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The

Hermetic Code

"•DNA

The Sacred Principles
in the Ordering of the Universe

Michael Hayes

Inner Traditions
Rochester, Vermont

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Colin Wilson for all the help and encouragement he has
given me in the writing of this book, and for always finding time in his busy
schedule to answer my calls. A kinder, wiser man I have yet to meet. I am
duty bound also to thank posthumously three other wise men who have
helped shape my world: George Gurdjieff, Pyotr Ouspensky, and Rodney
Collin. Without their input, I should never have dreamt of such wonderful
things.

A special thanks to Kay Hyman, whose invaluable editorial contribution
has been generously provided simply for the love of it.

And lastly, but most of all, thanks to my wife, Ali, for reasons too
numerous to mention.

Contents

Foreword by Colin Wilson
Acknowledgments
A Note on Measurements
Introduction

1 The Sacred Constant: The “Jewel in the Crown”

2 A Different Way of Seeing

3 Music over Matter

4 The Electron and the Holy Ghost

5 Further Light

6 Live Music

7 Extraterrestrial DNA

8 Interstellar Genes and the Galactic Double Helix

9 The Hermetic Universe of Ancient Times

10 The Hierarchy of Dimensions

11 The Fate of the Universe

12 Inner Octaves

13 The Holographic Principle

14 Quantum Psychology: The “Nonlocal” Brain

15 QP2: The Universal Paradigm

16 The Shapeshifters

17 “Al-Chem”—the Egyptian Way
Notes

Bibliography

About the Author
About Inner Traditions
Copyright

Foreword

I suspect that the name of Michael Hayes is going to be remembered
together with those of Stephen Hawking and Watson and Crick as a thinker
who has made a revolutionary contribution to our vision of modern science.

Some time in 1995 I received a copy of a book called The Infinite
Harmony, and subtitled Musical Structures in Science and Theology,
published by the respectable firm of Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Since I was
overworked, trying to complete a book to a deadline, it took some time before
I got around to reading it. My book was about ancient Egypt and was called
From Atlantis to the Sphinx; its starting point was the theory of John
Anthony West that the Sphinx may be thousands of years older than anyone
had supposed. And the amount of reading required was enormous.

One evening I was relaxing with a glass of wine when I noticed The
Infinite Harmony in a pile of books beside my chair. I picked it up idly,
glanced down the table of contents, and saw that the second chapter is
devoted to ancient Egypt. Naturally, I turned to it immediately, and was soon
reading with excitement and absorption. I quickly learned something I had not
come across before: that in the antechamber to the King’s Chamber in the
Great Pyramid, there is a square granite relief whose area is exactly equal to
the area of a circle whose diameter happens to be precisely the same length as
the antechamber floor. What is more, when this length is multiplied by pi, the
result is precisely the length of the solar year: 365.2412 pyramid inches.

I was fascinated. It had long been clear to me that the ancients attached
some mystical significance to numbers and that the sophistication of their
knowledge was often greater than ours. Hayes reinforced my feeling that we
are dealing with a very ancient knowledge system whose secret has been lost.

I was so excited that I looked around to see if I could locate the letter that
had accompanied the book. It had vanished. The inscription in the book
showed that it had been lying around my sitting room for months. And my
wife had made a note of the sender’s address, which was in Moseley,
Birmingham. I rang Directory Enquiries and asked them if they had a
telephone number for Michael Hayes; they had. And although it was now
after ten in the evening, I rang him. A girl answered the phone, and went off

to get her father. A few moments later, I was speaking to Michael Hayes,
apologizing for keeping him waiting so long for a reply, and telling him that I
found his book enormously exciting.

I asked him some questions about himself, and about how he had become
interested in the subject. He told me that it had started in his hippie days,
when he was living in Mashad, in Iran, and was in the great mosque of the
Imam Reza, impressed by the sheer number of worshippers, and by their
devoutness. It was obvious that to them, religion was a living reality, just as it
had been to the thousands of worshippers who had brought stones for the
building of Chartres cathedral in the twelfth century. And during his travels in
Iran, India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, Michael Hayes had felt exactly the
same thing—that their religions had a living source. He experienced an
overpowering sense of being on the brink of learning some enormous secret.

Back in England, he had decided that it was time he learned something
about the genetic code, and the mysterious letters DNA. He enrolled at a
course at Leicester University. And there he took an important step closer to
the secret. It proved to be numerical.

The spiral-shaped DNA molecule involves four chemical bases called
adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. And these four can combine
together in sixty-four different ways to form triplet units called RNA codons.

The number 64 struck a chord. Then he remembered what it was: that the
Chinese “Book of Changes,” the I Ching, has sixty-four “hexagrams,” each
made up of two different lines. Any reader who has ever tried throwing down
three coins to consult the I Ching will recall that a preponderance of tails
result in a broken line,

while three heads form an unbroken line:

The first symbolizes the Chinese concept of “yin,” the feminine, the
yielding, while the second is “yang,” the forceful and masculine. The coins
are thrown six times, and the six lines are laid on one another in a kind of six-
decker sandwich.

Those who use Richard Wilhelm’s translation, with the introduction by
Jung, will recall that the next step is to turn to the chart at the back of the
book, which contains sixty-four numbers in a grid of squares, whose sides are
eight units long. You then look up your “top” trigram along the horizontal
edge, and your “lower” trigram along the vertical edge, and the square where
the two trigrams meet is the number of the hexagram you are looking for.

In the early stage of his quest, Mike Hayes (as he prefers to be known) had
studied the I Ching, and wondered idly why the number of hexagrams is eight
times eight, not seven times seven or nine times nine. And now, with the
coincidence of the DNA code and the hexagrams of the I Ching, he found

himself wondering if this number 64 is some basic code of life.

When he learned that there were eight trigrams hidden in DNA, he began to
feel that this was more than an odd coincidence. . . .

All this Mike sketched out for me during that phone conversation. And
when it was over, I had decided that reading the whole book was a major
priority.

What I learned in The Infinite Harmony was that this coincidence was just
the beginning of a whole series of related discoveries. For example, the
number 22 plays a basic part in the DNA code. Proteins are formed by twenty
amino acids, but with two codons forming start and stop signals, making
twenty-two in all. And 22 also plays an important part in music, being the
number of notes in three octaves on the piano. The followers of the Greek
philosopher Pythagoras regarded 22 as a sacred number, and also 3.

Previously, studying the Russian mage Gurdjieff, Mike had also been
introduced to something called the law of three. Positive and negative, good
and evil, light and darkness, merely counterbalance one another, but a third
force is necessary to combine them—just as the two sides of a zipper are
made to interlock with the fastener in the middle, or two gases will only
combine in the presence of a catalyst that is itself unaffected.

Studying the world’s major religions, Mike was struck by how often the
numbers 22, 3, and 7 occur. The number pi, the relation of a diameter of a
circle to its circumference, is 22 divided by 7. So now he began to look in
detail at the world’s major religions—ancient Egyptian, Judaism,
Zoroastrianism, Islam, Jainism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Christianity.
With increasing excitement, he realized that his numerical discoveries
constituted a code that connected them all. The same code turned up in
alchemy, which led him to label it the Hermetic Code, after Hermes
Trismegistus, the Greek god who is the patron of alchemists, and whose best-
known dictum is “As above, so below.” And so The Infinite Harmony came
to be written.

His chances of publishing such a strange and abstruse book seemed
minimal, yet its importance was recognized by an editor at Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, and it appeared in 1994. But there the marvelous wave of
coincidence and synchronicity that had carried him so far seemed to run out
of strength. The book was not widely recognized, and opened no further
opportunities. And just as Mike was beginning to experience a sense of
anticlimax, I rang up, and said I intended to write about it in From Atlantis to
the Sphinx.

I did just that, and the book came out in 1996, and went into several
editions—partly because the whole subject of ancient civilizations had
become popular as a result of Graham Hancock’s remarkable bestseller
Fingerprints of the Gods, which argued that civilization may be thousands of

years older than archaeologists believe.

By that time, I had met Mike Hayes. He had spent a part of his childhood in
Penzance, in Cornwall, and accepted eagerly when I suggested that he should
take a few days off writing his second book, and come and renew his
acquaintance with Cornwall. We spent days driving around, talking endlessly,
and he told me many things about himself and his development that I shall not
repeat here, since they are in the remarkable and absorbing introduction to
this book.

Mike proved to be a slightly built, fair-haired man who was in his mid¬
forties at the time I met him. And during the few days he spent in Cornwall
(his wife, Ali, had to stay behind to look after their three daughters), I got the
same odd feeling I had experienced while reading The Infinite Harmony : that
here was one of those people that fate seems to throw down into the world to
make some important discovery.

This has always seemed to me true of all scientists and inventors. One of
my favorite television programs is Adam Hart Davis’s Local Heroes, in
which he cycles from place to place, and comes upon dozens— in fact
hundreds—of remarkable men and women who have left something behind
them, perhaps something as straightforward but essential as the lawnmower or
hovercraft, perhaps some world-changing knowledge like relativity or
quantum theory.

Mike Hayes, I soon came to feel, is one of these.

And why do I think he is so important? Because if the genetic code and
Mike’s Hermetic Code—these numbers that recur constantly throughout all
world religions—are identical, then there is a fundamental connection
between molecular biology and religion. And why is that important? Because
ever since Gregor Mendel created genetics in the nineteenth century, it has
been regarded as a science of the mechanism of evolution. Darwin suggested
that evolution progresses through a mechanical process of the survival of the
fittest, but he was not sure about the nature of the mechanism that creates
species. Mendel’s discoveries pointed to the genes as the answer.

But Darwinism plus Mendelism was even more mechanical than
Darwinism alone. At least Darwin believed that his colleague Lamarck— and
his grandfather Erasmus—might be partly correct in believing that the will of
the individual influences evolutionary changes. But the neo-Darwinists who
accepted Mendel’s discoveries as the mechanism of evolution felt that it
explained everything. Evolution was now a totally mechanical process—like
the erosion of a landscape by geological forces—for the will of the individual
cannot influence his genes. And the most influential of modern geneticists,
like Richard Dawkins, are rigid materialists.

I personally have been attacking this view for the past half century, and
have pointed out anomalies that cannot be explained in terms of mechanical

evolution—for example, how a colony of little insects called the flattid bug
can crawl onto a dead twig and then shape themselves into the likeness of a
living flower—a flower that does not even exist in nature. This cannot be
explained by “survival of the fittest.” It seems to involve some “group mind”
operating at an unconscious level.

Now, in showing the connection between the Hermetic Code and the
genetic code, Mike Hayes has pointed to the fact that the essence of evolution
can also be found in religion, and therefore in the realm of the evolution of
consciousness.

I found his introductory remarks about the insights he obtained through
LSD exciting partly because of his comment, “I clearly perceived that
(everything solid) is composed, literally, of sparkling, vibrant ‘particles’ of
light,” a view that is of central importance to the argument of the book, and
that echoes the vision of so many mystics.

Now, I had already come upon this notion in a book called Essay on the
Origin of Thought (1974) by a remarkable young philosopher named Jurij
Moskvitin. Lying one day in the sunlight with his eyes half closed, he became
aware of a kind of moving mosaic pattern through his eyelashes. It seemed to
be made of tiny light fragments, and as he slowly developed the ability to
focus them, he recognized patterns like those in religious art, “art and
ornamentation created by civilizations dominated by mystical initiation and
experience.” These forms, he finally decided, were made up of “dancing
sparks,” a little like the tiny lines in the work of the painter Signac. These
sparks, which he decided looked a little like tadpoles, make up our whole
visual field, on which we impose shapes. He compares it to the way that, in a
Dutch painting, a wineglass examined closely proves to be merely a few
strokes of yellow paint. Moskvitin is suggesting that the external world our
eyes reveal to us is simply a limited version of a larger inner world. I was
reminded of Moskvitin’s thesis by Mike Hayes’s theory of light—on which
he expands greatly in this book.

His insights were also close to those of a remarkable anthropologist called
Jeremy Narby, who studied among the Ashaninca Indians of Peru, and
became convinced that their extraordinary knowledge of the medicinal
properties of forest plants was obtained through a visionary process involving
the drug ayahuasca.

For example, the drug curare, used on poison darts, is made from a
combination of plants, and the first stage is to boil them for three days, while
staying clear of the deadly vapors. The final product kills monkeys without
poisoning their meat, and also causes them to relax their grip so they fall from
the tree to the ground, instead of clinging to the tree in a death spasm.

But there are about eighty thousand species of forest plants. How did the
Indians stumble on curare without poisoning themselves first, or wasting their

lives in endless experiment?

The same questions arise with regard to ayahuasca. It is made up of two
plants, one of which contains a hormone secreted in the human brain, a
hallucinogen that is rendered harmless by a stomach enzyme. In order to
prevent it being rendered harmless (and useless as a drug), it has to be mixed
with a substance from a creeper. Then it induces visions.

How, Narby wondered, did the Indians discover anything so complex?
Surely not by trial and error—trying millions of possible combinations. The
shaman’s answer was that they learned it from drugs, which “told” them the
answer.

Narby learned a great deal from another anthropologist, Michael Hamer,
who had also experimented with drugs among the Indians. And Harner had
declared that his visions emanated from giant reptile creatures “like DNA”
that resided at the lowest depth of his brain.

It struck Narby that DNA looks like two intertwined serpents (as Mike
Hayes also points out). The molecule also looks like a spiral ladder, and
shamans the world over talk about ascending a ladder to higher realms of the
spirit.

Narby himself tried ayahuasca, and reached the same conclusions as
Harner. The drug introduced him to Harner’s “serpents”:

Suddenly I found myself surrounded by two gigantic boa constrictures that
seemed fifty feet long. I was terrified. ... In the middle of these hazy thoughts,
the snakes start talking to me without words. They explain that I am merely a
human being. I feel my mind crack, and in the fissures, I see the bottomless
arrogance of my presuppositions. It is profoundly true that I am just a human
being, and, most of the time, I have the impression of understanding
everything, whereas here I find myself in a more powerful reality that I do not
understand at all and that, in my arrogance, I did not even suspect existed.

He began to feel that language itself was inadequate, and that words would
no longer stick to images.

But after this alarming beginning, things began to improve as he realized
that the Indians know their way around in this bizarre reality, and that the
most apparently absurd things they had told him were true. And somehow, the
Indians seemed to be obtaining their information directly from DNA, a
concept that seems less odd when we remember Mike Hayes’s discovery of
the similarity between the genetic code and the I Ching.

Later in The Cosmic Serpent, Narby writes, “It seemed that no one had
noticed the possible links between the 'myths’ of 'primitive peoples’ and
molecular biology.” And he goes on to make the important comment (in view
of Mike Hayes’s emphasis on music), “According to the shamans of the entire
world, one establishes communication with the spirits via music.”

Narby dares to ask, “Is there a goal to life? Do we exist for a reason? I
believe so, and I think that the combination of shamanism and biology gives
undisputed answers to these questions.”

Obviously, Jeremy Narby and Mike Hayes have been pursuing parallel
courses, and arrived at very similar conclusions.

A few words about the present book.

In many ways, it is easier to absorb than The Infinite Harmony. To begin
with, Hayes discusses in his introduction the pertinent biographical facts that
enable the reader to watch the discovery and unfolding of his ideas. This
introduction says everything that is in The Infinite Harmony, and makes it all
beautifully clear. He then plunges into the questions that are directly related to
Graham Hancock’s thesis in Fingerprints of the Gods, Robert Bauval’s in
The Orion Mystery, and my own in From Atlantis to the Sphinx. Even I,
who have now devoted about ten years to these matters, was fascinated by his
treatment of them. He also points out that there is evidence that Neanderthal
man knew about the Hermetic Code seventy-five thousand years ago.

I shall not try to summarize the rest of the book except to say that it is
remarkable for the confidence he shows in handling an immense range of
subjects, from modern physics to the paranormal, from evolutionary biology
to musical theory, from yoga to superconductivity. I was familiar with some
of this material, but much of it was unknown to me, and the use he makes of it
is strikingly his own.

The performance is often so dazzling, reminding a reader of a juggler who
can keep ten balls in the air at the same time, that the reader might easily be
misled into thinking that this is no more than a brilliant piece of eclectic
exposition. But make no mistake: what Mike Hayes has discovered could be
as important as the original discovery of DNA. Like Jurij Moskvitin and
Jeremy Narby, he has created a new paradigm—that is, he is looking at our
familiar universe from a new angle, and making us aware of magical
possibilities.

COLIN WILSON

Colin Wilson is a prolific author and philosopher whose 1956 breakout work The
Outsider helped popularize existentialism in Britain. Later, when existentialism fell
out of fashion, he became a symbol of the British version of the beat generation as a
member of the “Angry Young Men,” in which he was the head of a small group of
existentialist philosophers. Beyond his early political influence, his more than 108
titles convey his enormous literary scope—ranging from philosophy, crime, occult,
literary criticism, and short fiction—and include From Atlantis to the Sphinx,
Atlantis and the Kingdom of the Neanderthals, and his autobiography, Dreaming to
Some Purpose. He is also coauthor, with Rand Flem-Ath, of The Atlantis Blueprint.

A Note on Measurements

When taken from other sources, units of measure used in the book retain the
measurement system used in the original text. So temperatures may be in
Kelvin, Celsius, or Fahrenheit, and physical measurements may be metric or
imperial, and so on.

Introduction

T his book is the product of a personal journey of discovery, a trip that
began when I was about seven or eight years old. This, significantly, was
when I first chanced to think about that ultimate question in life: death. I
remember feeling greatly disturbed that I was unable to comprehend this truly
awesome prospect. What made matters worse was the fact that the adults
around me were not only equally clueless in this respect; it seemed to me that
they didn’t even want to think about it. But then this was England in the mid¬
fifties, and the grown-ups had just survived a horrendous global war. For
many of them the unspeakable facts of death must have been an all-too-
prevalent and uncomfortable reality, so it is not surprising that I was usually
given short shrift whenever I asked one of the available big people to show
me the netherworld on a world map.

As it turned out, and for reasons I cannot explain, I have been drawn to
ponder this question many times over many years. So, if nothing else, the
subject has been a recurrent reminder to me of the transient, apparently futile
nature of individual existence. But it has also, I think, been a primary factor in
determining one of my major motivations in life—to try to understand the
meaning and purpose of our being, to establish some kind of meaningful
perspective from which to view our true position in the cosmic scheme of
things. Basically, I simply want to know what is going on around me. Don’t
you?

So, what is this thing death, this future happening looming over the horizon
of our lives like some conceptual black hole? Can the process be elucidated,
defined in terms we can understand? My answer is a cautious yes, and I shall
explain why in due course.

