The Christian Credo, in its version established at the Council of Nicaea (325), declares that God is the creator “of all things visible and invisible.” The Roman Catechism (1566) explains the meaning of these words:
“Whatever exists in the universe, whatever we confess to have been created by God, either falls under the senses and is included in the word visible, or is an object of mental perception and intelligence and is expressed by the word invisible.
If we look at other religions, especially pre-Christian ones, guided by historians who have dealt with such subjects, we find that this postulate is common to them. Whether monotheistic or polytheistic, most ancient cultures speak of the existence of an unseen (i.e., spiritual) world inhabited by supernatural beings. Another interesting detail, which I will mention en passant, concerns the quality of this spiritual world: in the case of pre-Christian religions, this is conceived (in physical terms, with symbolic connotations) as being underground. Whether it is the Jewish Sheol, the Greek Hades, or the Mayan Xibalba, all refer to what the Latin Christian tradition calls infernum (usually translated as “the depths of the earth”).
The belief in the existence of this unseen world, where all evil deeds from earthly life are punished, represents the foundation of a vision that, as Hannah Arendt argues, would have prevented the bloody dictatorships of the 20th century. If this did not happen, it was due to the collapse, at the level of our modern culture, of the belief in the existence of the unseen world. This is why the discussion about the place of this world is a subject that simultaneously concerns theology, philosophy, anthropology, religious history, politics, and economics. It can only start from the most challenging question: if it exists, where is this unseen world located?
For those (like Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell) who consider all ancient beliefs, all religions before Christ, and Christianity itself as nothing but the fancies of exalted minds or projections of earthly situations onto a non-existent world, the above question makes no sense. What follows is primarily intended for those who are open to such a possibility or those who believe in its existence. I will just add that any speculative-rational evidence of the truth of the unseen world is never sufficient. The explanation for this is simple: the possibility of empirical or experimental verification is excluded. In the case of already discovered legendary lands, such as Troy or Herakleion, archaeological investigation has been decisive and sufficient. In the case of those yet undiscovered—such as Plato’s Atlantis—we still await the final “revelation” through archaeological discovery. But in the case of the unseen world of religions, there are and will never be direct, empirical proofs. As we have already seen in the Roman Catechism, it is of the same nature as our minds, which are not material. Just as the mind is irreducible to the bodily organ to which it is connected, it remains inaccessible to direct measurements, experiments, or archaeology. There is no rocket, no submarine, no vehicle created by humans that can take us there. The fascinating journeys to the afterlife described in countless myths and sacred texts are not physical in nature. To clarify these issues as much as possible, I will return to the fundamental question: where is the unseen world?
There have been classical theologians and philosophers who have approached the same issue, even though their starting points were different. Yet I will not turn to them, but to an author much closer to us, a historian of religions from the University of Chicago, Ioan Petru Culianu (1950–1991). Having specialized in Gnosticism and experiences of ecstasy, he dedicated an entire work to the theme of journeys into the world beyond. Entitled Out of this World: Otherworldly Journeys from Gilgamesh to Albert Einstein (1991), the monograph begins with a substantial discussion regarding the location of the “other world.” Predominantly historical, it contains numerous descriptions of trans-corporeal experiences as they are recounted in numerous sources from the great religions of the world. What is significant for my analysis is the speculative-philosophical part of the argumentation in the introduction of the mentioned volume.
Having been perfectly aware of the difficulty of the subject, Culianu did what only rarely a historian attempts: to propose some plausible theoretical hypotheses regarding the possible existence of the unseen world mentioned in the Christian Credo and other religious sources. His speculative abilities make him truly interesting for any reader. Trained as a mathematician, he later “converted” to historical-religious studies under the influence of Mircea Eliade. Familiar with both theological and philosophical speculations on the subject, he was equally at home with the explanatory models proposed indirectly by writers of philosophical and mathematical fiction, such as Edwin Abbott Abbott (1838-1926) and Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986). He began by affirming the difference between the historian’s approach and that of the epistemologist (i.e., the speculative thinker): while the former provides the rich collection of sources attesting to the experiences of journeys into the “world beyond,” the latter attempts to answer questions regarding the reality and location of the transcendent dimension.
