Notes from Mathilde Scholl 1904–1906

GA 91 — 21 August 1906

5. The Fourth Dimension I

We must not confuse space and dimension. Only three dimensions can be recognized in space, These are the three dimensions of what has become, of what exists, that is, which represent what hovers before our eyes in the present as a shadow image of the intersecting forces of past and future. To this, however, the word "everything flows" is always to be applied. Nothing remains of it, but everything is in constant change. The three spatial dimensions are only the means to bring the individual development moments before our eyes like in a panorama, so that we as three-dimensional beings, which are pronounced in the space, can also recognize other processes in their three-dimensional pictoriality. This is necessary so that man learns to recognize himself as a special being in the world. Otherwise he would never have come to the objective recognition of the environment and would always have felt it only subjectively within himself.

Now we have the other dimensions also all in us and around us. The other dimensions are not to be looked for in the space. But the space, the three dimensions, rest in the other dimensions. The other dimensions contain the three dimensions of space within them, but are not delimited in them - just as water can contain floating pieces of ice, but is not delimited in them, or as air can contain denser substances, but is not delimited in them.

The dimension in which we live, which initially conditions our development, our growth, in the first place, is time. Every moment of our life is a moving through this fourth dimension, time. Time includes everything spatial. The inanimate has only the three dimensions; it does not change into the fourth dimension, into time. But everything that is alive lives into time. To live means to change into time, to change into the fourth dimension. The fact that we are physically different today than yesterday is only possible through the fourth dimension. Within the three dimensions, changes in growth cannot take place. They only become visible within the three dimensions as shadow images of changing in time.

The fifth dimension still includes the fourth; it is sensation; that goes beyond space and time. That which connects us with the other beings, that is the fifth dimension. Sensation holds space and time within itself and is not limited by space and time. Each higher dimension makes us independent of the one below, because in the higher one we control the one below. The second dimension is a going beyond the first dimension; the third dimension is a going beyond the second dimension, a progression to independence. The fourth dimension is a going beyond the third dimension, a further becoming independent. For time makes us independent of space. What we could not achieve bound to space, we can achieve in the fourth dimension, time. Time makes it possible for us to rise above the space dimension. Thus, sensation, the fifth dimension, makes it possible for us to rise above time; we become independent of time through sensation. Likewise, self-consciousness, the sixth dimension, makes us independent of sensation. The sixth dimension, self-consciousness, is the one from which we also master sentience, the fifth dimension. With self-consciousness, we also encompass the fifth dimension, sentience. Our sensation can rest in the self-consciousness, the fifth dimension in the sixth. Thus time rests in sensation, the fourth dimension in the fifth; and space rests in time, the third dimension in the fourth; the surface rests on the body, the second dimension on the third; the line rests on the surface, the first dimension on the second. The sixth dimension, self-consciousness, leads over to still higher dimensions. The overcoming of self-consciousness lies in the seventh dimension, in that which goes beyond self-consciousness. In the seventh dimension, the chela begins to live, entering higher worlds through self-consciousness. The seventh dimension is the conscious surrender to the world. In this conscious surrender lies the seventh dimension. The eighth dimension is conscious absorption in the environment; the ninth dimension is conscious creation in the environment.

Dimensions 1 through 3 are the inanimate;
Dimensions 4 through 6 are the living but passive;
Dimensions 7 to 9 are the creating ones.

Through the third dimension alone there is separation. The third dimension is the dimension of specialness. By overcoming the third dimension, we step out of the specialness into the community.

Beings with higher dimensions and with the first and second are not bound to specialness, but can overcome space. The third dimension is space in the first place. Beings can have several dimensions that have nothing to do with the third dimension of space. Those who have the first and second dimension and the fourth - the time - and the fifth - the sensation - are independent of the third space dimension. In the astral world we are also independent of the third space dimension. But there we have the time like a panorama behind us and in front of us. As we look here in the space, we can look in the astral, in the fourth dimension, in the time. Time lies rolled up in front of us. The past and the future surround us like a panorama here in space. Looking back into the past or looking into the future is therefore conditioned by the ability to consciously enter the fourth dimension or to consciously grasp the panorama of time that is rolled up there before us.