As for death’s equally mystifying opposite, the counterbalance we loosely
call life, this too cries out to be understood. Evolutionists think they have
cracked it by charting the increasingly complex interactive development, over
four thousand million years, of the RNA and DNA molecules—which is fine,
as far as it goes—but where does the evolution of consciousness fit into the
Darwinian picture? Indeed, can it fit? That is, is it possible to explain the
thought processes of the modern hominid in terms of the current theory of
evolution? Actually I don’t personally know of any evolutionists out there
who are aware of this fact, but the answer, once again, is yes. As I see it, the

systematic, biomolecular process involved in the evolution of DNA is a
perfect model of the working of the healthy human mind.

So what I currently have to offer is an ambitious, but serious, proposition,
which is that life and death are in a certain and unique way entirely
comprehensible.

As I said, what follows is the record of a personal journey, but this is also,
by its very nature, an account of the entire evolutionary journey of the
conscious hominid. What began for me in the fifties, with what might be
called a chance thought, has been happening to thinkers for many thousands
of years. So, in effect, I have merely tuned in to an already existing stream of
ideas, a channel of intelligent information whose list of presenters and past
contributors reads like a roll call of the immortals—scientists, philosophers,
saints, mythmakers, saviors.

We will therefore have to go back in time to trace the origin of this
“thought” of mine: back to ancient Egypt and Greece, and to China, India,
Palestine, Arabia, and the Americas. One of the principal reasons for looking
back is that most of these ancient cultures developed a religion, or a
mythology, to explain the mystery of life and death. Indeed, this almost
wholly preoccupied the earliest peoples. And, significantly, although different
cultures over the millennia have expressed their ideas in apparently diverse
ways and idioms, they all agree on one fundamental point: that there is an
existence after death. As it happens, the originators of all the major belief
systems also concurred on one other fundamental point in respect of life.

But first things first. My own personal account is the warp of this
metaphysical design, so we must for the time being stick to the minor plot; the
greater weft will be woven in chapter by chapter.

In the early sixties, I dutifully went to grammar school, obtained mediocre
GCE passes, and subsequently took up a position selling advertising space for
a local newspaper. Disillusionment soon crept in. A large workplace can be a
quagmire of trivia and petty jealousies and, to avoid being sucked in, I
became a corporate drifter, aimlessly careerhopping from one meaningless
job to another.

Meanwhile my alter ego was heading off on a completely different trail. By
the time of the late sixties, he was already blowing in the wind, unwittingly
heading for a second memorable jolt. This happened when, quite by chance, I
came across a certain psychedelic agent called purple haze.

Purple haze was the name given to a particularly pure batch of LSD that hit
the streets of my town in the winter of 1968, one tiny tablet of which
happened to come my way. It cost me thirty bob and about eight earth hours,
but such was its impact upon me that it changed my whole life, for, quite
suddenly, after this one, mind-blowing experience, I became absolutely
convinced of the existence of other dimensions beyond my own tiny,

subjective conceptual domain. This newly found awareness made life appear
much more interesting. But more perplexing.

More trips inevitably followed, always, without exception, profoundly
illuminating, producing in me such powerful waves of emotion that I felt I
could very easily be swept out to some mystic sea and be gone forever.
Whether these glimpses into other worlds were real or imaginary was a
question I never bothered to ask, but my perceptions were so vivid and
incomparably impressive that they made my molelike working life seem like
a form of penal servitude.

It has been more than twenty years since I last took a trip, and I have no
intention of taking another in the foreseeable future. Neither do I recommend
the use of psychedelics to anyone. I am merely reporting here. My own
“transgressions” were directed largely by circumstance. This thing—this drug
—was new and radical, and virtually everyone in my peer group was
experimenting with it. Obviously, in another time and another place, with
different peers, I might have taken an alternative route to the present.

So, to get to the point, which is to explain why my psychedelic experiences
should be of such importance to my story. It has all to do with the impressions
I had then. To be sure, very little remained of the total experience after each
of these illicit forays into inner space, but certain key impressions did remain
indelibly imprinted on my mind.

The first was that everything solid or material—houses, trees, rocks,
mountains, people—were ah possessed with a kind of inner light of their own.
That is, I clearly perceived that these things, or objects, were composed,
literally, of sparkling, vibrant, “particles” of light.

It is entirely possible, of course, that this is not so—that “things” are not
composed of light at ah—and that the impression was simply a drug-induced
false consciousness. However, when the hallucination, or whatever it is,
appears to be infinitely more striking and meaningful than anything so-called
reality can throw up, then I think I have good reason to pay heed to it—which,
indeed, I have done ever since. And, in fact, although I was unaware of this at
the time, I was later to discover that my impression was corroborated by two
quite different and independent sources.

In the first instance, Einstein had already shown that light quanta, i.e.,
photons, were “particles.” Second, the idea that matter is simply one
particular form of light has been common currency among the holy men of
the East for centuries.

The second major impression (or hallucination) had to do with time—or,
rather, the absence of it. I could never explain it, not even to myself, but in
these altered states time seemed to stand still. I remember that the word
eternal came to mind more than once when I was attempting to describe this
condition.

Interestingly, this particular notion—that there are “timeless” realms, or
dimensions, of existence—is not at all unique. In fact, it is part and parcel of
practically every major religion and mystical belief system known. If you
think of familiar scriptural concepts like heaven, eternity, time without end,
the realm of Him that liveth for ever and ever, and so on, all these so-called
religious notions seem to suggest that legions of contemplatives have in the
past had glimpses or feelings similar to mine. Further, as with the earlier
impression that matter is made up of vibrating particles of light, this second
idea of a “timeless” form of reality has also been quite clearly expressed in
independent sources. For example, through the development of modern
quantum theory, it has been discovered that, in the “world” of the subatomic
particle, time as we know it (or as we think we know it) has no place: it is
statistically meaningless.

For me, this idea of an “eternal” dimension of existence was especially
appealing, because it seemed to hint at a possible way out of the time-laden
quicksand in which we hapless mortals become immersed. That is, if there
was any substance at all to my extratemporal experiences, then maybe we—
you, me, everyone—need never truly die.

I have always been an avid reader, but over the years my taste changed
with my circumstances. So, by the end of the sixties, works of fiction, classic
and popular, were gradually replaced by books on science and what my elder
brother Tony laughingly called “all that esoteric stuff.” He was right, of
course. The hippies were on the move, traveling in droves to the East, reading
books by and about countless Indian holy men, Sufis, Western occultists, and
Lobsang Rampa and Erich von Daniken to boot. I readily joined in the party,
reading all kinds of spiritual and philosophical fare. Much of it I found pretty
ineffectual: hearsay, vague allusions, apocryphal stories, parables, and
outright guesswork—but all in all I was temporarily hooked, greatly
impressed by the vast numbers of mostly sincere writers from all walks of life
attempting to understand the nature of consciousness. Of all intellectual
pursuits, the exploration of the human mind seemed to me to be the most
worthwhile. If we could reach journey’s end on this one, all other questions
might fall neatly into place, side by side with their answers.

The trouble was, although a lot of the books circulating in the seventies
contained many interesting ideas, after reading them I still had no idea what
was really going on in people’s heads. So many writers claimed to have all
the answers, but when it came down to the nittygritty, everything seemed to
end with a question mark. I had no inkling then that a major clue was in the
offing, but I was soon to find a man who had some important answers. What
is more, he wasn’t entirely unique.

Usually with my wife, Ali, I made several trips to the East during the
seventies. Often we would stop off and visit my brother, who at that time was

living in Mashad in northeastern Iran. Tony, who never stopped traveling
throughout the whole of his abbreviated life, had at this stage in his journey
married and converted to Islam.

This was in the days of the pro-Western Shah, and Iran had a booming
economy, affording plenty of opportunity to anyone with an entrepreneurial
flair. And yet, despite all this, the people remained deeply religious,
especially in Mashad, one of Iran’s holy cities, home of the great mosque of
the much-venerated Islamic saint Imam Reza, the fourteenth imam in a direct
line of high initiates that began with the Prophet Muhammad himself.

During these visits, I was always struck by the intense fervor and passion
of Muslim worshippers there. Their tears were obviously very real, and their
emotions seemed to be charged with a vitality of a kind seldom encountered
in Christianity. To these people, prayer was a genuine, wholehearted
celebration, a loud, proud, public affirmation of their devotion to Allah and
His Prophet.

I must admit that my interest in Islam, although it impressed me greatly,
never passed beyond an observational level. What intrigued me most about it
was the sheer emotional power that this metaphysical phenomenon had so
effectively harnessed. There was a self-evident force at work here—not a
force that could be empirically measured according to established scientific
criteria, but a real source of power nonetheless, one so energetic, in fact, that
it could somehow cause millions of people from different ethnic backgrounds
all over the world to simultaneously move, speak, and act in concert. Perhaps
the most curious thing about this remarkably well-coordinated mass
movement of human beings is that it was all set in motion by one man.

When I try to picture Muhammad in my mind, I see a person of true genius,
the light of Allah sparkling in his eyes, a clear vision of the future march of
Islam stretching out before him. Here, quite evidently, was a man who knew
exactly what he was doing, an individual who understood the workings of the
human mind like few others. How else could he have created such a powerful
living movement? Luck? Accident? I really don’t think so. There is a weird
kind of magic afoot here, and it comes to us today in the form of a tangible
supernatural force—the mysterious power of Islam. Now, this force exists, it
cannot be denied, and I am saying that the person who purposefully created it
was—and indeed still is—without doubt a giant among men. Irrefutable
evidence to support this view is provided daily, weekly, continuously for all
to see, when millions of Muslims all over the world emulate their leader by
taking time to align themselves with this great spiritual source. Similar
individuals have appeared elsewhere in history, and we shall be meeting some
of them in this book, but in my view the Prophet was the last.

After my initial brush with Islam I soon started to recognize certain
similarities with the other great religions. In particular, they had all apparently

been set in motion by single individuals, then, incredibly, had subsequently
inspired the voluntary participation, over thousands of years, of millions,
billions of people.

So eventually it became clear to me that there are very real forces
profoundly affecting the human brain at work within these religious and
philosophical movements. Think of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism,
Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Islam, and so on. Nowhere in the entire “civilized”
world is it possible to avoid some kind of contact with one or other of these
apparently incomprehensible influences. They emanate from every church,
mosque, synagogue, and temple.

Now, recognizing the existence of such forces is one thing, but
understanding how and why they operate so effectively is quite another. I
pondered over this unfathomable mystery for years, reasoning that the
founders of the major religions must have had one fundamental factor in
common, which enabled each of them dramatically to affect the lives of
whole races of people—but what this was, I had not the least idea.

A BREAKTHROUGH

Then in France, some time in the mid-seventies, a fellow traveler called John
Mullins told me about a book he had read recently which had impressed him
very much. I asked my wife to send me a copy from England. It was a
propitious move. The book in question, In Search of the Miraculous, was an
account by the Russian writer Pyotr Demianovitch Ouspensky, of his
meetings with George Gurdjieff, a Greek-Armenian teacher of “esoteric
wisdom” whom he met in Moscow in 1915.

Ostensibly the book is a record of talks given by Gurdjieff to his pupils
over a period of about eight years. I had never heard of Gurdjieff or his
principal pupil prior to this, but after reading Ouspensky’s brilliant piece of
reportage from cover to cover, stopping only to eat, drink, and catnap, I can
truthfully say that encountering the teachings of this man was one of the most
important stages in my entire voyage of discovery. I could write a book on
this book, but that would be a digression—and in any case I would simply be
diluting what is easily obtainable from any good bookshop. The main thrust
of Gurdjieff’s teaching, however, I will briefly mention here, because it is
relevant to this part of my tale.

Basically he taught that the universe and everything within it is made up of
vibrations, resonating, interactive “signals,” which permeate through all
kinds, aspects, and densities of matter. This almost immediately struck a
familiar chord in me, because it reminded me of my earlier impression that all
matter is made up of sparkling (vibrating) particles of light. What really made
me sit up, however, was Gurdjieff’s explanation of how these vibrations move

through matter, time, and space.

Gurdjieff said that all processes, all “vibrations,” both in the world and in
man, are governed by two fundamental laws—laws that were understood in
the remotest antiquity.

The first is the law of three, which says that every action, every
phenomenon in the universe, is the direct result of the mutual interaction of
three forces: active, passive, and neutral. If you ever do something so basic as
change a three-pin plug, or use a catalyst in a chemical experiment involving
two other compounds, or watch a referee do his job, or examine the structure
of an atom, you will recognize immediately the action of these three forces.
They are fundamental, everywhere; quite literally, universal. If you have only
two forces—active and passive—the result is either deadlock or destruction,
but if a third, reconciliatory force is introduced, anything and everything can
happen. Gurdjieff said that this concept was the basis of the Holy Trinity of
Christian tradition. This in turn implies, of course, that Christianity itself was
formulated by people of a scientific turn of mind, people who understood the
principle of the three interacting forces, the forces of creation. And, of course,
the Trinity, in one way or another, is a fundamental component of virtually
every major religion, a fact that suggests that “science” itself—the science of
creation—is indeed rooted in the distant past. Scholars may argue that the
Trinity was in fact denied by certain monotheistic religions such as Judaism
or Islam, which assert emphatically that there is only one God. But consider
this: the most significant act of creation in the whole of Islamic tradition was
the revelation to Muhammad of “God’s words,” which were subsequently
compiled as the book known as the Koran. We thus have two participants,
Allah and His Prophet. We should note, however, that Muhammad is said to
have received his revelations not directly from God Himself, but through an
intermediary, the archangel Gabriel—enter the third force. This exact
principle is described in the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis: “In the
beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” You can’t get much clearer
than that. Creation is the result of three forces. This is the first law.

The second ancient law is the law of octaves. This says that all vibrations
moving through matter, and through man, develop—that is, ascend, descend,
grow stronger, weaker, and so forth—precisely as a musical octave develops,
that is, in proportional steps of seven or eight. Now, this development,
apparently, does not proceed uniformly, in a smooth ascension or descension,
but erratically, with certain regular “glitches” in the line of motion. Just like a
musical octave, in fact.

For the benefit of those unfamiliar with the structure of the octave, or the
major musical scale, the notes Do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, Do are each separated
by a series of intervals or tones, five of which are whole, and two of which
are only half-tones, like so:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

i I i I I i I i I i I

Do re mi fa so la ti Do

or, as illustrated by the keys of a piano:

The half-tones—between the notes mi-fa and ti-Do—are the glitches just
mentioned. Said Gurdjieff, “The seven-tone scale is the formula of a cosmic
law which was worked out by ancient schools and applied to music.” 1

Exactly how ancient these schools were is never specified, but Gurdjieff in
his own writings suggests that the Pythagoreans, usually credited as being the
originators of practical musical theory, had actually rediscovered a long-lost
science.

During his talks, Gurdjieff gives Ouspensky many examples in nature
demonstrating the action of the forces described by the two fundamental laws.
These forces, for example, dictate the structure of white light, the seven colors
of the spectrum, and the sevenfold symmetries of the periodic table of
chemical elements. He also describes the physical structure of the universe in
musical terms, even including in his unique worldview the biological and
psychological composition of the human being. All of these phenomena,
Gurdjieff said, are essentially musically structured. His evidence, as presented
to Ouspensky, was for me extremely compelling, and I instinctively felt that
here at last was a real nugget of spiritual knowledge, a genuine, 24-carat
kernel of truth. And I was right, as we shah see.

Of course, knowledge is one thing, but understanding how best to use it is
quite another. This is what made Gurdjieff unique among ah the people
whose ideas I had previously encountered, because he didn’t simply present
original and interesting knowledge, he applied it in an entirely practical and
comprehensible way.

I must try to keep things simple at this stage, as my preliminary story is not
yet finished. All one needs to know here is that the practical aspect of this
knowledge—the core of which is musical theory—is based on a systematic
application of these “musical” rules as something like a code of personal
conduct. The theory is that, by doing this, by introducing musical rhythms and
elements into our lives in an orderly and disciplined way, it is possible for us

to evolve, to become more and more conscious (i.e., harmonious) at a much
faster rate than is normally envisaged by evolutionists. We can call this the
principle of “transcendental evolution,” which holds that a harmonious
individual is like a fully evolved octave and is capable, through the final
“note” Do at the top of the given scale, of striking a single new note, or
impulse, into a greater scale above. This greater scale, or dimension, the
ancients called heaven. Darwinists take note: what is being implied here is
that there are certain limitations to current evolutionary theory, that it is, at
best, incomplete.

In between life’s periodic distractions, I studied Gurdjieff’s ideas for
several years, on and off. I read everything by and about him that I could find.
He apparently drew his ideas from a number of ancient traditions, as referred
to in Ouspensky’s book—Egyptian, Christian, Buddhist, Dervish, Hindu, and
so on. Of course, these were, broadly speaking, the very same religious
movements that had intrigued me for years, which I had surmised were
sources of strange metaphysical power that could quite literally move legions
of the faithful.

There was an obvious and important link here, but for some time its real
significance escaped me.

In the early eighties life slowed down. We had two young children by then
and, as there were inevitably a number of conspicuous gaps in my CV,
finding a regular and amenable occupation proved difficult. These were days
of high unemployment, and the corporate drifter found himself up against
stiffer opposition than he had expected. In the end, after several halfhearted
attempts to reenter the professional workplace, he decided to go back to
school, taking exploratory extramural courses in numerous and often tedious
and uninspiring subjects. There was, however, one short course—a module
dealing with the biomolecular world, with DNA and the genetic code—that
ultimately turned out to be exactly what I had been looking for.

This was in the summer of 1984. I had been reading a great deal at this
time, both textbook stuff and books of my own choosing. One week, genetics
or astronomy, perhaps, or a droning essay on Karl Popper; another week, John
Michell, Colin Wilson, or Idris Shah, or possibly a couple of chapters of
Gurdjieff’s monumental epic Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson. This
multilayered tome is over a thousand pages long and no easy read, with
sentences the length of paragraphs, paragraphs pages long, and dozens of
obscure new words invented by the author—for the express purpose, one
suspects, of making reading it an even more difficult task. Gurdjieff advised
his followers to read it three times (presumably in accordance with the law of
three). The fact that I undertook this daunting task may say something about
me that I wouldn’t care to hear, but I completed it, nevertheless, in several
stages, over a period of about five years.

I need not comment on the book itself. As with Ouspensky’s, I could write
a lengthy treatise on it—or try to—and even then would possibly succeed in
conveying only a small fraction of its intended meaning. The point I want to
make here is that Gurdjieff’s ground-breaking ideas were well to the fore in
my mind. In fact, practically all of the thoughts and ideas I have mentioned so
far were jiggling around in my head, like ephemeral, dancing genes: life . . .
death . . . light. . . timelessness . . . matter . . . vibrations . . . religion . . . force
.. . Gurdjieff .. . music.

It was virtually all there, like the scattered pieces of a jigsaw, but the
overall picture still eluded me.

Now let’s return to the genetic code. Probably most of you will at least
have heard of this chemical arrangement, used by the DNA in the cells of
your body to manufacture amino acids, the building blocks of all organic life.

