developed into monotheistic religions, each of which determined that its followers were dearest
to God and its efforts the most fruitful in returning to a state of grace. Jews, claiming to have
made a pact with God and hoping for the coming of their Messiah promised by Malachi,
composed prayers of praise to a God who seemed like a vain king. Christians, intent on
partaking of a new covenant with God through the blood of Jesus Christ, cultivated liturgies to
inspire humanity’s escape from the clutches of original sin and eventual return to beatitude.
Muslims, purporting to have the word of God’s final messenger, Muhammad, divided the world
into believers and infidels to convert the human race to Islam.
The cycle theory became a particular source of anxiety for the Far Eastern traditions that
inherited it. Some manipulated the cycle to revolve around the coming of fantastic individuals
who would put an end to evil. For Buddhists, the savior is Maitreya, who promises to overcome
humanity’s evil; for Tibetans, Maitreya will emerge from Shambhala during a time of chaos to
summarily usher in a golden age; for Hindus, it is Kalki, who will come at the end of the world
and defeat death, darkness, and other undesired aspects of dualities. Many Eastern religions
determined that the best recourse was to escape this fallen world and be reborn in a better one,
such as Shangri-la, a Pure Land, Krishna loka, or heaven, instead of pursuing an outer search
for knowledge of the world and an inner one for knowledge of the self. The creators of these
myths failed to analyze human motivation and to acknowledge that where life is portrayed as
effortless, few efforts are made, especially in the pursuit of truth.
East and West alike entered the Dark Ages devaluing their multibillion-year-old world. Striking
parallels between their end-time prophecies show that whereas earlier civilizations both reduced
the dualistic forces of good and evil to a relative play of nature and respected the universe’s
capacity to function according to set laws of nature, they themselves saw the world coming to
an end and evil instantaneously eliminated. Further, their attitudes reveal that a society’s
cosmological sense of time is embedded in its sense of morality. In both hemispheres, belief in
end-time models promoted fear of evil and moral absolutism, depreciation of the natural world,
and divisive eschatology, all of which disrupted the harmonious progress of the human race.
In today’s advancing age requiring more sophisticated, universal answers to life’s questions,
spiritual investigators overlook the Dark Age penchant to invent ethnocentric time schemes,
fabled places, and fantastic individuals holding the key to human salvation, preferring to
reinterpret past myths as mere parables for personal enlightenment. They also recognize that
good-versus-evil theologies and other end-time models fail to serve humanity’s best interests.
The dangerous myths that haunted darker minds can be expunged by observing the cosmos
without religious projections, exposing ourselves to the bigger picture of human evolution and
devolution, and learning to accept the cycles of time as cultivated in the practice of Technique 7.
TECHNIQUE 7
A Meditation on Cycles
By meditating on cycles, we learn to accept them and change our perception of time, making
long time-spans seem shorter and our sense of self feel broader. Ultimately, we learn to see
ourselves in universal terms and actively transcend the prevailing conditionings of our era, a
significant accomplishment considering that even thinkers like Plato and Aristotle were subject
to the assumptions and superstitions of their age.
To begin, sit in a meditation pose with eyes closed and attention focused on the forehead,
mentally aware of your breathing, which represents the cycle of existence that began with your
birth and will end with your death. As you breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon waste,
realize that life and death are in the body and that breath is born from both. Breathing is a cycle
we accept as part of the human microcosm.
While “watching” your breath with your attention focused on your forehead, allow other cycles to
come to mind, such as day and night, the moon and the tides, the seasons, the zodiac, and the
equinoxes. Calculate your birth date in terms of the cycle theory (2000 CE was roughly 300
Bronze Age) or any other calendar that measures the Great Year. Gain a perspective of your
lifetime within the current precessional arc. Explore what the concept of endless cycles in time
means in relation to your finite life and how it challenges your sense of self.
As you continue to watch your breath, imagine yourself in a spaceship approaching the speed of
light, the only absolute in this world of change. You are in the captain’s chair aware that with
each breath, years are going by for the rest of humanity. As you go faster, almost becoming a
light ray yourself, picture a million earth years going by with every breath.
Next, contemplate the idea that relative time is a function not only of velocity but of the cognition
of your mind. To start, regulate your breathing by taking long, full, and slow inhalations through
your nostrils, holding your breath for a few moments and then exhaling through your mouth.
