5D
Another interpretation from my book, The Pouring, or How the Universal Mind Reached Out to a Generation
After posting my commentary on Hey Jude, which is quite anxiety-ridden, I feel the need to quickly post something more positive, particularly since there are undoubtedly a lot of people who heard Hey Jude in a much more positive light: the message of encouragement that is the ostensible flavor of the song. So, I was listening to Pandora today and heard 5D by The Byrds and this is a perfect counterpoint. And, a reminder, that the song publisher would not allow me to quote the actual lyrics.
5D (Fifth Dimension)
By The Byrds
Album: 5th Dimension
Written by Roger McGuinn, 1966
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/byrds/5dfifthdimension.html
Written in a loping 3 /4 time, 5D captured, musically and lyrically, the ecstatic sense of freedom from boundaries that the awareness of altered states of consciousness produced for many members of the Generation. The song describes a state of consciousness that represented a life’s goal for many within the Generation—that of “falling” through the many dimensions of consciousness as long as we are alive. It was a state of non-attachment and transcendence of the material world that, once experienced, we wanted to experience all of the time. That psychedelic drugs could sometimes get you there accounted for their high rate of consumption by the Generation. That they could not keep you there accounted for the search by many members of the Generation for a spiritual way that would allow one to experience that state—or perhaps something even more transcendent and powerful—permanently.
The question posed in the first verse alludes to the sometimes traumatic inward journey that was part of the altered states experience, especially if one were using the vehicle of psychedelic drugs. It also references the often turbulent life journey that members of the Generation took on their way to the Small Enlightenment. The “here” is that peaceful, unified or near unified state of consciousness that has variously been described as Void, Nirvana, White Light or simply There (although what was actually experienced by most members of the Generation was likely only a reflection of the higher vibrations that are these states).
To continue to fall through the Infinite and never reach bottom both conveys a sense of falling endlessly through space and alludes to Alice’s descent down the rabbit hole. As the last line of the verse conveys, the key to remaining in that state of peace and bliss is to relax the mind and pay attention to what is going on in the Here and Now. A tensing up, one distraction that leads the mind astray into thoughts of past/future/there and the feeling is lost.
The second verse begins with a metaphor that casts the world of consensual reality as an inferior world—a world of two dimensions compared to the world of five dimensions. Of course, consensual reality has four dimensions so this poetic license merely emphasizes the inadequacies of the physical world. The latter part of the verse references the experience of seeing the world of consensual reality melt away, crumbling into multi-dimensionality. It is like one is dead to the world but the mind is still possessed of senses—whether modified or enhanced physical senses, or inner senses altogether.
The third verse describes the ecstasy of being in that state of inner peace. We find that we are at the positive pole of Duality. We do not even think of the negative pole. Everything around us, all our thoughts and experience, reinforces the positivity of what we are experiencing and shows us the joy that exists in complete innocence. It is just Joy and nothing more—self-sufficient Joy. In this state, just be quiet. Be still—and Know that I Am God.
The next verse expresses the unconditional optimism and faith in the Goodness of God or the Universe that is the result of the ecstatic experience of Oneness or near Oneness. Beyond the insecurities of relativism and Duality, this is the state of Hope for which members of the Generation yearned and in which they believed, ideologically. All we had to do was to open our hearts to the Love that is around us and it would be there. If we trusted the Universe and dropped our ego-defenses, the Universe would not betray our trust.
In the next verse, we see that the realization of the Reality of Love was accompanied by the realization of the tremendous error that the rest of the world—those who accepted the consensual reality—had made. They had accepted a worldview based on the false senses. This misconception about the nature of Reality had been exacerbated by the material scientific revolution that holds sensory data interpreted through linear logic as the standard to be used to determine what is reality.
Going down this road had proved disastrous. It had resulted in the atomic bomb, napalm and the “rational” prosecution of the Vietnam War, as well as the machine-dominated consumption-production culture. The idea that science rather than human values can and should govern society’s direction had proved to be madness and science’s belief that it has the key to truth is nothing more than delirium.
The penultimate verse (prior to the refrain of the first verse) exclaims the desire that this state of peace and bliss would continue forever. There was definitely a belief and a hope that, if this state could be revisited often enough, it would become permanent. The verse ends with a riddle about the illusoriness of linear time and the ever-lastingness of the Now. For many in the Generation all past and future is contained in the present moment. Time itself is a quantum that, from Eternity’s viewpoint, has no reality and, thus, ends before its beginning. All in all, 5D is a powerful statement of ecstasy and of hope and a signal of the direction in which the consciousness of the Generation should travel toward.
If you enjoyed this post, there is much more in the book - some 875 songs. The Pouring is available as an e-book from Smashwords.com and from Amazon in print. The e-book has links to the song lyrics online. The print edition obviously doesn’t so you have to search on the internet for them - quite easy to do.
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