The Theory

A young couple take a moonlight walk along a private beach. They stop, gaze upat the night sky, and see something they will never forget. From out of nowhere,a strange, spherelike object radiating a brilliant white light appears directlyoverhead. To the couple's astonishment it changes to a triangular shape in afraction of a second; then moments later, like the Cheshire cat, it justvanishes. But how? Where did it come from, and go? And how can a solid objectchange into a completely different shape instantaneously?

UFO sightings like this, though this one is of the stranger variety, are notrare. They demonstrate the most startling aspect of the entire phenomenon: UFOsviolate—transcend—the world of space as we know it, leading some of the world'smost renowned researchers to conjecture that UFOs come from beyond our space,from a larger space-time continuum, of which ours is just a part. Moreover, manyphysicists now also suspect there are more than three dimensions of space. Infact, extra-dimensional theories are the hottest new topic to emerge intheoretical physics in over fifty years.

A high-school girl has a terrifying dream the night before a field trip. In itshe sees a bus full of classmates in a bad accident in which one of her friendsis injured. Shaken by the realness of the premonition, she refuses to go on thetrip and warns her friend. But her warning is not heeded, dismissed as silly,and the accident happens just as she saw it.

Psychic phenomena such as this not only violate our normal idea of space, butour idea of time itself. How can this be? Can our time also be just part of alarger world of time? It seems that to understand the paranormal at its deepestlevel, we must first acknowledge, as many researchers now do, that we need anew, broader framework of space and time—a new worldview.

Amazingly, only about five hundred years ago the standing worldview was stillthat of a flat Earth. Only about four hundred years ago, it was that the Earthwas the center of the universe, that all the stars and planets revolved aroundit. By now you can see that our problem has always been underestimating the sizeof the universe and overly exaggerating our place in it. But a revolution, ofsorts, followed. About 350 years ago, Newton had it all figured out. Theuniverse was like a giant machine of three dimensions of space plus time, theworkings of which he described in breathtakingly precise terms. But then in theearly 1900s, Einstein showed that there was another variable that must beincluded in any depiction of space and time, and on equal footing:consciousness.

Two thousand years ago, a lonely figure in a distant land has a sudden explosionof consciousness, the effects of which will transform the world forever. Herealizes, knows directly with a new kind of consciousness, that everyone andeverything in the world, indeed the world itself, is just part of a largerreality, a virtual "kingdom" by comparison with ours. He begins to teach, as allreligious giants have, that beyond our space and time, beyond the limitations ofnormal consciousness, exists a vaster reality, which can only be known withanother, expanded consciousness. Yet the real significance of this has beenignored ever since. For Einstein clearly demonstrated that space, time, andconsciousness are interwoven, in effect dependent on one another. But even withthe recent interest in expanding our space-time structure, the fact thatconsciousness itself must be likewise expanded has been completely overlooked,until now.

A New York City police detective lies dying amid the carnage of a drug bust gonehaywire. But as his consciousness slowly fades, suddenly it is lifted up out ofhis body, then through a kind of tunnel to another place, another world. Hisconsciousness now somehow enlarged, he "knows" with a new type of sense. Hebecomes aware of a larger self and reality, one his normal state had neverallowed him to see. Stranger still, here old ideas of space and time aresuspended, transformed into a different, larger structure he cannot quite grasp.where am I? Is this what it's like to die? he wonders. Not bad. But it is notyet his time. Suddenly, the expansion of consciousness halts, begins tocontract, and he descends back to his original state. He will recover, but neveragain think of the world in the same way.

And neither must we. For every time our worldview has changed—been expanded—ithas been for the same reason. There are conflicting data that cannot beincorporated into the old model, which must then be broadened to accommodatethem. The conflicting data now are reports of the paranormal. We either need astill broader model that can include them, or, as the diehard defenders of everyworldview always propose, we can simply ignore them and maintain the status quo.But that is becoming harder to do; reports of paranormal experiences havereached astonishing proportions. There are now over 100,000 UFO reports on fileworldwide, and a 1998 Gallup poll showed eight percent of Americans, about 20million people, claim to actually have seen one.

Furthermore, there are now thousands of people who claim to have been "abducted"even taken beyond our space-time, by aliens. The number of psychic experienceshas been estimated at over 50 million worldwide. Another Gallup survey (1999)found 46 percent of subjects reporting "an unusual or inexplicable spiritualexperience." Just a few profound mystical experiences have given birth to everyreligion known to Man. The International Association for Near Death Studies(IANDS) reports that 14 million people in the United States may have had a near-deathexperience.

Einstein pointed out that it takes only one contradictory fact to demolish ascientific theory. So if just one of these accounts is true and our currentspace-time framework cannot explain it, we need another, broader framework thatcan. This I shall bring forward as the extra-dimensional universe theory.