In order to give myself a kind of visual aid, an image of the code in action,
I had drawn up a diagram incorporating the key numbers of the biochemical
components involved in the process. These were 4, 3, 64, and 22. That is,
there are four kinds of chemical bases. It takes three of them to make what is
known as a triplet codon, an amino acid template, of which there are exactly
sixty-four variations. Each of these codons correspond to one or another of
twenty-two more complex components, namely, the twenty amino acids and
the two coded instructions for starting and stopping the process of synthesis.
In my diagram, the number 64, the number of tripletcodon combinations (4 x
4 x 4), was represented by a square grid, eight divisions across and eight
down, like a chessboard.

PROTEIN SCALE p/s

START SIGNAL AMINO ACID SIGNAL STOP SIGNAL

(one note) (one note) (one now)

.A B C

Drmfsl tDrmfsl tDrmfsIlD

^ k THE SQUARE OF THE CONSTANT

III

111

til

Jit

12 3 4

> 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 192021 22

— 8 —

DNA

Adenine Uracil Guanine

- • - ' - • - ' - • -

It struck me immediately that there was a curious kind of symmetry
involved with these particular number combinations, one that was entirely
familiar to me and that I had seen many times before. I realized, in fact, that
the whole diagram echoed the format of the famous Chinese work known as
the I Ching (Yi King), whose sixty-four basic texts are each identified with a
six-line symbol called a hexagram.

The I Ching, the so-called Book of Changes, was one of the more popular
works circulating among “New-agers” in the sixties and seventies, and I had
browsed through it several times. It was intended for use as an oracle: you
pose a question, toss three coins, and note the way they fall. A preponderance
of heads gives an unbroken line—“yang,” positive; tails a broken line—“yin,”
negative. There is an older method of consultation using a clutch of forty-nine
yarrow stalks, but the principle is the same. Repeat the action six times and
you will have called up one of the hexagrams. The accompanying text
supplies your answer. Although I was never drawn to actually consult the I

Ching, I had always been intrigued by its structure.

As I said earlier, the key numbers of my genetic diagram were 4, 3, 64, and

22 .

Let’s begin with the number 4, the number of fundamental chemical bases
in the genetic code (adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine) upon which the
whole process of amino-acid synthesis depends. The I Ching, I discovered,
embodies exactly the same principle. The sixty-four hexagrams are actually
constructed from four, basic, two-line symbols known as the Hsiang. These in
turn were derived from the two fundamental lines, one broken and one
unbroken, known respectively as yin and yang.

Next, the number 3. The genetic code, as was evident, obeyed the law of
three forces, which is why only triplet codons are evident in the process of
creation. The three forces are initially represented in the Book of Changes by
the two original yin and yang lines, and a third factor called the Great
Extreme: that is yin (negative, female), yang (positive, male) and neutral, the
third, invisible or “mystical” ingredient, the tao. This greater trinity is
fundamental to the whole system, but the number 3 also occurs in a way that
corresponds exactly with the genetic code, because each of the hexagrams is
described as being composed of two “trigrams,” two three-line signals.

We now come to the number 64. As we have noted, the I Ching is
composed of sixty-four hexagrams. At first glance it seems as if the genetic
code deviates from this pattern, with its sixty-four triplet units. However, it
should be noted that the genetic code functions as a dynamic system, and as
such should be viewed as an ongoing, evolutionary process, in which every
part is connected both with the simpler processes below and also with the
more complex components above. Thus we can see that there is, in fact,
another side to the codon template, the amino acid itself, which must also, by
its very nature, be tripart in structure. So we have one triplet codon and one
amino acid—a biochemical “hexagram.” Incidentally, triplet-codon templates
originate inside the DNA molecule, as copies of segments of its internal
structure; this means, of course, that DNA itself is also composed of sixty-
four biochemical hexagrams.

By this time, having recognized so many similarities between the IChing
and the genetic code, I was convinced that I was on to something of profound
importance, and my emotional state reflected this: I was highly charged. No
way, I thought, could the identical features of these two apparently disparate
systems be the product of mere coincidence, for they were not only identical
in structure; it seemed that they each had a common purpose, which was to
facilitate the process of evolution. Just think about this for a moment: the
genetic code is used to create a greater organic structure; the I Ching, the
Book of Changes, is supposedly used to create a greater, more enlightened
being. The principle is exactly the same.

With a greatly increased respect for it, I returned to the I Ching several
times—not to read it or to consult it, but to concentrate on its structure. I felt
that its real secrets must lie in the symbolism expressed in its format and that
the accompanying texts were simply an embellishment, merely repeating, in
longhand, what the hexagrams were already telling me.

Now these hexagrams, as I said earlier, just like the biochemical hexagrams
of the genetic code, each consist of two trigrams, two three-line symbols, one
above, one below. The trigrams, eight in number, were derived from the four
Hsiang, by successively placing over each of them the two original broken
and unbroken lines. When these same two lines are placed over the eight
trigrams, the result is sixteen figures of four lines. Repeat the process once
again and you get thirty-two figures of five lines, and a final similar
movement produces the sixty-four hexagrams.

Unlike the four- and five-line figures, the eight trigrams, known as the kwa,
are given particular prominence in the system. I mused over these for a long
time, juggling with their numbers. Eight threes. Three eights. Twenty-four. I
needed twenty-two. Close, but not close enough. Certainly the number 8 was
an integral part of the overall symmetry, being the square root of that magical
64; but why did the sum of the trigrams not conform to the twenty-two codon
signals of the genetic code? Why twenty-four? Why eight?

It was an exhilarating moment when the light finally dawned and the
answer, which came filtering through in the form of the tiniest of thoughts,
exploded silently inside my head: “Heptaparaparshinokh.”

This peculiar word is one of Gurdjieff s creations, and it is repeated many
times in Beelzebub’s Tales. It means, quite simply, the law of octaves, the
law of seven (sometimes expressed as the law of eight), 2 the law by which, he
had said, everything proceeds. Everything? Including the genetic code and the
I Ching?

So there it was; obviously the symmetry I had been looking at was
musically based. It had to be. Here was my chessboard: eight divisions across,
like an octave; eight divisions down, another octave; and sixty-four divisions
across the grid, an octave squared.

I then remembered what Gurdjieff had written in Beelzebub’s Tales about
the origins of musical theory. He said that the Greeks only rediscovered the
science, and that its true origins were far more remote in time. No dates are
given, but what he had to say about its originators turned out to be extremely
pertinent. Beelzebub informs us that, a very long time ago, there once lived
two brothers—princes—in ancient China. These men were direct descendants
of a high initiate who survived the cataclysm that destroyed ancient Atlantis,
and it was from his teachings, passed down through the generations, that they
learned of the law of octaves.

According to most commentators on ancient Chinese history, the creator of

the trigrams was a legendary sage called Fu-hsi, thought to have lived in the
third millennium BCE. King Wen of the Chou dynasty and his son, Tan, the
Duke of Chou, added the texts much later, around 1140 BCE. Princes, kings,
dukes ... it all sounded very familiar.

In the same section of Beelzebub’s Tales there is a detailed account of how
these ancient men of genius verified for themselves the law of octaves (aided
by experiments with light, prisms, and other, strange paraphernalia), and how,
subsequently, this knowledge became lost. As I recalled how the I Ching was
being so casually used simply as a pocket fortune-teller, I could see how true
this was. These people never acknowledged the “music” inherent in the
system. They “played” it without even knowing.

But now I felt that I had found it again, the secret of life, no less, the music
of life, the music in you and in me, in the I Ching and the genetic code—and
even, if Gurdjieff’s claims hold true, in the cosmos itself.

And the number 22? It fits perfectly, as can be seen from the Pythagorean
version of this ancient science. This number was one of the key numbers of
their system, principally because of its musical aspect. It represented, in fact,
three octaves of vibrations, or notes, three sets of eight—twenty-four
components.

If you look at a twenty-two note scale in diagrammatic form, you will see
that the first octave is made up of the eight familiar fundamental notes: Do,
re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, Do. The eighth note, Do, however, is also simultaneously
the first note of the second octave. So the two octaves overlap. Similarly, the
eighth note of the second octave—again Do—is also the first note of the third;
so these again overlap. In this way we see that the twenty-two divisions
actually represent what is, in reality, a manifestation of twenty-four
interrelated components—three individual octaves, or 8-8-8:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

I.I.I.I

DRMFSLT DRMFSLT DRMFSLTD

8 8 8

Now see what happens when we apply to the phenomenon described above
the first law of nature—the law of three forces—which tells us that each of
the individual octaves are themselves tripart in structure, composed inwardly
of three octaves each. This produces nine subordinate octaves:

Do Do Do Do

I 1 I 2 I 3 I 4 I 5 I 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |

Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do

8 8 8

Nine octaves, of course—from the first base note, Do, to the last— contain

precisely sixty-four fundamental notes.

INTERIM

The story I have just related is only the beginning of the next, which even
now is still unfolding. From that time onward, the summer of 1984, I spent
several years exploring the mazelike annals of history. I automatically
assumed that, if the Chinese and the Greeks were “tuned in” to this ancient
science referred to so frequently by Gurdjieff, then it was probable that so
were some of the other traditions and civilizations he mentioned. As it turned
out, the evidence was overwhelming. Everywhere I looked I saw musical
symbols beaming back at me: every known major religion and esoteric
tradition in recorded history had embraced this science as a code of conduct, a
harmonious mode of being. Here, in fact, was the missing common factor I
had long felt existed, that magical ingredient that had given religious
movements the power to affect the minds and hearts of billions in such a
profound and extraordinary way. They were all unerringly based on the
principle of harmony, a harmony that is echoed in, literally, every single cell
of our bodies, in our DNA and in the genetic code. This is, therefore, a natural
harmony, one that must naturally appeal to the deepest and innermost
instincts of DNA’s ultimate creation: Homo sapiens sapiens.

Remember, DNA has been successfully using this method of evolution for
billions of years. And now look what it is capable of. What began in the
primeval soup with a single-celled organism has culminated in the creation of
the conscious human being. That’s quite a leap, even if it did span four
thousand million years.

And then, somewhere along the line—very recently by evolutionary
standards—a group of extremely gifted individuals somehow came to realize
that the best way forward was to get right back down to basics, to a musical
mode of being that was in harmony with the natural evolutionary processes of
nature. This, surely, is Science with a capital “s”; it is the science, and in one
way or another, it touches all others. And, as we shall see, in terms of the
cumulative effect it has had upon the human race, and of the numbers of
people who, over several thousand years, have been drawn to study its
principles, it genuinely has no peer.

Now, these ancient men of genius, the first practitioners of the noble art of
right living, subsequently disseminated their superior knowledge far and
wide, across the entire globe, across millennia of time. The results of my
researches into this extraordinary cultural phenomenon were finally published
in 1994 in my first book, The Infinite Harmony.

The book begins with Old Kingdom Egypt, where the symbol of the octave
first appeared in the form of their pantheon of eight gods, four male (yang)

and four female (yin), said to have materialized on the fabled Island of Flame,
the primary source of light. There were, in fact, three coexistent creation
myths in Old Kingdom Egypt, and in all of them the octave format is
paramount. Furthermore, as with virtually every major religion, Egyptian
theology embraced a trinity of three major deities: Osiris, Isis, and Horus—an
expression of the law of three, and the triple octave, composed of twenty-two
notes. In fact, the mathematical convention pi (p), expressed numerically as
22/7, is first and foremost a symbol of the triple octave, an encoded
description of the law of octaves and the law of three forces. Orthodox
historians will tell you that this formula wasn’t known in Old Kingdom
Egypt, but this, as I have shown elsewhere, is an entirely false assumption.
Indeed, the pi formula was not only known by these people, it was applied in
a wholly practical way in respect of their day-to-day activities, and can be
identified quite clearly in important administrative documents of the Old
Kingdom/ 3 This is quite apart from the evidence of the Great Pyramid itself,
of course, the structural proportions of which accurately express the
mathematical value of “classical” pi.

Incidentally, the pi relationship has also been discovered in the dimensions
and proportions of the so-called Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan in Mexico
and, most recently, in the stmctures of Stonehenge in England and the “step
pyramid” of Silbury Hill in southern England—details that suggest that the
dissemination of the knowledge of this musical code was a genuine
worldwide movement. Later on we can look at these relationships in more
detail.

Subsequent sections of The Infinite Harmony are devoted to tracing the
ongoing development of this musical influence, which flows like a river of
pure thought through all the major belief systems in history, including
Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Confucianism,
Christianity, Islam, and the alchemical schools of the Middle Ages. But then,
as if this extraordinarily potent stream of ideas flowing unhindered through
earlier times were not a remarkable enough phenomenon, later in this book
we shall note how the main tenets of this ancient teaching are now finding
conceptual niches within the framework of the most advanced, systematic
disciplines of our own age. We see this not only in the science of genetics, as
just discussed, but also, as will become apparent, in particle physics and even
astrophysics and cosmology.

The final chapter of my first book takes a detailed look at the musical
structures of the biomolecular world, the realm of DNA and the genetic code,
of amino acids and protein macromolecules.

Now this musical symmetry is real, it exists for all to see, and I don’t
believe I have contrived it in any way. I have merely looked at the facts as
presented to me by experts in their respective fields, and then strung them

together into what I see as a clearly recognizable musical pattern. Music is
life; life is music: this is what I have learned from the facts. But of course the
most important, and perhaps controversial, fact of all those arising from my
research is that the musical symmetry dictating the evolution of the human
gene pool was not only identified by ancient peoples, it was actively
employed in their daily lives as a complete way of being, a “religion.”

As the first recorded version of this archaic science first appeared in the
Nile delta about five thousand years ago, I have called this musical symmetry
the Hermetic Code, after Hermes Trismegistus, the Greek name for Thoth, the
ancient Egyptian god of wisdom. This musical symmetry, as I have said, is
precisely what the formula pi was designed to express; that is, the law of
seven and the law of three—the triple octave, composed of twenty-two notes.
And remember, the law of three tells us that each of the individual octaves so
expressed is also tripart in structure: it is composed of three “inner” octaves,
making nine octaves in total—exactly sixty-four fundamental notes, the
square of the constant number, 8. This is the Hermetic Code, a universal
formula that, as we shall find out, encompasses within it practically
everything.

Having thus outlined my preliminary ideas, it is now time for us to embark
on a greater journey of discovery—to new territories that I myself have yet to
explore fully. Therefore much of the discussion that follows is to a large
extent speculative in nature. We shall be dealing with “facts,” of course, many
of them astonishing—unbelievable even—but empirical data, however
pertinent, can take us only so far. If we wish to go to realms existing beyond
the bounds of “logical” thought—which is where this narrative is intended to
take the reader— then we may have to temper our “knowledgeable”
worldview with liberal measures of two of the most elusive of human
faculties: instinct and intuition.

Instinct, as most people understand it, is a gut feeling, something in one’s
bones. I am sure that we have all experienced this impulse in one way or
another. Instinct may well be the primary cause of the emergence, over the
past five millennia, of the inordinately powerful religious movements referred
to earlier. These are long-held traditions, essentially rhythmic in form and
method, and they are steadfastly adhered to by billions of ordinary people
even now. These religions were founded, as I have explained, on the
principles of musical symmetry, a symmetry that is so clearly evident in our
DNA—literally in our bones. This could mean that the inclination to pray, for
example, on every seventh day may, to a large extent, be the product of
instinct. The “holy” Sabbath is the seventh day/note in an octave of time; the
eighth “note”—Sunday in Christianity—is also the first day/note in the next
“octave,” the next week. Clearly this essentially “religious” division of time is
no arbitrary invention. It is musically based. It has “rhythm,” it has “soul”; it

is a perfect example of real “live music,” of the Hermetic Code in action.

Now intuition, on the other hand, is generally believed to operate from
what we call our subconscious minds—a seemingly inexplicable, faster-than-
light process of instantaneous recognition, flashing on and off in sparse,
random bursts, conveniently providing us with sensible answers to
“impossible” questions—and very often when we least expect them. If this
has never happened to you, the idea might seem too vague or fanciful to be
taken seriously. To dispel any doubt, consult the recognized experts, by which
I mean trained and disciplined thinkers in virtually all fields of scientific
investigation, past and present. I think you would be hard-pressed to find
more than a handful of these individuals working today who would deny the
existence of the intuitive process in the functioning of the questing human
mind. Indeed, as we shall see later, modern scientific enquiry thrives on it.

To put all this simply, I am asking readers to open their minds and try to
put aside all preconceptions about, well, almost everything. I realize, of
course, that this is a tall order in these troubled and confused times, but the
expansive, sometimes dizzying journey we are about to make requires that we
be, as it were, “fleet of foot,” relatively free from dogma and conceptually
ready for anything. Having said all that, there is one crucial fact that we need
bear in mind: that the Hermetic Code, the blueprint of all creation, has been
known and understood as such since the dawn of our civilization.

As will become clear, the originators of this code discovered a spectacular
sphere of existence, its expanse far beyond the confines of today’s
imagination. It stretches backward and forward in time, to infinity: through
historical time (as far as it goes), through geological time, to the first stirrings
of life on earth—and even further still, through cosmological time, to the
origin of the universe itself, the big bang. This remarkable worldview also
encompasses all kinds of space: the inner space of the molecule, the atom and
the subatomic particle, the space you and I perceive as “real” space, and the
greater scales of space above us—the space of the planet, the solar system, the
galaxy, the galactic supercluster. In truth, there is not a single phenomenon
that is excluded from this all-encompassing cosmic plan, not even life, death,
and the ultimate fate of our expanding universe.

Obviously, therefore, at certain stages in this investigation we shall have to
look at some of the weird and wonderful notions of modern science—in
particular, some of the key advances made in particle physics, astrophysics,
genetics, and evolutionary theory. As a nonscientist, I trust that my
interpretations of these complex, sometimes perplexing, ideas, will be clear
enough for most readers to follow. In any event, they are necessary
excursions, as a basic understanding of recent scientific thought will enable us
to compare it with some of the theories of ancient times. There are a number
of surprises in store, for today’s science appears in many ways to be simply

reiterating what has gone before. This is not, of course, what scientists
themselves want to hear, and, as a blatant trespasser, I would not expect them
to give these ideas a warm reception.

So, where do we begin such an apparently impossible journey across an
infinity of time frames and even dimensions? It is probably best to start with
our feet firmly on the ground—on bedrock—in the land and time of Old
Kingdom Egypt. The reason is clear: because the pi convention first emerged
here, both in the architecture and in written form.

The Sacred Constant

The “Jewel in the Crown”

A lthough all ancient civilizations were special in their own way, Egypt
was in a class entirely of its own. To begin with, it was the first truly
unified nation in history. It was also the longest-lived, spanning three
thousand years from unification to final dissolution. Its architecture is truly
exceptional: in magnitude, sophistication and precision, nowhere since has it
been surpassed or even equaled. Most importantly, it was in Egypt, at the very
beginning of the era of the historical pharaohs, that the Hermetic Code first
came to light. This is demonstrated not only through the pi relationship,
which appears to have been incorporated both in the architecture and in the
administrative procedures of this culture, but also in its protracted and
detailed mythology. The octave format inherent in the natural processes of
creation was first expressed in stories surrounding the miraculous appearance
of the eight principal gods of the Egyptian pantheon.

