It might seem like an abstract, far-out idea to suggest the world we experience has an underlying, hidden geometry. However, the idea of sacred geometry has been around for thousands of years, with a precise flower of life on a wall of the Temple of Osiris in Egypt dating back 6,000 years.

In recent years, researchers found that “symmetry and simplicity spontaneously emerge from the algorithmic nature of evolution,” with a sort of economy of design that leads to simple geometry. Although the scientists didn’t mention the Flower of Life, they inadvertently supported the ancient concept, which represents the mathematical order in all of life, albeit with a spiritual component.

It’s one thing to explore these ideas, but what if a person could see them with their own eyes? As it turns out, a few people say they have seen the mathematical structure of the ‘real world,’ or perhaps the Matrix we live in. 

People Who See the Hidden Geometry of the World

While watching William Shatner’s ‘The UnXplained’ series, you may have seen the story about people who have suddenly unlocked genius. It’s the Mystery of Genius, episode 2 of Season 4. (It’s on Netflix at the time of this writing.)

In the episode, Jason Padgett, a man from Anchorage, Alaska, suffered a brain injury in a violent attack. Afterwards, he suddenly leveled up with extraordinary abilities. Although he was a struggling teenage student who hated math before, he was suddenly jolted into a new reality on Friday, the 13th of December, 2002. That evening while out at a bar, thugs attacked him and hit him on the back of the head with a thud.

“I saw a bright flash of light and the next thing I knew, I was on the ground,” Padgett said.

After a shot of pain medicine at the hospital, he went home in the ambulance, noticing blurry vision. But the next morning, when he woke up, he started seeing the underlying geometry of everything around him. What he saw as smooth before was rendered in a grid of lines and ‘picture frames,’ producing entrancing shapes as objects moved, frame by frame.

He Started Drawing ‘the Way the Universe Sees’

Later, while out at a shopping mall and drawing, a physicist happened to walk by and stopped in his tracks at what he saw.

“He goes, ‘What are you working on there? It looks like you’re trying to talk about spacetime and the discreet structure of the universe.’ He goes, ‘I’ve never seen anybody try to do it in Layman’s terms before.”

The physicist suggested that Padgett take a math class, and he did. That’s when he realized he really was seeing mathematics around him. Later, an expert diagnosed him with Acquired Savant Syndrome, which gave him extraordinary skills. After a trip to Finland for an MRI, doctors found he could use generally off-limits areas of the brain.

“They found that I was using areas of the brain that we don’t normally have conscious access to,” Padgett explained.

Spacetime is a Fractal

Ever since then, he could literally see math everywhere, “the way the universe sees it,” as he described it.

“Every shape in the universe is a fractal,” he explained. “Spacetime itself is a fractal; Fractals are shapes that if you take them apart into pieces, the pieces are the same as the whole. So our veins, our lungs, our brains, our neurons, everything follows these fractal algorithms,” Padgett said (see video below).

And although he is an extraordinary case, he believes it’s likely “we all have these abilities.” And we’re all running incredibly complex mathematical calculations in the background of our consciousness all the time. Maybe our brain’s internal processing is why we see things like smooth circles when Padgett says they don’t truly exist.

You can see his amazing drawings on his website.

Jason Padgett appeared on TODAY below:

More in his 2016 TED talk:

Others Who Perceive the Geometry of the Universe

Padgett’s experience is rare, but others have reported similar accounts. For example, mathemetician and child prodigy Jordan Ellenberg wrote a book, Shape: This Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else. 

Although he doesn’t see the shapes around him, his mind perceives them. Ellenberg sees geometry “as a way of thinking,” a method of reasoning, and a system “for making sense of the world.” He even believes geometry is a form of honesty where individual students can prove statements and build individual knowledge.

And Ellenberg explains that geometers can train their minds to perceive shapes in higher dimensions. (see video below).

“One of the biggest misconceptions people have about math is that math is finished,” Ellenberg said. “People who are geometers are typically thinking about crazy stuff that’s going on in high dimensions with all kinds of crazy curvature. But four-dimensional shapes are, in some sense, just as real as three-dimensional shapes. We just have to train our minds to be able to perceive what shapes in those dimensions…would look like.”

You can see more on Ellengerg’s book here.

Interview with Jordan Ellenberg by WIRED:

Kundalini Awakenings and Seeing Geometry

For another example, those who have described having a “Kundalini awakening,” have occasionally reported seeing the geometry of the world around them. A Kundalini awakening is sometimes described as a surge of ethereal or astral light energy up the spine and is talked about in ancient cultures such as Egypt and India (Sekhem in Egypt and Kundalini in India).

In modern times, teachings about Kundalini and associated chakras (Sefech Ba Ra in Egypt) are still widely followed. For instance, Neven Paar describes it in his book, “Serpent Rising: The Kundalini Compendium.”

After a full awakening of energy to the top of the crown, he and a few other experiencers say they began seeing the world differently, in a way similar to Jason Padgett. They started to see the grid or geometry of things around them. Paar also reported seeing a “silvery haze” of light transposed onto everything around him.

Could such an awakening be a way to unlock a hidden ability, allowing one to see the underlying geometry of the world?

Neven Paar appeared in an interview below with Eric Balance to describe what happened after his Kundalini awakening:

Featured image: Screenshot via YouTube/TED Archive with images from Wikipedia of the Flower of Life and Eye of Ra