How to Visualize 4D

After becoming aware of the three dimensions that we readily perceive, it is natural to try to conceptualize dimensions beyond the third. Doing so forces your mind to reach for concepts that are nearly impossible to truly visualize, but the exercise stimulates your mind and strengthens your ability to think conceptually. Because we can only concretely define the three dimensions that we perceive, the nature of the fourth dimension is not completely definite. Some people like to think of it as another spatial dimension, but it is widely accepted that the fourth dimension is time.

Instructions

• 1

  Imagine an existence in only two dimensions, length and width. This would be existence on one plane, with a forward, backward, left and right, but no concept of up or down.

• 2

  Imagine that in a two-dimensional existence, it would be possible to move through the third dimension, but you could only see it in two-dimensional cross sections. This would be like cutting any three-dimensional object into infinite cross sections and seeing each one at a time as you move through the third dimension in your two-dimensional perception.

• 3

  Associate the way we would perceive cross sections of three-dimensional objects in a two-dimensional existence with the way we perceive cross sections of the fourth dimension in our three-dimensional existence. Since we are only readily able to perceive three dimensions, moving our perception through the fourth dimension can also only happen in three-dimensional cross sections.

• 4

  Extend the concept of these three-dimensional cross sections of the fourth dimension to be moments that we perceive as the passing of time.

• 5

  Understand that the fourth dimension is all time in its entirety, and that moving through the fourth dimension is the equivalent of moving through time.

• 6

  Imagine yourself as you are in the fourth dimension with your entire life progression stretched out through the fourth dimension. This would look like you as a baby through every moment of your life to your death.

• 7

  Extend this concept of every moment connected through the fourth dimension to everything you can see and then to the whole universe. Clearly, you will be unable to produce concrete images, but with practice you could create fleeting visualizations of this elusive concept.