What You Seek, You Already Are

Seeking is a word often applied to the spiritual path, and many people are proud to call themselves seekers. Often, they are the same people who once chased too hard after money, sex, drugs, alcohol or work. With the same addictive intensity they now hope to find God, the soul, the higher self. The problem is that seeking begins with a false assumption.

It doesn’t mean the assumption that materialism is corrupt and spirituality is pure. Yes, materialism can become all-consuming, but that’s not the really important point. Seeking is doomed because it is a chase that takes you outside yourself. Whether the object is God, money or whatever; makes no real difference. Productive seeking requires that you throw out all assumptions that there is a prize to be won.

This means acting without hope of rising to some ideal self, hope being a wish that you’ll get somewhere better than the place you started from. You are starting from yourself, and it’s the self that contains all the answers. So you have to give up on the idea that you must go from A to B. There is no linear path when the goal isn’t somewhere else.

You must also discard fixed judgments about high and low, good and evil, holy and profane. The one reality includes everything in its tangle of experiences, and what we are trying to find is the experiencer who is present no matter what experience you are having.

People who race around trying to be models of goodness are trapped in 'spiritual materialism'; the transfer of values that work in the material world over to the spiritual world. The pitfalls of the seeker are:  knowing where you’re going, struggling to get there, using someone else’s map, working to improve yourself, setting a timetable, waiting for a miracle. There’s no better way to be a genuine seeker than to avoid these pitfalls.

Spiritual growth is spontaneous. A single word can open your heart; a single glance can tell you who you really are. You should glean teachings from all directions, keeping true to those that bring progress yet remaining open to changes in yourself. People get stuck in bad places that they can learn to get out of. Rather than a timetable, give yourself support for spiritual growth.

If you strip away all the distractions of life, something yet remains that is you. When people say that they are seeking, it’s this level of themselves that is calling to them in its silent, untroubled way. Seeking is really just a way of winning yourself back. The 'I am' consists of nothing but a silent witness.

Look at a rose and break it down from the level of a physical object; to the level of energy vibrating in empty space. So, when you are seeing a rose, is nothing looking at nothing? So it would seem, but the real phenomenon is more amazing: You are looking at yourself. One part of your awareness, which you call yourself, is gazing upon itself in the form of a rose. There is no solid core to either the object or the observer.

There is no person inside your head, only a swirl of water, salt, sugar and a handful of other chemicals like potassium and sodium. This whirlpool of a brain is always flowing, and thus every experience is swept along in currents and eddies as swiftly as a mountain stream. So, where is the silent observer located if not in my brain?

This is a cause for incredible excitement because, if the real you isn’t inside your head, you have been set free, like awareness itself. This freedom is limitless. You can create anything because you are in every atom of creation. Wherever your awareness wants to go, matter must follow. You do come first after all; and the universe second.

We imagine a fixed 'I' who is in control, at least as much as possible. But there is another, far more stable point of stability: the witness. No one can predict your next step of unfoldment, including yourself. But if you are willing to follow the flow, the path will certainly lead you closer to the silent witness, who resides at the source of all your desires.

On the other hand, when you feel distracted, lost, confused, fearful, scattered, or trapped inside ego boundaries - you are not in flow. Pick a strongly negative experience, put yourself back in the situation and feel what you felt then. You might want to close your eyes and visualize. Do what it takes to make the situation vivid in your mind.

When you feel that stab of anger, hurt, mistrust, suspicion or betrayal, say to yourself: “That’s how my ego feels. Now let the feeling run. Get as worked up as your ego wants; envision fantasies of revenge or self-pity, or whatever your ego thinks is appropriate. Imagine your feeling spreading like the shock wave from a slow-motion explosion.

Follow this wave as far as it wants to go, watching it grow fainter and fainter as it spreads to infinity, filling the whole universe if it wants to. Now, just as you see the wave disappearing into infinity, look at yourself and see if any of the following feelings are present: a giggle, the desire to laugh, a shrug, peace, exhaustion, release or letting go.

These are the telltale feelings that arise in us when we are crossing the invisible boundary between ego and the real self. If you follow any emotion far enough, it will end in silence. But it’s asking a lot to get that far every time. Your aim is to get to the frontier at least, the line where the ego’s needs begin to lose their grip.

