CBC Massey Lectures 2279 Dimensionalist Pálma Ellström reading, "The Colours In Our Shadow Universe – English Edition" University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada. “Between the eyes and ears there lie the sounds of colour and the light of a sigh. And to hear the Sun, what a thing to believe. But it’s all around if we could but perceive.”1 Sage words though more poetic than scientific I admit. Yet, the Moody Blues were on to something profound even if they ventured but baby steps into our topic. “Our universe” is but a shadow of the truth. Could any of us imagine a colour beyond the visible spectrum? They exist: ultra violet, infrared and X rays; as real as blue or orange but we do not notice them. They can be detected with technology, still we cannot visualize them. They must be translated into conceivable shades should we utilize them. A thermal scan is a translation of reality more than a window onto the greater cosmos. And, as with all translations, truth is often lost. Lost due to our limited perceptiveness. Consider, “you're more advanced than a cockroach, have you ever tried explaining yourself to one of them?”.2 We'll replace cockroach with ant as most humans on Earth have lived in close proximity with an ant colony. Children learn that ant colonies are well ordered, insect societies enduring for many generations of their kind. On the surface not unlike our own species. But ask, are ants aware of the humans that dwell so close at hand? Do their senses perceive us in anything but the most basic way? Do they have the mental faculty to ponder us? Most would say no, ants are not aware of the very advanced and very alien human life with which they share their habitat. Aliens who bear their skeletons on the inside no less. Perhaps the comparison to ants is unfair. Humans have the perceptive and mental means to consider others than ourselves - alien civilizations in the greater cosmos. We’ve had the ability long before we knew that other civilizations existed. We do conceive of the giants - all great, some terrible - which share the landscape. But can we imagine beyond our own terms? Beyond our own limitations? Could we imagine those new colours? The ant analogy illustrates the multiple gulfs between Humanity and other civilizations - what some blithely name ‘The Community”. These divisions are categorized as mental, perceptual, social, temporal, physical, metaphysical, technological and, apparently, nine other mercurial degrees of freedom which we yet do not comprehend. At most 130 million years separate humans from ants - albeit very indirectly. Some alien societies have existed for a billion years prior to the Cambrian explosion. Consider the separation between us and ants and multiply that chasm by at least ten. I should qualify that last assertion with ’as we perceive time’. Amongst what has been gleaned of elder civilizations - the eldest so far found beyond Constellation Sagittarius - is that “time” is a multidimensional phenomenon. As inconceivable as that idea is for us – or even to technologically detect - members of elder civilizations perceive time beyond the linear shadow with which we are familiar – sic aiunt. A striking illustration of Humanity’s natural and extended perception thresholds. To simplify, envision time not as a line but as a sphere. What we perceive to be (human) time is one of the three axis of this sphere. Many paths or surfaces can be plotted through the sphere. These structures could be straight, flat, curved, twisted, knotted even folded while projecting a seemingly causal shadow on the axis of human time. Again, “it’s all around if we could but perceive”. Of coarse such a thought experiment does not reflect temporal nature's full complexity, but if it helps in thinking about it that's good... 1The Moody Blues, 'In Search Of The Lost Chord' (Deram Records, 1968) 2John Keel, ’The Mothman Prophecies’ (Panter Books, 1975)