The Psychic Being Exists in a Fourth Dimension Outside the Three Spatial Dimensions

The external world operates on three dimensions of form (length, width and depth). In our lives we interact with objects that have these dimensions. The first mathematical dimension is a “point” with no actual ‘mass’. The second mathematical dimension is a ‘line” that essentially creates a linear, albeit “flat” world. Various artists and writers have envisioned life in a 2 dimensional world with no depth. While an interesting thought-experiment, it is not how we perceive the world. We add depth to create the third dimension for a world of forms, including our bodies and all the objects with which we interact.

This does not imply, however, that there are ONLY three dimensions. Since the advent of Einstein and the theory of relativity, many people consider ‘time’ to be a fourth dimension. The Mother describes the subtle planes of consciousness as additional dimensions outside the normal 3 dimensions of the external world, so the question of the ‘fourth dimension’ is simply a definitional one between the various viewpoints.

Consciousness is one and universal, permeating, creating and sustaining all that we experience. Consciousness has levels far more subtle than the three that make up our visible reality. We have not yet explored fully, nor understood, the number of dimensions that make up the entirety of the divine manifestation. Modern physics has postulated 10 dimensions in what is known as ‘string theory’. Other theories hold there are 11 or more. While some conclude there remain further hidden dimensions that we have not yet uncovered or understood.

The Mother writes: “The other day I said that most of the time people do not have their psychic being within them. I would like to explain this in greater detail…. You must remember that the inner beings are not in the third dimension. If you open up your body you will find only the viscera of the body which are in the third dimension. The inner beings are in another dimension, and when I say that some men do not have their psychic being within them, I do not mean that it is not at the centre of their being, but that their outer consciousness is so small, so limited, so obscure that it is not able to keep a contact, not only conscious but intimate, with the psychic being which extends beyond it in every way; it is so much higher and deeper than the other outer consciousness that there is no relation either of quality or of nature between them. Religions say that you have a divine spark in you — it is well they call it a ‘spark’, for it is so small indeed that it can be placed anywhere in the body without difficulty. But this does not mean that it is in the body: it is within the consciousness in another dimension, and there are beings who have a contact with it, others who haven’t. But if you come to the divine Presence in the atom, the image is easier to understand, for there you touch so infinitesimal a domain that you are on the borderline where you can no longer distinguish between two, three, four or five dimensions. If you study modern physics you will understand what I mean. The movements constituting an atom are, in the matter of size, so imperceptible that they cannot be understood with our three-dimensional understanding, the more so as they follow laws which elude completely this three-dimensional idea. So if you take refuge there, you may say that the divine spark is at the centre of each atom and you won’t be far from the truth; but I was not speaking of the divine spark. I was speaking of the being, the psychic consciousness, which is another thing. The psychic being is an entity which has a form; it is organised around a central consciousness and, having a form it has a dimension, but a dimension of another kind than the third dimension of the outer consciousness.”

reference: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Psychic Being — Soul: Its Nature, Mission and Evolution, Section 6 More Lights on the Psychic Being, pp. 163-164