When you laugh, you are losing the need to take yourself so seriously. When you shrug, you lose the need to blow things out of proportion. When you feel calm, you lose the need to feel agitated or to have drama. When you can look at yourself as if you are another person, you lose the need to be the only one who counts.

When you feel relief or fatigue coming out, you lose the need to hold on to stress. When you have the feeling of letting go, you lose the need to be vindicated - the possibility of forgiveness is in sight. When you suddenly realize that the other person may be right, you lose the need to judge.

Spiritual Nomad

There is a significant phase that occurs in the process of initiation for many people that is referred to as the "Spiritual Nomad." Often, when one reaches this transition phase of spiritual evolution, it can be so painfully unnerving to the personality/ego that it not only devastates one's self esteem; it also severely undermines our confidence to manifest even the most basic needs for our survival. It is precisely our "root" fears of survival that are being shaken to the core and unpeeled from us during this process. We are being prompted to work toward clearing these fears and perfecting our trust and surrender. So it is extremely important to understand the dynamics of why this occurs and actually how entirely common it is.


This will help you avoid the pitfall of allowing yourself to dwell in feelings of humiliation, shame and embarrassment by this externalization of forces that transform your world into what appears to be a great "sacrifice." This is a crucial part of some of our development and we need to realize that many people have already undergone, or are currently working through this phase of spiritual development. This is a temporary phase. So if you know anyone who is presently working through this, do be sure to acknowledge their courage, strength and bravery to surrender to divine order and align to their soul's purpose. Send them love. This is the truth of what they are doing and it is to be honored and acknowledged. We need to be more conscious of supporting those being recruited and the new initiates awakening to reinforce the divine purposes of awakening transformation on this planet. We are moving incredibly swiftly - forward.

So what is a "Spiritual Nomad"? Some questions to define "The Spiritual Nomad": are you currently jobless, juggling jobs, possibly homeless and relationship-less... much to your own bewilderment because you are an incredibly talented, skilled and loving being? You may even have assorted credentials to your name. Do you feel invisible - like no one will hire you, love you or even recognize you? And, really, for no apparent reason (it feels like you have a mark on your forehead)? Are you unable to do anything as you did in the past to earn a living or live as you once did? Are you a healer or working as a mentor, teacher, trainer or therapist; running around trying to find a way to translate this into cash or a means of support?

Do you seem to travel a lot, drive or go long distances; or sleep in several different places in short periods of time, perhaps even on your ex's couch? Do you feel confused about your purpose and identity in the world? Are there people, such as your biological family or friends, who are completely shocked or troubled by your life, attempting to offer their advice of what went wrong with you? Welcome to "The Spiritual Nomad" experience. Fun, isn't it?

This is the time in one's life where every aspect of perceived "security" in the structure of the human world is completely unstable, unknown and unforeseen. Your life in all major areas; such as relationship, money, career, residence is all abruptly halted, changed and/or terminated. You are left feeling isolated and standing in a place of total bewilderment, wondering what happened to your life, the people in it, and your former identity. This sets off every fear button you have because there is absolutely no sign of what is going on, what is coming or why it's happening. There is only a sense that some force came in, picked you up out of your hologram, and placed you into someone else's life. For a while, you may not recognize whose life it is. It is very much like the sensation captured in the Talking Heads song lyrics, Once in a Lifetime..."Where does that highway go? Am I right? Am I wrong?"

In the process of our unraveling consciousness in this human drama setting, this is one of the experiences that we have set up as "spirit" to create the experience of learning to fully surrender to transformational forces. It is a complete dismantling of our ego and ego defenses. This is the crossroads where we start to leave the world of human order and align to the Divine Order. To many of our earthly cohorts, biological families and old energy friends; it will appear as if we have stepped off the edge of a chasm into a realm of insanity. Groups will stand around shaking their heads, whispering how you have gone off your rocker, and offer lots of advice and theories about your problems and issues. As unsolicited advice starts mounting - generally suggesting that you are incompetent, "less than", unrealistic, ungrounded, living in the clouds or just purely strange - your subconscious fear programs get triggered. Maybe, just maybe, could they be right? Internal pressures increase and you feel extremely conflicted about who you really are and what the heck you are doing with your life. This sets you off on a tangent of extreme inner examination and the re-evaluation of every goal, dream, thought and idea that you have had about your role in the world. Will I ever make it? Will I ever become self actualized? Will I have the ability to create abundance in my life?

