Three Dimensional Imagination

A few Christians perceive what is happening in the spiritual realms through their external senses. Most of us perceive it in through our imagination when the Holy Spirit displays what is happening in the spiritual realms in our imaginations for us. Sometimes, our own spirit will perceive things in the spiritual realms and put a picture of it into our imaginations.

A limitation is that most of our imaginations can only see in three dimensions. This is natural because we live in a three dimensional world. The spiritual world has many more dimensions, so when we perceive something from the spiritual realm, our spirit or the Holy Spirit has to translate it into three dimensions, so that it will fit into our imaginations.

This means that we rarely see the spiritual world as it really is. When people describe their experiences of the spiritual realms, they describe it in a three dimensional way. They describe the height, width, layout and colour of things as if they were three dimensional. They should understand that they are not really seeing it as it is, but in a way that a human mind can understand.

Therefore, recording the height and hair colour of an angel does not mean much, unless the height and colour tell us something spiritual, such as the character of the angel.

When Daniel saw the ancient of days, he had hair like white wool. It was not real wool. Daniel’s spirit translated what it saw into something that his imagination could perceive.

When John saw Jesus, he described him like this.

Among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters (Rev 1:13-15).

This is not the way Jesus actually is, because he now lives in the spiritual realms. The Holy Spirit translated this reality into something that John’s imagination could actually perceive.

The same applies to visions of the afterlife. It is a spiritual world. Our imaginations cannot handle it, so our spirit or the Holy Spirit, must translate it into three dimensions so that we can understand it. So we are seeing a reduced form of what it really is.

Mathematicians and physicists have models that require multiple dimensions. I wonder if those Christians who think in these multiple dimensional frameworks for a big part of their working lives, are better able to perceive the spiritual world. I suppose they are so focussed on scientific things, that they actually find it harder.