While regulating your breath, picture yourself approaching the speed of light by accelerating
your mind in concentrative stillness so your breaths can encompass increasingly vast
time-spans. As your mind becomes more and more focused, imagine that with every breath an
hour goes by, then a day, and finally a month of human activity.
Now, move your attention up the spine to your brain while inhaling and, after holding your breath
for a few moments and focusing on the gentle pressure at your forehead, down the spine to
your tailbone while exhaling. At the same time, imagine that with every breath one year passes:
six months with the inhalation and six more with the exhalation. Can you imagine galaxies being
born with your inhalation, sustained for billions of years as you hold your breath, and gradually
dying with your exhalation? When your breathing dramatically slows and your mind begins to
melt away in perfect concentration on the forehead, hours may feel like moments and you can
experience entire ages coming and going with your breaths.
The ancient science of intuition compared the human spine and brain to the four ages of the
cycle theory, with the cerebral and medullar plexuses representing the Gold Age, the cervical
and dorsal plexuses representing the Silver Age, the lumbar and sacral plexuses representing
the Bronze Age, and the coccygeal plexus representing the Iron Age (see the illustration titled
“Anatomy of Intuition,” on page TK). According to these intuitive scientists, humans untrained in
controlling the energy that flows in the spine and brain can know only what is dictated by the
age in which they live. So they devised techniques such as this one to direct nervous energy to
the brain and enliven the cerebrum and its outer layer, the cerebral cortex, allowing practitioners
to see the universe through the eyes of a Gold Age human being. Once you cease to battle
expansive time, uproot end-time scenarios from your mind, and begin accepting the cycles of
life and the changes they bring, you can expand your sense of self by imagining yourself
extending across the universe with your slow, even breaths reflecting cycles of phenomenal
existence. Finally, if you center your attention on the cerebrum, gradually reducing the influence
of time as you increase your intuitive capacity, you can shoot through the roof of impositions
that time places on your faculties of perception.
When I was first introduced to the science of intuition, the instructions to which I had access
were too fragmented and incomplete for me to even understand how the words science and
intuition might be properly associated with them. Of course, neither the Eastern nor Western
authors exactly approached them as instructions on intuitive science because of the corrupting
influence of the Dark Ages on the subject of self-knowledge. It was only after years of practice,
years more of study, and a decade of discarding mystification, superstition, and affectation that I
finally realized the simplicity of the practice.
Intuition, meaning to look within, means to know a self uncircumscribed by sensory input. The
physiological consequence of closing the eyes and gazing upward is intuition. Simply
concentrating the mind’s capacity to direct attention using this technique resulted for me in
nervous energy and awareness moving upward from sensory preoccupation to the brain. With
practice, an hour felt to me like ten minutes. With more practice, three hours felt like ten
minutes. My sense of self, stretched by intuitive investigation, reassessed not only time but all
the things that happened in time, including memories, conditioning and trauma, and the
seemingly stable identity I brought to the fore in my experiences. I not only discover an
indescribable peace but also the game my mind had been playing on me. My mind was a
builder that hardly cared whether it built a sense of self that could withstand the ages or even
cursory scrutiny. It built the walls of fables, defending them with restless scattering of thoughts,
finally tamed by intuitive technology.
The recognition of cyclical patterns illuminates a fundamental difference in cultural backdrops
between the East’s Veda-based religions and the West’s Hebrew Bible-based religions, and
helps explain the growing interest in Eastern thought among Westerners in the current
progressive period. Interestingly, even though Vedic India predates the Hebraic tradition by only
several thousand years, according to the cycle theory that brief span of time spelled the
difference between a higher age and a dark age. It may be no coincidence that Sanskrit,
perhaps the oldest language in the world, is also the most scientifically advanced. And though
Hinduism and Buddhism gradually formed and declined thousands of years later, their roots in
the higher age Vedas may explain why their philosophies are now receiving more attention in
the West and how they created cultures that were at one time more inward-looking than
European societies.
Also intriguing is the fact that while Eastern higher age intuitive pursuits degenerated during the
Dark Ages into methods of mind-numbing meditation and prayer wheels, outer rituals, stratified
societies, bodhisattva cults, and abject surrender to one’s fate, wars of faith are not common
features of the pantheistic East. In fact, the Chinese were able to place Buddhism,
Confucianism, and Taoism peacefully side by side. The climax of antagonism between
Hinduism and Buddhism came in the ninth-century CE writings of Adi Sankara who, seeing the
degeneration that had crept into Buddhism, worked to assimilate Buddhists back into the fold of
a monistic Samkhya, the ancient philosophy taught by the Buddha. The conflict between
Hinduism and Buddhism helped prepare for the emergence of one of the world’s greatest
ontological philosophers, suggesting that though the two religions diverged and degenerated,
their roots in the higher age Vedas inspired a potential for peaceful resolution in the East.