This process is designed to cultivate the incredible inner strength needed to face yourself and your deepest fears of survival. You then become intimate with the universal Law of Abundance and learn how generous the universe really is, even if it's not all manifested in order of your personal preference. You find that somehow, someway, all your base needs are being met, even though you have not the foggiest clue how it's happening or who some of the strangers are that have appeared in your life to support you - in ways you would never imagine. You learn how to receive from total strangers (an illusion, as everyone is family) or from new sources, and learn how to acknowledge and receive these new ideas of abundance of which you were not formerly aware. So, most commonly, one feels a type of embarrassment at being in the situation; yet, simultaneously, one feels gratitude for these blessings being demonstrated at the most mundane levels (or even incredibly opulent levels) of existence. Finally, at about this time, you begin to trust and realize that you really are divinely protected and supported. You can relax now (at least a little).

These experiences do cultivate a level of deep faith and trust in the transformational order, even when you do not have any external validation of "safety" - and that safety could be monetary, emotional support or a place to call "home" with a bed in it. Even when you are feeling blind and disconnected, to face this uncertainty and to find yourself "okay" with it all is a major revelation. When you realize that your deepest fears (so many of them) did not happen anyway, and, if they did... well, it really was not as bad as you once imagined it. You can face just about anything. Your personal power begins to increase and your inner conviction keeps on growing. Well, if you find yourself smack dab in the center of this process, know that there are many designs and great plans for you. But, it is important to work through all your fear, worry and obsessions. Then work to allow guidance, support and your inner sense of knowing to come to you on your path; even when it makes absolutely no logical sense. You are learning to work your higher sensory perceptions and these antennae within you are being finely tuned for your new task and mission in the world.

You cannot "make" anything happen while you are in this process. So, you must relax as best you can. You are in transition to your greater destiny. When relaxing, you are expanding, not constricting and the transformational forces can more easily work through you and for you. Know that transformational forces are working magic in your life in ways you cannot comprehend. That there really is a divine order to what is happening to you. Know that it is okay not to know. Get more comfortable with uncertainty and external chaos while you cultivate that impenetrable core of essence to show the way for you and others. Finally, know that likeminded people are out there.

Man, Spirituality, Technology

Wired magazine’s own "Senior Maverick" talks with Ken Wilber about some of the ideas behind Kevin's blog The Technium, which explores the various ways humanity defines and redefines itself through the interface of science, technology, culture, and consciousness. Kevin also shares some of his own thoughts about the role of spirituality in the 21st century, going into considerable depth around his own spiritual awakening several decades ago.

Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He helped launch Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor until January 1999. He is currently editor and publisher of the Cool Tools website, which gets 1 million visitors per month. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers' Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985. He authored the best-selling New Rules for the New Economy and the classic book on decentralized emergent systems, Out of Control.

Ken Wilber is the most widely translated academic writer in America, with 25 books translated into some 30 foreign languages, and is the first philosopher-psychologist to have his Collected Works published while still alive. Wilber is an internationally acknowledged leader and the preeminent scholar of the Integral stage of human development, which continues to gather momentum around the world. His many books, all of which are still in print, can be found at Amazon.com. Some of his more popular books include Integral Spirituality; No Boundary; Grace and Grit; Sex, Ecology, Spirituality; and the "everything" books: A Brief History of Everything (one of his largest selling books) and A Theory of Everything (probably the shortest introduction to his work). Ken Wilber is the founder of Integral Institute, Inc. and the co-founder of Integral Life, Inc.

The universe, we are told, is winding down. Nothing escapes the remorseless grasp of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics—and with each passing moment, our world, our solar system, indeed our entire galaxy slowly approaches its inevitable heat-death. But this is not the full story, for while the universe is winding down, it is also winding up, bringing forth new forms from old, adding new layers of complexity where there was once only an empty vacuum. It is what Alfred Whitehead called the "creative advance into novelty," referring to a distinct "tilt" of the universe toward more complexity, more significance, and more wholeness. From atoms, to molecules, to single-cell and multi-cellular organisms, to the reptilian brain, mammalian brain, and the human neocortex—the universe is abound with inexhaustible creativity, pushing deeper and wider towards its own limitless potential. Entropy and evolution: these two "arrows of time" exert their pull upon everything that ever is, was, and will be—one pulling us up toward the eternal light, the other pulling us down toward the infinite black.

