One wonders if those walking the Labyrinth of Crete or traveling on the Snowpiercer train are in some ways like those living in Abbott’s one-dimensional space. They all tend to see their world only through the one-dimensional lenses of forward and backward. There is no left or right. And for those on the train, there is no looking out the window at a frozen world. One has contact only directly with the person (or small group of people) residing in front and behind them on the train. This contact would be beneficial; however, imagine what is lost when the second dimension is missing. Does the anxiety become more intense if one is living in limiting space while hearing the roar of the minotaur or anticipating the battle at the train’s midpoint?
And what would a third dimension look like for those living on the train? Would the third dimension be represented by stories about life once lived in an unfrozen world? Could those who are born on the train even imagine a different world when looking out the window? Would this third dimensional world in some way resemble the unconscious world (with “fabulous” images) that Carl Jung envisioned while “going mad” on the edge of a lake in Switzerland?
And Then there Was Nothing
What does it mean to live in a world of no dimensions. This is the great void. This is the awe-fullness that is portrayed by Rudolph Otto (1923) and Carl Jung (1938). We look at the void. We recognize it’s infinite vastness. We recoil at the prospect of falling into it, forever tumbling downward. Yet, we step to the very edge of the void. We are enthralled by its depth and wonder what it would be like to step off the edge into the void.
Ultimately, it is a matter of engaging three processes when there is nothing. We must apprehend what we are seeing in the void and how we are feeling while standing on the edge of the void. We must also comprehend what we are seeing and feeling. Somehow, we must understand what the void and nothingness are all about—or not about. Finally, we must come to appreciate what we are seeing and feeling. It is in the void where we might find our capacity to be creative and perhaps even our capacity to be free.
Apprehension
In a state of nothingness there are none of the three dimensions. Abott’s flatland would seem like a heavenly place when one is living with no sight, no hearing, no touch, and no smell. It is as if we are living in the nightmare of being dead yet somehow knowing that we are alive and conscious, yet with no access to the outside world. We might envision a state of solipsism in which there is only our personal “reality”—yet this reality contains nothing. We win the solipsistic “prize” of ultimate control over our reality, yet there is nothing there to control.
Robert Lanza (Lanza and Berman, 2010) takes this matter of solipsism to its extreme. Adopting a model of bio-centrism, Lanza proposes that each of us individually creates the universe in which we are “living.” From moment to moment this personal universe will change, based on our personal perceptions and feelings. Building on quantum physics and the Heisenberg Principle, Lanza describes the condition of personal creation, suggesting that we are producing something out of ultimate nothingness. A reality shared by all of us is not to be found.
