Eternal Consciousness

Is Matter a Dimension?

19 Is Matter a Dimension? Everything that exists is situated. Everything that’s above matter is situated; matter itself is situated. —Max Jacob Space is three-dimensional, and time is a fourth dimension, and matter is thought to be situated in space and time. If we say matter itself is a dimension, though, then what is situated in space and time and matter? Events? Let us say matter is a dimension along with space and time, and let us say events are what are situated in space and time and matter, and let us see where this leads us. Telling a story then, as we have been doing, is telling of events in space and time and matter. “A story that is to be told,” Padraic Colum says, “has to be about happenings.”1 “Everything that exists is situated,” Max Jacob says. “Everything that’s above matter is situated; matter itself is situated.”2 If we say matter is a dimension, though, then matter situates as well as being situated. That would mean the brain situates the mind, the body situates the soul, and generally matter situates 20 Eternal Consciousness events or happenings of all kinds. I think of Einstein’s theory of relativity. His original theory, the special theory of relativity (1905), led to Minkowski’s inference that time is a dimension. His later theory, the general theory of relativity (1915), I believe , could lead to a similar inference that matter is a dimension . There has been a renaissance of general relativity in our time, and so perhaps it is time to draw this inference from the curvature of space and time that arises from matter in general relativity. If matter is a dimension along with space and time, then storytelling is about spirit. I think of Heinrich von Kleist’s marvelous essay “On the Marionette Theatre” where he speaks of “the path taken by the soul of the dancer.”3 The marionette, as he describes it, is a doll suspended by a string attached to its center of gravity. It is an image of the dancer. But “the path taken by the soul of the dancer” is the path of the spirit. The story of the spirit then goes from unconscious unity with the body and on through partial consciousness to full consciousness . Grace as gracefulness is there in the beginning and in the end, but it is missing in the partial consciousness of the middle. In the beginning and in the end we are as graceful as dancers, but we lack that grace now in the middle time. “Grace appears most purely in the human form which either has no consciousness or an infinite consciousness,” the dancer says in Kleist’s essay. “Does that mean,” Kleist answers, “we must eat again of the tree of knowledge in order to return to the state of innocence?” “Of course,” the dancer replies, “but that’s the final chapter in the history of the world.”4 If we say matter situates the spirit, then the brain situates the consciousness, and the body situates the soul of the dancer. Does the Brain Situate the Mind? “This is the point where the two ends of the circular world meet,” the dancer says to Kleist, speaking of conscious and unconscious grace.5 The relation of body and mind, according Is Matter a Dimension? 21 to this, is a circle, going from unconscious to conscious unity by way of partial consciousness with its separation of body and mind. If we speak then of the brain and the mind, we come upon this circle and this same “point where the two ends of the circular world meet.” I think of the two hemispheres of the brain, and how words are associated with the left hemisphere and music with the right hemisphere, and how there seems to have been an original unity of words and music, as in Vico’s idea that “the world’s first languages were in song,”6 and thus perhaps an ultimate unity or harmony to come which I want to call “the music of words.” Now the right hemisphere seems to be connected to the left hand and the left hemisphere to the right hand. So if a person suffers a stroke in the right hemisphere, as happened to a friend of mine, the paralysis occurs in the left hand and the left leg. I noticed that my friend...