But it is not just physical matter that is evolving! Alongside the increasing complexification of the material world, evolution brings forth novelty in at least three other dimensions, particularly evident within human evolution:
We see the evolution of systems, such as the movement from foraging to horticulture, to agriculture, to industrial, to informational modes of techno-economic production.

We see the evolution of cultural worldviews, such as the developmental model offered by Jean Gebser, in which cultures develop through archaic/instinctual, magic/animistic, mythic/traditional, rational/scientific, pluralistic/postmodern, and integral worldviews, each offering radically different ways of interpreting our world and our roles within it.

And, perhaps most profoundly, we see the evolution of consciousness, with cognitive faculties developing from Piaget’s pre-operational, to concrete operational, to formal-operational, to Wilber’s suggested “vision-logic” stage—and with values developing from pre-modern, to modern, to post-modern (or pre-rational, rational, and trans-rational) stages, and beyond.

Taken together, we notice a rich mosaic of evolutionary emergence, in at least four important dimensions: subjective and objective development in both individuals and collectives. This gives rise to Wilber's famous “Four Quadrant” map, one of a handful of basic components that comprise the Integral model. The Integral approach helps to reveal some of the deepest patterns that run through all human knowledge, showing the relationships that exist between physical evolution, systemic evolution, cultural evolution, and conscious evolution.

Whereas some consider consciousness, culture, and technology to be mere epiphenomena of biophysical evolution, the Integral approach highlights many of the fallacies hidden within such reductionistic views. The Four Quadrants represent four distinct dimensions of the universe, all strongly correlating with each other, but not at all reducible to one another. Consciousness cannot be simply reduced to the chemical soup between your ears, as scientific materialists might believe. All truth cannot be reduced to cultural embedment, as post-modernists have claimed. And all of our behaviors cannot be reduced to techno-economic conditions, as Marxists presume. There are simply more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in any of these partial philosophies—and the Integral approach essentially tries to get all of heaven and all of earth onto the table, without ever confusing a meadow for a cloud, a mountain for a star, or an ocean for a galaxy.

This, in many ways, is what Kevin's Technium truly represents. As he describes in his blog, Technium is a word he "reluctantly coined to designate the greater sphere of technology—one that goes beyond hardware to include culture, law, social institutions, and intellectual creations of all types. In short, the Technium is anything that springs from the human mind. It includes hard technology, but much else of human creation as well. I see this extended face of technology as a whole system with its own dynamics." The Technium exists at the interface between science, technology, culture, and consciousness, exploring the various ways humanity has defined and redefined itself through the ages. Within the Technium, technology is not regarded merely as the lifeless artifacts created by a particular species, but as a living matrix of innovation—the infusion of consciousness into inanimate matter, which in turn shapes our personal and cultural experience of the world.

Toward the end of the discussion, Kevin shares one of his most powerful experiences. At the age of 27, he slept on the supposed spot where Jesus was crucified, and upon awakening had a powerful spiritual experience. Many people are aware of the fact that Kevin continues to be a devout Christian, which might defy some expectations of those who otherwise consider him extremely rational—trans-rational even—while pushing the vanguard of digital culture. In many contemporary thinkers' minds, spirituality is little more than a quaint vestige of antiquity, and once we transition from the mythic/traditionalist stage to the rational/scientific stage, there is no longer any room in the universe for God.

This, more than anything, has been the rallying call of the "New Atheist" movement of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and (to a lesser degree) Sam Harris. But it is important to note that it's not spirituality per se that the modern world should jettison, but the magical and mythical interpretations of spirituality that are transcended by the rational or postmodern mind. The present schism between modernity and spirituality does not need to exist, as long as we allow ourselves enough room to re-conceptualize what we mean by the word "spirituality."

