Sachchidananda 'The Life Divine' Book I,Ch.9, 10, 11, 12 - Track 505

In fact the effect of what Einstein has said is this that space is to our consciousness three dimensional that is to say there is length, breadth and depth. These are the three dimension of space of which we are aware normally and this is peculiar to our consciousness. A small creature like a bug may not have three dimensional view of space at all. It only sees perhaps one dimension or two dimensions. Our senses are so located that we can see these three things at the same time. Even in art for example, we know that actually depth is seen by a certain device, otherwise, it is only two dimensional and attempts are being made to give you instruments by which you can even on the screen of cinema, where you can have three dimensional experience of what is presented on two dimensions.

If there is time for every space then it is the fourth dimension, so the modern science speaks of four dimensional space-time continuums, this is the expression in modern science. The world as a whole is four dimensional space-time continuum, not space and time, but space-time. It is space-time continuum, but four dimensional. So in this book for children, which I had seen twenty years ago, where objects were shown with a dimension of time, which you don’t see physically and according to Einstein time is physical, it’s not merely as we think normally. We don’t see physically, time, but actually time is physical, time is connected with speed and speed is a physical event, so space-time continuum, how to present to the children. In any case our children when they go the level of B.Sc. and M.Sc. they are required to study this. If they take science as a specialization they are required to study this but a time will come, when the knowledge will still expand further, so that what is being taught at the level of B.Sc. will be taught at the lower levels of education and that will still come down further. The age in which we are living is so highly intellectual that if the modern generation is not trained in high level of intellectuality, we will be unfit to live in the modern times. We won’t be able to adjust ourselves with the modern times and here lies a very big danger for civilization. It intellectually develops to such an extent like this and since intellectual domain is so vast and the lanes and by-lanes of intellectual thought are so multitudinous, millions of ways of thinking of which you are not even aware but as you start reading intellectual books, you will see hundreds and millions of ways of thinking and points of views. And if humanity is sunk into this huge network of millions of ways of thinking then the question of experiencing will be so much postponed. You will be only lying all the time in the field of abstraction and greater abstraction; it will be a great danger.

Human beings will be highly abstract and the capacities of dealing with the concrete and experience will be so limited, it is one of the great dangers of the civilization that is going to come up. Already, we see that our children when they are studying, if they are really studying they become so abstract. We are obliged to give them such abstractions. Even in a subject like commerce, for example, how much mathematics is involved, how much graphs are involved the curves of the graphs and understanding of the graphs. Actual concrete reality are separate but understanding through graph and through mathematical formulas, how much abstraction has come in our thinking. It is true that most of the children forget about it, but if they are really studying it truly, and ultimately, gradually this burden is going to come upon him in a very large way. It is going to be a kind of a consciousness which will be highly abstract and when the intellectual consciousness becomes very abstract there is a great danger that its capacity to deal with the concrete becomes diminished. In humanity once you develop one capacity, the other capacities becomes diminished. To develop all the capacities equally is a very difficult task.

To make a philosopher a story writer is very difficult, to make a story writer, a philosopher is very difficult. Some of course can be, but once you develop on one line, it is very difficult to be another. To put a philosopher on a political throne in the present time is very dangerous because he may not be able to understand the concrete problems of mankind at all. His mind is so abstract that he is not able to read the concreteness of life. Of course the ideal would be that you should able to do it but merely being intellectual you cannot achieve that ideal at all that is impossible. Something more is to be done after doing intellectuality, something more is to be done to be able to reach that harmony.

At that time you were asked the question – if there are millions of ways of thinking, are there any way by which this can be abridged? Are there any ways in which you can distill all the different ways of thinking and arrive at the most minimum, most essential, which can be mastered. My answer is seven pages of this book. It is as if we have visualized so many ways of thinking, any way of thinking you take, ultimately when you reduce to a most minimum, most essential, to what do you arrive on the question on Existence? In these seven pages you have all the essential elements, therefore, if you read these seven pages, you don’t need to go through millions of ways of thinking on this subjects, it is kind of a summary, of summary, of summary, the most distilled element. Therefore you might say that intellectually this is perfect. It is because of this reason, that I venture even to speak all this before all my friends.