The Universe In You

Sit back, or lie back if you can, and relax and prepare yourself for a most amazing journey. What you will discover though is not something new, but rather you will rediscover something you knew all along and have forgotten. Your arms and legs will be the first to relax. Feel all of the tension draining out of them as you let them drop. Your arms hang loosely down by your side, and your legs are sinking down into your cushions.

As your arms and legs continue to relax feel this loose sensation draining downwards into your hands and feet. Your wrists and ankles let go and drop to their natural resting state. You're suddenly aware of the tiny amount of tension you keep in your fingers and toes, and you are able to relax them, letting them droop downwards. You feel a warm wave wash downwards through your arms; it passes your shoulders.... your arms.... your elbows.... right straight through to your hands. The warm feeling flows right out of your fingertips.

The same warm wave starts flowing through your legs, starting at your thighs... oozing downwards into your knees... then your calves... your ankles... and finally into your feet and flowing out through your toes. As this happens you feel your arms and legs growing extremely heavy and they sink further into your cushions.

Now think of that warmth gathered up into one spot, which sits at the center of your stomach in a bright white ball. It sparkles like electricity as it tumbles and turns there. Wherever the white light flashes out to touch you can feel the muscles relax and the tension draining away. The ball of light starts to expand, growing to fill your entire torso now. Your chest relaxes, and your back feels very warm as the white light circulates through you. It washes outwards now to your arms and legs, which are now completely relaxed, and up into your head. You feel the tension in your neck being drawn out by the white light, leaving your body and leaving you feeling light and relaxed. It continues up and outwards until the white light fills your entire body. Then, once it has gathered up all of the remaining tension you have, it starts to drain downwards, through your body and out, taking the tension with it. The last of your tension seeps out into the floor and floats away.

In this relaxed state your senses are heightened and you can hear, see, and feel an entire world you didn't know existed. The sound of your own heart beating slow and regular fills your ears. The slight breeze of air circulating through the room wakens your skin. Your eyes spot the tiniest of details on the walls across from you. Gradually, your senses turn inwards and your attachment to the outside world becomes more tenuous. Your eyes close, and you become aware of everything happening inside of your body. You feel your breath rushing through your lungs, you can hear each different phase of your heartbeat, your eyes seem to be sending you images of the inside of your body in its perfect operation.

You now feel yourself begin to shrink. At first you cannot tell as your attention is so focused inwards. But your senses start to pick up very small hints that your size is diminishing; the contraction of air around you, the higher pitched sound of your heart, even the speeding up of your circulating blood. Smaller and smaller you become. Your eyes start to show you images of things around you, as they get larger. The dust on your table has now grown to the size of bowling balls. You can see the dust mites wandering through it. Further and further you diminish, until that same dust is the size of a mountain. The bacteria you know is present everywhere has now reached visibility and before your eyes grows from the size of your hand to the size of an elephant. They pay no notice of you as you continue on your journey of diminution.

Smaller and smaller you become, so that now the very molecules of the air itself become visible. It's very dark now, as the light waves and photons are now much to big to make any impression on you, but still you sense your surroundings. Beyond the range of anything man has seen before, your journey has not ended yet. Streaks of what can only be electrons in the very atoms around you seem to you as lightning bolts, dancing around the house-sized nuclei. As you continue, smaller and smaller streaks become visible to you. They must be the higher levels of radiation - radio signals, wireless communication, and remote controls. It's a crowded sea at this level as you become completely engulfed in these fast-moving crackles of information.

Finally things quiet down and nothing is around you. The occasional X-ray passes by, but everything else has been scaled so large that it is not visible. There is only the inky blackness now, and the complete awareness you have of yourself.

One beat... two beats... you find yourself wondering if your journey is to end here, engulfed in nothingness. Vaguely you become aware of a dim light, growing and surrounding you. It doesn't seem to have any source; it appears to be coming directly from the darkness. As it grows brighter it starts to resolve into distinct spots of illumination. One of those spots of illumination appears to be traveling towards you (or you towards it? There's no way of knowing). Its spider shape spins around you as you plunge downward into one of its arms. The brightness is almost unbearable as it enfolds you.

As you descend further and further the light abates and once more separates into distinct pockets. At dizzying speeds these pockets of light fly past you, and you recognize them to be stars. But what are stars doing at this tiny size you've become? A yellowish one is heading right towards you and you can make out objects circling around it. At first they seem to be going at remarkably high speeds, as though they should fly right outwards at any moment. But as you approach they slow down, as do you. You recognize one as Earth, only about the size of a marble now but growing (or are you still shrinking? Again there's no way to tell). Down into the atmosphere you plunge, shrinking smaller than the moon now and decreasing with every mile you drop.

As you approach your house you see the Earth spinning in perfect unison with your travel, as though it were expecting you, you have reduced in size further and passing right through your own roof, phantom-like, you wind up right back in the couch you started on. There is no sensation of landing though, only a sudden feeling of contraction, as though the entire Universe were rushing into your body all at once. Your senses start to reawaken to your surroundings, turning outwards once more. The room becomes alive to you again and the relaxation you felt now seems to surround you, becoming a part of you rather than a feeling you had. Now you are ready to take on anything.