Deep thoughts on the nature of experience

This post is just a little food for thought.

I am sure we are all familiar with the way birds fly into windows, or bugs scorch themselves on a hot lightbulb. Both of these are examples of how the birds' and bugs' perception fails them. The poor bird thinks it has a clear flight path, and not understanding the idea of glass because it did not evolve with anything like glass in its environment, it slams into it. Perhaps some birds learn about glass, but I'm sure it's a hard thing for them to understand. It may take many generations because they really "get it."

And the bug that burns itself to death on a lightbulb is similarly ill equipped to deal with a new phenomena in its experience. It is used to the only light sources being the sun, the moon and the stars. It is able to use thse fixed sources to navigate. When there is a lightbulb nearby, it tries to navigate by it but ends up actually hitting the bulb! What a shock!

We can feel sorry for these poor birds and bugs, but I would like to suggest that we may not be any different. The world is changing so fast environmentally, socially, economically, etc. that there are certainly lightbulbs and windows out there we don't know exist. We may be vaguely aware that we seem to be having certain problems, but we are unable to figure out what to do about them.

Think how different the world is from only a generations ago where the only people you could know were the people in your town, which you may never have left. Your environment would have been pretty similar for many generations back, so it was small, comprehensible and navigable. Not so today.

Or, have you ever had the experience of feeling bad for no good reason? Perhaps you may have even noticed that others around you were having similar trouble? Maybe it's just random coincidence, but also maybe not. Maybe there is something happening beyond our ability to perceive it. This certainly seems possible.

What if astrology is like this? On one level it seems absurd that the motions of the stars and planets could affect our experience. On the other hand, these stars and planets are extremely massive objects in our universe, and it could be possible that they influence our lives. For example, we already know the moon affects both the tides and womens' menstral cycles. When you think about it, these are two major impacts caused by something relatively small and far away. It's something to think about.

Or, here is something even more mindbending to think about. A number of cosmologists, physicists and mathematicians are now suggesting that the universe may have 10 dimensions. For example, read The Elegant Universe or visit http://www.tenthdimension.com/. I know it sounds like a crazy idea, but this website makes it somewhat conceivable.

If there are 10 dimensions, then there are 6 dimensions (if you exclude the 3 dimensions we can see and time as the fourth) we have no way to perceive with our five senses. That's more dimensions we CAN'T perceive than we can perceive! That starts to be a little scary. What if there are things happening in those other dimensions, and there certainly are bound to be, that we don't know are going on. It's like treading water in a deep ocean: there may be a whole world of life and activity that can see us but that we can't see. You feel something on your leg, but what is it? You don't know.

In this scenario, it could be very possible that major things are happening all around us without our knowing that affect us every day. What if some of our bad moods or good moods or success or failure or other experience is strongly influenced by these other dimensions?

Or maybe this is all just a crazy thought experiment. :) But it seems prudent to at least see if we can find out what else is going on that we don't know about. It might help explain alot that now seems random or beyond explanation.