It was once pointed out to me that one of the earliest and most influential of
the Egyptian creation myths portrayed a pantheon not of eight but of nine
gods, known in the Old Kingdom as the Great Ennead. Clearly this rather
awkward detail was disconcertingly inconsistent with “my” musical theory.
The obvious anomaly puzzled me at first, but on closer examination of the
myth in question, I came to realize that there was, in fact, no inconsistency
whatever. More than that, I found that this imagery of a mythical group of
nine not only embodied within it the symbol of the octave, the primary
ingredient of the Hermetic Code, but also an extremely subtle connection with
another key component of this universal formula.

The principal god of the Great Ennead, Atum, was said to have fertilized
himself to produce eight offspring. So we are already back on safe ground.
Eight is good. So is seven, of course, as expressed in the formula pi, the
symbol of the triple octave, the “trinity.” In general, the numbers 7 and 8, as
they appear in myth and religious tradition, each refer to the same concept,
namely, the octave and the musical symmetry inherent in ah processes in
nature. And the number 9? This also has definite musical connotations. If we
substitute the “gods” of the Great Ennead with the word octaves, the result is

a musical composition of nine octaves, comprising sixty-four fundamental
notes. The Great Ennead, therefore, is simply a mythical expression of the
formula pi, the triple octave, which is quite naturally subdivisible into nine
inner octaves, sixty-four notes.

Sixty-four is, of course, the square of eight. And the number 8, as I have
said, is a constant number, one that consistently recurs in nature, in the
genetic code, in the spectrum composing white light, and in the natural
harmonies of the major musical scale. The Egyptians evidently recognized
this musical symmetry, which is why they held the number 8 to be sacred—
hence its association with the gods. Eight was thus regarded as a “sacred
constant,” a yardstick by which everything could be measured or compared.
Sixty-four, being the square of this number, was therefore of supreme
significance to the guardians of the Egyptian mysteries, representing the
ultimate goal of the individual—the squaring of one’s possibilities, the
acquisition of godlike attributes. In “bioharmonic” terms we might call this
the attainment within oneself of an optimum degree of physical and
psychological “resonance,” an individual condition of absolute metaphysical
harmony. This is simply a higher state of consciousness, a level of perception
that empowers the individual to strike metaphysical or conceptual “notes” up
in a greater “scale” above, which we call, for want of a better word, heaven.

ORIGINS

I have often speculated on the true age of this ancient wisdom. As far as my
own research has revealed, it seems initially to have appeared in its full-blown
form in Egypt in the first half of the third millennium BCE. This by no means
proves, however, that the concept of the sacred constant actually originated in
Old Kingdom Egypt.

Even when starting to write The Infinite Harmony, I suspected that the
canon of wisdom to which I had tuned in could be much older than the
existing records show. Orthodox historians are reluctant to push back the
beginning of Egyptian civilization much further than the establishment of
what is known as the Archaic Period, which began around 3100 BCE, when
Upper and Lower Egypt were first unified under the rule of King Narmer and
his successor, Hor-aha, or Menes. However, the Egyptian chronicler
Manetho, a priest of the city of Heliopolis from the third century BCE,
recorded a long, continuous succession of divine and semidivine rulers of
prehistoric Egypt stretching back 24,925 years beyond the beginning of the
Archaic Period. An earlier, fragmented document known as the Royal Canon
of Turin and dated to around 1300 BCE contains a king list that begins with
an unspecified period when Egypt was ruled by a succession of ten gods, the
Netjeru, followed by a second period of 13,420 years of divine rulers known

as the “Followers of Horns.” 2 Obviously these reigns are given no credence
by academics: the timescales involved are simply too great to fit into any
accepted historical format. But in my view these records, though they might
have become distorted with the passage of time, are highly significant,
primarily because they reflect the views and traditions of the Egyptians
themselves. Clearly these people firmly believed that their culture had its
origins in a past reaching back many thousands of years before the Archaic
Period.

So which view is correct? Is it that of today’s archaeologists and historians,
who rely principally on the evidence of datable artifacts to ascertain the age of
a culture? Or is it the account that has come down to us from the horse’s
mouth, so to speak, from the Egyptian priesthood of Manetho’s day and from
the compilers of the Royal Canon of Turin?

It seems to me very unlikely that a culture as advanced and sophisticated as
Egypt’s should have mushroomed “overnight” from a primitive intellectual
environment. As we have noted, the Old Kingdom priests and astronomers
were already in possession of a fully developed, extraordinarily imaginative
belief system—a true science, no less—the main tenets of which they
described symbolically and with superlative clarity in the form of the
Hermetic Code. What is, perhaps, even more incredible is the obvious intent
behind this essentially harmonious mode of spiritual evolution, which was to
forge for mankind a direct means of access to the stars, to the mythical realm
of the gods that came to be known as heaven. The important point to note
here is that heaven— that place I vainly looked for as a boy—is, in fact, a
scientific concept employed by ancient metaphysicians to describe a higher
dimension of existence. We can define this netherworld in musical terms as a
greater “scale” of being. This unique mode of evolution is based, as I have
said, on systematic scientific principles—those of harmonics—but later we
shall see that this theory of “transcendental evolution” is also scientific in
other significant ways—specifically in relation to some of the benchmark
discoveries of modern physics and genetics. But even if we presently consider
only the musical aspect of this theory, this is a surprisingly sophisticated
concept to have originated with the relatively close descendants of simple
hunter-gatherers.

In addition to this highly evolved “religion” of the Fourth Dynasty
Egyptians, the stonemasons and architects of that unique era—particularly the
builders of the Pyramids of Giza and Dashur—displayed incomparable
expertise in precision and enormity of scale.

So history here belies logic: the finest, the most sophisticated, appeared
very early on, and the standard of pyramid building degenerated as time went
by. This is not, of course, what we observe in the ongoing development of our
own culture, particularly in technology and the sciences, which are generally

considered as having progressively evolved— primarily out of the supposedly
superstitious ideas of medieval alchemy.

Of course, if the Egyptians themselves are to be believed, quite the
opposite appears to have happened. According to them, their culture was not
the product of a gradual development, but began in full bloom, with a first,
golden era, a distant age when the “gods” suddenly appeared (presumably
from somewhere), bringing with them all the trappings of civilized existence.
This period in their history the Egyptians called Zep Tepi, the “First Time.”

From this golden age onward, there apparently proceeded a gradual process
of involution, through a long period of high civilization under the rule of
lesser demigods—the “Followers of Horns” earlier mentioned— ultimately
ending with the “normal” era of the historical pharaohs. I use the term normal
guardedly here, because the Great Pyramid was constructed at this time, and it
is difficult to imagine that those responsible for the creation of this amazing
structure were just ordinary souls.

On the face of things, it seems as if this ancient Egyptian scenario of a
distant, perfect beginning is, by conventional standards, fantastic, totally at
odds with the established academic view of events. Egyptologists tell us that
the datable, factual evidence, painstakingly collated by scholars over the last
couple of hundred years, proves conclusively that a mere one thousand years
before Egypt’s Dynastic Period, the tribes in the Nile region were living in
simple, mud-brick dwellings and thought about little other than survival.

And then, one thousand years later—around 2550 BCE—historians present
us with the fully developed civilization we know as Old Kingdom Egypt, the
most advanced of the ancient world, whose architects built like giants, and
whose influence upon the human race is felt even to this day. This crucial
development, from the hunter-gatherer tending a few goats in the middle of
the fourth millennium BCE, to the Egyptian priest-astronomer of the Old
Kingdom, with their gigantic pyramid markers and lofty thoughts of the
firmament, is perhaps the most dramatic leap forward ever encountered in
human history.

This sudden appearance of the high civilization exemplified by the
architecture and the extant texts of Old Kingdom Egypt has prompted many
alternative investigators to challenge seriously the orthodox view of the
sources of Egyptian culture, positing a direct legacy from an earlier, greatly
more advanced race of people.

The evidence in support of this revolutionary proposition has in recent
years come to us from all quarters, and doubtless most readers hooked on the
mysteries will already be familiar with most of it. Modern writers, such as
Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval, Colin Wilson, Andrew Collins, and
many more have done much to increase public interest in “alternative”
explanations of the origin of civilization. Many of the ideas discussed by

these authors are of necessity highly contentious and so are continually under
attack from academics. However, even if we accept that some of these
theories are, to coin an apt phrase, not “hermetically sealed”—not entirely
watertight—there is now a whole swath of significant new data that simply
does not fit in with the orthodox picture of events. In short, it is now time for
us to rewrite the standard, but apparently garbled, story of the development of
civilization, for the period that historians have consistently referred to as
“prehistory,” circa 10,500-4000 BCE, is that no more.

Most of the new evidence to support this view of a highly advanced, proto-
Egyptian culture has been variously dealt with by dozens of alternative
theorists, so we need not dwell too long on the details. A quick review of the
main features will suffice to impress upon the reader how remarkably
advanced these denizens of “prehistory” really were. No doubt academic
arguments over the true age of civilization will rage for years to come, but
this is not my primary concern. The intention of this book is to proffer an
alternative perspective that is not so much focused on the antiquity of our
culture, but more on the nature and future ramifications of the unique belief
system bequeathed to us by our most distant ancestors. But first let us
examine certain key, well-established facts and see for ourselves exactly what
these mysterious people were capable of.

“IMPOSSIBLE” MAPS

In 1966, the late Charles H. Hapgood, Professor of the History of Science at
Keene College, New Hampshire, published a seminal work called Maps of
the Ancient Sea Kings. The title refers to certain medieval maritime maps
currently filed away in the American Library of Congress, which depict the
exact contours of the land mass buried deep beneath the mile-thick ice packs
of Antarctica. Possibly the best known of these is the now famous Piri Re’is
map of 1513, owned by a Turkish pirate executed in 1554. This shows the
southern Atlantic Ocean, a part of the coast of Africa to the right, the coast of
South America to the left, and, farther to the south, Antarctica, with the bays
of Queen Maud Land shown in astonishingly clear relief. Note that these bays
were not officially “discovered” until surveys using sonar soundings were
conducted by a joint team of British, Swedish, and Norwegian scientists in
1949. There are, in fact, many more of these maps—called portolans—some
of which show that Antarctica actually consists of two separate land masses, a
fact not known to modern geographers until further surveys were conducted
in 1958.

Hapgood’s explanation for the existence of these portolans remains
controversial even today. He surmised that they were probably copies of
earlier maps, which in turn might have been copies of even older ones— and

so on, effectively reaching back to a time when Antarctica was relatively free
of ice. Controversial this proposition may be, but Hapgood’s observations
were based on solid factual evidence that has never been refuted or otherwise
explained by the academic establishment.

The obvious implication of all this is that there may have been highly
proficient mariners alive then—when Antarctica was a more temperate land—
with the wherewithal to chart it. But of course mapmaking of the accuracy
found in many portolans is a highly exacting science and implies a detailed
knowledge of trigonometry and geometry—hardly the skills we would
normally ascribe to “primitive” peoples.

Geologists and climatologists tell us that the latest possible date that
Antarctica could have been a temperate region—and therefore
topographically surveyed by ancient seafarers—was around 4000 BCE. If we
assume, then, that this prehistoric civilization of accomplished mapmakers
and mathematicians progressively evolved, as we have, through long periods
of trial and error and spasmodic bouts of inspirational genius, then the
conservative date of 4000 BCE would merely mark a turning point in the
development of a culture that had already reached a marked stage of maturity.
How long it took to attain such a level of sophistication is anybody’s guess,
but if historians are ever to make sense of the evidence provided by portolans,
this is certainly a question that needs to be addressed. Where these ancient
seafarers went after Antarctica finally became covered with ice is also crying
out for an answer. After all, they must have gone somewhere, because they
had boats and were obviously inclined to use them. It is perhaps significant
that the time frame under discussion comfortably encompasses the beginning
of the Archaic Period of ancient Egypt. And the early Egyptians, in fact, also
had boats. Khufu’s father, Snefru, had a fleet of them, and they were identical
in design to reed boats still being built today by the South American Indians
living on the shores of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. Local Indians informed
Graham Hancock that the design had been given to them by the legendary
Viracocha, the white god from the sea who, like Osiris in Egypt, brought with
him civilization and a new way of being.

In 1954 a rectangular pit was discovered on the south side of the Great
Pyramid that contained a dismantled boat made of cedar. It took fourteen
years to reassemble this craft, which measures 43 meters from prow to stern.

According to the sailor and explorer Thor Heyerdahl, the streamlined hull
of this boat could never have withstood the conditions of the high seas. It was
built, in his opinion, as a symbolic craft for the use of the pharaoh in his
afterlife. This acknowledged expert in the field of ancient shipbuilding
believes that the boat was essentially a riverboat. Curiously, however, he also
asserts that its high-prowed design was a highly sophisticated and technically
accurate model, not of a riverboat, but of an ocean-going vessel. Heyerdahl is

suggesting that Khufu’s ceremonial boat could have been derived from the
plans of very experienced shipbuilders, people with a long tradition of sailing
on the open seas. 3

It is tempting to think that this is the answer, that the Egyptian and,
perhaps, the early American civilizations, whose descendants are still making
boats of an identical design today, might have been spawned by descendants
of this long-forgotten race of mariners of ancient Antarctica—say, around the
middle of the fourth millennium BCE.

The emerging historical picture, however, is not quite that simple.

THE GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE

Let us now look briefly at the latest controversy surrounding the dating of the
Great Sphinx and its two neighboring constructions on the Giza plateau, the
extraordinary buildings known today as the Sphinx Temple and the Valley
Temple.

In 1979, the American writer John Anthony West published a book,
Serpent in the Sky, in which he discusses the ideas of the maverick Alsatian
Egyptologist, Rene Schwaller de Lubicz. Schwaller, who spent almost fifteen
years between the wars investigating numerous archaeological sites in Egypt,
noted marked differences between the erosion of the Sphinx enclosure and
that of the nearby tombs and pyramids on the Giza plateau. The weathering
pattern on the exterior surfaces of the tombs and pyramids is angular and
irregular, with rock layers higher up in the masonry showing less weathering
than the layers below. This angular erosion is attributed to the effects of wind¬
blown sands blasting away the softer layers of limestone and leaving exposed
the harder levels. The weathering of the Sphinx and on the outer walls of the
two neighboring temples, however, is rounded, undulating, sloping slightly
outward toward the ground, with deep, intermittent, vertical fissures or
gullies. Schwaller’s explanation for this is that the erosion of the Sphinx and
its surrounding structures has been caused not by sandblasts, but by water.
This clearly suggests that they must have originated in a different and quite
distinct era—when water other than that of the River Nile abounded.

West’s book subsequently achieved only a moderate success. One can
perhaps understand why: it certainly had no chance of being officially
endorsed, and the present “Egyptian renaissance” had not yet begun to flower.
Undeterred, West, convinced that the weathering pattern of the Sphinx
provided a vital clue to our understanding of “prehistory,” has spent the last
twenty years steadily chipping away at another crumbling edifice—the
orthodox opposition to Schwaller’s theory. The turning point in this modern
David and Goliath story came when West invited an expert to examine the
Sphinx erosion and try to ascertain what had caused it. Significantly, this

expert was not an Egyptologist, but a scientist, a leading authority on the
structure and nature of rocks.

This was the eminent Boston geologist Dr. Robert Schoch, whose studied
opinion, based on exhaustive investigations at the site, is that the erosion is
indeed the result of water—rainwater, to be precise. Schoch presented his
findings at the annual convention of the Geological Society of America in
1992, and his evidence and conclusions were received with marked approval.
The assumption is, therefore, that the weathering of the Sphinx enclosure has
most likely been produced by precipitation. As with the case of the portolans
mentioned previously, orthodox historians may have another serious question
to address here, because it has now been fairly well established that Egypt
ceased to be a temperate zone nine thousand years ago—around 7000 BCE—
over three and a half thousand years before the beginning of the Dynastic
Period. Significantly, this ties in rather well with Schoch’s estimate for the
age of the Sphinx, which he puts conservatively at nine thousand years. If he
is off by only a thousand years or so, and the Sphinx was indeed drenched by
rain in a temperate climate for a thousand years or more, this could arguably
account for the erosion observed by geologists.

Historians and archaeologists of the old school, however, have reacted
negatively to this radical view, insisting that the Sphinx is contemporary with
the Dynastic Period. They claim that it was commissioned by, and is an image
of, the pharaoh Khafre (Greek, Chephren), builder of the second of the three
Pyramids at Giza. An undamaged statue of Khafre was found in the Valley
Temple, and the American archaeologist Mark Lehner, leading the academic
opposition to West’s and Schoch’s theories, declared that the similarities
between it and the face of the Sphinx proved conclusively that the Sphinx was
an image of Khafre. West totally disagreed; in fact, he could see no similarity
whatsoever. And neither could leading New York forensic artist Detective
Frank Domingo when, at West’s behest, he went to Egypt to check out the
validity of Lehner’s claims. After a close, professional examination of all the
available evidence, Domingo’s verdict was emphatic: the Great Sphinx is
definitely not an image of the Fourth Dynasty pharaoh Khafre. Indeed, if the
geologists have it right, how could it possibly be?

If the orthodox view of an evolving culture is correct, we might reasonably
assume that the people responsible for such marvelous feats of construction
would have had a good deal of practice before they mastered their formidable
skills. Therefore if we are considering here a civilization dating back to a time
when the Sahara was green, there may be a great deal more evidence of it yet
to uncover—a hidden empire under the sand.

MEGALITHIC LEGO

There is also another anomaly intrinsic to the Sphinx enclosure, which again
throws the orthodox view into question: the incredible size of the stone blocks
used in its construction. Weighing at least 200 tons apiece, with some of them
tipping the scale at a staggering 450 tons, these enormous blocks—hundreds
of them—have been superimposed with a degree of precision that makes the
mind boggle. The point is that these massive, austere, and predominantly
rectangular constructions—the so-called Valley Temple of Khafre and the
Sphinx Temple—are entirely uncharacteristic of the architecture of the Old
Kingdom Pyramids and tombs—the latter incorporating elaborate carvings,
inscriptions, cylindrical fluted columns, and numerous other architectural
features typical of that era. One possible reason for this anomaly, as a number
of investigators have of course already suggested, is that the Sphinx enclosure
and the nearby pyramids and tombs of Giza originated in two quite distinct
and widely separated time frames.

Take the Great Pyramid, for example, possibly the finest and most
complete example of stonemasonry in existence, constructed mainly out of
standard blocks of limestone averaging around two to three tons in weight.
Even the most massive of its granite blocks, incorporated in what is now
commonly known as the King’s Chamber, would probably weigh in at “only”
around seventy tons.

