Over the years, I have struggled with how to understand and explain what the spiritual dimension might be like. Until now, I had never found a good metaphor for understanding it. So, I am going to try to explain it – using geometrical figures and a book written in the 1800s called Flatland.
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S3E11 – Explaining the Spiritual Dimension of Life - Flatland
by Scott R. Frazer
This is the podcast Science and Scriptures - Discerning Truth the from Error, Season 3, Episode 11, or “Explaining the Fifth Dimension of Life - the book Flatland.”
Hello everyone. This is Scott Frazer of the podcast Science and Scriptures. Today’s will be a different kind of podcast. I rarely invoke mathematics to explain metaphysical aspects of the Gospel.But today I’m going to try to do just that. Over the years, I have struggled with how to understand and explain what the spiritual dimension might be like. This is the interface between the physical world and the next. I feel like I should know something more about it, if nothing else so I am not so surprised at my death.
We can get bare glimpses of the spiritual dimension when we are touched by the Holy Ghost. We won’t move there permanently (I believe) when we die. I think I know and understand the physical dimensions of life. What will it be like when we could visit that new dimension? We can read in the scriptures about prophets being fully immersed in the spiritual dimension. They describe their visits as dream-like. Other than that, it may be that prophets simply could not find other words to express what the spiritual dimension is like. Until now, I had never found a good metaphor for understanding it. So, I am going to speculate – using geometrical figures and a book written in the 1800s.
Way back in 1878, a man named Edwin A. Abbott wrote a book called Flatland, A Romance of Many Dimensions. (By the way, though I will be fashioning my metaphor around this book, I can’t recommend you read it, unless you really like geometry and old-fashioned writing.)Now the non-human narrator in the book is named A. Square. He really is a square, living in a two-dimensional world, not three dimensions like we have. The inhabitants of his world are circles, squares, triangles, and pentagons. It’s not easy being a two dimensional being. Nothing has depth. For example, you can’t even see if a fellow being approaching you is a circle or rectangle. To understand why, do this mental exercise with me.
In your mind, draw a circle on a piece of paper. Mentally, hold a pencil about an inch above that paper, imagining that the pencil point is an eye. From the pencil point perspective, the circle looks like a circle. But you are operating in a three-dimensional world, and you must now make it two dimensional. Move the pencil in a gentle arc toward the paper and let it rest ON the paper, but OUTSIDE the perimeter of the circle. As it moves, from the pencil point’s perspective, the circle gradually becomes an oval that continues to flatten out. When the pencil point is resting on the paper, from its perspective, the circle has become a line. Think of yourself looking at a quarter. If you look at its very edge, it will appear as a line, not a circle. The length of the line is the diameter of the circle. Viewed from its edge, any two-dimensional figure will look like a line, so Mr. Square cannot tell anything about the other inhabitants of Flatland. Are they squares, circles, triangles, or decagons? Mr. Square and the other inhabitants of Flatland have no perspective to tell them more about their fellow citizens. Like Flatlanders, humans have difficulty telling things about other people in our dimension as well. Sometimes they hide their problems and true feelings. We often only see one dimension of a multi-facetted person.Other dimensions, other insights, are needed to help us see more.
Mr. Square then has a dream of visiting a one-dimensional universe called Lineland, where perspective is even worse. Only one dimension exists in Lineland. Thus, all the inhabitants of Lineland are single points or lines who must live right next to one another in a broken line. No one has width or depth in Lineland. Let’s do another mind experiment. In your mind again, draw a line on another piece of paper. Holding your same pencil with the eye on its end, bring the pencil down in line with your penciled line. You have only one dimension, so the pencil cannot be above or below or beside your line. It must be, as I said, right in line with the line you drew. From your pencil’s perspective, the first inhabitant of Lineland looks like a single point, even if it’s a line. In Lineland, you can discern nothing about other inhabitants.To one other, everyone else looks like a single point in space. Likewise, in this life, people we don’t know well appear just as a dot in our radar.They are there, but we know nothing about them.
Mr. Square then happens to bump into the king of Lineland.He encourages his Majesty to expand widthwise and become two dimensional. The king is incredulous and does not believe Mr. Square for a second.Two dimensions are inconceivable.It’s ridiculous and impossible. The king threatens to throw Mr. Square in jail for disturbing the peace. Neither the king nor his subjects believe that Flatland exists. They can’t even imagine such a place. This is such a good metaphor! Can we even imagine a spiritual dimension, where we can see into other’s souls, where we can tell almost everything about them with a glance?
