Sneak Peak at my book series: Relativity in Notion

For as long as I can remember, one of my most easily recalled "moments" happened one night when I was when I was about five years old, and I was lying in bed pondering the most perplexing day: I was in Grade One at Chisapiti Junior School in Harare at the time, and my teacher, Mrs Swanapoole, who did not have swans in her pool, or a pool, had introduced us to the topic of Astronomy.

I was instantly hooked! I loved it; all of it! It just all made so much sense! And when she came to the part about black holes, I felt like I had just had what I would come to know of as an epiphany. As soon as she said that black holes were terrifying things that would suck up everything around them, including light, I connected the idea with what she had shown us on the previous page of the book; galaxies!?!

I raised my hand and tentatively pointed out that there must be a black hole at the middle of every galaxy, including our own, because galaxies clearly looked like water going down a plug hole, and so therefore, black holes must be the reason for galaxies looking the way that they do?

[One may have thought such an insight from a 5 year old to be profound and thought provoking, but apparently not]

Well! You would have thought I had just transformed into the devil before everyone's very eyes! The children around me all started to back away, some even started crying, and Mrs Swanapoole looked like she was about to commit a murder - mine!

I was promptly whisked out of class and up to the principal's office. I can't remember what happened next, but the "moment" I referred to happened that night whilst lying in bed trying to get to sleep; I remember lying there and trying to make sense of it all! I was quite hurt and upset that I had gotten into so much trouble, and I certainly did not appreciate being told that I had tried to scare everyone in my class on purpose!

I admit that finding flaws in the methods of my mad elders back then drove me nuts on a daily basis, but the "black hole incident" stumped me that night: How was I supposed to know that animals and humans lose control of their bladders when scared? [We did not start biology or evolutionary genetics until high school?] Perhaps they should have mentioned stuff like that first?

Further more, for the life of me, I could not understand why nobody seemed able, or even willing to try to understand the logic behind the concept I had tried to put forth.I admit that my previous 2 years at a Montessori Kindy my have given me some false conceptions about what school would be like, but how could they not be fascinated?

I mean, it was not as if anybody else had any theories to put forward at all, let alone a viable one?

As I lay there, I tried to empathize with my peers, by imagining why they had been so terrified, but while I could understand their fear, I could not empathize with it, because there was nothing to worry about. After all, just because there might well be a black hole at the middle of our Milky Way, it was not as if we were going to get swallowed up by it any time soon.

To try to understand further, I tried to relate my new "idea" to what I had been taught in Sunday school. This further confused me, because as far as I was concerned, the whole concept of Christ, and God, did in no way make my black hole theory less likely, nor did it make it scary.

I was convinced that it simply proved that there is a God, and that He is greater than man and/or woman can fathom.

From this point, my memory fades again a little, and I cannot remember how I actually arrived at my next conclusion, but arrive at it I did, and it was this that led to the "moment" that I recall so easily; I tried to imagine myself as God (Yes, I know, but please bare with me) contemplating the why and the how of creating a universe, and I concluded that to do it, I would have to imagine it into existence in my own head.

This startled me, and I paused to wonder what it would mean if, when God created Heaven and Earth, or in other words, the universe, He had done so inside His own head?

Of course, the next thought that occurred to me (remember, I was only 5), was that if God had indeed created the universe inside his own head, that it would mean that the universe we can see, is really just the inside of God's brain.

I might start to lose you here, but please hang on: I took this idea one step further, and considered that for it to be so, then, in creating the universe, God had created everything in a way that would eventually lead to us, humans, having a universe inside our own heads. I imagined the inside of my head, my brain, and tried to imagine it with hundreds of millions of galaxies inside it, each with its own version of earth, and with another me on that earth having another universe inside their head.

[Just re-reading this to check it before publishing and it occurred to me that, while I was unaware of it when I wrote this a few months back, and of course most certainly so when I was 5, I seem to have described the anthropic principle]

I had not yet driven myself to the brink of crazy at this point- the "moment" - and in fact at this stage my thoughts were beginning to snowball, as it all seemed to make so much sense, and I therefore felt that I was on the verge of another epiphany, however, it was the next stage of this thought process that nearly drove me around the bend: I thought to myself, well, if there is a universe inside my head, and another inside that, just like a set of Russian dolls, then the same must be said for everyone else on Earth?

That was it. The moment. I had almost driven myself nuts, or perhaps I had "thought" myself to the very brink of insanity, and it was terrifying.

At least that is what I convinced myself, or is it more that that is what God made me believe, perhaps because He knew that such thoughts were simply too much for a five year old's brain to comprehend?

For me, it was simply the first, if certainly the most powerful, of many such "moments" in which I have felt on the brink of either sanity or insanity.

In this and future books, I will attempt to share such "moments" with you, as well as the science and philosophy of everything, whether life, art, music, humanity, technology, evolution, spirituality, conspiracy theories, sustainability, religion, aliens, demons and the devil, war and peace, global consciousness, faith, the matrix, genetics, astrology, astronomy, cosmology, quantum mechanics, prayer, poetry, the evolution of language and/or information, the nature of light and sound, the cosmos, how everything is connected, and all combined with the concept of God being The Mind of the Universe, not in the hope of bringing you, the reader, to the brink of either sanity or insanity, but to open your mind, and perhaps change the world, TOO!

Fact: It has been a while since I engaged in any serious activism:

Irony: The reasons for that have literally ensured I will be engaging heavily again!

Below I have put some links to my new facbook pages so you can choose which voice in my head you would like to follow?

• STOP the Violence Against Women & Children
• No, I never said there was anything freaky going on
• Mel's Memes
• Apatheutic Memeology: A Daily Dose of Sanity Inducing Irony
• How to fast track your Awakening towards Spiritual Evolution
• How to be politically incorrect
• Everything you need to know about the big whack theory
• The "Life's a Roller Coaster and we're Enthusiasts" Club
• Grassroots to going off the grid
• Animals have souls, too
• Your daily dose of Spiritual Reality, as I teach it to my kids.
• This is your Dog speaking
• Mel's Myth Busting Memes
• Yoohoo, has anyone seen my sanity?

• STOP the Violence Against Women & Children
  Organize to Resist! Together we can take on the Predators! Let's Break the Silence to End the Violence by working together to make our voices a Resounding SHOUT!!! Perpetrators BEWARE - you don't stand a chance!

Please Note:

_{All names in this article have been changed for legal purposes and to protect the privacy of the Author. Except where otherwise credited, or where text forms part of an external link, this article is under the following copyright:}

_{Copyright © 2010 Mel Stewart, "safe-at-last", of Perth, Western Australia. All rights reserved.}

_{All persons, places and objects shown in the images in this hub are are shown for illustrative purposes only. They bear no relation to any real person or event. All persons shown are paid models. Unless otherwise credited, all images are under the following copyright:}

_{Copyright © 2010 Mel Stewart, "safe-at-last" and Licensors Nodtronics Pty Ltd. All rights reserved.}