While nobly trying to dislodge humanity from the monolithic tyranny of fundamentalism, many modern and post-modern thinkers have inadvertently thrown the baby out with the bath water. When Nietzsche accurately exclaimed "God is dead!" he wasn't actually talking about God Him/Herself, but the mythic conception of God, along with all the dogmatism, absolutism, and ethnocentrism that follows. While the mythic God was dying, the rational God was only just being born. Possiby stillborn, some might argue, but born nonetheless—with both a pluralistic God and an Integral God close on its heels.

This is one of the most extraordinary insights of recent years: while the universe (and our experience of the universe) is constantly evolving, so is our spirituality. It is a sad reality that spirituality remains such a confusing and controversial topic. How is it that religion has brought more liberation to more people than any other human endeavor, while simultaneously causing more pain and suffering than anything in human history? As mentioned, both individuals and cultures develop through increasing waves of subjective and intersubjective complexity, from archaic, to magic, to mythic, to rational, to pluralistic, to integral stages of consciousness and culture, with infinite room at the top for future stages of unfolding. This is the profound role religion can potentially serve in the 21st century—a sort of "conveyor belt" of consciousness, designed to facilitate growth through each stage of consciousness.

And this is an absolutely crucial point—you can taste God at any stage in your own psychological development, as these experiences are always available as ever-present states of consciousness. However, your interpretation of the experience will be largely determined by what stage of consciousness you have achieved. For example, a mythic/traditional person might interpret a spiritual experience as a revelation from a personal God intended solely for the “chosen people,” a rational/scientific person might interpret reason and mathematics itself as the language of a Deistic God (the “great clockmaker in the sky”), while a pluralistic/postmodern person might interpret his or her experience as emanating from Gaia and felt as a radical interconnectivity with the “Great Web of Life.” This is demonstrated in the graphic below, known as the Wilber/Combs matrix, which plots four different types of commonly-acknowledged spiritual states against seven evolutionary stages of consciousness, yielding at least 28 different kinds of spiritual experience. No wonder we are so confused!Furthermore, just as we can look at evolution through three major perspectives (3rd-person physical and techno-economic evolution, 2nd-person cultural evolution, 1st-person conscious evolution), so can we view our relationship with the divine from these same three perspectives, sometimes called the “Three Faces of God”:

We can speak about God from a 3rd-person perspective, including theological or metaphysical descriptions, or just a simple appreciation of the universe as the living body of God. This is often experienced as profound awe at the entire world around us.

We can speak with God from a 2nd-person perspective, as an authentic "I-Thou" relationship between ourselves and divinity, in which we can commune with God as the ultimate "Thou"—or, as Martin Buber might suggest, as the living hyphen between the I and every Thou you have ever known. This is often experienced as bottomless, rapturous love with the entire world around us.

We can speak as God from a 1st-person perspective, a direct experience of Spirit in the form of mystical transcendence, personal revelation, or luminous reverie. This is commonly felt as an experience of the Self beyond the self, or the effortless "I AMness" behind all our thoughts, memories, and experiences. This is often experienced as transcendent, empty bliss as we realize we are the entire world around us.

Approaching spiritual experience in this way does a great deal to help us understand the current state of the world’s ongoing inter-faith dialogue, as we can see that every spiritual tradition intrinsically contains all three of these perspectives, though certain traditions might focus on one more than the others. For example, the Western theistic traditions tend to emphasize “God in 2nd-person” and are often distrustful of 1st-person experiences of the divine, whereas Eastern traditions like Buddhism tend to point to 1st-person realization as the ultimate means of liberation, while sometimes understating the importance of 2nd-person communion with Spirit.

Thanks to the information age, people now have unprecedented access to all the world’s knowledge, wisdom, and culture. Never before has the world been so small—and yet, considering the absolutely massive amount of data now at our fingertips, the world has also never been so unfathomably huge. We are drowning in zeros and ones, the digital reflections of our outer and inner worlds flooding our senses faster than any of us can metabolize. Only a genuinely Integral approach can make sense of this deluge of information, an approach that acknowledges and situates the established methodologies of phenomenology, structuralism, empiricism, hermeneutics, systems theory, etc., without ever confusing the territory of one methodology with the authority of another. In this sense, both Kevin Kelly and Ken Wilber are truly 21st-century pioneers, both of whom share an irrepressible drive to synthesize and integrate a truly staggering body of knowledge. Their work represents a new way of seeing the world, of relating to the world, and of being in the world. They strive to identify the very real patterns in our universe, patterns that connect everything to everything else, and in so doing, helping to clear a path for the future of evolution in this lonely pocket of the universe.