Now consider this: the average weight of the carved stones used in the
building of the Sphinx and Valley Temples at Giza is two hundred tons. Of
course, these blocks have been carved from much softer limestone bedrock
but, by Old Kingdom standards, they are truly cyclopean. What is more, their
joints are so fine that it is impossible to slide a razor-thin blade between them.
Even by modern standards, they are nigh on perfect.

In Abydos, in Upper, or Southern, Egypt, there is another ancient structure,
a temple known as the Osireion, which has the same stark, megalithic form of
architecture as the buildings of the Sphinx enclosure. Professor Edouard
Naville, sponsored by the Egypt Exploration Fund, excavated much of the site
between 1912 and 1914, and when he observed the unique style of
architecture of the structure, he straightaway compared it with the Valley
Temple at Giza. Both were made with gigantic blocks without any ornament
but, as Naville noted, the Osireion, though of a similar style, was made with
even larger blocks, a fact that, rather curiously, prompted him to suggest that
it was “of a still more archaic character.” 4 Is it not strange that he should have
associated antiquity with size in this way? He was saying, in effect, that the
larger the blocks—and, consequently, the more advanced the engineering
techniques required to carve, transport, and position them—the greater the
antiquity of the building. Naville suggested, in fact, that the Osireion might be
the most ancient building in Egypt. This is, of course, a decidedly unorthodox
view, but one that accords with that of the Egyptians themselves, with their

belief that their civilization began with a godlike race of beings who
possessed supernatural powers, in other words extraordinary skills.

Later excavations by Henry Frankfurt at the site in Abydos, between 1925
and 1930, unearthed a cartouche of the Nineteenth Dynasty pharaoh Seti I
carved in granite above the entrance into the main hall of the temple. Not
surprisingly, this and other minor finds linking Seti with the site prompted the
archaeological community to disregard Naville’s earlier conclusions, opting
for the much more palatable idea that the building dated back to an
established period in known history. There is now, however, a growing
number of investigators in the field who are inclining more and more toward
Naville’s view. The writer Andrew Collins, in his book Gods of Eden, has
suggested that Seti, having recognized the unquestionable sanctity of this
important edifice, may have constructed his own temple at Abydos “to
comply with the existing orientation and ground-plan of the Osireion, which
was already of immense antiquity even in his own age.” 5 This makes perfect
sense. And, after all, why should Seti, of all of the pharaohs to have ruled in
any dynasty since the Fourth (the supposed era of construction of the Valley
Temple), be the only one to have built with blocks of such size?

In respect of megalithic architecture, it is worth noting here that the Valley
Temple and the Osireion, while unique in Egypt, do, in fact, have
counterparts elsewhere in important archaeological sites worldwide, notably
in the Lebanon, Bolivia, Pem, and Mexico. In his book Fingerprints of the
Gods (1995), Graham Hancock describes the aweinspiring remains of
buildings all over the ancient world that have been constructed from massive
stone blocks weighing several hundred tons apiece—again, as with the blocks
incorporated in the Sphinx Temple and the Osireion, featuring joints of near¬
perfect precision.

Furthermore, in Mexico, as in Egypt, the pyramid structure is a central
feature. Most significantly, in the case of the Pyramid of the Sun in
Teotihuacan in Mexico, we even find the crucial pi relationship incorporated
within its dimensions. This and other “hermetic” buildings will be revisited in
due course.

THE ASTRO-ARCHAEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

The fact that the Sphinx has the body of a lion has prompted certain
investigative authors to suggest that it was very likely carved in the Age of
Leo, some time between 11,380 and 9220 BCE.

To understand the basis of this new argument, we first have to consider the
phenomenon of precession, which is the apparent backward motion of the
twelve constellations of the zodiac in relation to the horizon. Precession
occurs because the earth is spinning like a giant top that is losing momentum

and has begun to turn and wobble very slowly—almost imperceptibly so—in
the direction opposite to its spin. This alternative motion gives observers on
earth the illusory impression that the “fixed” stars of the firmament are
revolving slowly around us like a giant stellar wheel. The rate of precession is
measured by observing the gradually changing zodiacal backdrop against
which the sun rises on the spring equinox. Proceeding at the rate of one
degree every seventy-two years, this means that each of the twelve ages of the
zodiac occupies 30 degrees of this great astronomical circle, taking 2,160
years to complete. A whole precessional cycle therefore lasts 25,920 years.

In our present astrological age, the equinoctial rising of the sun still occurs
in Pisces, the symbol of Christianity. As Andrew Collins points out in Gods
of Eden, just before this age the equinoctial sunrise occurred against the
backdrop of Aries, the sign of the ram, which is historically associated with
the reign of the Hebrew Scriptures patriarch, Abraham, and also with the ram
cult of Amun in ancient Egypt, both of which appeared shortly after this age
began, around 2200 BCE. The latter stages of the age before this, the Age of
Taurus, the time of the bull cult of the Mediterranean and the Apis cult of
Egypt, is the epoch in which Egyptologists say the leonine Sphinx was
carved. To Collins, and indeed to many other current investigators, placing
the lion squarely in the bull’s domain makes no sense at all. The “alternative”
view, of course, offers a much more logical explanation: the Sphinx has the
body of a lion because it was carved and orientated in the Age of Leo.

The new evidence in favor of this hypothesis is concerned primarily with
certain stellar alignments that appear to have been intentionally built into the
Giza necropolis. As we might expect, the authors engaged in this new field of
enquiry are consistently under attack from traditional Egyptologists,
recognized experts in their own field, of course, but scholars who generally
know little or nothing about astronomy. Consequently the Leo hypothesis is
seen as simply another crank theory being purveyed by ill-informed amateurs.

Possibly one of the best-known names in this new area of
“astroarchaeology” is the Belgian construction engineer Robert Bauval. His
first book, The Orion Mystery, co-authored with the writer and publisher
Adrian Gilbert, is based around his discovery of an evident alignment of the
Giza necropolis with certain key stars in the Egyptian sky, stars that,
significantly, were of very special interest to the priest-astronomers of the Old
Kingdom.

Bauval noted the curious misalignment and marked difference in size of the
much smaller third Pyramid of Menkaura (Mycerinus), and wondered why
this should be. He subsequently realized that this peculiar anomaly
corresponded accurately with a similar “misalignment” evident in the
positions of the three stars of Orion’s Belt, called by astronomers Zeta
Orionis, Epsilon, and Delta. The smallest of this triad—Delta—is slightly

offset from the line described by the first two. Significantly, it is also
noticeably dimmer, apparently smaller.

As Bauval already knew from his exhaustive examinations of many of the
so-called Pyramid Texts, the constellation of Orion was extremely important
in the mythology and religion of the ancient Egyptians. It was associated with
their principal god, the great civilizer, Osiris, Lord of Zep Tepi, the “First
Time,” the golden epoch when Thoth/Hermes is said to have imparted to
mankind the fruits of his infinite wisdom. Orion, therefore, is clearly a key to
the enigma of the Pyramids.

Bauval realized further that the Great Pyramid itself has certain internal
features that link it directly not only with Orion, the star of Osiris, but also to
another equally important star—Sirius—that associated with Osiris’s consort,
the goddess Isis. Sirius’s heliacal rising (i.e., the same time as the sun) was in
fact the basis of the Egyptian “sothic” calendar. The link between Orion,
Sirius, and the Great Pyramid is to be found in two of the four mysterious
shafts projecting from the so-called King’s and Queen’s Chambers. Using
computer-simulated star charts to reproduce the position of the stars above the
Nile Delta around 2500 BCE, the time when the Pyramids were built, Bauval
established that each of the shafts would then have targeted particular stars as
they culminated at the meridian, that is, as they reached their highest point
above the horizon. The crucial ones turned out to be the southern shafts. That
of the King’s Chamber, angled at 45 degrees 14 minutes, would have targeted
the star known to the Egyptians as A1 Nitak, Zeta Orionis, the lowest of the
three stars of Orion’s Belt. Similarly the southern shaft of the Queen’s
Chamber, angled at 39 degrees 30 minutes, would have aligned with the high
point of Sirius, or Alpha Canis Major, in the constellation of the Great Dog.

During the course of the precession of the equinoxes, Orion’s Belt moves
through the heavens in a specific and unchanging way. It rises upward for
almost thirteen thousand years, tilting slightly in a clockwise motion, and then
back again, drifting slowly down and turning anticlockwise as it returns to its
starting point. To Bauval, this starting point was highly significant, for his
computer star charts told him that the last time Orion was at its lowest point in
the sky was circa 10,450 BCE, in the Age of Leo.

Bauval further noted that at this point in the precessional cycle the three
stars of Orion’s Belt would not have been tilted sideways, and so would then
have perfectly reflected the position and orientation of the three Pyramids of
Giza. He surmised that the Giza site in fact acted like a giant star-clock
marking the epoch of the First Time, the golden age of Osiris/Orion.

In a later book, Keeper of Genesis (1997), jointly written by Bauval and
Graham Hancock, the astro-archaeological theory is explored further. They
suggest that the designers of the Giza complex saw the River Nile itself as a
reflection of the diffused band of light of the Milky Way—our own galaxy.

The leonine Sphinx faces due east. Had it been there, as Bauval and Hancock
imply, at dawn on the all-important spring equinox in the year 10,450 BCE—
the beginning of the present precessional cycle—the constellation of Leo
would have appeared above the horizon directly in front of it.
Understandably, they see this as compelling evidence that the Sphinx
enclosure—which the geologist Robert Schoch believes is much older than
the nearby tombs—was built to align with the constellation of the
precessional age in which it was carved and constructed. At that time, Orion’s
Belt itself would have been positioned in the southern sky, at right angles to
Leo, and at its lowest point of declination. What is intriguing is the idea that
the builders of Old Kingdom Egypt, working in the later Age of Taurus, may
have built and aligned their three mighty pyramids to reflect perfectly the
position of the three stars of Orion’s Belt as they would have appeared in the
skies in the Age of Leo. It’s as if the designers may have been focusing back
on this age for a specific purpose, possibly to mark it as an important era in
their history, when Orion was closest to home and when Leo appeared in the
sky exactly in line with the Sphinx’s present gaze. Orion has been rising in
the sky ever since, and will continue to do so until around the year 2550 CE,
thus marking the first half of the full precessional cycle, thirteen thousand
years after the Lirst Time.

Clearly the earth-stellar configuration being described here, although not
yet accepted by academics, has much merit. It is, after all, based on verifiable
facts, data that Egyptologists, if they are sincere, simply cannot afford to
ignore. The point is that these ancient, highly accomplished construction
engineers of Old Kingdom Egypt were also experienced astronomers, people
deeply concerned with the movement of the heavens, and they apparently
knew about precession. This obviously begs the question, How did they
obtain this knowledge? If we assume through a vigilant observation of the
heavens, then it must also be accepted that these observations must have
continued uninterrupted for a considerable period of time. It takes seventy-
two years—a good lifetime—for the zodiacal wheel to move just one degree
of arc. So let’s say that, somewhere and at some time in the remote past, one
rather shrewd individual happened to notice a very slight change in the
position of a particular favored star. Fortuitously, he or she then passes this
information on to a son or a daughter, or to a group of followers, who
subsequently continue to observe the same star. For how long would this
observation have to continue before it was realized by someone in the chain
that their favorite star had a high point and a low point in its movement
through the heavens? More importantly, how long would it be before
someone could work out the last time the given star was at its lowest point of
declination in a great astronomical cycle spanning almost twenty-six thousand
years?

So, how old is “civilization”?

In fact, evidence of knowledge of precession in ancient times comes from
many quarters, and is not exclusive to the Egyptians. It was mysteriously
encoded in the different mythologies of peoples from all over the world. This
was first noted by the scientific historian Giorgio de Santillana and the
anthropologist Hertha von Dechend, in their complex and challenging book
Hamlet’s Mill (1960).

Put simply, what de Santillana and von Dechend discovered was that
certain numbers—derivatives of the great precessional cycle of 25,920 years
—cropped up again and again in myths and legends from cultures all around
the world. As with the numbers associated with the laws of harmony and the
structure of the octave, they appear to be deeply rooted in mankind’s race-
memory. The numbers are all based on the 360-degree precessional wheel
(“Hamlet’s Mill”) and the numbers of years occupied by the twelve zodiacal
ages. As we noted, one degree occupies seventy-two years, which is one of
the key numbers in the series. Further, one “age,” one-twelfth part, or a 30-
degree segment of the wheel, occupies a period of 2,160 years—two more
key numbers. If we double these we get two more: 60 degrees and 4,320 years
—and so on.

The fact that these same numbers occur in so many diverse myths and
legends not only indicates that ancient peoples were aware of precession, but
also that the myths themselves very probably have a common origin. Such
beginnings, however, reach back to a time too remote for us to identify
precisely. Perhaps the myths originated with the legendary Egyptian
harbingers of wisdom, Osiris and his grand vizier, Thoth. Certainly
precessional numbers appear in many of the myths surrounding these “gods”
of the First Time. Then again, possibly this knowledge had its source with the
race of ancient mariners responsible for mapping Antarctica way back when
the continent was free of ice. As experienced navigators, these people would
presumably have developed an acute awareness of the gradually changing star
patterns of the night sky. Perhaps Osiris and his companions were actually
connected with, or were either descendants or ancestors of, this prehistoric
brotherhood of mapmaking mathematicians and geometers. Alternatively it
may be that the true origin of the knowledge of precession dates back to a
time more remote than anyone has hitherto imagined.

Certainly observation of the sun, moon, and stars is one of man’s oldest
pastimes. We see evidence of this in the alignments of many ancient sites, not
just in Egypt, but all over the world, in Western Europe’s ancient stone
circles, the citadels and plains of South America and in the temples and
pyramids of present-day Mexico and Guatemala. Furthermore, as Colin
Wilson and Rand Flem-Ath have noted in their book The Atlantis Blueprint,
it is evident that very many of these sites were not simply selected at random,

but were chosen to conform to an overall global pattern of longitudinal and
latitudinal coordinates. That is, from sacred centers in Egypt and the
Americas, to remote Pacific Islands, through ancient Greece and the Middle
East and Tibet, there has emerged a clear pattern of whole-number
coordinates linking many of them. Obviously these sites are not all
contemporary with one another, ranging in age, according to orthodox
chronology, from one to five thousand years. However, given that some of
these important centers of culture are extremely ancient, it is possible that the
original geophysical or metrological plan was mapped out in the very early
days, when civilization was supposedly in its infancy.

What I believe is unfolding here, in the light of all the recent research into
“prehistory,” is a picture of an ancient people who, whatever the precise age
they might have lived in, were almost totally preoccupied with the idea of
harmony and order. As we have noted, this way of seeing the world reached
its peak in the civilization of the ancient Egyptians, who were so evidently
concerned with the order and movement of the cosmos. They were also,
according to the metrologist Livio Stechini, highly skilled in the measurement
of the earth and were able to define the extent of their country in relationship
to the latitude and longitude of the planet. 7 (According to Charles Piazzi
Smyth, the noted nineteenth-century Astronomer Royal of Scotland, the Great
Pyramid stands at the exact center of the largest landmass on earth.)
Moreover, Stechini has calculated that the base perimeter of the Great
Pyramid—921.453 meters—is exactly equal to half a minute of latitude at the
equator, so the perimeter is equal to 1/43,200 of the circumference of the
earth. This fact has a twofold significance: first, it demonstrates how
remarkably knowledgeable these people were about their planet, and second,
given that 4,320 is a precessional number, they may have realized also that
there exists an intimate, symmetrical connection between the earth and the
zodiacal wheel.

But the rise of the Egyptian civilization of the Old Kingdom, as we have
noted, marked a time when people probably already knew about the
immensely long cycle of precession. They knew about longitude and latitude,
shipbuilding and navigating, and techniques of building with giant blocks of
hewn stone that even to the present day have not been adequately explained.
Most importantly, they were also familiar with pi and, of course, the Hermetic
Code, which we now know is a virtual blueprint of the genetic code, the code
of life itself.

So once again, if we allow a reasonable period for the natural accumulation
of all this sophisticated knowledge, we have a clear indication of an
extraordinarily advanced civilization existing in the period historians call
prehistory, say, between 10,000 and 4000 BCE, or possibly long before.

How long exactly?

As I said previously, it is not my intention here to try to prove that civilized
hominid culture is ten or even one hundred thousand years old. In trying to
ascertain where the Hermetic Code originated, however, we must delve very
deeply into our past: there is, in fact, datable archaeological evidence to
suggest that the most fundamental component of the Hermetic Code—the
sacred constant, or the unit of the octave—was “sacred” even in the time of
Neanderthal man seventy-five thousand years ago.

In his book Cities of Dreams (1989), a highly original study of Neanderthal
culture, the psychologist and philosopher Stan Gooch describes a remarkable
find at Drachenloch in the Swiss Alps, a known Neanderthal bear-hunter site:
inside a cave an altar was discovered. It consisted of a rectangular stone-built
chest capped with a great stone slab in which had been placed seven bear
skulls with their muzzles pointing toward the entrance of the cave. Six more
skulls were discovered set in niches in the cave wall behind the altar.

Gooch sees this as a clear indication that the numbers 7 and 13 (7 plus 6)
were sacred to the Neanderthal. He notes also that the constellation of the
Great Bear contains seven stars, a fact that prompts him to make this rather
bold and startling statement: “We can hardly doubt that Neanderthal had
already given it this name that almost unimaginable time ago. And so, in our
own times, it is still called the Great Bear by ourselves, by the ancient Greeks,
by the Romans, the Hindus, the Ainu, the North American Indians, tribes in
Africa, and many others besides.” 8

If Gooch is correct in assuming that this 75,000-year-old altar was
intentionally associated with a particular constellation in the sky—that of the
Great Bear—then we already have here the beginnings of the science of
astronomy. Scholars may argue that there is no real proof that these seven
bear skulls, carefully placed in this ceremonial stone chest at a time when the
last great ice age was literally raging full-blast outside, were associated in any
way with the seven stars of the Great Bear. Surely the cavemen responsible
for this irritating anomaly were just adorning their lair and toying unwittingly
with a random number—in this case 7. However, as Gooch convincingly
demonstrates in chapter 10 of his book, these people were already extremely
interested in the heavens and were, in fact, capable of calculating the
periodicity of the planets and the long-term cycles of the moon. Remember
also that astronomy is in fact one of the most ancient sciences known, and that
a detailed knowledge of the 26,000-year cycle of precession is hinted at in
mankind’s oldest myths. It may be, therefore, that the practice of observation
and identification of prominent stars in the ever-changing firmament reaches
back in a continuous line to Neanderthal times. After all, only two
precessional cycles ago it was the Neanderthal, not the Cro-Magnon race

(modem man), who was the dominant hominid species on earth.

