I see, yes, I do believe everyone understands the workings of the universe on an intuitive level to some degree. Of course, we could not put one foot before the other otherwise. What you discribe goes beyond that, but I do believe many (intelligent?) people have passed that point many times in their lives. It's why we don't care anymore, why we get depressed, because life is just repetitively handing hands out. There is an infinite number of cards, but they vary so little from one card to another that you can take them and do an infitinite number of similar things with it.

And beyond that, understanding concepts is often like understanding music. There are only so many notes to compose from. Mind you, reading a wikipedia article is enough to tease you, but once you study a subject, it becomes a bit harder, and doing it is harder still. A concept of a thing and the thing itself is not the same thing. I study a subject for an hour and I see I understand it, I study it for half a year, and I wonder at the meaning of the simplest thing it consists of.

I too have wondered at the learnign universe and I like the idea very much. At least that would give a very much open ended meaning to our lives.