Harmonic Dissonance

Two years ago Richard Merrick decided to return to a research project in music perception, that he had postponed nearly thirty years earlier. In the process he came to conclusions, that, would ultimately lead him to the origins of Christian religious symbology:

It seems time had not diminished my curiosity about how we are able to organically measure the degree of dissonance and mentally anticipate the direction of resolution in music harmony. My original work in this area had taken me deep into mathematics and computer simulations in search of an explanation. Now, armed with the scientific method, powerful computer tools and access to the world’s latest research, I was sure that I could determine once and for all whether our perception of music was something organic or nothing more than cultural conditioning. I had no idea that what I was about to learn would shred my faith in Western science and shake the very foundation of my worldview.

Slowly but surely I began to put the pieces together. From a wide array of scientific research in music cognition, neurophysiology, genetics, acoustics, quantum physics and my own calculations and experiments, I developed a set of principles and mathematical models to explain how we perceive music. Naming this system interference theory, I found a way to show how harmonics play a common role in both sound and the structure of our anatomy. The theory proposes that life grows as a balance between resonance and damping just like a vibrating string and that music perception is a built-in pattern matching between the harmonic geometry of sound and identical structures in the ear and brain. In short, I came to see the entire body as a form of crystallized music.

Once I had convinced myself of the existence of harmonic properties in human physiology, I found myself drawn to Leonardo Da Vinci’s popular illustration of the Vitruvian Man to see what he might have known. I learned that the circle and square surrounding the Vitruvian Man represented the mathematical "squaring of the circle" whereby the perimeter of the square is drawn equal (as near as possible) to the circumference of the circle. Proposed first by Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio in the first century BC, the squaring of the circle was intended to represent the harmony and balance in the ideal human form.

As I pondered what this could mean, it occurred to me that the circle implied an inside-out resonance of cells in the body while the square represented an outside-in damping effect to contain the outward push of cellular resonance. Like the standing wave and ring models in my interference theory, it dawned on me that all organic life could be defined as energy exploding outward into space that is then pushed back inward into specific shapes, presumably depending on which harmonic proportions are emphasized by the DNA. Looking back on it, this was a very difficult thing for me to accept at first. Like every student, I had been taught from the earliest age that space was a complete and utter void. Yet, I simply could not resist the logic of life as a form of resonance and space as a kind of damping container.

Using this as a hypothesis, I decided to find a way to measure resonance and damping in the Vitruvian model. To do this, I overlaid a lattice of right-angled standing waves on the Vitruvian figure. When I scaled the lattice such that the circle radius was exactly equal to 2Pi, I was surprised to find that the proportion between the circle and square could be expressed very simply as Pi : (Phi ^ 2), or Pi divided by the square of the golden ratio. Could this be pure coincidence?

While both of these mathematical constants are irrational and infinite, the ratio between them can be seen to converge to the rational ratio 12:10 as 3.14159 / 2.618033 ≈ 1.2. The moment I saw this, I realized that harmonics really could account for our body structure. We have ten fingers and toes at the extremities (where cellular damping is presumably greatest), yet at the same time we have twelve major articulated joints in the body and twenty-four vertebrae in the spine (where cellular resonance must be greatest). Pursuing this line of thought, I decided to add a recursive growth dimension to the lattice (creating what is called a “Hilbert space”). This was incredibly accurate in predicting each of the key plexus points in the Vitruvian model, convincing me that our bodies (and all life) must resonate or grow into the containment geometry of space. And just to confirm this, I reverse engineered the Vitruvian model from the inside out by recursively building up each part of the body mathematically as if it were growing in space!

