Reality in a Higher Dimension?

Have you ever wondered if there was a reality greater than the one you experience everyday? Have you ever allowed your mind to dwell on infinity to the point that your head hurts and then instead of giving up, due to the feeling that you will never understand it or picture it in terms you can relate to, continue to let your mind explore the those thoughts further? One thing that is interesting me lately is the dimensions of time and space or as physicists cal it space-time. It is theorized that there may be as many as 10 dimensions most of which we have yet to detect other than length, width, depth and time (side note: some physicists have theorized that time is not only linear, that is, moving forward. but also moves up and down since it is relative to where you are in space and how fast you are moving). I don't want to get technical, well honestly, I never took a course in physics but understand basic concepts of it beyond Newtonian physics. The reason I am even writing about this is to try to better understand the world in which we all live, to make sense of it and hopefully become better people because of our better understanding.

Leaving time aside, what does a four dimensional object look like to us who are three dimensional (I'm speaking only in terms of space)/ One illustration I've heard a few times but more recently from Rob Bell, a pastor who himself tries to point out God to people who otherwise would not make so called spiritual associations with natural things. He said something to the effect of, and this is not verbatim so forgive me if it's not totally accurate, "imagine you lived in a one dimensional world. To you your world would look like a line. Now imagine a circle, which is two dimensional decided to come visit your world. As it approached it will first appear as a dot which would soon become a short line which would appear to grow longer then as it was fully grown to its full diameter would start to shrink to a smaller line then back to a dot then disappear. To you and your friends that is how it would look. But suppose you were inclined to say, 'I think that was a circle that come to visit us. I have no proof other than what we saw but something in my heart tells me there was more to it, that it wasn't just a line.' His friends would think he was crazy because they all saw the same thing." What it comes down to is perception. Is "what you see is what you get" always true?

Here is a link to a game that illustrates this concept very well and it's really fun too:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/EvilDog/z-rox

I thought about this a while and wondered what a cube, a three dimensional object would look like in a two dimensional world with the same type of illustration. Imagine in our two dimensional world we looked up in the "sky" and suddenly there appeared to be a square which came out of nowhere. Depending on how long it took the 3 dimensional cube to move through our world would determine the duration of us being able to view it. The cube will only look like a square that appears, stays for a period of time, then disappears. The cube existed before it approached our world as it moved in it's own three dimensional world and always remained a cube throughout its passing through our two dimensional world and then continued in its own 3D world even after disappearing in the 2D world.

What does that mean for us then who live in a 3D world? What is a 4D object or person passed through our world. Did it exist in it's own 4D world before coming to our 3D world? We only recognized it as a 3D object that had a beginning, a "life" or duration, then disappearance or "death". It makes you wonder if there really is a higher reality.

What Does Time Look Like to God?

I've sort of pondered that question from time to time and especially lately given the Harold Camping thing about tomorrow being "Judgement Day." I personally don't believe that and think any prediction of the end will invalidate it only by what the Bible says regarding that, "no man know the day or the hour of Christ's return." Many times throughout the years I have heard people claim that, "to God a thousand years is like a day" as stated in Psalm 90:4 and reiterated in 2 Peter 3:8. Here I think we make an assumption that is not really there. It says "it is like" not plainly that "it is." I don't believe that statement was meant to be taken as an accurate scale like a year on Earth is 365 days but a year on Mercury is 88 days, so therefore, a year on Earth is like 4 years on Mercury. I think it was meant to be more of a metaphor to explain that time really has very little or no meaning to God. Yesterday and tomorrow and four thousand years from now are all viewable to God at one time. Here's more on why I feel that way.

I was curious about the "Book of Life" mentioned a few times in the Bible since the whole idea of Judgement Day has become so prevalent in recent days. There are two verses in Revelation, that, for some reason, which I was not even looking for, mention a specific time along with the "Book of Life." Revelation 17:8 says, "The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and yet will come up out of the Abyss and go to its destruction. The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because it once was, now is not, and yet will come." What I want to point out is that statement is spoken to John, the writer of Revelation from a Heavenly being who I believe dwells outside of linear time however John, like the rest of us live in such a place that time is linear. This is why I think he speaks about the Beast in the context of human time (was, is not, will come). The thing that caught my eye was he says that there are those who's names have not been written in the Book of Life from the creation of the world. One would then assume that those whose names are written in this book have had there names in it since the dawn of time, or at least human time.

In Romans 8:29 Paul writes, "For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters." God, seeing all of human time all at one instant knew from the creation of the world, those who would freely accept him. But I'm not trying to argue Predestination verses Free Will my point is that all time is right now to God. Again, in Revelation 13:8 it says, "All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world." The last part of that statement is very insightful. We know Christ wasn't crucified on the first day of creation, at least not as far as linear time goes but to God it was as if it was from the dawn of time.

A strange way of looking at it is if you had a thin glass rod held out in front of you lengthwise so that you could see it was, say 5 feet long, you could look at that rod as a timeline of human history. Now, imagine you could turn that rod so that one end of it faces you. Imagine you could look down the rod all the way to the other end. In viewing it this way, all of time is technically all at one point because you can view through the entire length of the rod without moving your eye left or right. It is all right there. I think this is how God relates to time. We as humans, however; view time in terms of days, weeks, months and so on but God sees it all as now. So is a thousand man years literally equal to one day to God? I highly doubt it.

Glass image courtesy of ~love-hand-in-hand on deviantART.com