The Helianx Proposition/page 38
A gradual introduction to the wealth of information held in the virtual dimensions of the Hub,
with its implicit stress on the quality of an individual's consciousness,
had been a timely reminder for the Helianx of the value of maintaining a unique personality,
while simultaneously being able to lose themselves in the ecstatic closeness of the Web.
Their tentative explorations of the Hub soon revealed that when the Web was coherent and balanced, select groups of individual Helianx were able to meld their collective consciousness with the Hub in a way that made it possible to access the primary dimensions of life in the Multiverse. Although the Helianx had long been aware of the astral realms and had made extensive use of them in their travels out-of-the-body, and their theoretical physicists had always spoken of the multilevel nature of reality, prior to this breakthrough they had no idea how to gain access to these primary dimensions.
The simplicity of this revelation had been shocking at first and yet, as the physicists amongst them were quick to point out, the answer had been staring them in the face ever since their forebears had first proposed that the universe might have a multilayered structure. It had been then that the Helianx had started calling it the Multiverse. It was only by including the existence of enfolded dimensions that they were able to explain to themselves the aid they had often received so mysteriously in times of crisis. Just as planet-bound astronomers might infer the presence of a world invisible to their telescopes by measuring the small perturbations of its parent star, so also had the Helianx deduced the reality of these other dimensions by carefully observing the nature of the synchronous events that had been increasingly occurring in their lives. As a consequence, they had grown to believe that other sentient life existed on these finer dimensions, life that had appeared to have the best interests of their species at heart. But, try as they might, the Helianx had never been able to directly interact in any way with these caring beings.
As the millennia passed, a growing number of Helianx gained a working familiarity with the subtle energies of the Hub. This had encouraged them to make far more accurate maps of these exotic new dimensions, so unlike anywhere else they had visited in their previous explorations. Great architectural worlds were charted, far larger than anything even the Helianx had encountered, majestically orbiting stars in the fifth dimension and supporting countless myriad of celestial creatures. At other times, Energy Beings might flash across their field of vision, busy about their unknowable functions, unheeding and implacable. And yet, at another moment, some of the more experimental among them would find themselves deposited deep in the uninhabited outer limits of the Multiverse, dancing in the first dimension to the long, slow, rhythms of the rock devas, as they molded the forms of the worlds to come.
It had taken aeons of devoted practice and many generations for the Helianx to learn how to navigate collaboratively in these strange new dimensions.