The next day, Mr. Square is back in Flatland. He happens to meet a 3-Dimensional Sphere, who comes from a three-dimensional place called Spaceland. In Flatland, the sphere must manifest itself as a circle. However, the Sphere successfully argues with Mr. Square that there really are three dimensions. Mr. Square struggles with the concept, but he eventually understands that, like one-dimensional beings might become two dimensional, two-dimensional beings could become three dimensional. It’s an aspect of evolution if you will. Each new step opens up new ways of seeing things and, thus, new understandings. Mr. Square takes the Gospel of Spaceland to his fellow, 2D circles, triangles, squares, and rectangles.
However, not unexpectedly, his friends think him crazy. They cannot conceive of a land of three dimensions. Mr. Square is thrown into jail to recover from his temporary lunacy. In the end, Linelanders don’t believe in two dimensions and Flatlanders don’t believe in three dimensions. It simply isn’t conceivable to their minds. In this statement, I am not being critical of Linelanders or Flatlanders. Humans live in a universe of four dimensions – and, similarly, most of us can’t imagine a fifth.
And that is my metaphor for this world. Many, many people can’t really even imagine an afterlife – so they have quit believing in one altogether. I once heard an atheist explain that God can’t exist because science explains everything in the universe. There is simply no need or room for a God here.He obviously believes that the physical universe he sees now is all he will ever see.
Unless they overcome their inability to conceive more dimensions, Linelanders, Flatlanders, and Humans will always have a very limited understanding of themselves or of their fellow beings. They will not see the complexity that exists in the universe. They will never see depth, shadows, or have insight into the souls of other beings. Understanding that a new dimension can exist after this life is challenging. Actually, it’s much like the difficulty our brains have in understanding infinity. There are no words to adequately explain a new dimension or the infinity of time and space such that our brains can grasp the concept.
The Fourth Dimension
I mentioned earlier that humans live in a universe of four dimensions. Better said, we live in a universe consisting of three dimensions of space – length, width, and depth. Additionally, our universe of matter is passing through a fourth dimension – that of time. It was once explained to me thus. For matter to exist in our universe, it must have three dimensions. However, that matter must also exist for a certain amount of time, whether it be a millisecond or a million years. If a piece of matter has not experienced the dimension of time, that matter never really existed at all. To exist in the Universe, every material thing must possess a certain value of length, width, depth, and time.
This inability to grasp that there might be another dimension to their lives after death affects many peoples’ belief in a God. On the other extreme, there was a time in our history when people believed that if God did not exist, the planets would stop their rotation, plants could not grow, and there would be no births of animals or people. Most people have grown beyond that belief. God does not need to wind up the cosmos every day. In the physical universe, things run because they are governed by physical laws to do so. Gravity always works, as does plant and animal biology. Science explains everything in the physical universe because it was set up that way. There is a division. But science does not explain the spiritual dimension.
This division between physical and spiritual is often difficult for Christians to accept as well. We want to believe that God is involved in everyday life. Many want to believe that, without God, the sun won’t rise.But this cannot be. Physics equations cannot contain a variable that allows for changes that God might decide to make on a given day. We can’t live our mortal lives in a place where the weatherman tells us tomorrow will probably be clear and sunny – that is, unless God chooses to answer the prayers of those who want it to rain. There must be a separation between the physical world and the spiritual world. The whole reason for earth life would be compromised if the two dimensions weren’t separate. You may get glimpses of the spiritual realm during this life, but you won’t get to immerse yourself in it… until you die. Then you will leave the physical world to enter the spiritual one.
The fact that dimensions exist that are radically different from ours should not surprise us. For example, when scientists developed the ability to look at particles smaller than the nucleus of an atom, they were surprised at what they found. In the so-called quantum world, the identification of matter and energy must be more fluid. The two interchange quickly. Science still works… but not quite as expected. Opening up another dimension of our universe requires adjustments to our understanding.
In the history of the world, there have been people, such as the Savior and a few prophets, who brought an understanding of the spiritual dimension and its power with them. But it’s a dimension that is not understood, because it’s not a physical dimension just waiting to be discovered. It’s a spiritual dimension that requires your spiritual self to step forward. This will happen, to me at least, at death.
The Fifth Dimension
I want to expand on the idea from the book Flatland. Going from one dimension to two dimensions to three dimensions to four dimensions would have allowed the Linelanders and Flatlanders to achieve more insight and understanding of life and other people. Their lives would have been better for them, had they changed.IF we learn anything from this book, it should be that we shouldn’t give up on the thought of an afterlife. Just because we don’t have many facts, which have been withheld on purpose, and we can’t imagine what it could be like - doesn’t mean it's not there.