The implications were absolutely mind-blowing for me, since it seemed to confirm that space was somehow interacting with the structure of life. But this was only the beginning. I began to notice how the harmonic lattice could also contain other things, like ancient religious icons, sacred geometrical patterns and the mysterious symbols used by various esoteric fraternities. Not being a member of any such organization myself, I waded through the literature on these topics to get an idea of where these secret orders came from and what their symbols could mean. I found an unbroken current of knowledge through all of them tracing back to the Egyptian Flower of Life pattern (6th century BC) and its components, particularly Metatron’s Cube and the Vescia Piscis, which all fit perfectly into the Vitruvian harmonic model. I also noticed that the Hebrew Tree of Life fit within this musical lattice, aligning with the seven points of the Hindu chakra system. Even the Gnostic cross – a cube unfolded into 3 x 4 squares – fit nicely into the lattice, transforming the Vitruvian Man into a kind of archetypal crucifix. Could something like this have been the pre-Christian meaning of the cross, I wondered?

As my belief in Western science began to crumble, I asked myself how this simple harmonic lattice could be so completely absent from general public awareness. Why is this not common knowledge? Why is this not part of science, music, history and our entire educational system? Why would it not at least rate as a "fun fact" in a sidebar in Popular Science or on an anatomy poster at the doctor’s office? And above all, why would the Church not want people to know all about it? After all, it could be taken as proof of a sacred ordering principle in nature, inferring the existence of a cosmic intelligence (call it what you will).

Reorienting my study of history from this new perspective, it quickly became obvious to me why we know virtually nothing of this lost knowledge. I discovered that harmonic philosophy had long been associated with paganism (the belief of God in nature) and that the Roman Catholic Church had worked very hard over a period of a thousand years to suppress it through canon law. This was the reason the tritone interval of a half-octave, nicknamed El Diabolus in Musica or Devil in Music, had been banned from sacred music in 1234 AD by Pope Gregory IX (and still maintained to this day). The Church seemed well aware that the tritone could reveal the symmetry in music harmony and open the door to the “carnal knowledge” of harmonics in the body and elsewhere in nature.

As the most powerful force in the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church was very successful in establishing and promulgating a franchise system whereby the faithful could only reach God through the Church (and its iconic brand) rather than through the study of self and nature. Using this marketing and distribution network, the Church was able to social engineer vast populations by regulating admission to the afterlife. Through the power of guilt, fear, torture, and war against paganism from the Middle East, the medieval Church struggled to bring under hand a violent and turbulent Europe. The last thing the Church needed was a resurgence of Egyptian gnostism or neo-Pythagoreanism to interfere with its plan.

Such pagan harmonic theosophies were a clear and present danger to the Church and its project of social control. Harmonic ideals, often represented by the Pythagorean pentagram or Hebrew hexagram, were cast by the Church as evil pagan symbols and associated with satanic worship, witchcraft and occult rituals. Those who studied harmonic properties in numbers, geometry and astronomy, such as the Dualist and Gnostic Cathars in southern Europe during the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries, were threatened, executed or exiled, forcing many to roam the countryside as "gypsies" (a pejorative form of Egyptian). The Knights Templar, the primary keepers of the Egyptian temple mysteries, were then hunted down and murdered by the Church (on Friday 13, 1307) with a few fleeing to far-flung places like northern Scotland. In these remnants of Egyptian gnosis were the seeds of Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry and other “secret societies” – all of which were founded on the study of harmonics in numbers and geometry. This said, few adherents today are the least bit aware or interested in harmonic science, opting instead for the benefits of a fraternal network of friends and the occasional community service.

But while an honest look at European history seemed to explain how and why harmonic principles had disappeared from Western religion, it still did not answer why science, as the presumed pillar of empirical truth in the world, did not eventually return to harmonic science as a unifying field of study. So I dug a little deeper and here is what I found. During the run up to The Enlightenment in the late 17th and 18th centuries the “scientific method” had actually been designed to discourage the study of harmonics and its corresponding natural philosophy known as musica universalis or music of the spheres.

I learned that the exclusion of music and pagan harmonic principles from modern science was first suggested in a letter from the astronomer Galileo to his daughter, apparently prompted by the desire to avoid torture and imprisonment by the Italian Inquisition. Supported by Newton, Descartes and others who also wished to find a way to coexist with the Church during this period, the separation of harmonic study away from mathematics and science into “the humanities” became more and more institutionalized as the scientific method was accepted. In time, new generations forgot all about harmonics as a unifying property in nature - even taking up the cause of science to discredit any remaining harmonic theories as “smelling of the pulpit” (a twist of irony).

