Text: "The nature of space has long been a question which has defied man's attempts to comprehend it. In the past, men have tried to explain their space in geometric terms, but this has left much unaccounted for and has led to considerable error. The main assumption which needs to be made before space can be understood is that there is something which defines its position with respect to other higher realities. If this fact can be accepted, then all of the various fields, effects, motions and phenomena observed in the real world will fall into place in a single unified scheme. The substance which defines the space of the real world is a tenuous material with properties of elasticity. Its basic nature allows it to stretch, to contract, to flow as a current of water does, and to carry vibrational wave disturbances. This substance permeates all of the three-dimensional matrix. There is no location in the physical universe which does not contain the substance in one of its many forms. In the 19th century men speculated that there was a material of this kind extending through all of space, because they could not see how light could be transmitted if not on a medium of some kind. They named this hypothetical medium the ether, and in this book the same designation will be maintained. In essence, the scientists of that century were correct in their assumption, but they did not extend their reasoning far enough to grasp the full significance of this miraculous substance. If they had done so, they would have realized finally that all matter of every form is composed of the ether in one of its states of condensation or expansion, and that every phenomenon observed by man in the real world is accounted for by one or more of the properties of the etheric matrix. It is the purpose of this chapter to show how the ether is distributed and to discuss some of the properties which allow it to give rise to material manifestation. Space is not three-dimensional only. The space which man conceives is but part of the totality of creation. It exists within a larger space with a greater number of dimensions. The best analogy that can be made to allow a partial glimpse of the distribution of the ether is that which has been called Flatland. It is possible to imagine a two-dimensional space similar to a thin film or sheet, having extent in two mutually perpendicular directions but having virtually no extent in the third dimension, which would correspond to the thickness. It can also be conceived that this space would support beings within its surface, who would also be only two-dimensional. Such beings could conceive only of objects which in turn were two-dimensional because they would not have any experience of objects with a larger number of dimensions. If we could communicate with a Flatlander, we would not be able to describe, in terms he could appreciate, what a cube or a chair were like. Let us now suppose that we wish to give the Flatlander a complete universe in his two dimensions. We could extend the flat film which defines his space indefinitely in all directions, but this would not be the neatest way to go about it because there would always remain the question of the free edges and what happens beyond these edges. However, the problem can be solved in another way. The universe of Flatland could be made as the surface of a very large balloon or ball so that space would be of limited area but without a limit in the sense of a free edge. In such a universe the Flatlander could travel as far as he wished in any direction without coming to the "edge" of his space. But it would not be necessary to provide an indefinite amount of the material of his space in order to give him that freedom. The only drawback would be the confusion on his part when, after travelling a certain distance in what he thinks is a straight line, he would end up back where he started from. Even this difficulty can be minimized by making the balloon of his space so large that he is not likely to be able to complete one circuit around its periphery. Another advantage of giving the spatial balloon a very large diameter is that the local space in the Flatlander's immediate area would be virtually flat and would not exhibit any significant curvature. This would mean that the geometric relationships in a localized region of the Flatland universe would remain true in the sense of plane geometry. For example, a triangle set up in the curved Flatland universe would have its three angles sum to almost exactly 180', with the difference being too small to detect with the Flatlander's instruments. Of course this would give him the impression that his space was not curved, because he could reason that a significant curvature in his space would falsify the triangular relationship. The skin of the Flatland universe corresponds to the ether of the real universe. The ether is curved upon itself to define a spherical shape as pictured from four dimensions, and this hypersphere has an immense diameter, far beyond the possibility of any physical being to travel even a portion of its girth in the normal lifespan.

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