Adam Blatner

I found a book by a fellow who appreciates bird songs, Professor Richard O. Prum, who wrote a book called The Evolution of Beauty (New York: Doubleday. 2017). What struck me about the book is that Beauty is a transcendental quality vaguely describable by humans, but it really belongs to the 8th dimension.

This requires a recognition that mind is a dimension as much as time and three-dimensional matter. While mind is a 5th dimension, mind that thinks about mind is yet a higher dimension, a 6th dimension—which humans do.

Some relatively few professors think about thinking, they think about thinking about mind. I don’t know how few of those realize that they’re at another level altogether, a higher, 7th level. They’re doing it, but not realizing it. To say again, mind that thinks about thinking about mind is what some professors do, though they don’t realize that it’s another whole dimension.

Beauty and mysticism operates yet one step higher, at the 8th dimension,  more abstract, and with many richer qualities that are hard to describe—really, almost impossible. Blinding insight, gnosis, whatever, it becomes “all so obvious” to those who experience wholes this way. Most people find it unbelievable, mysterious, and often “fake.” But it isn’t.

It’s difficult to talk about epistemology—thinking about how we “know” what we think we know. At any rate, many people from different angles are getting close to contemplating the the philosophy of beauty—also known as aesthetics. Having the courage to say it belongs to birds is striking—one need not have much brain.”  (Then again, Winnie-the-Pooh, “a bear of very little brain,” as he described himself, although a character created by A. A. Milne, became a classic figure in children’s literature!)

That is to say, simplicity, innocence, directness—these virtues may have been what Jesus meant when he said “Unless ye become like little children…” —a mark of if not higher consciousness, at least openness to higher consciousness.