All that exists, exists and all that does not exist, does not exist. A simple logic, to be sure; as undeniable as it is universal. Nothing could be more natural. After all, reality remains consistent whether I believe in it or not.

If I throw my umbrella to the wind and scoff at an approaching thunderstorm, I will still, unfortunately, get wet. And no matter how much I imagine a fat wallet thick with cash, there will always be work to be done and bills to be paid. Simple enough: what is, is and what is not, is not. That's the way it is for everyone. Especially some people.

Perhaps though, it is the potential catastrophe and sheer human arrogance of the Large Hadron Collider in Cern that has recently made me wonder just where an object would go to not be? Alternately, I suppose, it could also be simple spiritual curiosity that has inspired this careful team of antiseptic, static free scientists in Switzerland to smash together tiny atoms in the hopes of witnessing just why and how nothing has managed to give rise to everything.

And I applaud their ambitions. I, for one, would like to know just what the heck is going on here. I mean really…stars, black holes, quasars, exotic matter, planets wafting around in great dark rifts; just what is all this stuff and how do we explain our presence in the middle of it all.

Looking at the mystical qualities of nature and the complexity of science, one has to also wonder just how solid this reality thing really is. Perception, as they say, is everything. After all it's easy enough to have a theory about something and then, unwaveringly, believe that theory. The scientific method tells us that if it was true once, it will be true again. Therefore, if science has proven it, it has been proven forever.

Recently, however, it has been discovered that physics experiments are actually changed by the mental expectations of the scientists in the room. The mental expectations…the thoughts. Now that's just creepy: thoughts, like stars and quasars and dark rifts, are funny things because they can change without warning.

Did I mention this black hole thing? These noble scientists at CERN expect to create a small black hole. Nothing to worry about, just a little tiny spec really; a miniscule disappearing void that would never, not in a million years, grow exponentially and swallow the entire earth. Couldn't happen: the mathematics say so and mathematics have been forever proven.

Still though, I wonder. Over the past few months a strange thing has been happening to me.

From time to time I have perceived alternate realities or, I suppose, received glimpses of another timeline. Sometimes negative, sometimes positive but always different from what is supposed to be.

While changing a light bulb recently I was suddenly overcome with a strange but visceral vision of suffering a nasty cut as the bulb cracked in my hand. Then quickly all was returned to normal and there was no blood.

Once when strolling down the street I had the vivid impression of having met up with an old friend. We smiled and laughed and chatted briefly and then, abruptly, I was again strolling down the street alone. That friend, I suddenly realized, had died years earlier.

Last week I walked innocently into my modest apartment kitchen and was, for a brief moment, standing in a huge and beautiful country kitchen complete with granite counters, marble floors and the latest pots, pans and cooking apparatuses.

What am I to make of these experiences?

I know myself well enough to understand that these experiences are not some sort of mental symptom. Besides, they are far too real. And, I have to say, they feel normal, as if these experiences naturally exist somewhere and I am the one flipping back and forth. Strange.

Or is it? Why should it be impossible for many realities to exist? Rather than a ‘uni-verse', quantum science has begun to profess the notion of a ‘multi-verse' or, in simple terms, a state of reality where, like bubbles, all possible outcomes cluster together in a kind of stream. Based on my own experience, I strongly suspect this to be the case.

And so, just what will this Hadron Collider do? Some claim it will answer the age-old riddle of the Big Bang. Others hope it will give us a better understanding of God. Still others expect it to create an event so monstrous it will rival the Tower of Babel, trigger an apocalypse or squirt the entire planet into the fourth dimension like a watermelon seed. For me, I am hoping that it will fill my wallet with cash and set me down on a warm sunny beach somewhere under a bright cloudless sky.

I suspect, however, it will do nothing. Rather, if we are lucky, it will broaden the conservative confines of the scientific mind a little and hint at the possibility that other realities do, in fact, exist. And they exist all around us. It has always been my experience that humanity, or at least Western civilization, thinks far too highly of itself. We often overstate our own affect and our own importance. I mean really…do you seriously think that at the end of the day Mother Nature won't win?