Stephen and I were a rather nerdy pair.

We had a book club that was very exclusive – just the two of us. Stephen put me in charge of naming the book club, and “Cook Blub” was born. It involved us sitting on the couch on a Saturday afternoon, eating homemade guacamole and discussing quantum physics. Yes, you read that correctly. Quantum physics.

Stephen put together an entire curriculum for us to go through. (And yes, I do plan to finish reading all these books someday!) They all centered around the themes of string theory, quantum physics, and other fascinating, imperceptible topics about our universe. Both of us relished having deep conversations about time, dimensions, the possibility of alternate or parallel universes, and how all this science could be fused together with the wisdom of various religious traditions throughout history. Like I said, we were a nerdy pair.

One of the topics that would come up on occasion was the question of what happens to us after we die. As you can imagine, I started thinking about this much more intensely after Stephen died, because for the first time in my life, it mattered to me more than anything else in the world to have some sense of certitude that souls do live on after our earthly bodies are gone.

Over years of conversing about this with Stephen, both of us concluded that there is a distinct possibility that when we die here on Earth, our spirits transcend to a higher dimension. Right now, all of us living here at this moment are trapped in three dimensions. And we all know, thanks to Einstein and other brilliant minds, that the fourth dimension is time. Time is how we are forced to experience our current dimension, but what happens if we were able to advance to a higher dimension?

When you read anecdotes of people who have gone through near-death experiences (NDEs), one very consistent theme that comes through is that they experience a sense of timelessness. When I received my message from Stephen at the end of October, one of the things he said to me was:

I am doing everything I can from this realm to help you have the best life. But you will have to be patient because it takes time…

But time is meaningless to me!

Well, if that isn’t one of the most SKW things to say, I don’t know what is! I told his mother about this after I received the message, and we laughed out loud together, delighting in the fact that he never cared much about time when he was alive, so it surely doesn’t mean anything to him now! I do believe the timelessness that so many people experience as part of death is evidence that our souls are transcending to another dimension, rather than ceasing to exist altogether.

As a math major in college, I was required to read an odd little book called Flatland. It is for a very particular audience, and I’d say it would not be terribly enjoyable to the average reader, so don’t go running out to your library to check it out unless you really enjoy satire and geometry.

(As a funny aside, to emphasize what a strange book this is, this was a review from the New York Times when it was published:

A very puzzling book and a very distressing one, and to be enjoyed by about six, or at the outside seven, persons in the whole of the United States and Canada.

I can’t say I disagree with this assessment. Anyway, I digress…)

This peculiar story is about a square that lives in a two-dimensional world called Flatland, and he is visited by a sphere from a third dimension. He then wants to explain this concept of higher dimensions to a line in a one-dimensional world, so he pays a visit to Lineland and demonstrates this moving between dimensions to the King of Lineland. And the King responds:

“I see you, I see you still; you are not moving.” But when I had at last moved myself out of his Line, he cried in his shrillest voice, “She is vanished; she is dead.” “I am not dead,” replied I; “I am simply out of Lineland, that is to say, out of the Straight Line which you call Space, and in the true Space, where I can see things as they are.”

Very simply, I believe this is how life after death works. Our bodies bind us to a three-dimensional realm, but when they inevitably stop functioning for one reason or another, our souls are released to move up to a higher dimension. And what binds two souls together when the technicalities of dimensions temporarily separate us?

LOVE.

And why love?

Because love transcends space and time.

From the movie Interstellar. Another tale of moving between dimensions, but quite a bit more enjoyable than reading Flatland.