Our world is part of a larger, extra-dimensional one; that is, our world has anextra dimension of space. We do not detect this extra dimension because it ishidden and included in our concept of time. But it can be detected, naturallyand effortlessly, by expanded consciousness. Let me explain.

There are three distinct levels of consciousness on Earth: sensation, simpleconsciousness, and self-consciousness. The first two have, over the course ofmany millions of years, evolved to the third, higher level. Each has its ownframework of space-time. Take a snail as an example of the first. It lives in aworld of one dimension of space plus time. The other two dimensions of space allaround it are translated, by its faculty of sensation, into one dimension ofspace or time.

But a higher animal like the dog, with a higher faculty and simpleconsciousness, mentally extracts from time another dimension of space and livesin a larger world of two dimensions of space plus time. Get the picture? Time isa collection of extra dimensions of space either not apprehended, or imperfectlyapprehended; each level of consciousness sees them bit by bit, moving constantlypast, fused with time. So it is with the dog and the third dimension. His simpleconsciousness translates the third dimension of space into either one of theother two, or time.

But we have a higher mental faculty still, self-consciousness. By virtue of itwe've extracted yet another dimension of space from time, or put another way,extracted from the transcendental or paranormal aspect of reality yet anothernormal aspect. We live in a world of three dimensions of space plus time. Thequestion is: is there still a higher faculty, one that can extract anotherdimension of space from our time? And if so, would our paranormal, in thisexpanded framework, then become the normal?

There is such a fourth level of consciousness, evolving slowly in our race,tortuously so over eons, as all other faculties have before it. It goes hand inhand with the apprehension of a fourth dimension of space extracted from time. Abrief taste of this faculty is the mystical experience in which one'sconsciousness expands into and realizes a broader continuum of space and time.Lesser glimpses of the faculty, just a bit of it at any one time, are psychicintuitions such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition. (How one can then"see" the future will become clear shortly.) This higher faculty conceives in afashion beyond sensation, simple- and self-consciousness, logic, concepts, andeven language. This is why those who have paranormal experiences have such ahard time describing how they "know" All they can say is, "I just know." Andstill other traces of this higher faculty are responsible for other kinds ofpsychic phenomena, such as psychokinesis, poltergeists, healings, andapparitions.

Now what if a race of beings on another planet has acquired this facultycompletely? They would be like gods to us, as far above us as we are aboveanimals. They would live in a different, larger world of space-time. Using thatextra dimension, they could perform feats that seem like magic to us, coming andgoing into and out of our space at will, and abducting humans into that realm aseasily as we, by using the third dimension, could snatch a bug from the surfaceof a pond. This is the alien consciousness behind the UFO mystery, which we'llmeet face-to-face in the abduction phenomenon.

Finally, if our world is just part of a larger world, then each of us in turnmust have a larger self that resides in that world. This becomes apparent in thenear-death experience, when normal consciousness, all but faded out, awakens tothe realization of its larger self in extra-dimensional space. These people knowthere is an existence beyond our normal space and time. They have been there.This is also why they no longer fear death: they know it is not the end.

The point is this. There are no UFO phenomena per se, no psychic phenomena, nonear-death phenomena, and no mystical phenomena. There is just a realityphenomenon. Our world is enveloped in a larger one, the workings of which arebeyond our senses and level of consciousness, and so these workings whenencountered are treated as paranormal. But in the broader scope of extra-dimensionaltheory, they are in fact quite normal. To clearly see how this isso, we must first examine all our preconceived notions of space, time, andconsciousness and put them to rout. We'll look at the building blocks of ourscientific worldview and watch them quiver, shake, and give way under the glareof the new light. Then, these obstructions removed from our view, we can see atlast the true vastness of the universe, the supernatural laid bare as thenatural, and our old world and selves as just shadows cast by the greater worldand life beyond.

The history of Man shows that we have continually overstated our position in theuniverse, not only by underestimating its size, but also by regarding ourlocation as its absolute focal point. It was at first a tremendous blow to ourego to accept that the Earth was not the center of the entire cosmos. What wemust now accept is that Man is no more the center of the conscious or psychicalworld than he is of the physical world. Our world may appear to have threedimensions of space plus time, but watch what happens....

Worlds of Space

What's this picture about? A world, but one totally unlike ours, a flat world oftwo dimensions of space plus time, a hypothetical plane world, complete withplane beings who live on it. Now this may at first seem odd, so perhaps it willbe easier to picture this world as existing on a vast sheet of paper, on thesurface of which the inhabitants—flat squares, circles, triangles, etc.—can movefreely about in any two directions, but not up or down, for they know nothing ofthe space above or below them.

