Another World or The Fourth Dimension
This analysis is also available in the Blog: 4DLab: Many dimensions everywhere .
Alfred T. Schofield's book: Another world, or the fourth dimension is an interesting book that draws conclusions from Abbott's Flatland and the Bible combined. For some people this my seem profane, however, it takes to read the book to see that his writings are not at all conceived without some solid grounds. If he is at some points wrong, then Abbot's ideas, or the Bible, are also concurrently wrong.
Another World was published in 1888 in London, the same year when Flammarion published The Atmosphere: Popular Meteorology and where Flammarion's famous woodcut was said to be in included in this book.
The first part of Another World is an extensive review of Abbot's Flatland. He wants the reader to have a somewhat solid foundation about the perception of the worlds of 'Pointland', 'Lineland', and 'Flatland'. The influence of Abbot in Another World is evident and he makes no intent to conceal it. In fact, Another World is clearly based of Flatland. The extensive use of paragraph citations is a manifestation of Flatland's influence upon him. However, the intention of Schofield is in no way to steal or plagiarize Abbot's ideas. In his own words in the Introduction he writes:
I would here take the opportunity of acknowledging my deep indebtedness to the anonymous author of a small book, called "Flatland," which I have used extensively throughout, and without which I am quite sure the public would never have been troubled with these remarks; my object being to carry on the line of argument there brought forward, to what seems to me its true and necessary conclusion.
He uses many of Flatland's sections to teach his readers about the space dimensions and to lay the grounds about the conclusions he is going to draw from passages of the Bible and from Christianity in general.
Is the center of a black hole a kind of Pointland? Is the center of a black hole a Pointland? Picture by NASA.
Briefly described, because Flatland describes it in full details, 'Pointland' is the "universe" or "world" of no dimension at all; it is just a point with no extension in any direction. But 'Pointland' is not the 'Void', 'Pointland' is not an empty space. Venturing a little into some modern physics, is difficult to resist the temptation of associating 'Pointland' with the hypothetical micro black holes. These mental constructs are calculated to be about 2 × 10−8 kg, an extremely small point-object indeed, however, but for Abbott, every world is populated, no matter how many dimensions it has, even if it lack of dimensions at all, like in 'Pointland', or in the center of a micro black hole.
In a journey that remembers us the epic of Dante's Divine Comedy, in a dream, the Sphere guides A. Square to the unbelievable world of the space without dimensions: Pointland.
Look yonder," said my Guide, "in Flatland thou hast lived; of Lineland thou hast received a vision; thou hast soared with me to the heights of Spaceland; now, in order to complete the range of thy experience, I conduct thee downward to the lowest depth of existence, even to the realm of Pointland, the Abyss of No dimensions.
There they found a living creature ---nothing less than a Monarch--- that has no dimension in any extension.
Behold yon miserable creature. That Point is a Being like ourselves, but confined to the non-dimensional Gulf. He is himself his own World, his own Universe; of any other than himself he can form no conception; he knows not Length, nor Breadth, nor Height, for he has had no experience of them; he has no cognizance even of the number Two; nor has he a thought of Plurality; for he is himself his One and All, being really Nothing.
This tiny being was immensely happy of himself for his "Infinite beatitude of existence!" Keeping talking about himself, in Third Person as the Sphere said because "have you not noticed before now, that babies and babyish people who cannot distinguish themselves from the world, speak of themselves in the Third Person?"
"It fills all Space," continued the little soliloquizing Creature, "and what It fills, It is. What It thinks, that It utters; and what It utters, that It hears; and It itself is Thinker, Utterer, Hearer, Thought, Word, Audition; it is the One, and yet the All in All. Ah, the happiness, ah, the happiness of Being!
After hearing this Monarch in an almost never finishing monologue, they decide to go back to their more comfortable Flatland. Oh Flatland, home sweet home!
"You see," said my Teacher, "how little your words have done. So far as the Monarch understand them at all, he accepts them as his own--for he cannot conceive of any other except himself--and plumes himself upon the variety of 'Its Thought' as an instance of creative Power. Let us leave this God of Pointland to the ignorant fruition of his omnipresence and omniscience: nothing that you or I can do can rescue him from his self-satisfaction."
As mentioned above, Schofield uses all the passages from Flatland that can be useful for his readers to understand the concept of dimension with the idea of later delving into the fourth dimension concept and how the Bible and Christianity unconsciously uses it.
Schofield uses two approaches to the understanding of the fourth dimension: (a) how lower dimensions are perceived by beings in higher dimensions, and (b) how higher dimensions are perceived by beings of lower dimensions. He starts with the first choice as quoted in here:
(A) Some of the relations of a being in one dimension, with the dimensions below him and the beings in it.