By contrast, wars of faith have run rampant in the monotheistic West, precipitating endless
violence and strife. Not even the universal ideals espoused throughout the Jesus narratives
could prevent Christianity’s participation in the Crusades, the Inquisition, conquistador
expeditions, antiscientific trends, colonialism, disrespectful missionary campaigns, slavery,
pogroms and the Holocaust, and two world wars. Readings of Islam embraced by terrorist
organizations and the Islamic State promote jihad by formally dividing the world into a realm of
believers and a realm of war. The ongoing antagonisms triggered by these religions are
unsurprising considering that their roots stretch back not to the philosophically sophisticated
Vedas but to the Dark Age Hebrew Bible, a book that recounts a tribal war god’s ambition to be
regarded as God of the universe.
With the years 700 BCE to 499 CE marking a time of devolving societies according to both the
cycle theory and historical records, the religions established during that time must be carefully
scrutinized if we are to move past their accepted truths. In view of the dangers humanity is
presently facing as a result of their perpetuation, failure to question them may be tantamount to
consenting to mass murder. Blind acceptance of end-time scenarios, for one, potentially turns
these plot lines into self-fulfilling prophecies.
Just as material science has rapidly erased centuries of religious antagonism toward scientific
investigation, so might intuitive science, when approached methodically, quickly remove the
darkness of the narrow self fostered by religious myths. Whether or not the cycle theory is
accurate, the responsibility for casting off this darkness has been placed squarely on our
shoulders; and supported by a global awakening to the self’s capacity for expansion, we will
have accomplished what earlier generations could not. Even if the cycle theory is decidedly
faulty, we can still effectively embrace its evolutionary promise as our own expansive
self-fulfilling prophecy.
Avenues to Knowledge
It is said that desire for knowledge lost us
the Eden of the past;
but whether that is true or not, it will certainly
give us the Eden of the future.
—Robert G. Ingersoll
Before humanity embarks on its next upgrade by balancing material knowledge with
self-knowledge, the spiritual explorer might bear in mind a few guiding questions: What is
knowledge? Do beliefs, sensory information, and thoughts constitute knowledge? What
distinguishes self-knowledge from material knowledge? Can the mind uncover the meaning of
existence or answer such enduring questions with absolute certainty? The rigorous examination
exercised while facing these questions gradually erodes religious faith and helps construct, in its
stead, a base for investigating the seemingly divergent avenues to material knowledge and
self-knowledge.
A good way to begin investigating the nature of knowledge is through a historical review of
knowledge acquired in the West. The modern scientific method was born in the fifth century
BCE in Ionia, where ancient Egyptian and Indian influences inspired a surge in philosophical
and scientific investigation. Spurred on by Ionia’s cultural diversity, freedom from conformity,
and widespread literacy, coupled with its citizens’ inclination to challenge ideas, Greek
philosophers pronounced the cosmos knowable by the human intellect. When Ionian science
began showing signs of decline in the work of its early exemplars and their disciples, magic,
organized religion, and pseudoscience gained footing. Philosophers like Plato divorced spirit
from matter. Pythagoreans preferred thinking about the heavens rather than observing them, a
tendency later echoed by Christian theologians who considered Aristotle and the New
Testament authorities on astronomy. While Pythagoras and Plato advanced science, they also
undermined scientific investigation by suppressing facts that did not fit their theories, projecting
perfect worlds that disagreed with empirical evidence, and refraining from objective
experimentation.
The onset of the Dark Ages ushered in an incapacity to critically assess authoritarian
declarations, which became so intense that reason was soon decried, blind faith exalted, and
theological inconsistencies sanctified as divine mysteries. Answers to the question What is
God? originated in faith, leaving little room for the unbiased pursuit of knowledge for its own
sake. Theologians inattentive to their motivations devised ethnocentric models describing the
workings of the world and humanity’s place in the cosmos, many of which still retain their
authority. Theological models implicitly asserted that there is more meaning to humanity’s
material existence than sensory organs alone can verify, but then fostered the world-demeaning
belief that the material universe and ephemeral human beings are imperfect and that a
changeless meaning should be sought apart from matter. Few theologians entertained the
possibility that there may be more meaning to matter than meets the eye or that matter might
arise from the changeless finer substance of eternal awareness.