In the early 20th century, this anti-harmonic campaign reached its zenith in the Michelson-Morley experiment “proving” that space was an empty void with no intrinsic structure or measurable effect on matter. This belief was quickly accepted as the cornerstone of 20th century scientific thought and education, elevating Darwin's theory of natural selection (with the occasional accidental mutation) as the explanation for why life takes the forms it does. Only in recent years has this experiment been shown to be misleading and even false by much more sophisticated instruments indicating space does have a measurable effect on matter.

But, like most everyone these days, I grew up in a society and educational system that still denies the existence of any structuring property in the vacuum or how it could play a role in the formation of life. Even the smartest and best-educated people happily accept the contradictory belief that space is both curved (Einstein) AND an empty void. No one even thinks to raise the question of how it is that nothingness could be curved or, for instance, why our bodies grew ten fingers instead of, say, eight or fourteen. The avoidance and outright ridicule of a structured space remains a point of great disagreement and debate today, not only slowing progress in virtually every field of science but also hiding a very important truth from society.

What is that truth? The truth is that for the past 350 years a complicity of convenience has existed between the institutions of Western religion and science to avoid any mention of harmonics. This unspoken tradition continues to spill over into society to this day, fragmenting Western culture and ideologically supporting unsustainable political, economic and environmental policies. With harmonic studies no longer present in our schools and churches as it once was, we push each generation further and further away from the idea that mankind should seek to follow the harmonic processes at work in nature. Without any coherent social and cultural model, most presume the universe to be a cold, meaningless and random environment within which only accidents or brute force applies. Life itself is seen as a quirky accident in a hostile world, making it easy to agree with people like neo-Darwinist Richard Dawkins that selfishness is the winning strategy for survival. Under the widespread presumption of a random and violent universe, nihilism has become the popular conclusion. This said, I do think there is hope in the bright light of quantum physics. While the rest of science continues to be powered by Newtonian machinations, quantum theory quietly proposes a cosmos composed of coherent harmonic waves crystallizing into matter inside a polarized cubic space lattice (like a physical hologram). The Schrodinger wavefunction and “particle in a box” model of quantum mechanics are just another way of describing the harmonic structure of space – no different than the physics of a guitar string. Still, with the long tradition of avoidance, any notion of coherent space has yet to make its way into standard science curriculum while remaining mostly absent in other fields of science.

But if the study of harmonic science ever were allowed back into the educational system, we might expect a cultural Renaissance that would make even Leonardo’s naked Vitruvian Man blush. T-shirts would implore us to “Bring back the aether” while religious bumper stickers proclaim, “Get in touch with your inner archetype!” The full intersecting circles of the Vescia Piscis would suddenly appear in place of just the fish part on all those Suburbans. Even Einstein’s “everything is relative” would sound tired, replaced instead by Pythagoras’“everything is proportional.” Fashion would explode with “sacred geometry” and Egyptian styles could make a comeback. The idea that an archetypal structure in space actually shapes flowers, insects, fish, birds, pets and people would be irresistible and, I think, difficult to suppress once the meme was released.

Driven by grassroots awareness, hardened scientists might eventually accept life as no accident and even consider embracing numbers and geometry as sacred. Western religion might make peace with pagan spirituality and finally admit (with a wry smile) that they knew all along the Holy Ghost was but a blueprint for Man in the fabric of space. And as these ideas took root, maybe our off-balance governments would consider modeling their policies on the coherence demonstrated so beautifully in the human form.

I know – many things would have to change for this to ever occur. Textbooks must be rewritten, curriculum revised, educators reprogrammed, social policies adjusted and harmonic principles accepted (at least in part) by people in positions of power who really want the truth to come out. Will it ever happen? I hope so, and soon! In the meantime, I’m not waiting around for all those scientists, historians, theologians and musicians to build me a new religion. I’m going to listen to a little Cake, enjoy the musical universe we live in and do my part to try and change things for the better. This is my new unapproved harmonic worldview.

Additional information and references on this subject may be found in the author’s latest book; Interference – A Grand Scientific Musical Theory, scheduled for release later this year.

Dear God

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Controversial Osho On 60 Minutes