The point has no extension. That what has no extension gets an extension is conditioned by the first dimension; thereby the point becomes a line. That the line can move is conditioned by the second dimension; thereby it becomes the surface; that the surface can move is conditioned by the third dimension; by the third dimension everything existing becomes physical, fixed. When the Spirit of God hovered over the waters, nothing had yet entered the third dimension, nothing was yet physically fixed. The other dimensions were there, but the third space dimension was not. That meant the greatest congestion of the life currents on earth. Thereby the physical, the separation, the particularity, the emergence of the individual things from the totality, the becoming fixed, crystallizing out came into being. It is the symbol for that, what in the spiritual the human being should undertake with himself. Just as a cosmos crystallized out of the chaos of the world, out of the confusion of the currents in the world, and became visible in the third dimension, formed itself, whereby a solid, fixed thing arose in the flooding sea of the world, whereby rhythm came into the chaos, so man should spiritually form a cosmos out of the forces flowing in him. He should first find in his self-consciousness the fixed point, the mainland, on which he can stand, and then arrange around it, rhythmically shape all the forces that are in him. The material for this microcosm is given to him, but he should work on this material himself, build a temple out of it, in which the divine rules. Just as the forces in nature, by working together, by crossing each other, cause a congestion, but also a crystallization, so also man should build a temple out of higher and lower forces, by their flowing against each other, by congestion, by forming something solid, lasting, by crystallization. When he has achieved this, he can himself work creatively in the world out of this ordered, harmonious whole. Then he is the ruler in this microcosm. Then he is no longer driven by the forces, but he is the driving force, the creator of something new. Then he rules all dimensions. Then they are for him only the lines along which he sends out his forces into the world. Spiritual growth transcends all dimensions; it masters and transcends all dimensions; there is no limit to it, neither by space nor by time nor by sensation.

The third dimension of space has great importance in the development of the world and in the development of the individuality of man. But it must be overcome. By overcoming the third dimension, man becomes free. Entering the third dimension means congestion; but congestion is also gathering of strength, fortification, anchoring in a fixed point, the only possibility for man to learn to stand firm. But man must not remain in the congestion of the third dimension, but must again grow beyond it, consciously grow beyond this congestion, so that the accumulated forces can become free, can unfold. That which has become solid must be made fluid again. If man frees himself from the congestion, frees his own forces, then he can also free all the rest of nature from the congestion. That is releasing the mineral kingdom and transferring nature into the plant kingdom, transferring it out of the congestion of the third dimension into the life of the fourth dimension. Then also everything is still there that is there now, but living in the fourth dimension, with overcoming of the third dimension. Then we do not look at what has become, but all around us at what is becoming. Everything that lies in time then becomes visible to us. The conditions of life then take place visibly before our eyes. While now all life lies hidden behind the veil - maya - of what has become, we then grasp life itself.

Just as the second dimension enables the movement of the first, the third the movement of the second, so the fourth dimension enables the movement of a three-dimensional body. And further, sensation enables the movement of time - the fourth dimension; and self-consciousness enables the movement of sensation. Or, we can say: the first dimension moves in the second, the second in the third, the third in time, time in sensation, sensation in self-consciousness. Or, as the first dimension fixes the second, so the second fixes the third, the third fixes the fourth; so space fixes time, time fixes sensation, sensation fixes self-consciousness. On the one hand we proceed from the cause, on the other from the effect; on the one hand from the narrower, more limited, more dependent, on the other from the wider, going beyond, more independent.

Man had to descend completely into the narrow, the limited, into dependence, in order to gather forces from the environment for his own field, so that he could become an individual, and now he must overcome the limits again, give the forces he has gathered back to the world. But it is precisely in this giving back that his spiritual growth now consists. To the extent that he gives, he increases spiritually, because spiritually one does not give oneself away, but spiritual giving means growing out to it oneself, to the extent that one gives. If I give something physically, I remain where I am, and what is given is then no longer my property. If I give something spiritually, I go with what is given. If I keep everything to myself spiritually, I remain in accumulation, I do not grow. If I give spiritually, I expand myself in proportion to what I give. To give spiritually means to build oneself up. Everything that a person gives spiritually to his environment is and remains himself. Therefore, anyone who succeeds in giving himself completely spiritually to the rest of the world, as Christ did, will grow into the whole of the rest of the world.

This means not being closed off, opening up to the environment of spiritual beings. Through this, the inner light shines out into the environment. A being who does not live in congestion, who is not closed off in the third dimension, radiates his innermost out into the environment; thereby he shines out into the environment. He who lives in congestion, in egoism, cannot radiate and become luminous; only the selflessly devoted can do that. He who closes himself off has no light of his own. He needs light from outside to perceive the environment in his seclusion. He who does not shut himself off has his own light shining from within him; he enlightens the environment.