Rethinking Extra Dimensions and Consciousness
A Proposal for Physicists:

I am not a physicist or mathematician by training (B.S. Civil Engineering, Lafayette College, 1970), but I wish to offer a fresh perspective on the conceptual challenges posed by string theory’s extra dimensions and their possible connection to consciousness.

Our everyday experience of space is limited to three perpendicular axes, and time is experienced as a continuous present moment, with past and future being more like cognitive constructs and bookkeeping rather than parts of the experienced temporal dimension. How, then, should we conceptualize these additional string dimensions? How do we “experience” them, if at all? There must be some experience there.

Historically, science has advanced by embracing radical ideas that initially seemed way outside-the-box: Dirac’s prediction of the positron because the expression for the electron he calculated involved solving a quadratic equation; Pauli’s neutrino hypothesis, which he didn’t announce for years because of its weirdness; and Greenberg’s introduction of a hidden color charge to accommodate quarks and gluons in quantum chromodynamics. Each represented a paradigm shift grounded in mathematical consistency and eventually verified with experimental validation.

Inspired by this tradition, I propose a speculative framework: the extra dimensions posited by string theory may correspond to different levels of experience and cognition, different dimensions of consciousness. Analogous to how color charge is a quantum number completely unrelated to electromagnetic color, these experiential dimensions might have properties analogous to density or other qualitative measures, yet fundamentally distinct from conventional spatial characteristics.

To illustrate, using the simplest version of string theory, imagine a closed cylindrical container at room temperature filled with equal volumes of six fluids of differing specific gravities—let’s say air, ethyl alcohol, milk, molasses, bromine, and mercury. Left to settle, they stratify according to density, with the air containing some intermingling of vapors from alcohol, water in the milk and sublimating bromine. The milk and the molasses react at their interface. Of course, the mercury isolates itself from the others at the bottom, not playing well with others.

Now shake the cylinder. The fluids interact in complex ways. By analogy, at every infinitesimal point in spacetime (x_n, y_n, z_n, t_n), there could be a superposition of states in these experiential dimensions (s₁, s₂, s₃, s₄, s₅, s₆), representing a multidimensional substrate of consciousness or awareness. This leads to an extended manifold:

Now let’s take our experiment one step further: Let’s insert our six-dimensional cylinder into our spacetime grid and into our algebraic expression and see what happens.

Stop the shaking. Stop all motion. Stop time. Inspect this tiny slice of spacetime.

Here’s the expression:

x_n, y_n, z_n, t_n, s1_x, s2_x, s3_x, s4_x, s5_x, s6_x,
where n is fixed (space and time are locked in) and x is variable.

Spacetime becomes a frozen moment, and in that infinitesimal moment, consciousness is still sloshing around deep within the continuum but outside spacetime strictures. Consciousness is not bound by space or time. There are reciprocal quantum/relativistic effects between space and time and consciousness, of course; but at a given point, consciousness has (at least) six-dimensional freedom. How do you think that “feels?”

And now at the precise moment of stoppage in our experiment, how would one describe the fluid concoction, the extra dimensional conditions? Well, it’s basically a soup, all six ingredients swirling around, randomly mixing into one frothy brew. But let it settle, with space and time still stuck at position n, and what happens?

The individual constituents begin to separate and settle. The mercury quickly sinks to the bottom. Some of it reacts with the bromine and crystallizes into mercury bromide; the alcohol and milk are miscible; and some bromine sublimates into the air along with alcohol vapors, etc.

Eventually, it settles into a coherent layered structure. When time stops at a given point of space, consciousness settles into a meditative state.

Of course consciousness contains many aspects of experience and cognition other than just dream states, as suggested in the other substances of the diagram. Elements of consciousness mix and mingle in many ways. You could be daydreaming on a breezy afternoon walking barefoot in your garden with grass between your toes, the sun in your face and robins twittering; all the while remembering a recent interaction with a colleague or lover that caused you distress; and starting to imagine a plan to react more effectively in a similar situation in the future. All those conscious thoughts and experiences occur virtually simultaneously. Consciousness is multidimensional. It feels like a one-dimensional string maybe, a unitary self. But there’s so much more to it when you break it down.

That’s what consciousness is like at every moment. When one meditates, time coordinates slow down and allow the string experiences—all six or seven or twenty-two of them—to settle.

This imaginative analysis suggests the possibility that consciousness amounts to everything that goes on in the multiverse that does not fit into current models of quantum/relativistic physics. It is metaphysical reality so-to-speak. So-called subjective stuff. Noetic stuff. Spiritual stuff. Including all our experiences of dreams and of incorporeal entities and our thought and analysis and intention and everything in between, intermingling and becoming our unique sense of self.

It is all a conscious fabric at the Planck scale. Proof of life. Pulsating. We are swimming through it and it is swimming through us; and we are awash within our own bubble of universal mindstuff. Our own singular existence.

And it’s absolutely real; and for each of us completely different. It’s all in the math. Space. Time. Consciousness.

Furthermore, these experiential string dimensions could also somehow underlie physical effects attributed to dark matter (gravitational anomalies) and dark energy (cosmic expansion), linking consciousness and cosmology in a novel way. Space. Time. Consciousness. All interacting seamlessly.

Space is measured in centimeters, miles and lightyears; and time in seconds, years and millenia. If we could define units for these experiential dimensions—perhaps involving a “consciousness constant” analogous to Planck’s constant—we might integrate consciousness as a fundamental aspect of the universe, alongside space and time. Consciousness would not emerge solely from matter but be a foundational substrate, percolating beneath spacetime like virtual particles. And with that, the “hard problem” of consciousness would become moot.

Sounds fanciful, almost science-fictional, but I wonder. Though speculative, this framework invites new experimental and theoretical approaches. For example, could unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) involve manipulation of or non-inertial navigation through these experiential dimensions? Could some advanced meditation technology enable access to this multidimensional consciousness space, allowing such travel and fostering a unified awareness—and with it an overarching sense of universal compassion? Could love be scientific?

Unless and until we as a species learn to tune in to the universal consciousness, there will always be danger in this world.

Click/tap below to learn about this “DANGER HEY, HEY”.