And the number 7? According to Gooch, the Neanderthals actually
identified three sacred numbers: 3, 7, and 13. Significantly, two of these—3
and 7—are fundamental components of the Hermetic Code; that is, taken
together, they are an elementary expression of the pi relationship. With regard
to the number 13 it is, perhaps, worth noting that all of the world’s traditional
musical scales are founded on the pentatonic scale and the so-called circle of
fifths. A fifth is an “overtone” and is produced by touching a vibrating string
lightly at one-fifth its length. The ancient Chinese found that a series of
“perfect fifths” will produce twelve separate notes before the notes begin
repeating. Set down in pitch series, these twelve separate notes include all the
semitones of our westernized octave. The thirteenth note, seven octaves
higher, is the same as the first.

Is this merely coincidence? Of course, it could be. But I am offering an
alternative hypothesis, based wholly on hermetic/genetic principles, which is
that the emergence of these specific numbers in the cultural practices of our
hominid predecessors, numbers that so closely reflect the musical symmetry
of DNA and the genetic code, may have been a perfectly natural adaptation
acted out almost instinctively by perfectly natural people.

It should now be clear, from the evidence discussed so far, that the story of
our origins is by no means clear-cut. There are simply too many anomalies in
the prevailing picture of events, awkward “facts” that consistently fly in the
face of the orthodox view of the evolution of civilization.

We have, for example, the “impossible” medieval maps—portolans—
copies of copies which were arguably made many thousands of years ago,
possibly before 4000 BCE, by people with a workable knowledge of
geometry and trigonometry.

Then there is the weathering of the Sphinx and its related structures, quite
different from the exterior erosion patterns of the Fourth Dynasty pyramids
and tombs, which suggests a greater age for the Sphinx than historians will
currently permit. Robert Schoch’s proposal, supported by other geologists, is
that the erosion has been caused by heavy rainfall. But very little rain has
fallen on Egypt in the last nine thousand years—hence the desert we see
today. This obviously raises serious questions in respect of the present dating
of the Sphinx and its enclosure, which, archaeologists tell us, was created in
the Fourth Dynasty, at a time when Egypt had for many thousands of years
been engulfed by desert sands.

The incomparable size of the stone blocks used in some of Egypt’s most
ancient structures is also hard to explain. There are no intermediaries in terms
of size, no other earlier structures of any significance whose form might
indicate some kind of gradual, evolutionary development leading to the use of
such incredibly huge stone blocks. Another puzzle is the remarkably accurate

metrological data encoded in the dimensions of the Great Pyramid, data that
indicates that its designers possessed an intimate knowledge of the
dimensions of the earth. The fact that Giza, along with dozens of other sacred
sites scattered worldwide, is positioned on a giant grid of whole-number
latitudinal coordinates, suggests that this knowledge was not exclusive to the
designers of the Great Pyramid.

Further, the very detailed and extremely plausible astro-archaeological
evidence highlighted by Bauval and Hancock, among others, points to an era
in time for the carving of the Sphinx that is too remote for historians even to
consider. And yet the evidence speaks for itself. Giza displays so many
astroarchaeological features that it is hard to believe they might all be purely
coincidental. Further, the inclusion of precessional numbers in ancient myths
and legends from all over the world is a clear indication that the science of
studying and mapping the heavens was fully developed at a time when the
inhabitants of pre-dynastic Egypt supposedly hadn’t even begun to
domesticate plants and animals.

Finally, and in my view most importantly, we have the evidence of the
Hermetic Code, an encoded expression of the two fundamental laws of
creation that, sometime around 2500 BCE, appears to have suddenly flowered
into a complete, highly articulated belief system. On the other hand, if we
accept that the numbers 3, 7 and 13, sacred to the star-gazing Neanderthal,
taken together constitute an elementary expression of the pi symmetry, we
can envisage a long and winding trail of intuitive and scientific discovery
stretching back at least seventy-five thousand years.

By now the reader might appreciate how remarkably talented were these
early ancestors of ours. Of course, strictly speaking, this is the “alternative”
view. Egyptologists, by and large, officially accept none of the theories I have
mentioned here. Indeed, many of them still maintain that the Great Pyramid
was built solely as a tomb for the megalomaniac King Khufu.

In spite of this intransigent orthodox opposition, however, the alternative
concept of an extremely ancient lost civilization is fast gaining ground. This
has resulted, not surprisingly, perhaps, in a renewed interest in the writings of
the Greek philosopher Plato, and in particular his story of the great
catastrophe that destroyed a high civilization known as Atlantis in 9600 BCE.
As I write, I know of three forthcoming books by investigative authors that
will be dealing with this enduring historical enigma in some detail. Doubtless
they will be met with the usual scholarly objections, but these detailed
investigations, which have been briefly outlined by the authors concerned in
recent lectures in the UK, will certainly pose more challenges to the standard
view of history.

Just on the basis of the current evidence, there is a scenario suggesting that
the advanced knowledge we usually see as marking the beginning of recorded

history by no means represents the dawning of scientific activity, but rather
the last vestiges of the science of a prior great and hitherto unidentified
culture.

Plato’s dialogue on Atlantis, though, is officially just a story, a “fairy tale”
concocted by this overworked Greek sage as a form of relaxation, a means of
escaping the rigors of disciplined academic life. That may be the case, and the
existence or otherwise of Atlantis is not here my primary concern. It is
enough to know that the ancient Egyptians of the Fourth Dynasty were
scientists of the first order. After all it was here, on the banks of the ancient
Nile, that the numerous branches of the knowledge acquired in “prehistory”
were subsequently drawn together in a vast intellectual exercise. And what a
truly awe-inspiring enterprise this was, combining precessional astronomy,
geodetics and metrology, surveying and architecture, a complete
understanding of the scientific laws of creation and, incredibly, a method of
applying these laws as a way of being, a “religion.” It is difficult to imagine
how much more in tune with the world and with nature anyone could possibly
be. These people were in tune with virtually everything, with the patterns in
the skies, the symmetries on the earth, and, most importantly, the rhythm of
life itself.

It seems to me, therefore, that one of the most rewarding lines of inquiry is
to try to find out what made these great megalithic builders tick.

Let’s investigate.

A Different Way of Seeing

O f the many recently published books investigating our cultural origins,
there is one that is of particular interest with respect to the ideas being
investigated here. This is Colin Wilson’s From Atlantis to the Sphinx (1996),
described by its publishers as an attempt to understand how the long-forgotten
race of mariners and builders of prehistory “thought, felt, and communicated
with the universe.” This position does, of course, presuppose that there was
once a race of people existing in the so-called Neolithic era who were capable
of contemplating the mysteries of nature and the universe.

Wilson begins with the ideas of Schwaller de Lubicz, which are detailed in
a book called Al-Kemi, written by an American artist called Andre
VandenBroeck, a former friend and pupil of Schwaller. VandenBroeck says
that Schwaller believed the ancient Egyptians and their predecessors had a
knowledge system that would be unrecognizable by modern man, a different
way of looking at things that gave them a unified perspective on the universe
and human existence. This ancient system of knowledge, according to
Schwaller, provided a “method of accelerating the pace of evolution.” 1

No details of this method are given, presumably because Schwaller didn’t
have any. But it nevertheless struck a resonant chord in Wilson’s mind,
because the possibility of speeding up the evolutionary processes, particularly
those involved in the structure and development of consciousness, has, as he
says, been the underlying theme of all his own work.

Significantly, Wilson has also written several pieces on the life and works
of Gurdjieff, notably in his highly acclaimed first book The Outsider (1957),
and in his encyclopedic classic The Occult (1973). In a later book, The War
Against Sleep (1980), he describes Gurdjieff’s “system” as “probably the
greatest single-handed attempt in the history of human thought to make us
aware of the potential of human consciousness.” 2 The “sleep” referred to in
the title is what both Wilson and Gurdjieff would describe as normal
consciousness. This is the kind that sees most of us through every normal day,
a kind of low-resonance state of awareness that, at its lowest level, keeps us
from bumping into furniture, jumping red lights, or murdering one another

wholesale, and, at its peak, enables us to rationalize, to be logical, and so on.
And, of course, it doesn’t always work.

But what Gurdjieff, Schwaller, and Wilson all say is that there are other,
higher states of consciousness that can be reached, and which were somehow
attained by such as the ancient Egyptians. Wilson says as much in his
introduction to From Atlantis to the Sphinx : that in his view the Egyptians
understood “some secret of cosmic harmony and its precise vibrations, which
enabled them to feel an integral part of the world and nature.” 3

Drawing on an idea first presented by Robert Graves in his book The White
Goddess, Wilson suggests that there are two fundamental kinds of knowledge
—what Graves referred to as solar and lunar. Our modern type of knowledge,
he says, is rational, solar, and works with words and concepts, fragmenting
and dissecting everything by analysis. By contrast, the knowledge system of
ancient civilizations Graves saw as lunar, or a form of perception based on
intuition, which somehow grasped things as a whole.

As an illustration of this latter form of perception, Wilson quotes a passage
from Ouspensky’s book In Search of the Miraculous, in which Gurdjieff
explains to his pupils what he sees as the distinction between “real art” and
“subjective art.” According to Gurdjieff, a subjective work of art is merely a
random, arbitrary creation, usually conveying very different impressions to
different people. Real art, on the other hand, is as objective as any systematic
science and invariably creates the same impression in everyone who
understands the basic principles of objective expression, or art imbued with
real meaning. Gurdjieff said the Sphinx was an example of real art, and that
he had seen many others on his wanderings across Asia. No doubt the Great
Pyramid would also have been included among these examples, although,
rather curiously, he makes little mention of it in his own writings. The point
is, both the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid do, in fact, arouse the very same
basic response in everyone, persisting into our times in the form of an acute
sensation of awe and wonder.

In his lesson, Gurdjieff mentions one particular and rather mysterious work
of “objective art,” a certain strange statue he and his fellow travellers
encountered in the desert at the foot of the Hindu Kush mountains in
Afghanistan. At first, they all thought it was simply an ancient depiction of a
god or devil. But after a while he and his companions began to feel that this
was no ordinary figure, and that its composition was in fact extremely
intricate and revealing in its design and structure. Gurdjieff said that they
gradually came to realize that there was in fact a complex system of
cosmology embodied in this figure, in its legs, in its arms, in its head—
everywhere. In the whole statue, he said, there was nothing accidental, no
feature without meaning.

Subsequently this sudden awareness of the statue’s esoteric content seemed

to induce in his group a different and unexpected kind of perception, through
which, he says, they were not only able to understand the symbolism of the
figure itself, but also, in some strange, “holistic” way, to feel the thoughts and
emotions of the people who had created it thousands of years ago.

Gurdjieff was, in fact, an inveterate storyteller (a trait he seems to have
inherited from his father, who was an ashok —a bard of some renown), and he
may well have invented an imaginary statue here purely for the purpose of
exposition. But what is important is what is being conveyed in this story: the
idea that objective art is based on intuitive, “lunar” knowledge, and unlike
ordinary art, presents the viewer with a complete and coherent picture of the
content and meaning of the work.

Much of Wilson’s book, like Hancock’s Fingerprints of the Gods, is
concerned with the great enigmas of the past, some of which we discussed
briefly in the last chapter. But, in the final section, after a long and highly
informative journey through ancient history and remote prehistory, he returns
to the question that lies at the root of all of his writings: What is
consciousness?

Wilson sees the two fundamental kinds of knowledge, solar and lunar, or
rational and intuitive, as operating in different regions of the brain, which
consists of two major hemispheres: right and left. The right hemisphere, our
lunar side, is responsible for our intuitive processes; the left controls our
rational thoughts, our modern, solar functions.

As an example of ancient man’s “right-brain” consciousness, which, he
suggests, still exists in an attenuated form today in certain so-called primitive
cultures, Wilson cites observations made by the American anthropologist
Edward T. Hall in his book The Dance of Life (1983). Hall spent several
years studying the religious and social customs of several Native American
tribes, in particular the Quiche, who are direct descendants of the ancient
Maya, and the Hopi and Pueblo. He discovered that to many of these peoples,
time, as we know it, has no meaning. In fact, the Hopi have no word for it
and, in their language, verbs have no tenses. They have no yesterday and no
tomorrow, perceiving only an “eternal present,” in which time virtually stands
still.

On reading this, I was immediately struck by this notion of an endless
moment, because it sounded more than vaguely familiar. It suggests, in fact,
that the shaman of the Hopi, like those of many other American tribes, are
given to using some kind of hallucinogenic agent in certain of their
ceremonies. Certainly their view of time—or the absence of it—is very
reminiscent of the extratemporal impressions I had during my “experiments”
in the sixties and seventies. It also brings to mind a point I made in the
Introduction: that the religious and mystical writings of every major culture,
from Egypt right through to Islam, all refer repeatedly to the timeless

dimension of heaven.

This notion of timelessness is thus an important link between the
psychedelic or shamanistic experience and the mystical revelation, and could
provide us with a valuable insight into the true nature of rightbrain, lunar
consciousness.

So what does it mean to experience only an “eternal present”? Can such a
reality be defined in a way that even “left-brainers” can comprehend? I
believe it can. In fact, as we shall see, modern science has already provided us
with a mathematically verifiable model of such a definition.

Obviously, by its very nature, a “timeless” reality is difficult to rationalize,
and so might easily be disregarded as the stuff of primitive imagination or
temporary hallucinatory madness—too nebulous to be real. But then there is
another, equally nebulous, manifestation of human consciousness that is
accepted by practically everyone, and this is our intuitive capacity. Intuition is
not a logical process, but everyone “knows” it exists. Indeed, science itself
thrives on intuition; it has been responsible for some of the most important
discoveries of the modern age. And so, today, as particle physicists probe
deeper and deeper into the apparently illogical nature of matter, they are only
too aware that intuition is one of the most effective tools they have.

This is an odd state of affairs, in that we are positing here a thought process
shared, though perhaps to greatly varying degrees, by very different
psychological types: by the physicist and the shaman, or by what Wilson calls
the scientist, the modern thinker, and the artist, the high priest of ancient days.
Obviously there is a little bit of the “lost” artist in every scientist; and, as the
physicist’s probings become ever more surreal and intuitive, the artist’s
presence grows in stature. Perhaps, then, this is evolution, the process
whereby the artist and the scientist come to coexist in equal measures.

According to Gurdjieff and Schwaller, however, ancient man had far more
extensive mental powers than we have today, which suggests that there has
been more than a slight hiccup somewhere along the way, something that
caused an involutionary trend in our development. If true, one wonders how
this could have come about, how a people so highly evolved could suddenly
just lose the initiative, fail to pass on their knowledge to their descendants,
and all but disappear from man-kind’s race-memory.

One possible reason, as Hancock has suggested, is that there was some
great catastrophe, possibly caused by the extreme conditions of the melt-down
at the end of the last ice age, that left only a few survivors of the evolved race
—an elite, highly resilient minority, castaways in a new and forbidding
wilderness populated by fierce and fearful hunter-gatherers. It would have
been virtually impossible for these survivors to have immediately passed on
their vast wealth of knowledge to primitive tribes. Yet they realized that
somehow, if the less fortunate peoples of this earth were to have any chance

of evolving at anything other than a snail’s pace, this knowledge had to be
kept alive. And this meant dealing with, and controlling, the majority
population, whose manpower they needed to utilize in their concerted effort
to build on a scale so vast that only another great cataclysm could wipe out all
traces of their endeavors.

The myths of the Fourth Dynasty Egyptians and the ancient Native
Americans both refer to these superior-minded survivors as gods possessed of
supernatural powers. These were the gods of the First Time—the “golden
age”—who planted the seeds of ultimate wisdom in the minds and hearts of
our ancestors, the primitive natives. They created complex cosmological
creation myths and subsequently disseminated them worldwide; they built
great works of “objective art,” monuments with specific dimensions,
orientations, and alignments that, once decoded, would reveal every aspect of
their knowledge in precise and graphic detail. And this knowledge, wholly
encapsulated in the Hermetic Code, was subsequently embodied in the
measurements of pyramids and other megalithic structures all over the world,
and in virtually every major religious scripture.

And so then they waited, these gods, for the population to evolve. Gods
living in eternity can do that. Presumably they are still waiting, waiting for
their seminal message to germinate and come to flower. And who knows?
Maybe the current upsurge in awareness of the extraordinarily advanced ideas
of our most ancient predecessors is the first sign of a new bloom.

Of course, this is just one historical scenario, and it doesn’t bring us any
nearer to answering the question posed by Wilson, i.e., how might these gods
have perceived the world?

Strange as it may seem, we may possibly find at least part of the answer not
at the dawn of history, but at the very frontiers of modern science. We have
already noted how scientists are becoming, as Graves might say, more and
more “lunar” in their mode of thought. The modern scientist is not a god, but
he has at least learned to use his intuition in his quest for the truth about
reality. And what he has discovered, for example in the microcosmic world of
the subatomic particle, is extremely interesting, because the reality now being
described in scientific terms brings us full circle, right back to the visions of
the Hopi, the hippie, and the Egyptian high priest.

“Down there,” in the world of the elementary particle, time has no
quantifiable meaning, no value; it simply doesn’t exist. This is the real world
we are talking about here, the world defined by physicists in precise
mathematical terms. Therefore the Hopi, in a very real sense, have it exactly
right: timelessness is the primary reality. More than that, the ancient
Egyptians, I believe, realized this also, as is evidenced by this ancient poem
referring to the god-king:

His lifetime is eternity,

the borders of his powers are infinity. 4

Lofty thoughts indeed for a people whose ancestors of only five hundred
years before were simple, wandering nomads. I shall have more to say on this
“modern” notion of timelessness later.

But in fact, as we shall see, there are other crucial shamanistic concepts that
are equally at home in the modern scientific mind. Consider this. The most
important part of Hopi ceremonial life is the dance— hence the title of Hall’s
book. He writes that if the dance is performed correctly, to the participants
everything—the entire universe—“collapses, and is contained in this one
event.” Thus the Hopi’s experience of this alternative reality is not only
timeless, it is spaceless, and implies a dimension in which everything—time,
space, matter—can collapse into a single conceptual “eternal moment.” Once
again we have a close Egyptian parallel in the reference to the god-king
quoted above, whose life span we noted was described as eternity, and the
borders of whose powers are infinity. Endless time . . . infinite space. . . . And
this is just for starters. Later, when we take a more detailed look at other
scientific discoveries, we shall see how this “primitive” notion of
spacelessness also has quite distinct echoes in the present day.

