Hyperspace theory: Mishlove excerpt #3

Psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove writes in “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death” that: Philosopher Martin Gardner also drew upon the work of two nineteenth-century Scottish physicists, Balfour Stewart and Peter Guthrie Tait. Based on their thinking, he argued the brain itself could be a three-dimensional “surface” of a much greater, higher-dimensional self. What we think of as death is the “shuffling off of our three-space mortal coil” ... while the higher-dimensional self continues.*

Gardner’s instinct about hyperspace was correct. Work on hyperspace mathematics and physics has made strides in recent decades. Physicist Bernard Carr, emeritus astronomy and mathematics professor at Queen Mary University of London, explains how linking the mathematics of higher dimensional space could account for other mental spaces: dream space, out-of-body space, near-death space, apparition space, and mystical space. They all seem to need a space outside of ordinary physical space. And a higher-dimensional self would supply ample space.

Carr suggests hyperspace hierarchies form a universal structure that will help us better understand paranormality and mystical experiences. It will also help solve conventional problems such as normal mental experience and the relationship between quantum and classical versions of physics. The idea of hyperspace occurs in esoteric traditions. What is new is linking mental space descriptions to the higher dimensions described in physics.

Philosophical schools related to the mind- body problem generally divide into three categories: (1) materialists and physicalists who claim consciousness is a product of the brain; (2) dualists who believe mind and matter are separate and distinct aspects of reality; and (3) idealists who see the entire physical universe existing within mind-at- large (i.e., the universe’s living consciousness that is the ground of all being).

A hyperspace approach to consciousness could explain postmortem survival evidence within all these metaphysical approaches. However, as I elaborate near this essay’s Conclusion, metaphysical idealism is the most economical and logical approach. It resolves the paradoxes associated with materialism and dualism, with no unnecessary assumptions. Metaphysical idealism is also consistent with the primordial tradition.

One finds related hyperspace approaches to consciousness in Nobel laureate physicist Wolfgang Pauli’s Jungian dreamwork – where an archetypal figure presented a theoretical model to him. Wilson Van Dusen, whose work in psychology is mentioned later in the section on possession, wrote a doctoral dissertation on a hyperspace theory that was seriously reviewed in correspondence between the great Swiss psychiatrist Carl G. Jung and Wolfgang Pauli.

*The three-dimensional "space" we know in everyday life is the only "physical" space in this theory of consciousness as hyperspace. The word "levels" or "dimensions" or "planes" might be more helpful metaphors than "spaces."

Jeffrey Mishlove’s essay, “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” received first prize in the 2021 Bigelow Institute’s challenge to provide proof for the survival of human consciousness after death. Footnotes in Mishlove’s essay and videos he refers have been removed in this presentation but are available in his essay, which may be downloaded at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Mishlove is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, and host on YouTube of “New Thinking Allowed.”