UR Part of It

I grew up in Southern California during the 1950?s, 60?s, and 70?s. My fascination with consciousness and exploring the depths of human experience started in my early teens. I was reading about Einstein?s theory of general and special relativity in an encyclopedia on a warm southern California summer day. Two ideas, a finite universe due to the effect of gravity on light, and the use of thought experiments to evaluate the efficacy of ideas were very interesting to me. I decided that I would do a thought experiment to evaluate the notion that the universe was finite. I laid down on my bed, closed my eyes and began to imagine traveling out through the universe at the speed of light as a point of conscious awareness. The dark and stars and planets all whizzed past and as time went on I puzzled about how the curve in the universe would be noticed. Eventually I decided that there must be some sort of boundary or impediment that would prevent my movement on a straight line. I imagined a brick wall and started to break through it, there were more and more bricks, on and on the experience of breaking through the bricks went on until suddenly I realized that the bricks themselves went on forever. There was no end to the universe. At that moment I found myself in and identical to a featureless, timeless space and experienced perfect peace, unlimited knowledge, and infinite love.