Let us suppose that, save for this one shortcoming, the inhabitants are muchlike us. They are resourceful and inventive, have formed a civilization, learnand love, raise children, grow old and die, and even have religion, philosophy,music, and science. In fact, their plane world scientists have made remarkablestrides and now feel they're on the verge of having a complete understanding ofthe entire universe—all in two dimensions of space plus time.

But their science cannot explain everything. Strange things are happening inthis world: paranormal phenomena, which some plane beings attribute to a higherrealm of existence. Others just scoff at the idea, calling the phenomena thestuff of pipe dreams and prophets. But we are in a position to know, for wedwell in that higher realm, the third dimension, and can see all that happens ontheir flat, two-dimensional surface.

Let's think of this world of two dimensions of space plus time as a map, orblueprint, which we can use to understand the paranormal in our higher world. Itis like a musical scale, that can be transposed into a higher or lower key,while the relationship of the notes remains the same, or a Rosetta stone forunderstanding the paranormal. In a remote corner of the plane world, aconversation has just taken place.

"Another dimension of space! Absurd," said the Square.

"Is it?" said the Circle as he continued with his presentation. "You know someof our top scientists now think there may be more than just two"

"Yes, but those are just crazy theories, mathematical ... [searching for the rightword] ... hocus-pocus, and entirely unproven," said the Square, an avowed skeptic.He then thumped his hand against a nearby object and stammered: "If there's athird dimension of space, why can't we see it, touch it, like the other two?"

"It may just be too small" interjected the Triangle, echoing the trend of modernresearch to portray possible extra dimensions as too tiny to see.

"Actually," said the Circle, "it's because it is outside of space as we know it.Look, we know that there are two dimensions of space, length and width, and theyare at right angles to each other, that is perpendicular, right?"

"Right," replied the Triangle, a renowned scientist on the plane world and open-mindedabout such matters.

"Well," continued the Circle, "I propose a third, likewise at a right angle tothe other two, and—"

"But there is no such direction; one cannot even conceive of it," interruptedthe skeptical Square.

"I agree; we can't conceive of it," said the Circle. "That is the whole point.It is beyond our senses, beyond our powers of perception. One needs a higherkind of 'sense,' a higher power of mind, a higher faculty, to see it, whichbrings me to the point of this discussion. I shall demonstrate how such an extradimension and higher faculty can account for all the strange goings-on we'vebeen hearing so much about of late, the so-called paranormal."

"You mean reports of plane beings who profess supernatural powers, being'elevated or uplifted,' as they call it, into some other level of reality andseeing the insides of things in our world or knowing about events taking placefar away, even seeing the future?" asked the Triangle, his interest piqued.

"That, and more; in fact, much more," said the Circle.

"Oh, but that's all rubbish anyway," growled the Square. "Those people are alldeluded, or frauds."

"Not necessarily," said the Triangle. "A colleague of mine at the Plane WorldAcademy of Science has informed me that such abilities are all but proven in thelab under the strictest conditions imaginable. Funny thing though, they stillhave no idea just how they work!"

"This I wish to remedy," confidently stated the Circle. "And, I said there wasmore. You must have also heard the tales of aliens from some other world comingto ours, and doing so in such a way that seems impossible, just appearing anddisappearing from out of nowhere, even taking plane beings away with them and—"

"That does it," said the Square abruptly. "You can't possibly believe that.Besides, there's just no way it can be. It's not possible; it's pure fantasy."

"Not so fast, Square," said the Triangle, suddenly finding himself in theunexpected and undesirable role as mediator. "My first inclination is to agreewith you, but let's see what the Circle has to say. You know there are manyplane beings of sound repute who have either seen these aliens themselves orpersonally know others who have, and they are convinced of it, even though theymay not publicly say so. Go on, Circle."

"Okay," Circle continued, "but tell the Square to keep an open side to this,will you, and I promise to give him, if nothing else, something to howl aboutwith his cohorts at those skeptics club meetings. Here's the pièce derésistance. When I explain how these paranormal phenomena work, you'llunderstand still others, ones that have always been thought of as religious innature, and beyond our science, such as the religious experience itself and theage-old question of life after death."

"That's a tall order to fill," cautioned the Triangle, but he was intrigued bythe sheer scope of what the Circle was proposing.

"Impossible," said the Square. "Religion and science are in the nature of thingsdirectly opposed to each other, contradictory, 180 degrees apart. One is amatter of faith, the other a matter of fact."

"True enough," the Circle conceded, but quickly added: "This is only becausethere has been no framework, physical or conceptual, that can unify both ofthem." He then announced he was ready to begin his presentation in earnest, andbrought out some drawings he had with him. "Look at this [see figure 2]," hesaid to his audience (the Triangle watched attentively, the Square eyed thedrawing suspiciously) "and think of it as a world, but one totally unlike ours,a world of one dimension of space plus time, a hypothetical line world, completewith line beings who live on it."