Eternity and The Flatlanders

Husband Post. Be warned. Seriously, though. This one's... out there.

I've had an idea kicking around in my head for a few years that I've never put into writing or really been able to discuss at length with anyone. Since your perusal of this blog is voluntary, I can ramble without the usual guilt I associate with cornering some poor soul and unleashing a barrage of my random thoughts at them. So here goes:

There's a book called Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. If you haven't read it, read it. It's fantastic and it's free (public domain). Here's a link to a free download. If that's too much for you, the Wikipedia article hits the high points. I'll give you an even shorter version:

A Square narrates his daily life living in the 2nd dimension (Flatland). He is then visited by a 3rd dimensional Sphere who proceeds to blow his freaking mind.

If you'd rather get the quick version of what I'll be talking about (as well as a similar mind-blowing experience) watch the following two videos, entitled "Imagining the 10th Dimension" parts 1 & 2:

Or watch the movie Interstellar a few times back to back.

Anyone still reading? Just the two of you? Ok, then let us begin:

In a two-dimensional space, all you see are lines. Imagine a penny on a table, then lower yourself to be looking at only the edge of the penny. That penny's edge, reduced to infinite thinness because there is no thickness in the 2nd dimension, is the essence of being a Flatlander. You see the edges of things and that's it. If you're looking at a Square, it's a line. A circle's a line. A triangle's a line. You get the idea. Without "feeling" the edges, you have no idea how many sides a shape has because they're all lines. If there's a triangle behind a pentagon, you see the pentagon and not the triangle because they're lines.

Looking from the third dimension you can easily distinguish a circle from a hexagon or triangle. You can see several of these shapes at once, even if they're hiding "behind" one another, because of your third-dimensional view. You could even look inside a shape to see his "organs." You could see into the privacy of that shape's home because you're looking down into it rather than from the side like a Flatlander would. This seems trivial to us, but would be unfathomable to someone in Flatland. A Flatlander would understand forward, backward, left, and right, but wouldn't even be able to imagine such a thing as "up" or "down" because those directions don't exist in the 2nd dimension.

Still with me? Just the one? Oh, well I'm sure the other guy had somewhere to be. Now it gets a little hairy...

If a Sphere were to visit Flatland, he would be perceived in the same way a circle would. Our narrator, A Square, "feeling" the sides of the Sphere would find a smooth circle and that's it. The difference would be that a Sphere could change the size of that perceived "circle" or even disappear entirely depending on how it moved through the plane of Flatland. Imagine the sphere rose up through Flatland. Its existence would be perceived by a Square as starting at a single point, then growing larger until it reached its equator, then shrinking again down to a single point, then popping entirely out of existence. In reality the sphere merely made an appearance in the dimension that the Square could perceive.

While the Square struggles to understand what just happened, the Sphere looks on in amusement at the limited perspective of those in a dimension lower than himself. He can see inside, outside, behind, around, and on every side of a shape simultaneously while the Square is flipping his lid trying to understand "up." The Sphere's motility and powers of observation seem magical and unbelievable, even though it's the simplest thing in the world depending on your perspective and dimension.

Next, the Sphere takes the Square on a journey through the third dimension, known as "Spaceland." The Square is shown things that his mind couldn't even imagine. Spheres, cubes, and polyhedra of every type are suddenly made visible. He's introduced to impossible concepts and beings of seemingly incredible power. These beings turn, rotate, float, and move in new, mind-boggling ways. Light and color now have surfaces to reflect from. He can see the entirety of shapes that before he could only see or feel one edge at a time. In reality, the Sphere merely allowed the Square to see and move through a dimension one higher than his own. He could still be comfortably seated in his own house but now he's looking up, which was impossible before.

Now imagine A Square describing this to people who didn't see it for themselves. A voice introduces himself, then a being appears out of nowhere, grows, shrinks, then disappears. This being could also see everything. Even when you hid in your closet, he could see you plain as day. Then he takes you somewhere not far from your home but completely unreachable and introduces you to shapes whose powers seem mystical and unbelievable.

In a universe such as that of Flatland, as a being is raised from his own dimension to a higher one he is able to perceive and do things that seem impossible to those below.

Anyone left? No? Well I'm gonna finish anyway.