If we lived in a world without the fourth-dimension of time, well, then time would probably be unimaginable as well. Time allows us to progress, learning, as the saying goes, “line upon line, precept on precept”. Human development on earth wouldn’t be possible if we didn’t have four dimensions.It shouldn’t surprise us that we’ll need another dimension to progress to our next phase of life.
If the Fifth Dimension sounds familiar, it may be that you are remembering a singing group from the 1960s and 70s. I’ve got to give that pop quintet it’s due – they picked a phenomenal name. In any case, there are a number of science fiction movies that use the theory of multiple dimensions to entertain us. The first that comes to mind is the 2022 Marvel movie, Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Dr, Strange, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, trapses across multiple parallel universes to defeat his evil foe, the Scarlet Witch.So, as we discuss the existence of a spiritual realm, let’s try to keep our heads out of the Multiverse interpretation that we’ve seen in the movies. We’re not talking fantasy or even science fiction here.
What would a 5th dimension look like? What would access to a fifth dimension enable us to do, to see, or to understand differently? Joseph Smith told us that,
”All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and it can only be discerned by purer eyes. We cannot see it, but when our bodies are purified, we shall see that it is all matter”.
So, when we enter into what I will call the Fifth or Spiritual Dimension, I think we will be able to see things as they are – not only the spiritual bodies of humans, but maybe even the bodies of angels as well. Just like the Flatlanders might have seen things in their 3-dimensional form, we will see things in another form as well. Being able to see family and friends from a new perspective should help us to understand them better.
I interviewed Aaron Franklin, the author of the book The Spiritual Physics of Light a couple years ago. Quoting from his book, we read,
“If an object emits light because it has thermal energy, it seems reasonable to conclude that our spirits emit a type of spiritual light when they have an associated spiritual energy.”
Dr. Franklin then goes on to quote President David O. McKay. We read,
“Every person is a recipient of radiation.The Savior was conscious of that.Whenever he came in the presence of an individual, he sensed that radiation – whether it was the woman of Samaria with her past life, whether it was the woman who was to be stoned or the men who were to stone her; whether it was the statesman Nicodemus, or one of the lepers. He was conscious of the radiation from the individual. And to a degree, so are you, and so am I.”
So, when you enter this spiritual realm, prepare yourself. The new dimension will allow you to see people as you have never before seen them.
I think we will hear differently as well. First, we should be able to hear the Lord speak. Again, so you’re not surprised, the scriptures tell us that His is a pleasant voice, even as a whisper, but it will pierce your soul.Helaman chapter 5 does a good job of describing that voice. In that chapter, the two brothers Nephi and Lehi are out preaching. The Lamanites to whom they were preaching were lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time to hear the voice of the Lord.In Helaman 5:30, we read,
“And it came to pass when they heard this voice, and beheld that it was not a voice of thunder, neither was it a voice of a great tumultuous noise, but behold, it was a still voice of perfect mildness, as if it had been a whisper, and it did pierce even to the very soul.
Lastly, with our improved sight and hearing, I hope we will be able to recognize the truth of things. You see, I love discovering truth; it’s one of the reasons I became a scientist. I especially love to experience epiphanies.Epiphanies occur when seemingly unconnected facts come together in your brain, and in a single moment, you understand something that you never realized before. An epiphany is a mental process. However, if the epiphany is accompanied by the Holy Ghost confirming your thought, it can also be a spiritual process. I have a tough time telling the difference between an epiphany and a revelation.
In any case, throughout the scriptures, as prophets got further into the spiritual realm, you can tell they also had deep insights. Remember when Nephi, son of Helaman identified Seantum as the murderer of the chief judge in Helaman 9? That was pretty obviously a revelation of course. From the New Testament we read that Peter was able to determine that Ananias and Sapphira were lying to him in Acts chapter 5, when they decided to not pay a full tithing on a sale they had made. Peter never claimed his knowledge to be via revelation. Had Peter arrived at the point to be able to be able to “sense radiation” and read people and their thoughts?
So, that is all I have for you today. I hope this podcast made sense to you – it was a hard topic to put into words. I hope you appreciate the fact that we live in a universe with four dimensions, which allow us to see things almost as they really are. We should look forward to when we will have insight into the fifth, or spiritual dimension. This is Scott Frazer from the podcast Science and Scriptures. Take care, have a good week, and may God bless.