Nirvana shatters

In 1884, a British schoolmaster wrote a book called Flatland, a romance in many dimensions. The author coyly called himself 'a square' but was the mathematician and novelist Edwin Abbot. The book went on to have an impact on far-flung fields such as philosophy and semantics well beyond its charming theme of clash of dimensions. The animated film made in 2007 with voices by Martin Sheen, Kristen Bell and Tony Hale attests to the perennial relevance of Flatland's thesis.

University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt, for example, who researches on emotional basis of morality, goes so far as to credit Flatland with providing the most helpful metaphor of all in understanding morality, religion and the human quest for meaning:

The protagonist is a square living in a two-dimensional world populated by geometric figures such as line segments (females) and polygons and bossy circular supervisor, Miss Helios. There's a close encounter of the third kind when an alien sphere from a three-dimensional world visits Arthur Square. The Square just doesn't get the concept of a third dimension despite strenuous attempts made by the sphere to explain the concept with analogies and geometric demonstration.

Finally, the sphere yanks the square, out of Flatland and onto his own world. Here he can see the insides of all the houses and the insides of all its inhabitants. "The Square is awestruck," Haidt writes in his The Happiness Hypothesis. "He prostrates himself before the sphere and becomes the sphere's disciple. Upon his return to Flatland, he struggles to preach the 'Gospel of Three Dimensions' to his fellow two-dimensional creatures - but in vain."

There's more to it, Haidt points out: we are all squares before enlightenment hits us. "We have all encountered something we failed to understand, yet smugly believed we understood because we couldn't conceive of the dimension to which we were blind," he adds.

A moving example of this world-shattering aspect of enlightenment is found in Arjuna's 'rediscovery' of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. Here is our hero chuffing his ever-tolerant boon companion, Krishna, generally being a selfish sod. Imagine his horror, shame and contrition when he discovers that Krishna is none other than the Supreme Lord Himself! The corollary that you are divine yourself (Tat tvam asi) may be even more mind-shattering.