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Alcoholics Anonymous – 4th Dimension – “We have entered the world of the Spirit”
“We have found much of heaven and have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed.” — BigBook Page 5
“The whole point of meditation may be summed up as living in the present.” – Dhiravamsa
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Barefoot’s World
The Fourth Dimension
A member asked me about the meaning of a sentence on page 25 of the BigBook, i.e., “We have found much of heaven and have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed.”
From William James (1842-1910), U.S. psychologist, philosopher in “The Varieties of Religious Experience” — The further limits of our being plunge, it seems to me, into an altogether other dimension of existence from the sensible and merely “understandable” world.
Name it the mystical region, or the supernatural region, whichever you choose. So far as our ideal impulses originate in this region (and most of them do originate in it, for we find them possessing us in a way for which we cannot articulately account), we belong to it in a more intimate sense than that in which we belong to the visible world, for we belong in the most intimate sense wherever our ideals belong.”
Bill was describing his spiritual experience, [and mine too], the nearly instantaneous coming ALIVE of Our Own SPIRIT to full spiritual awareness, to freedom, and to perception of possibility. It is a “rocketing” experience.
We are “rocketed” into this fourth dimension of existence, the spiritual, when the dimensions of our physical, mental, and emotional states are in harmony and balance, each with the others, occasioned in the moment by our total surrender with complete abandon to our Higher Power and to the diligent disciplined practice of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
That is my experience upon completion of the 5th, 6th and 7th steps, April 27, 1974, and many times since in 11th step meditation.
I have tried describing it, as did Bill, in totally inadequate words, in many ways…. “Seeing the white light and hearing the angel feathers” or “Knowing” that I was living and being in the presence of total and complete LOVE or “An electric moment, like moving out from behind a jet engine into a sound proof room, the silence is so deafening.”
Perhaps it is best described in this quote from my page Ancient Wisdom — A Starting Point In the Quest Set Before All Mankind.
“None by his own knowledge, or by subtle consideration, will ever really understand these things. For all words and all that one can learn or understand in a creaturely way, are foreign to the truth that I mean and far below it.” — John Van Ruysbroeck (1293-1381)
Love and Peace, Barefoot
http://www.barefootsworld.net/aa-4thdimension.html
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