Direct experiences of the world have been augmented by the invention of tools that enhance our senses. Some of the earliest examples of such tools include telescopes and microscopes that greatly expanded the scale of objects that could be seen. We now have a multitude of new instruments to collect and record information beyond our immediate senses, from the sub-atomic scale to the limits of the knowable universe.
The world beyond the present includes the past which can be accessed both via personal memory and historical records potentially available to anyone. Conversely, the future can only be based on the power of the brain to imagine. Imagining the future allows the creation of models of potential conditions without needing to act them out, thereby reducing the chances of making existential mistakes.
There are, of course, disadvantages associated with this ability to live in an imaginary world. The brain tends to fill in missing bits and thus create illusions. More importantly, we can make blunders. We may believe that there are things which are not really there. Seeing ghosts, UFOs, or wrongly recognising a person in a crowd are all small problems due to excessive imagination. Believing that there may be an afterlife or other utopian worlds may have much more serious consequences for societies. As a product of such rich evolutionary history, the brain is always at the edge of being out touch with reality, which, in some cases, may lead to behavioural inadequacies.
The collective traps of imagination generated the primordial world of myths and religious cosmologies. The construction of cosmologies based on wishes, desires, anxieties, and fears, or powerful empires, based on beliefs rather than on real knowledge of the world represent substantial dangers for survival of the species.