clifford_a-_pickover_surfing_through_hyperspacebookfi-org

preface
To consider that after the death of the body the spirit perishes is like imagining
that a bird in a cage will be destroyed if the cage is broken, though
the bird has nothing to fear from the destruction of the cage. Our body is
like the cage, and the spirit like the bird. We see that without the cage this
bird flies in the world of sleep; therefore, if the cage becomes broken, the
bird will continue and exist. Its feelings will be even more powerful, its
perceptions greater, and its happiness increased.
—Abdu'1-Baha, Some Answered Questions
The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would
be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God's
name is Abraxas.
—Hermann Hesse, Demian
Touring Higher Worlds
I know of no subject in mathematics that has intrigued both children and
adults as much as the idea of a fourth dimension—a spatial direction different
from all the directions of our normal three-dimensional space. Philosophers
and parapsychologists have meditated on this dimension that no one can point
to but may be all around us. Theologians have speculated that the afterlife,
heaven, hell, angels, and our souls could reside in a fourth dimension—that
God and Satan could literally be lumps of hypermatter in a four-dimensional
space inches away from our ordinary three-dimensional world. Throughout
time, various mystics and prophets have likened our world to a three-dimensional
cage 1 and speculated on how great our perceptions would be if we could
break from the confines of our world into higher dimensions. Yet, despite all
the philosophical and spiritual implications of the fourth dimension, this extra
dimension also has a very practical side. Mathematicians and physicists use the
fourth dimension every day in calculations. It's part of important theories that
describe the very fabric of our universe.
xi