Your cosmic racquetball game reminded me of one of my own more irresponsible adventures, sailing a small boat offshore in 20 knot winds while tripping my brains out. Ah yes, I remember it well, cold, crisp and sunny, whitecaps and spray, everything clear and distinct and vibrant, evey line and sail taught and dripping and the hull driven hard to its very limits. There was the usual epiphany one expects at these times, the recognition of the implacable indifference of the sea and atmosphere and the accumulated experience and wisdom of generations of mariners and boatbuilders permeating your little craft, all coming together mediated by your own physicality at the very intersection of sea and sky, boat and mind. The entire universe bombards all your senses simultaneously and you stand up to it and communicate with it directly with your hands on rudder and sheets. And somewhere inside your skull, the stacatto firing of neurons and synapses is bringing it all together in a smooth avalanche of raw experience. It is not conscious thought so much as the ability to become part of the entire process, subconsciously, subliminally. There are names for this exquisite state of consciousness: flow, fugue, the zone.

Athletes, dancers, musicians and race car drivers know this, it is the full power of the mind manifesting itself through the body without language and thought, interacting directly with reality. We do indeed become "at one" with the universe, we are part of it. Animals do this all the time, but we are forgetting how. So did this experience make me sail any better that day? Of course not, but I'm convinced it made me a better sailor for the rest of my life. I understand it better now than I ever did before.

A lot of physical activity requires complex mental processing to support it, whether it be swinging through the trees or making good time in rough county while trying to remain as alert and invisible to predators as possible. It's easy to see how the mind evolved these arts to better navigate the body through the perils and opportunities of the world. The unexpected bonus is that this ability to absorb and process information and react "instinctively" also has such wide application in areas and activities that could not possibly have been anticipated during our endless millennia in the forest and the savanna.

The individual, subjective experience of personally dealing with physical reality, those we love, our community and culture, and the abstract mental structures we devise to help us make sense of it all is what provides purpose and meaning to life. Love, truth and beauty is all that matters and understanding that is the only true spirituality. Everything else is just bookeeping.