Many Native American tribes consider the earth to be a living, matriarchal
being. Some believe that she becomes pregnant every spring and should
therefore be treated gently. Thus they will remove steel shoes from their
horses and modern shoes from their own feet for fear of breaking the surface
of the earth. As Wilson says, such a notion is not simply an idea or belief, but
“something they feel in their bones, so that an Indian’s relationship with the
Earth is as intimate as his relationship with his horse. ... To regard this as a
‘belief’ is to miss a whole dimension of reality.” 5

Wilson believes that the ancient Egyptians shared a similar kind of
intimacy with nature, and with the land and skies of the Nile valley, perhaps
partly due to their close relationship with the life-giving River Nile, whose
annual inundation occurred just as the star Sirius/Sothis returned to the early
morning sky after seventy days spent below the horizon. These regular and
important events would have ensured that the Egyptians remained very much
in tune with their environment, with the earth, with the sky, and with the
rhythmic unfolding of the seasons.

So what Wilson is saying is that Egyptian knowledge was not simply based
on superstition, but on “a deeply experienced relationship with the earth and
the heavens.” 6 As with the Native Americans, this contact with the world
about them was something the Egyptians felt in their bones, and what they
felt was the rhythm of nature. Schwaller shared a similar view, stating that

“every living being is in contact with all the rhythms and harmonies of all the
energies in the universe.” 7 But Schwaller also believed that modern man had
lost touch with nature’s rhythms and harmonies, and when he speaks of
ancient knowledge providing a method of speeding up the evolutionary
process, he clearly associates this method with the reestablishment of man’s
former, intimate relationship with nature.

Now, Schwaller’s ideas are sound enough to deserve consideration, but
Wilson, while obviously sharing similar views, was prompted to pose the
following question: “But is there any way to turn this rather vague and
abstract statement into something more concrete and down to earth?” 8

In my view, there is, a wholly practical way of looking at the processes of
the development of consciousness, the very “secret of cosmic harmony and its
precise vibrations” that Wilson believes the Egyptians possessed. The
Hermetic Code, the musical theory of transcendental evolution embodied in
Egyptian myth and religion, in the I Ching, and in just about every major
religious doctrine known, fits the bill perfectly. Wilson doesn’t actually say as
much, but he then goes on to devote several pages to an impartial
commentary on my first book, including details of the close correspondences
between the structure of the I Ching, the pi symmetry, and DNA and the
genetic code. I have to say that his studied appraisal of the ideas presented in
The Infinite Harmony is very gratifying—particularly so since, as far as I
know, he is the only published writer to have broached them to date. Whether
he agrees with everything I say is, of course, another matter. When I spoke
with him prior to publication of his book he hinted then that there would be
no committal, no outright endorsement of my ideas. Typically, he has been
true to his word. Nevertheless, this now gives me an opportunity to strengthen
my case by filling in some of the gaps left in his commentary.

As we have noted, the musical symmetry described by the Hermetic Code
is echoed, note for note, in our very bones, in our DNA and in the genetic
code. Through the world’s religions, mankind has been instinctively living
out the basic principles of this code for thousands of years. This is because it
is a perfectly natural thing to do; it is the way of creation. The trouble is that
somewhere along the line we forgot why we were holding the seventh day
sacred and acting out “passions.” We have had timely reminders of our sorry
state from individuals like Moses, Christ, the Buddha, Zoroaster, and
Muhammad, which have helped to keep “the faith” alive, but such has been
our lot that we have tended always to forget and switch back over to
automatic pilot. This is how a great work of “living music” like the I Ching
can end up being used as little more than a pocket fortune-teller.

The Egyptians, I believe, never forgot, but consciously persisted in the
application of the principles of the Hermetic Code as a complete mode of

being, a “religion” in the fullest sense. This is how they were able to develop
their acute sense of belonging with the world and so become increasingly
more conscious in it. I think this is precisely the “method” Schwaller was
looking for.

The remarkable thing about the Hermetic Code is that it is not only a
blueprint for our inner development; it also has very definite cosmic
applications that provide us with a direct link to what Schwaller called “all the
rhythms and harmonies” of the universe. This is how.

The theory of transcendental evolution, as I have said, is based on the
knowledge of the structure of the major musical scale, and the idea that all life
evolves ever upward, as the notes in a developing octave evolve into higher,
more resonant scales of existence. Going up, in other words, toward the stars.
In a broad sense, the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution accords with this
concept. Over billions of years, bacteria have evolved “upward” into single-
celled organisms; they in turn have evolved into multicellular structures, and
these have evolved into all the complex animal life forms existing today. This
continuous chain of evolution, from the free-floating bacterium to the free-
thinking human being, is a transcendental process involving a continuous
succession of quantum leaps from one scale of existence into a greater scale
above.

I’m not suggesting, of course, that the ancient Egyptians knew all about
biomolecular events in the microcosm—at least, not through an accumulation
of fragmented facts experimentally verified by prehistoric biologists and
geneticists. What I am saying, however, is that the Egyptians probably took
all this for granted, that they already intuitively understood what was going on
inside them, or “down there.” As a matter of fact, the originator of the
Hermetic Code—Thoth, Hermes, whoever—left us with one simple yet
incredibly astute dictum that sums up the theory of transcendental evolution
perfectly: “As above, so below.”

“Above” we have the Hermetic Code as expressed through the pi
convention, 22/7, composed of three octaves, each of which is itself
composed of three octaves, a total of sixty-four inner notes. “Below” we have
the genetic code, whose structure is not merely similar to the Hermetic Code,
but is identical right down to the very last detail. Not only that, but both
codes, as we noted when discussing the I Ching in the introduction, share a
common purpose, which is to facilitate the processes of creation, of evolution
onto a higher scale of existence. In the case of the genetic code working
within your body’s cells, this higher scale is represented by your whole being
and, in particular, your mind. But in the case of the Hermetic Code operating
within “cells” of some kind in an infinitely greater “body,” the next, higher
scale must lie far beyond the confines of the brain, somewhere ... up there.

The established neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, of natural selection

through random mutation, attempts to explain only the evolutionary
development of physical bodies in the local biosphere of our planet. It is an
unfinished theory. The theory of transcendental evolution, however, gives us
the whole picture; it tells us that the evolutionary chain of life doesn’t end
with the human being struggling to survive in a competitive terrestrial
environment. The truth is, where the ongoing evolution of mankind is
concerned, as the Egyptians knew full well, the possibilities are limitless.
That is, nature’s evolutionary processes, encoded within the musical structure
of DNA and the genetic code, continue to evolve higher still, beyond the
confines of the physical brain encased in the skull, into metaphysical scales of
existence that ultimately encompass the entire universe.

We noted in the previous chapter that ancient man was intensely interested
in the stars, in precession, and in immensely long cycles of time. Now we can
see why. The ancient Egyptians weren’t simply admiring the view; they were
staking their claim in the greater scale above, paving a way to heaven.
Cosmology with a capital C.

In the world of computers, virtual reality, and endless information
highways, the modern mind is more often than not inclined to look back on
these times with superiority. Even today, historians continue to portray
ancient Egyptians as manic “tomb builders,” highly gifted but superstitious
stargazers, whose monumental architectural designs, however ingenious, are
totally devoid of any esoteric meaning. But as we have seen, these remarkable
people in fact had a complex cosmology superior even to our own, one that
included within it the cosmologist himself.

Our modern cosmologists assiduously study everything “up there.” That is
their job. What lies “below” is no concern of theirs. But this partial view
presents problems, as with the Egyptologist who meticulously searches the
sands for telltale shards of pottery and other fragments, but who knows
nothing about astronomy. This is the tunnel vision of specialization that
prevents many “experts” from seeing holistically. As a result of this
imbalance, scientific knowledge has become segregated; it is not a part of our
everyday lives. We might look up and think about astronomical questions
occasionally, but on the whole our world is predominantly terrestrial,
confined and circumscribed in relation to the vastness of the universe around
us.

Now consider the world the ancient Egyptians inhabited, which not only
included the land of their birth, but also the earth itself, the sun, moon, and
planets, and even the ever-changing constellations. This is an all-
encompassing vision. And the civilization capable of perceiving it showed its
stature through the grandeur of this vision. The Egyptians had their sights set
firmly on the heavens, their sole raison d’etre being an intense, concerted
effort to assist mankind on its transcendental journey to the stars, to the

greater scale above. And to make absolutely sure that their message carried,
they skillfully encoded the fundamental principles of their extraordinary life
science in the dimensions, proportions, and alignments of massive stone
monuments built with unsurpassable precision, many still acknowledged as
the greatest man-made structures on earth.

As we shall see later, the cosmological perspective of Egyptian
metaphysics is, in fact, the basis of ancient man’s entire belief system, and
may even be, as many commentators now suspect to be the case, a legacy
from an even earlier period of civilization existing in what we currently refer
to as prehistory. But before we can ascertain how their musical method of
self-development might have given them direct access to the greater cosmos,
we first need to consider more earthly matters, which will be the subject of
the next chapter. The main question arises from the established historical fact
that virtually all of the cyclopean monuments created at the dawn of our
history were built before the wheel was invented. So how was this
accomplished?

Music over Matter

N o one has yet convincingly explained how the architects and engineers
of the ancient world managed to build on such a monumental scale. This
applies equally to structures on both sides of the Atlantic, many of which
have been shown to display remarkably similar design features. In the ancient
city of Tiahuanaco in the Andes, as in Egypt, blocks weighing more than two
hundred tons are commonplace. There is one construction block that has been
estimated by Graham Hancock to weigh as much as 440 tons. Also in Peru,
the citadels of Sacsayhuaman and Machu Picchu contain similar megalithic
stones that have been cut and carefully positioned with a degree of precision
that even modern construction engineers would be hard pressed to match.

Equally mysterious is the presence of truly giant pyramids on both
continents. The Great Pyramid is arguably the most notable, being the largest
solid stone edifice ever constructed by man, having a base area of over
thirteen acres. However, the great Pyramid of the Maya at Cholula in Mexico,
despite its core consisting not of blocks of stone but of rubble, is in fact more
than three times as massive as the Great Pyramid. Its base covers an area of
forty-five acres, making it easily the largest building on the planet.

Now, fashioning and carefully placing hundreds upon hundreds of huge
blocks of stone to conform to precise geometrical and astronomical
alignments is an art in itself, but the immense scale of these enterprises is not
the only puzzle. There is also the question of how these craftsmen actually
carved and cut the stone. William Flinders Petrie examined the red granite
“sarcophagus” in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid and noted that it
had been hollowed out to such a fine degree of accuracy that its external
volume is exactly twice its internal volume. And this was achieved with one
of the hardest stones on earth. The method used, according to Petrie, was
some kind of tubedrilling mechanism, rather like a section of drainpipe with
exceptionally hard teeth set into the rim. How such an implement might have
been powered is a question that only compounds the mystery.

Petrie surmised that the sarcophagus itself had been cut from the mother
block with a “saw” at least two and a half meters long, though no evidence of

such an implement has ever been found—except for the serrated marks, of
course. Petrie also found evidence of the use of circular saws and even lathes;
but again, only the manufacturing marks on numerous stone artifacts remain
as proof that such tools ever existed.

In any event, even if drills and lathes were in common use in ancient
Egypt, this would not explain the discovery of a large number of hollowed-
out basalt vases found in and around the Third Dynasty Saqqarah necropolis
and dated to around 4000-3000 BCE. As Hancock describes in Fingerprints
of the Gods, some of these elegantly curved vessels with widely flared
interiors have long, slender necks too narrow for even a small finger to be
inserted. And yet they have some-how been hollowed out with unbelievable
precision.

It has been suggested by a modern toolmaker called Christopher Dunn,
who has studied the baffling stonework of the Egyptians in some detail, that
the craftsmen responsible for some of the work may have had a technology
based on high-frequency sound. Basically Dunn believes that the workmen
may have employed some kind of ultrasonic tool bit capable of vibrating at a
rate thousands of times faster than a pneumatic drill. However, even if such a
mechanism were used, as in the case of the proposed drills and saws and
lathes mentioned above, we would have to assume that the Egyptians could
somehow produce the power necessary to drive such devices.

Whatever may be the case, it is becoming increasingly evident that,
contrary to the beliefs of orthodox archaeologists, the craftsmen responsible
for some of these mysterious artifacts certainly did not use crude copper
chisels, adzes, and simple wooden mallets to do the job. As Dunn has noted,
these people were capable of producing smooth, flat surfaces on granite or
basalt to an incredible accuracy of a thousandth of an inch or more. He
demonstrated this to Robert Bauval in the Cairo Museum by placing a high-
precision metal gauge against a side of the ancient relic known as the Ben-
race-memory-Ben Stone and shining a light against the line of contact. That
no light was visible from the other side indicates an engineering accuracy
equal to that of the present day.

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of Dunn’s idea of the use of
high-frequency sound is that it implies the application of a concentrated form
of resonance, the raw material of music, the principles of which, as we have
seen, were the mainstay of Egyptian metaphysics. So possibly these people
used their knowledge of cosmic harmony and vibrations to assess—or maybe
“feel”—what kind of ultrasound frequency would be required to work a given
material. After all, everything vibrates, resonates, and it may be that the
Egyptians had found a way of creating sympathetic frequencies that depended
not so much on a powerful energy supply but more on an understanding of the
subtle, interrelated structures of these inherent symmetries.

Such a notion may at first seem somewhat abstract, but later we shall see
that the Hermetic Code provides us with a rather ingenious description of the
mechanism by which these “inner” symmetries can be understood. This is
further supported by the ideas of Gurdjieff, some of which I shall be
discussing in detail in chapter 12, and also by some of the ideas of a number
of modern scientists in disciplines as diverse as clinical psychology,
neurophysiology, and even that seemingly inviolable sanctum of all empirical
science, nuclear physics.

Unfortunately Dunn’s ultrasound theory, if correct, would still not explain
how such massive stones, such as those incorporated in the Valley Temple at
Giza and the Osireion at Abydos, once cut and shaped, were then moved into
position.

Colin Wilson has suggested that the builders might have employed a
method similar to the popular party trick in which a subject sits on a chair and
four volunteers place one finger underneath each armpit and knee and try to
lift him or her. Without any preparation, the result is as one might expect, and
the subject, unaffected, stays put. If, subsequently, the volunteers all place
their hands on the top of the subject’s head, first their right hands and then
their left hands, and then concentrate hard for a minute or so, when they
simultaneously remove their hands and try once more, the subject can
sometimes be lifted high off the ground with very little apparent effort. It’s as
if four people concentrating in unison can somehow exert a new, much more
powerful kind of force. One volunteer alone would find difficulty in lifting a
quarter of the weight of a fully grown subject with a single index finger, yet
four together can not only lift four times that weight, they can often do it with
astonishing ease.

Wilson suggests that this “group-mind” phenomenon was possibly a basic
way of life to the ancient builders of Egypt, who saw nothing extraordinary in
moving great chunks of stone in this way, perhaps believing that the gods
were making the blocks lighter, and that no special effort was required other
than acting in unison, in harmony with one another.

With regard to the party trick mentioned above, one wonders whether the
mind of the subject might also be involved. There is a certain amount of
pressure on the subject’s head from the hands of the volunteers, and when that
pressure is released the subject naturally feels a sensation of becoming
suddenly lighter. If this were a contributory factor in the experiment, it would
raise further questions relating to the raising of inanimate blocks of stone,
which could not, one would assume, participate in the experiment in any way.

Extensive tests have, in fact, been conducted under laboratory conditions,
the results of which indicate that psychokinesis, or the ability to affect
physical objects with the mind, is in fact a statistically verifiable reality.

In a series of experiments conducted in the 1970s, Robert Jahn of the

Princeton University School of Engineering and Applied Science and the
clinical psychologist Brenda Dunne used an instrument called a random-event
generator (REG) to test the psychokinetic abilities of a large number of
volunteers. Triggered by the process of decay of a radioactive material, which
is an unpredictable, natural process, a REG is an automatic selector—a “coin
flipper”—that produces a completely random series of binary numbers.
Volunteers were asked to sit in front of the device and concentrate on trying
to make it produce an abnormally large number of either “heads” (1) or “tails”
(2). Subsequently Jahn and Dunne’s results clearly showed that, simply by
concentrating on the REG, the volunteers were able to influence the binary
output to a small but statistically significant degree.

In another series of tests they used a kind of pinball machine in which
9,000 marbles were allowed to roll around 330 nylon pegs and cascade out of
19 exit holes into bins. Once again, over the course of many trials, they found
that most of the subjects were able to produce a small but significant change
in the average number of balls falling into each bin.

Jahn, a professor of aerospace sciences, was at first skeptical and reluctant
to involve himself with these experiments, but he was eventually so
impressed by the results that in 1979 he founded the Princeton Engineering
Anomalies Research Laboratory, where researchers have continued to
produce strong statistical evidence in favor of the existence of psychokinesis.
Furthermore, as the above-mentioned experiments have shown, it looks as
though the ability to produce detectable psychokinetic influences is not
limited to the few, but is something that most of us can do.

Another, rather more unusual example of psychokinetic abilities is that
which physicists call the Pauli effect, where merely the presence of certain
individuals appears to cause machinery and equipment to malfunction. The
classic example is the eponymous physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who would often
and unwittingly cause sensitive equipment to go wrong, or glass apparatus to
explode, simply by being there.

This effect may be similar, though not identical, to the one I described in
The Infinite Harmony, where the psychologist Carl Jung caused a piece of
heavy furniture to split apart with a force that appeared to emanate from his
solar plexus. Sigmund Freud actually witnessed the incident, but when Jung
declared that he had somehow been responsible, Freud bluntly refused to
believe it.

There are fundamental differences between this “Jung effect” and that of
Pauli. First, Jung was conscious of it as it was happening, because the “force”
caused his solar plexus to heat up; second, while Freud was shaking his head
in disbelief, Jung, feeling the force build up once more, was able to predict
that it would happen again. Within moments there was another loud crack and
the wood splintered a second time. 1

Obviously these examples are not quite the same as the party-trick
phenomenon, which relies on the concerted, conscious effort of a group, but
they at least serve to remind us that there is probably a great deal more to the
power of the human psyche than its recognized potential for reasoning,
inventing, conceptualizing, and so forth.

When considering the possibility of the “group-mind” technique, Colin
Wilson is not implying that the architects of ancient Egypt actually levitated
their megalithic blocks. Rather, he thinks that the cumulative power of “group
consciousness” was an everyday reality to the Egyptians, and that apparent
physical forces, when applied in concert by a given group in this way
(perhaps orchestrated by priests uttering magical incantations), could
somehow be magnified to an unusually high degree.

Now it so happens that there is a very close parallel to Wilson’s idea in the
legends and myths of the ancient Greeks. The Pythagorean philosophers, who
clearly inherited their hermetic or “musical” knowledge from Egyptian
sources, had a name for this “group consciousness,” homonoia, which
translates as a “union of minds.” This state could be achieved, they believed,
by emulating the divine actions of the god Apollo and the nine muses, the
patrons of all the arts. Significantly, Apollo himself was depicted as the
supreme musician, and the word music, derived from the word muse,
originally referred to all aspects of learning. According to the Greeks, through
this kind of harmonious union of minds, mankind could literally change the
world.

