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This confused me because it illustrates space as sitting on one invisible surface. Are illustrations such as these used to show only one of the infinite amount of planes affected by the matter depicted? If so, that makes sense. But that brings me to my next question...
You can think of a volume as containing an infinite number of 2D planes. You've obviously noticed that the analogy is strictly 2 dimensional, with the sun and planet only being able to move along an X,Y axis. So long as you keep as a 2D analogy, you should run into problems. Asking what direction space is curving in does not work, much like how the conmcept of up and down would be unimaginable to a 2D stick person. Since humans can only see 2 dimensional planes, we cannot even begin to imagine what a curved volume would look like.
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