In what space does reality exist? We can sense four dimensions: three-dimensional space and time. Are there any more dimensions? It probably is futile to ask this question because we may never know.

This thought, however, puts our very perception of reality in question. Does the world really look like as we see it? “What is the true nature of the world?” is probably a better question. And then, what may be the nature of God? For us, anyone or anything who can perceive more dimensions of reality than us will be “God,” or closer to it, though that person or thing may just be another entity in the infinite possible multiverses.

We might be just like the dog that can’t see the rainbow. Reality might be “right in front of us,” but we will not be able to sense it because of our inabilities. Indeed, it is quite a painful feeling that we are doomed to be in the dark. Our mathematics have become advanced enough to show the possibility that there are parts of reality that we cannot know in its full dimensionality, but it probably can’t say what is it that we are missing. I use the word “probably” with care, because it is human nature to try and find a way out of ignorance, and even with all my confidence about our continuation of it, I still hold a fantasy in my heart to sense the fifth dimension.

Mindless optimism, I find, is not just a reason for scientific development. It is also an essential part of human survival. The conclusiveness of our inability to know, rather than being a mere disappointment, is actually quite disturbing and painful. It might be hard for a human to accept that there might be no heaven or hell or reincarnation, that death is the end of it all. Continuation of hope is engineered into the human subconscious — how, I don’t know, but we can still feel it.

It could be said that one day we might able to recover the missing orthogonal component of n-dimensional reality that has been lost in our incomplete reconstruction of it in the four-dimensional universe that we sense. To me, it is near impossible, because to reconstruct reality in all its completeness we need to be free from all the prejudices we have about it just because we are human. So there, we do go back to the ancient thought of disconnecting from the illusory reality that we sense right now.

My only submission is that this reality may not be illusory, but merely incomplete. We must stop seeing the world as colored by the million colors that we know, so that we can take a look at it again and try to see the other colors that we could not see earlier. We must break the shackles imposed on our minds by the sense of space and time. Difficult as it may be — it may be impossible — I still live in this bubble of mindless optimism that maybe one day we might be able to know what lies beyond four dimensions.