Are you looking for God behind bushes and under rocks? Look no further. See what I mean in this week’s edition of “Isn’t That Ironic?”.
Where is heaven? Where is God? To paraphrase Baroness Orczy’s silly poem in The Scarlet Pimpernel,
They seek Him here,
They seek Him there,
Those Christians seek Him everywhere.
He is hiding in plain sight.
Our leading physicists have, in recent years, posited that the universe actually has more than four dimensions, the three dimensions of space plus time. Einstein made it clear that time itself is also a dimension. I don’t even come close to understanding modern physics. I can barely grasp the basics. But it’s interesting that since the time of Newton, physics has always led the other sciences in bold thinking and mathematical sophistication. It’s also fascinating, and somewhat ironic, that the ideas of physicists are coming ever closer to the ideas of the world’s great spiritual teachers.
Our perception of the world around us, of reality, we might say, is mediated by our five senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. It is only through these that we are able to perceive reality. And we know very well that our sense perceptions are limited. Dogs hear higher pitches than we do. Eagles can see much farther than we can, and so on.
But in addition to these, we also have “psychic” senses. All of us have these, but a few people have developed these senses more than most. Perhaps they were born with a greater aptitude for psychic awareness, similar to the way that some people seem to have an aptitude for music, or painting, and hockey. Of course, these aptitudes need to be developed, and even those of us without any obvious “aptitude” can still develop reasonable skill. Everyone learns to read and write in school, but only a few people become famous writers. In every case, skill needs to be developed and practiced even if one is gifted with an aptitude. So it is with psychic gifts.
Every physical sense has a corresponding psychic sense: vision and clairvoyance, hearing and clairaudience, touch and clairsentience—that’s the ability to experience the emotions of those around you. If you’ve ever walked into a room and “felt” the emotions in the room, you’ve tasted clairsentience. It’s pretty common.
I am a musician and I often think in musical metaphors. Consider this one. As we get older, like me, our hearing tends to decline, as mine has. (Just ask my wife.) Our perception of the higher frequencies declines the most.
Say I was at a concert with my grandson and the band played the famous Sousa march, “The Stars and Stripes Forever”. It’s got a fabulous piccolo solo that is absolutely thrilling. Since I don’t hear the higher pitches much, I might turn to my grandson and say,
“I just love that march. It’s too bad they left out the piccolo solo.”
“They didn’t leave it out, grandpa. It was there. I heard it.”
“No. They left it out. I didn’t hear it at all.”
In truth, the piccolo solo was there. It existed in reality. I just didn’t perceive it. But anyone with better hearing did perceive it. We might think of spiritual reality—or call it psychic reality—in the same way. Some people see auras, talk to angels, have out-of-body experiences, etc. I don’t do any of that. Does that mean that these other people are crazy? If I don’t perceive what they perceive, does that mean they are loonies?
No, just like I couldn’t hear the piccolo solo because my sensory perceptions were limited, I don’t see auras or talk to angels for the same reason. But I do often pick up the feeling in a room, or in a person. We call it a “sixth sense” for exactly this reason. It is a sensory perception that goes beyond our usual, four-dimensional senses.
Perhaps in this way we are “perceiving” dimensions of reality that exist right here but are not perceptible by our other five senses. Maybe, as modern physicists think, we are living in a universe of multiple dimensions and only perceiving four of them. Maybe, as spiritual leaders have been saying for centuries, heaven is right here, right now, and we just need to adjust our awareness to be able to perceive it. Jesus told us, but so few believe it, “The kingdom of God is within you,” (Lk 17:21).
It is ironic that we pray to “go to” heaven. We look for God here, there, and everywhere. But He is as near as our breathing. Heaven and God are right here, right now. It is for us to quiet our bodies and minds—to listen for that “still, small voice within”—to hear the voice of God and see the face of God, within the dimensions of reality we usually ignore.
God Bless You!
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