In the fifteenth century, belief in magic began to give way to a rebirth of the Ionian spirit of
science, breaking the shackles religion had placed on it. Scientists uncovered worlds hidden in
matter, theorizing an inherent simplicity and unity in nature and rejecting the theological
tendency to view natural forces as projections of a local god. Traveling past edges of the known
world in search of greater universal truths, scientists focused on unbiased investigations, in
contrast to theologians who defended scriptural models through faith.
Today, centuries after these conflicts between science and organized religion, disagreements
still exist. Despite recent scientific successes in revealing the mechanics of the cosmos,
organized religions, popularized mystical traditions, and modern spiritual movements largely
reject the scientific method: religionists tend to pursue a doubt-free faith; mysticism enthusiasts
often confuse mystified anecdotes, ecstatic and cathartic exercises, and coded languages for
avenues to infinite self-knowledge; and modern spiritual adherents routinely romanticize exotica
and esoterica, whether or not they constitute tested knowledge.
At the same time, there is reason to question the scientific method for it repeatedly confirms the
intellect’s limitations in knowing the cosmos absolutely and directly. Not only is material
knowledge based on sensory data unable to furnish a final verdict regarding the self-awareness
expressed in and by the cosmos, but the finite intellect cannot fathom an absolute truth, making
it impossible for material science to give enduring and universal meaning to human existence. In
other words, as tempting as it may be to regard the discovery of a universal constant as the
equivalent of direct knowledge of the universe, information about the way the cosmos operates
should not be mistaken for an understanding of why it exists, what is real, and how awareness
emerges from matter but can never be directly measured except by its own avenue of
investigation. The best that science can offer in the search for universal meaning to human life
is possibilities ending with a question mark. Still, science effectively assists in analyzing data to
extract useful information, predict events, explore technological pursuits, and place beliefs
advocated by organized religions outside the realm of probable knowledge.
Secular humanists, too, played a significant role in critiquing theological models. Paralleling
advances in science, outspoken philosophers like François-Marie Voltaire, Robert Ingersoll, H.
L. Mencken, and Bertrand Russell, repulsed by the dogma of religious institutions, used critical
thinking to raise important questions about the meaning of existence. And despite the efforts of
religions to suppress their works, these and other secular humanists partially wrested the
monopoly on the meaning of life from religion. However, due to religionists’ sensitivity to
criticism, a misplaced tolerance for religious beliefs, the prevalent entertainment culture, and low
educational standards, relatively few people were exposed to these philosophical challenges
and religion largely remained the assumed root of goodness, truth, and purpose.
Eventually, though the Catholic Church had fought against early scientific advances threatening
the validity of its worldview, the appearance of unquestioned technologies promised a futuristic
new world. In response, humanity began to speed along the avenue to material knowledge
while faltering on the avenue to self-knowledge, which was obstructed by the prevailing Dark
Age perspective mired in greed. For people influenced by the mind-numbing “why” of
world-demeaning theologies, superstition, and exclusionary belief systems, technology became
their modern version of magic capable of satisfying desires and solving problems. But the
deficiencies in self-knowledge led to shortsighted applications of this technology, often resulting
in machinery of murder and pollution that caused crises increasingly more difficult to resolve.
Many applications were made with convenience and profit in mind. Deforestation was preferred
over the cultivation of hemp; pharmaceutical drugs were promoted as miracle cures; power to
cities and fuel for transportation were dispatched without regard for their environmental impact,
causing catastrophes and wasting resources on dangerous or dead-end technologies that
profited an elite few. Because scientists most influential in these programs often fought as “hired
mercenaries” in a technology-driven economic war zone, the implementation of any science for
purposes of advancing expansive self-knowledge to this day has not been actualized.
Twenty-first-century humanity has instead inherited the struggle between Dark Age religious
myopia attempting a last-ditch effort to claim the world as God’s kingdom and the more recently
awakened reasoning of secular humanists who see fit to project godly aspirations directly onto
humanity. But with today’s advanced weaponry, fundamentalists on all sides may have the
capacity to decide the world will be God’s kingdom or nothing.
This global struggle is mirrored in America, a microcosm fighting its own ideological war. Here,
Thomas Jefferson’s secular humanism has penetrated the hearts and minds of millions, while
followers of religious fundamentalism still dream of culturally winning the civil war against
Lincoln’s enduring legacy. However, all Americans can win the battle against narrowness by
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