I've been considering this OP for over a week. Its catalyst now was via a post on the ultimate realization thread, there are no levels of being, there is only being.
If there are higher dimensions of reality above the material universe, why don't we experience them? The quantum nature of reality was discovered by Max Planck in 1900 as an explanation for the discrepancy between the theory of radiation of heat and what was actually measured. Planck thought he had merely discovered a mathematical trick to make the numbers come out right, it was left to Einstein in a paper in 1905 to show that it wasn't a mathematical trick, but the way the universe actually operates. His paper was on the photo-electric effect, and showed that energy is not transferred continuously, but in discrete packets, IOW, quantums of energy. This later explained the movements of electrons in an atom, and how we came up with the term, quantum leap. An electron jumps from one shell to another without traversing either time or space, it just vanishes from one orbit and appears in a higher orbit when the right energy is added (or jumps from higher to lower with the loss of energy).
OK, what does this have to do with levels of being and why we can't normally experience the higher worlds? All of reality (except God as Ein Sof of course) is structured in this manner. Therefore, there is a gap between our material world and the next higher world, and then a gap between that world and the next higher, up to seven worlds.
Let's begin at the beginning and move downwards. There are various maps of what is called the Great Chain of Being. Plotinus had a cosmology of different orders of reality. The Kabbalah also does as the Tree of Life, the ten Sefirot, another is called the ray of creation. The universe has a certain structure, it's based on triads and octaves. In the beginning, God is One, unitary Being, Oneness. We could call this world 1. God created world 2, which has three forces, where Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching says One became two and two became three.
God (world 1) is infinite energy. Between world 1 and world 2 is a gap. The movement from a higher level of energy to a lower level of energy is called involution. Involution takes place through decending octaves, do, si, la, sol, fa, mi, re, do. An octave from do to re is a whole, or from do to si, seven notes, and then we come to do again, the eighth note, the beginning of a new octave. Between si and do the interval is shorter, between mi and fa, longer. Descending levels of energy is natural, the movement is from order to disorder, AKA entropy.
So the movement continues from world 2 to 3, from world 3 to 4, from 4 to 5, from 5 to 6, from 6 to 7. This is creation, the end of involution. We end up with our earth/moon, about 3.8 billion years ago. Then begins evolution, the ascent back towards world 1, back to God. An ascending octave has the same gaps (between si and do, and between mi and fa), but it has no energy to jump the gaps, because the natural movement of energy is from higher to lower, not lower to higher. Evolution occurs because the smallest organisms learn to take energy from their environment, and reproduce. The energy from the exterior world being transformed is what allows the crossing of the gaps from mi to fa and from si to do. Science tells us the journey from the most simple organisms, to man.
However, the evolution of man is not complete. Man was created as a self-developing organism. Our essential nature was designed as a seed of potential. It's possible for the seed to unfold and grow, and traverse the worlds back toward God. Man can move from world 7/6, to world 6, to world 5......on upward. But unlike the movement downward of involution and creation which happens naturally, the movement upward is like a salmon swimming upstream to spawn, it must go against the downward movement of involution (the stream moving toward the sea, via gravity).
Between each world is a gap that must be crossed to reach the next higher world. And each world can be looked at as zero to infinity (IOW, each world, each dimension, can be consider as a Whole unto itself, as self-contained). The gap is crossed by reaching a certain level of development, we can grow-in-to the level of energy of the next higher world, just like an acorn can grow-in-to and oak tree.
So, if we let nature take its course we follow the law of entropy and can never reach the next higher world. Reaching the next higher world requires the transformation of energy, called by Hermes Trismegistus, separating the fine from the coarse. IOW, reaching a higher state of consciousness never occurs naturally, never occurs without a certain quality and quantity of transformed energy, via interior work.
The next higher world upward is a different level of being, a level which we are capable of accessing, but not by doing nothing. It doesn't happen naturally. The higher encompasses the lower but the lower cannot encompass the higher. The movement upward is from simplicity to complexity, our being has to change to correspond to the next level upward, which we could say is more intelligent (as man is more intelligent than an ant, man can take in more of what reality is, than an ant can).
The transformation of energy from a lower vibration to a higher vibration, and its accumulation in a man or woman, is what allows the jump of the gap from a lower world to a higher world.
I fully accept and affirm (and understand) the unity of each world, each dimension, as a Whole, unto itself, IOW, Oneness on each level. (And this is why only a direct question by enigma made necessary the clarification of my view of the universe). This would also mean the unity of each world "looking" downward. This is what I was trying to indicate in the looking forward looking backward thread. God encompasses the Whole of reality, meaning God is aware of all that Is. But the lower cannot encompass the higher.
The lower, is not the higher.stardustpilgrim