Now imagine a being in the 4th dimension looking at us. Such a being could see things hidden from our eyes. He could see and travel through walls, appear and disappear at will, and interact with our reality in ways we've never seen. His "body" might touch on our plane of existence, but we would only be seeing the 3-dimensional part of him that he allows to appear. In the 4th dimension the x, y, and z axes are all joined perpendicularly by the w axis. Directions like up, down, left, right, forward, and backward would be joined by ana and kata, directions only traveled in the 4th dimension or higher, directions that we simply can't wrap our heads around because all we know are three dimensions.

A being in even higher dimensions could travel through time. A being in dimensions higher than that could see events from the past, present, and future simultaneously. Space and time would be just eight of the dozens of directions in which this being could see and travel. The details of our entire lives, our whole universe, would be laid out as plainly as the blueprint to a building.

I submit to you that the power and omniscience of God are, in part, derived from His residing on a dimension much higher than our own. Think of how God's omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence are described in scripture:

The Lord’s eyes see and know all men’s works: D&C 121:24

The past, present, and future are continually before the Lord: D&C 130:7

All things are present with God: Moses 1:6

The eyes of the Lord are in every place: Prov. 15:3

Now this "higher-dimensional being" theory would seem to contradict one of the core beliefs of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because we, as Latter-day Saints, believe that God has a tangible body of flesh and bone. I liken this to the Square seeing a circle when the Sphere visited him. God has a body like a Sphere has a circle. Yes, the Sphere is a circle, but that is only a part of the entire being. That's merely a protrusion into observable space. The fact that there's more doesn't negate the fact that the Sphere is a circle or that God has a body, it's just that so much of him is unobservable to our natural eyes limited to the 3rd dimension.

Look in 1 John 3:2.

"Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is."

In order to see God as He truly is, our bodies must be changed and our perceptions altered. A transfiguration must take place. The dictionary definition of "transfigure" means "transform into something more beautiful or elevated" (emphasis mine). It seems that transfiguration, the process by which man can perceive the true form of God and withstand his presence, is an elevation of our form to a higher dimension.

We, ourselves, are also higher dimensional beings in a way. Our spirits are made of higher-dimensional matter chained to our three-dimensional bodies. Even Joseph Smith said something very similar:

"There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and 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" (D&C 131:7-8 emphasis mine).

Everything is matter, but some matter can't be seen by our natural eyes. That sounds like a Square being pushed into a higher dimension to me. Moses spoke of such an opening of the eyes as the heavens being opened:

"3 And it came to pass that I turned and went up on the mount; and as I stood upon the mount, I beheld the heavens open, and I was clothed upon with glory;

4 And I saw the Lord; and he stood before my face, and he talked with me, even as a man talketh one with another, face to face; and he said unto me: Look, and I will show unto thee the world for the space of many generations" (Moses 7:3-4).

Look! That word! If our spiritual eyes are allowed, through transfiguration, to look in the right direction we can begin to see dimensions beyond our own, even the one where God Himself resides.

I believe that attaining permanent residence on such a dimension is the whole point of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Plan of Salvation. In order to progress and rise and expand and grow to be able to perceive and move through these higher dimensions, we have to prepare ourselves. Not just our bodies, but our spirits. A process that is totally beyond my comprehension is in place to purify our beings in preparation for our ascension to the dwelling place of God.

The funny thing about all of this talk of dimensions, though, is that it doesn't matter at all. In the grand scheme of things this is all just tiddlywinks. Everything I just wrote about could be 100% true or 100% false and it wouldn't affect the Gospel of Jesus Christ one iota. If the Gospel and the Plan of Salvation are the roadmap to eternal salvation, this whole idea I just wrote about is similar to meditating on the metallurgy behind the signs that tell you where the ducks cross the road. It may be interesting to some, but it's so insignificant when compared to things like Faith, Repentance, Baptism, and the Gift of the Holy Ghost, not to mention the thousands of other principles that still escape us. They'll never teach this idea in Sunday School because almost all of us are still struggling with the most important stuff. I figure those who make it to the Celestial Kingdom will study this all in depth at some point when it might actually be useful.

I do, however, think of this stuff every time a scientist starts pontificating about the idiocy of a bearded wizard in the sky creating everything. "How preposterous! There is no God and you're an idiot for thinking that an invisible being in any way affects the goings-on of us important people here on the 3rd dimension!" When I hear things like that I just chuckle and think of A Square.