St. Teresa de Avila: Autobiography

The questions is: what did she see? Was she hallucinating, or having what William James would call a genuine religious experience? Never mind that the book was painful to get through. As she explains, "I had not read it through yet after I had written it", let alone given it any kind of edit. "Some things in it may not be very clearly explained, and there may be some repetitions" (350). An understatement, to be sure.

But what did she see? One possibility is that she saw the literal truth: that demons really were waiting around every corner, that there was a special place in hell reserved for her if she didn't repent--although what her sins are is never clear--and that Mary, Joseph et al take a special interest in certain humans and not others, appearing to them in their glory and fixing everything right up. I don't really care whether this is true or not, because I would refuse to believe it even if it were. That is not how the universe works, it isn't it isn't.

Another possibility is that she was actually bonkers, schizophrenic of a very textbook variety. Possible, very very possible. The visions, the unseen presences, the voices, and the seizures all are easily shrugged off by medical explanations. But this is not how the universe works either, or so I am coming to believe. Hear me out:

Picture a one-dimensional creature. No, pick a two-dimensional one; it's easier. A creature that lies perfectly flat, and lives, say on the surface of a body of water. What do you look like to that creature as you dive into the water? You would be two-dimensional to it. You would look like a rapidly expanding and contracting, two-dimensional shape. In fact, you would be a two-dimensional shape to it, but you would look like a one dimensional shape, a rapidly expanding and contracting line.

Now put yourself in the position of that creature. You are a three-dimensional creature, and even though you think that everything around you is three-dimensional, you see it in two dimensions because you can only ever see one side of it at a time. People may say that you see in three dimensions, but you do not. Look how easily you are fooled by a 3D movie or a realistic painting.

If a 4D something or other fell into your pool, what would it look like? For purpose of simplicity, lets say that it was a perfectly regular (in geometric terms) 4D shape: the 4D equivalent of a sphere. It would no doubt look like a a rapidly expanding and contracting sphere appearing in the middle of nowhere and then disappearing altogether. Following this? Probably not, but that's why I write this crazy shit down here instead of sharing it over cocktails.

How would you react to that? Even if it were a perfectly regular object, even if some 4D guys happened to toss their basketball through the plane (or 3D equivalent) where you reside? You would probably ignore it, but suppose that you didn't. If you were somehow able to acknowledge it, your brain would have to engage that marvelous human capacity for making shit up. And would you make up that a 4D object had passed through your experience? Probably not, and especially not if you lived in the 16th century. You would draw from what you know, and what Teresa knew was angels and devils. In short, she saw what she was capable of understanding. If you or I were to see something of the same source, we would see what we are capable of understanding.

Which is all well and good, but in reality nothing is entirely two-dimensional. The idea of you passing through the plane occupied by a two-dimensional creature is purely hypothetical. Everything you or I know has three dimensions, even the thinnest sheet of paper. If we see something that looks two-dimensional, it is only because we can only see one side of it at a time. How likely is it that our three-dimensional model is any less theoretical?

If every plane is just a mathematical construct intersected by a variety of three dimensional objects, everything, everything in that plane is just an aspect of some three-dimensional object, an expression of that object into two-dimensional space. If a fourth dimension exists, then it follows by the same logic that every thing in a given three-dimensional space is likewise an expression of a four-dimensional object. This includes you and me. We seem to exist purely in three-dimensions, but we are in truth expressions of something four-dimensional. We are appendages of something greater.

To make matters more confusing--if less complicated--most if not all of those who have what are called religious experiences tell of their perception that we are all not only part of something greater, but that we are all expressions of the same greater something. We are the fingers and toes of God

I have been thinking a lot about this lately. Is there something bigger than I am that I can somehow tap into or experience? How do I see the things that Teresa saw? Is it only for a few, or can anybody train their senses--or rather, untrain them--to see the full scope? Stay tuned: my next big project is The Science of Mind by Ernest Holmes. I expect some revelations . . .