Out of the mouths of babes...

[Busby]

The cause of me being on this forum is an experience I had as a lad of about nine or ten. Say 1947/48. Then the streets were empty of traffic and we played all sorts of games on the roads. For football we'd just throw pullies or jackets onto the ground to mark goals, for cricket we'd draw stumps on walls ..and so on. We were perfectly happy although all around us was the remaining devastation of the war - which took years to be cleared away.
One day, in the middle of playing a game of football, I suddenly had to stand still and look because it hit me with full force - the realisation that that all around me; the houses, the bushes, the roads, in fact everything was absolutely impossible. I did indeed perceive the outside world, that solid world which hurts when you fall on it, as a lie. This overbearing moment of conscious awakening (or whatever) set me off on a search which has lasted more than 7 decades. These 7 decades have led me into many and varied fields and I've read about, seen, heard and experienced many strange, odd and inexplicable 'things'.

In the years following that moment on the streets of London I've had 15 more astounding, inexplicable, interludes of what I prefer to call cosmic consciousness or cosmic insights - these I look upon as being the fruits of my efforts to find anything which will or could give a clue as to what this thing called life is all about.

It is clear to me that there is a force (I'm not giving it any name here) in which we are embedded or surrounded and which gives us the opportunity to exist in this state or condition we call consciousness. I am also of the opinion that consciousness is all there is and forms the backdrop for everything and is in itself boundless. It was this, then for me indiscernable knowledge that hit so hard when I was ten years old.