There is a separate category of responses: those of a psychological nature. Projecting all experiences of this kind into the space of subjectivity, they imply their imaginary nature. Culianu does not allow himself to be drawn into the path of such hypotheses. The reason lies in his philosophy. Knowing classical anthropology, developed by great thinkers from Plato and Aristotle to Plotinus and Saint Augustine, he recognizes that modern psychology lacks an adequate understanding of the concept of mind/intellect. Gradually proposing a superior understanding of this key notion, he postulates the existence of capacities of the human intellect that surpass our usual possibilities:
We are entitled to believe that our mind space has amazing properties, the most remarkable of which is that it is not limited to three dimensions like the physical universe surrounding us.
Culianu’s understanding excludes the materialistic interpretation, which identifies the mind/thought with the brain and the electro-chemical processes within it. His next step is no less spectacular: he argues that the so-called “mental space” is a complete universe, existing in parallel with our “real” world. In a twist reminiscent of the speculations of John Scotus Eriugena (ca. 800-ca. 877), the proposed description of the world avoids unilateral explanations, whether they are “realist” or “idealist.” According to this understanding, “the outside world could not exist without the mental universe that perceives it, and this mental universe in turn borrows its images from perception.” So there is neither subject without object, nor object without subject.
Before continuing, I will insist on the fact that everything I discuss here opposes the positivist interpretations developed in the shadow of Kant, interpretations that discard all the sources recorded by the history of religions with the accusation that they are the product of fantasy. If, indeed, numerous testimonies can be considered to belong to the chaotic territory of “superstitions,” others, on the contrary, however few they may be, most likely reflect authentic experiences of journeys into the “other world beyond.” This was certainly Culianu’s conviction. Let us now return to his explanations.
The starting point of the main hypothesis is provided by an Albert Einstein text that imagines a two-dimensional world. The beings in this imagined world would only be able to see what happens on their flat horizon. By analogy, we are also limited to perceiving only what happens in our three-dimensional space. The argument may be clarified with the introduction of another author, Edwin Abbott Abbott, who wrote a novella called Flatland (1884). Although the standard reading is that it is an allegory for the weaknesses of Victorian culture, the book has circulated among science-fiction lovers, who are convinced that it is one of the first literary examples of the genre. Regardless of the situation, it is certain that Abbott’s metaphor was adopted by Culianu to support his hypothesis. How does he do this? By explaining how the experience of Flatlanders would look like when faced with a three-dimensional object: for example, a spoon.
If we imagine their world as the surface of the soup—only 2-D—that we have on our plate when serving lunch, what will the beings living in it see when we introduce our spoon—fully 3-D—into the enticing liquid? Culianu’s answer is simple to understand: a line. Just like in the case of that intersection zone—a line—between two planes, Flatlanders will only see a line from the three-dimensional spoon penetrating into their world. Limited by their own condition, they will never be able to see in its full 3-D amplitude, as it actually appears. The consequences of Culianu’s proposed hypothesis directly refer to our own condition as creatures limited by the three known dimensions:
Obviously, the moral of the story is that a being from the fourth dimension would be able to operate in our three-dimensional world in exactly the same way as we could be here yet remain unnoticed, could come and go through solid objects, and could reach into a drawer or safe for a valuable without opening it.
Although similar to complex geometric figures such as the tesseract, Culianu’s proposal has its own limits. First of all, the physicalism of the vision must be received cautiously: it is risky to speak in an era heavily affected by materialism about a universe in four or more dimensions. That is because the “unseen world” could be understood as representing only a kind of “extension” of the visible world, which is accessible to the senses. However, in the classical metaphysical sense of Plato, Patanjali, Proclus, or Saint Augustine, the spiritual world has qualities other than the physical cosmos. Consequently and prudently, we must assume Culianu’s hypothesis only as a mathematical metaphor for the spiritual, supernatural world.
Once the possibility of the existence of the unseen world is accepted, the adventure begins. The most important lesson is not that of contemporary thinkers—Ioan Petru Culianu included—who propose, to the best of their abilities, spectacular hypotheses to explain what the ancient and medieval thinkers discussed much more deeply. The true masters are Plato, Aristotle, Proclus, or the saints Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, and Bonaventure—not Einstein or Abbott. That is why the appeal to ‘return to the classics’ isn’t merely a cultural trend, but rather a categorical imperative.