1. He can enter or leave the world below him, that is, appear and disappear at will, and that without changing his form.
2. However near to the world below him, he remains invisible till actually in it.
3. He can be in closest proximity with the beings in the world below, and yet outside that world altogether, and therefore invisible.
4. From his dimension he can see and enter at will the inside of every living being and thing in the world below him.
5. When he enters the world below, he can never be wholly seen, and that part of him that is seen is always in the form of the world below him which he enters.
6. His voice, while still in his own dimension, would be heard (if hearing were possible) by a being of the world below as an internal voice, or a voice from his own inside.
7. His appearance and disappearance in the world below are not caused by any change of form or substance, but by his entering or leaving that world.
8. A world and beings of any dimension include all the shapes and characters of those below them, adding to them that further shape and character peculiar to the added dimension.
Download the free E-Book: Another World.
Click here to download Another World by A. T. Schofield.
Then he continues speculating about how a being from any dimension will perceive other higher dimensions.
(B) The relations of a being in one dimension with that above him and its inhabitants.
1. All conception of a higher dimension is impossible, though capable of mathematical demonstration.
2. However vast and populous the dimension, to him it is absolutely and necessarily non-existent.
3. If he could hear such beings, the sound would appear to come from his inner consciousness, and not from his own world without.
4. If such beings enter his world, he can only see and comprehend that part of them that enters it. Such beings may directly enter his own inside.
5. And to him such part always appears in the likeness of an inhabitant of his world (the inhabitants of one world being always a partial likeness, or the likeness of a part, of those in the world above them).
6. He can never, by his own power, leave his own dimension or world.
7. While in his world, he can never see the true appearance or shape of any being in it, but only its exterior.
8. If raised into the dimension above, he at once perceives the true dimension and shape of every being in his own world.
9. The beings of the dimension into which he is raised, at first present the same appearance as the beings (now first truly seen) in his own dimension.
10. By close inspection and careful comparison the real difference can be discerned.
11. Even if the dimension above be visited and understood, it is impossible to describe it in the language, or to draw it in the figures, of his own dimension.
12. All such attempts are necessarily unintelligible, and sound foolish and irrational.
13. All attempts to understand or grasp the dimension above, without having entered it, are futile.
14. An eye in one's inside would, according to analogy, look in the direction of the dimension above.
15. Each dimension adds one new direction of size, space, capacity, and form to the one below.
16. The visibility of a being does not depend on physical properties, but on its position inside or outside of the world below him.
Schofield sees the connection of our material world and the spiritual world of the Bible in the following way:
Speaking of communion, and turning to the Bible and to the lives of the saints and of all good men in ancient and modern days, and, on the other hand, to certain events in the lives of bad men, especially in connection with great crimes, no student of the subject can doubt that the expressions, "We see Jesus," "David sat before the Lord," "God spoke to Moses," "Satan tempted him," "Daniel cried unto the Lord," "I sought the Lord, and He heard me," and hundreds of similar utterances in biographies and from the lips of living men, represent the fact of communion and intercourse between the two worlds, just as faith, the evidence of things not seen, prayer, contemplation and abstraction represent the means.
In the next paragraph he says:
The testimony of the Bible alone (if believed) is of course overwhelming on the point. Angels come and go at will, God Himself is seen in Old Testament times in human form, and in New Testament times, when our Lord takes a spiritual body, He appears or disappears in this world of ours at will. A hand wrote on Balthazar's wall. The form of the Son of God was seen in the fiery furnace. Since then appearances have been seen and voices heard that cannot be explained by anything in three dimensions.
Painters pickup the fourth dimension in the Bible.
The painting shown here of the incident of a feast by Balthazar where a hand appears and writes on a wall was done by Rembrandt (1606-1669) based on the Old Testament Book of Daniel (5: 1-6, 25-8).
We see in in the painting that a hand appears out of nowhere and writes some words on the wall. Recall that the statement 5 above of the behavior of a being from a higher dimension entering a lower dimension says "5. When he enters the world below, he can never be wholly seen, and that part of him that is seen is always in the form of the world below him which he enters." This is exactly what happens in this painting: a hand from an unknown dimension (the heaven, may say the believers) enters into a lower dimension and writes on a wall. In Flatland a similar thing happened to A. Square when a Sphere from the third dimension entered in his flat world.
Enoch ascending to the heavens alive. Elijah Taken Up in a Chariot of Fire.
Schofield also mentions other passages from the Bible that can be explained easily as moving to and fro from some dimensions to another. "We have also the account of Elijah and Enoch and Christ suddenly leaving this world for the higher one, while yet alive." See the painting by Giuseppe Angeli (1712-1798) that illustrates the passing of a human being from one dimension to another while still alive.
In another painting by Sebastiano Ricci (1659-1734) picks up the ascension of Enoch, similar to the event of Elijah.
Schofield, Bible, Heavens, Enoch, Elijah, Flatland, Rembrandt, Ricci, Angeli.