“At the beginning we may as well consider the question so

often asked by the neophyte, who desires to be informed

regarding the meaning of the word “Plane,” which term has

been very freely used, and very poorly explained, in many

recent works upon the subject of occultism. The question is

generally about as follows: “Is a Plane a place having dimensions,

or is it merely a condition or state?” We answer: “No, not a

place, nor ordinary dimension of space; and yet more than a

state or condition. It may be considered as a state or condition,

and yet the state or condition is a degree of dimension, in a

scale subject to measurement.” Somewhat paradoxical, is it

not? “

 

This was something I found that new age writings did a poor job of defining. New age texts and other religious texts, such as the Christian Bible and Quran, talk about alternate dimensions such as heaven, Shaeol and the lake of fire or what we later called hell.  Then you have Dante’s 7 layers or planes of hell. But I found I never had what these different dimensions or planes worked or how I’m supposed to think of them.

If you want to think of a plane as terrain, then it’s not useful to think of it as physical terrain, as you will see, but think of it as being like digital terrain, like the internet. Your email “address” indicates a location. But your email is essentially accessible from any point on the planet, as long as you have a device and a way to translate the wireless signals in the air.  Hitting a website in China is again essentially as quick as hitting a website sitting on a server next door.

 

Another helpful example is integral theory’s idea of the physio-sphere, biosphere and noos-sphere, discussed in some other posts on this blog. Each can be thought of as a layer, measuring the planet’s development, yet each layer can be thought of as existing on top of or underneath the others. The first layer in the planet’s development was the non-biological matter layer or physio sphere. The next layer, the biosphere, would be composed of biological matter, but can also be thought of as being layered on top of, but still includes, the physio sphere. Then the noos-sphere, everything that emerged out of mind, whether it’s art, poetry, architecture etc, is layered on top of the previous two spheres. This can be thought of as the mental plane but it’s a bit more complicated than that, but I agree in part. A common phrase you will here in relation to these spheres or planes is “as above, so below.” We will explore it in other blog posts.

 

 

“But let us examine the matter. A “dimension,” you know,

is “a measure in a straight line, relating to measure,” etc. The

ordinary dimensions of space are length, breadth, and height,

or perhaps length, breadth, height, thickness or circumference.

But there is another dimension of “created things,” or “measure

in a straight line,” known to occultists, and to scientists as well,

although the latter have not as yet applied the term “dimension”

to it—and this new dimension, which, by the way, is the much

speculated—about “Fourth Dimension,” is the standard used

in determining the degrees or “planes.””

 

One of the most important ideas that I learned, which helped me begin to dis-identify as my body, was that we have no real reason to believe that the mind is merely a product of the brain. Sure, I have a body, but the thing I call Me is not my body. My body does not include a “me”, the “me” includes or has a body.

 

The more I read and searched for answers as to how the brain produces the mind, the more I found that answers for this wouldn’t be found in fields such as neuroscience. I ran into problems trying to find physical ways of explaining the mind. Problems like the unified/perceptual binding problem, and the big problem of consciousness, as they call it.

 

Integral theory, like this passage above, points out that if something is purely physical, then that suggests that it takes up space. Ken Wilber likes to say it’s reducible to atoms. But the mind, unlike the brain, cannot be reduced to atoms. It does not take up physical space in the brain. Nor do thoughts or feelings. They can not all be fully explained by brain chemistry.