The Pythagoreans believed that their mythological heroes and gods—
including Pythagoras himself—were able to play special forms of music that
could directly affect both sentient beings and non-sentient things. Orpheus,
for example, is said to have moved rocks and even mountains with the power
of his music; and another legendary hero, Amphion, with only his lyre moved
rocks and stones to construct the walls of the ancient city of Thebes.

Interestingly there are exact parallels between these and some legends of
the peoples of the pre-Columbian Americas. For example, one Mayan legend
says that the construction of the Pyramid of the Magician at Uxmal in
Yucatan was a relatively simple affair, that all the builders had to do was
“whistle and the heavy blocks would move into place.” 2 Another tradition
tells how the blocks used in the building of the city of Tiahuanaco in the
Andes were “carried through the air to the sound of a trumpet.” 3

In his book In Search of the Miraculous, P. D. Ouspensky recounts a talk
given by Gurdjieff concerning the literal truth of these musical myths.
Gurdjieff states that “objective music,” as he calls it, cannot only destroy, as
in the case of Jericho, but also create. Orpheus disseminating knowledge
simply by playing the lyre is cited as an example, and further, he says, there

could be such music as would freeze water, or even kill a man
instantaneously.

Though not quite so dramatic, we see examples today of music, or sound
vibrations, having a direct effect on people and things. Most people have
heard of the soprano’s voice that, when pitched at a given level, can shatter a
glass. Of course, a glass is an inanimate object, but certain sounds can also
have a dramatic effect on people.

In particular, a new innovation in surgery known as high-intensity focused
ultrasound (HIFU) involves using powerful beams of ultrasound as a “virtual
scalpel” that allows surgeons to operate deep inside the human body and to
target very accurately and destroy malignant tumors. The precision of this
technique is such that, unlike established cancer treatments like radiotherapy
and chemotherapy, the operation can be carried out without damaging any of
the surrounding tissue. And there are no apparent side effects. Early trials
have proved very promising. To date, almost one hundred people in Britain
have been treated with ultrasound for liver cancer, with positive preliminary
results. 4

Another example is the kind of sound that has recently been employed by a
Swedish manufacturer of burglar alarms. It resembles that excruciating sound
of a nail scraping down a blackboard, but not just one nail, many of them,
with the sound magnified to an intolerable degree. Subjects in trials invariably
ran out of the sound room within seconds, while those who tried to stick it out
reported feeling physically sick. The maximum time anyone cared to endure it
for was around fifty seconds. Personally I have not heard the sound produced
by this diabolical machine, but I have been around enough blackboards to
know that I certainly don’t want to. I only have to sit here and imagine it and I
can literally make my teeth go on edge. This kind of “music” might not
directly kill you, but, if prolonged, it could very possibly drive you mad
enough to do the deed yourself.

In one of his own books, Beelzebub’s Tales, in chapter 41, “The Bokharian
Dervish,” Gurdjieff speaks about a demonstration of “objective music” given
to him by cave-dwelling ascetics in the mountains of Central Asia. During the
course of the experiment, which involved playing obscure sequences of notes
on an elaborately modified piano, he watched as a large abscess rapidly
appeared on the leg of one of those present. When another series of notes was
subsequently played, the abscess, which evidently caused the subject very real
pain and discomfort, mysteriously faded away. In another demonstration,
fresh flowers were made to wither and die within minutes.

Of course, the ancient musical legends describing the extraordinary
abilities of master stonemasons could be pure fiction, although it is difficult to
understand why so many identical myths—and there are many—should have
emerged in such widely separated regions. And then we have the amazing

architectural evidence itself, in sites the world over, which demonstrates a
superior and currently inexplicable technological proficiency in the handling
of stone.

All this actually proves nothing, however, and those of a scientific turn of
mind will feel that such tales of “musical magic” are either allegorical, or that
they are simply the stuff of imagination and superstition. Perhaps so. But even
those at the cutting edge of scientific enquiry would agree that all their sacred
laws are not yet written. There is currently in circulation a whole new batch of
fantastic ideas concerning the nature of universal reality. These range from
the macroworld of chaos and complexity theories implying an underlying
cosmic unity, to the microworlds of superstrings and inter-penetrating loops
in which even so-called empty space is seen as a woven fabric of
unimaginably fine threads of . . . well, something or other. As we shall see in
subsequent chapters, there is no end to the ingenuity and imagination of
scientists intent on discovering the “theory of everything.”

Given such an open-ended scientific view of the world, it would seem that
there is still time and space enough to accommodate the ancient notion of
“musical magic.” After all, this “primitive superstition” has already found
expression in the field of biochemistry, where we see that the respective
musical symmetries of the genetic code and the Hermetic Code are identical
in every respect. So then we hear that the people who first revealed the
Hermetic Code also believed in the power of a strange kind of music that
could “enchant” just about everything: trees, wild beasts, even rocks of the
hardest stone. We can see how this could apply to trees and wild beasts,
because the very essence of both the animal and vegetable kingdoms is music;
it is the genetic code, which “enchants” just about every living thing. Rocks
are another matter; they are not imbued with life as we know it. Could it be,
then, that they are imbued with some form of life as we don’t know it? This is
what the mythmakers say.

The Greek philosopher Thales, reputedly one of the teachers of Pythagoras,
taught that the whole universe was alive and that even inanimate things like
rocks and mountains possessed psychic attributes. The “builder gods,”
Orpheus and Amphion, were said to have had the ability to tune in to this
elemental consciousness, and so persuade inanimate objects to do their
bidding. This notion could easily be discarded as simply another example of
primitive superstition, until we learn that the idea that elementary atoms of
matter might possess some kind of awareness of the world about them is now
being seriously considered by physicists. Later we shall be exploring this
newly discovered “quantum” reality in more detail. As we shall see, many of
the scientific discoveries relating to this microcosmic wonderland may not, in
fact, be quite as new and radical as most scientists believe.

Thus, according to Thales, the ancient builders of Egypt did not see things

in the same way as we do. To them, everything was to some degree alive,
conscious, “psychic.” Interestingly, this is an idea that is reflected quite
clearly in the long-standing traditions of the great Indian yogi masters, many
of whom are reputed to have possessed psychokinetic and telepathic powers.

The eminent Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo, echoing Thales, stated that
psychokinesis is possible only because matter is to some extent conscious. If
matter were truly inert and lifeless, there would be no conceivable means of
contact between the thinker and the object. Further, if a single point in the
universe possessed zero consciousness, he said, then the whole universe itself
would have to be unconscious.

Similarly, in his book Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramhansa Yogananda
describes meeting numerous yogi masters who could materialize and
dematerialize their own bodies and other objects at will. He claimed that such
holy men can actually move at the speed of light and utilize “creative light
rays” to bring into instant visibility any physical manifestation. 5 Obviously
Yogananda was referring here to a more subtle form of materiality than
sandstone or granite, and this is a difficult concept for our logical minds to
accept. But the world of the Indian yogi, like that of the Hopi shaman, is
primarily a world of the mind, an alternative reality in which psychokinesis is
seen as a perfectly accessible human function. This kind of abstract notion
might seem far removed from the question of building with megalithic blocks
of stone, but there is, nevertheless, an extremely important link between
Yogananda’s view of the phenomenon of “creative” light and that of the
ancient Egyptians, a link fundamental to our understanding of the whole
cosmology of ancient man. We shall shortly be looking at this crucial
connection in some detail.

Now, I’m not suggesting for a moment that buildings like the Great
Pyramid and the Sphinx enclosure were simply “thought up” by gods, at least
not without human intervention. But from the evidence at hand I feel reluctant
to accept the uncompromising view of orthodox archaeologists who insist that
there was nothing unusual about the methods of construction employed. Many
of the stone blocks used by these ancient builders, remember, are several
hundred tons in weight. The largest so far identified is the massive, free¬
standing foundation stone of the Temple of Baalbek in Lebanon, which is
estimated to weigh a staggering 1,200 tons. Cutting and shaping a megalith of
such monumental proportions is in itself an accomplishment that makes the
patchwork concrete and steel structures of modern builders look positively
Lilliputian, but then to move this block hundreds of meters to its present
location is a technical maneuver that practically defies belief. The most
powerful lifting gear used in the modern construction industry can lift
hundreds of tons, and a trained team of workers have to spend weeks
preparing the ground of the proposed site beforehand, examining the

subsurface, leveling, laying down hard core, and so forth. Yet here we have a
single, free-standing megalith whose estimated mass is over twice the
maximum lifting capacity of even the most modern boom-crane. This in itself
does not, of course, constitute proof of the use of paranormal powers on the
part of the people who executed this remarkable feat, but it nevertheless raises
fundamental questions concerning the orthodox view, that this block was
moved purely by conventional means.

Colin Wilson, as we noted, has suggested that the “group consciousness”
technique might have been employed in the manipulation of such blocks. He
believes that the builders still used conventional means of construction—
ramps, rollers, levers, ropes, and the like—but that the real power behind
these methods emanated from the collective “vibrations” of the “group mind.”
And this is precisely what is being implied by the Pythagoreans’ notion of a
state of homonoia. To these thinkers, as with their Egyptian forerunners,
homonoia, a collective unification of mind, body, and spirit, was an attainable
reality. They believed that, when totally synchronized—as it apparently was
in the old mystery schools of Orphic origin—the psychic energy generated in
this way could somehow be used directly to influence matter, even
gargantuan lumps of hard rock.

As Jahn and Dunne have demonstrated through their extensive tests,
statistically discernible psychokinetic powers can be exhibited today by
perfectly normal subjects using nothing more than their ordinary
concentration. In other instances, such as the Pauli and Jung effects
mentioned earlier, the results are sometimes dramatic, but often erratic and
uncontrolled. Nevertheless, there are thousands of accounts from every age
describing the paranormal powers of gifted individuals: in the legends of the
builders of antiquity, in the scriptures of virtually every major religion, and in
the many stories of the lives of saints and “psychics” the world over. Even
supposing that many of these accounts might have been invented for effect or
whatever, one feels that it would be stretching credulity too far to presume
that there wasn’t a single grain of truth anywhere in the vast store of literature
on the subject.

In the party-trick phenomenon, in which a set of minds enter into a
homonoic state, it seems as if the cumulative force so generated is
considerably greater than the sum of its parts. The volunteers being raised in
this kind of experiment can often be lifted high off the ground with such
disproportionate ease that they seem almost to be floating. And if this same
method could also be used effectively on inanimate objects, then possibly,
given the right circumstances, a large mass would require relatively few
people to shift it. This is interesting, because it may provide a possible answer
to a puzzling question raised by John Anthony West in a 1992 documentary
film about Robert Schoch’s investigations into the weathering of the Sphinx

enclosure. West noted that the enclosure, which is surrounded by steep-sided
natural bedrock, is relatively small in view of the enormous size of the stone
blocks that had to be maneuvered within it. There would have been
insufficient room for teams of workers large enough even to drag a two-
hundred-ton block, let alone lift it. If, however, something like the “group-
mind” technique were the force behind their ropes and levers, a force
considerably greater than the sum of its parts, then the paucity of working
space might not have been a problem.

In any event, we have already ruled out the use of massive lifting devices
and excessively large numbers of manual workers, so there has to be some
other explanation: the “group-mind” technique, which, as we know, works on
living subjects, is at least a theoretical possibility. And, as we have noted,
something very similar was involved in the early Greek concept of a joint
state of homonoia through which, it was believed, mankind could ultimately
transcend to greater things, some kind of collective psychological harmony
acquired via a thought system based, according to the Greeks, on the music
played by the god Apollo. And this “music,” the art of the muses, was not
simply concerned with the theoretical aspects of the science of harmonics—
that is, the systematic definition by the Pythagoreans of the mathematical
structure of the major musical scale—but also with an awareness of the
greater cosmic order, with knowledge of the principles and practical
applications of the Hermetic Code. It is this concept, I believe, that in some
mysterious way lies at the root of the special form of music played by the
heroes, Orpheus and Amphion, by the stonemasons of ancient Egypt, and by
the “builder gods” of Central and South America.

So did these people really possess supernatural powers? We may possibly
never know, but we are certain that they possessed extraordinary abilities. By
the uninitiated, these highly advanced skills could easily have been construed
as magic. Of course, the exact methods of construction used in ancient Egypt
elude us still, and we ourselves, for all our accumulation of technological
expertise, are left in a position not dissimilar to that of the early propagators
of ancient myth, who evidently witnessed the actions of this highly developed
people, but did not fully comprehend what they saw. Modern observers, who
do not, by and large, believe in magic, obliquely refer to this forgotten science
as the use of “unknown techniques.”

We noted earlier that all around the world there are legends and myths
speaking of a time long ago when godlike civilizers used the power of music
to build the first cities. According to such stories, these mysterious builders
could move great blocks of stone simply by creating special forms of sound,
by playing musical instruments, whistling, singing, or whatever. In Mexico,
Bolivia, and Peru, and in numerous regions in Central Asia, where these
legends abound, there is a single common factor that gives credence to all of

them: the hard evidence, in all of these locations, of buildings incorporating
truly gigantic stone blocks.

In his book Gods of Eden, Andrew Collins devotes three chapters to the
subject of what he calls sonic technology, citing some of the mythological
accounts already quoted, but including also accounts of travelers to Tibet in
the first half of the twentieth century who witnessed the apparent levitation of
stone blocks actuated by monks using numerous, specially contrived sound
instruments. Published in the 1950s by a Swedish engineer, Henry Kjellson,
one of these accounts concerns another Swede, a certain Dr. Jarl, who was
invited by a Tibetan acquaintance to visit him at his monastery near Lhasa.

One day during this visit Jarl accompanied about 240 monks to a nearby
meadow adjacent to a high cliff face. About 250 meters up the cliff was an
entrance to a large cave, on the outer ledge of which were several other
monks. Forty or so of the monks assembled below took up strategic positions
in slightly more than a 90-degree arc around a large, cupped, stone platform.
They then began to prepare a large number of instruments: thirteen drums, of
varying size, with a skin at one end and open at the other, and six “ragdons,”
described as three-meter-long trumpets. Subsequently a large stone about one
and a half meters in length and one meter in height and width was dragged by
yak to the cupped stone platform and manhandled onto it by attendant monks.
The musicians then began playing, at first slowly and rhythmically,
apparently “pointing” their instruments at the stone at the apex of the
triangular shaped assembly. Gradually the noise from the drums and trumpets
increased and then the tempo sped up so quickly that Jarl lost track of any
rhythm. His account of what happened next sounds like pure fantasy.
Allegedly the stone in focus at first began to wobble and then it rose from the
ground with a rocking motion. As it rose, the drums and trumpets were tilted
upward, aimed constantly toward the stone, which continued to rise in a long
parabolic arc, until it ultimately crashed down with considerable force onto
the ledge at the mouth of the cave, 250 meters up the nearby cliff face. For
much of that day Jarl watched as the process was repeated five or six times an
hour. 6

As if. This is the response I would expect from most of you. Indeed, on
first reading this account I experienced the same old knee-jerk reaction
myself, living as I do in a predominantly secular environment, where
“miracles” such as the one just described occur only in fairy tales. But at the
back of my mind, I have this confounding piece of evidence, an undeniably
real artifact, whose very existence gnaws at the core of my reason. This is the
1200-ton stone megalith of the Temple of Baalbek in Lebanon, a perfectly
shaped block almost twenty-five meters in length, with a mass nearly two and
a half times greater than anything that could be lifted by the largest boom-
crane on Earth. At some period in ancient history, long predating the Greek

structures on the site and before even the simple wheel had been invented,
this veritable monster was somehow transported several hundred meters from
the quarry of its origin to its present location high above sea level. Three
comparatively smaller stones, each weighing something approaching 600
tons, were also carved and transported with it.

So we have hard evidence, great, monstrous lumps of solid stone standing
as high as five-story houses, which attests to a stone-raising technology vastly
more sophisticated than our own. We might expect that modern engineers
could, given sufficient time and funds, build a boom-crane capable of raising
such a mass upward, but by what conceivable means could they then, without
the application of the wheel, apply a sideways motion to these megaliths,
covering not just a few yards, but hundreds of meters of undulating terrain? It
seems to me that until the experts can come up with a plausible answer to this
great mystery, we would do well to keep an open mind as to the methods
used.

The above story of the mysterious Dr. Jarl and the Tibetan monks, however
improbable, at least fits the bill, because it attests to a stone-raising
technology that relies not on ropes, wheels and pulleys, but on purposefully
created vibrations of sound. Furthermore, if Jarl’s account is genuine, it seems
that there may have been more to the events he witnessed than simply the use
of sonics. He describes, for example, how the two hundred or so monks not
directly involved with playing the instruments stood in rows eight to ten deep
behind the arc of musicians, carefully following the flight path of the stone
blocks as they rose up toward the cliff face. Jarl was unable to establish their
true role in the proceedings, suggesting that they could have been either
trainees or replacement players, or that they were engaged in the kind of
“group-mind” enterprise discussed earlier in this chapter, meaning that they
were effectively using some kind of psychokinesis to direct the flight of the
stones.

Jarl’s entire account is very sober and detailed, recording numbers,
distances, angles, dimensions, and even technical specifications relating to
some of the instruments themselves. As Collins says, not unreasonably in my
opinion, there seems to be too much detail in this report for it to be dismissed
as total fantasy.

Collins goes on to cite another account recorded by Kjellson, that of an
Austrian filmmaker by the name of Linauer who also visited a Tibetan
community sometime in the 1930s. Here again we have a very detailed
account describing the use of custom-made instruments of sound—in this
case a large gong made of gold, iron, and brass and a stringed instmment, also
made of different metals and shaped something like a large mussel shell,
which apparently was not played as such, but somehow worked in
conjunction with the low, short-lived sound vibrations emitted by the gong.

Collins suggests that the “silent” stringed instrument may have transmuted the
sound of the beaten gong into the ultrasonic range, which somehow caused
the effects allegedly witnessed by Linauer. He reported that when these two
instruments were activated they enabled the monks to lift heavy stone blocks
with just one hand and very little apparent physical exertion. Linauer was also
told by the monks that similar instruments existed that could actually
disintegrate physical matter. This brings to mind Gurdjieff’s claim that
“objective music” could do unimaginable things, freeze water, for example.
More ominously, it could make flowers wither and die within minutes, cause
physical aberrations to manifest rapidly in the structure of physical organisms,
or even, as in the case of the warrior patriarch Joshua’s assault on Jericho,
cause great stone walls to disintegrate, to crash to the ground in pieces.

In chapter 6 of his book, Collins further examines evidence in sacred
buildings all over the world of an extraordinary knowledge of acoustics.

In Mexico, for example, there is the nine-stepped pyramid known as the
Castillo, a temple dedicated to Viracocha/Kukulcan, which is one of the main
structures of the Mayan complex at Chichen Itza in north Yucatan. If you
stand at the foot of this pyramid and shout, the sound vibrations echo and
transmute into an eerie shriek that emanates from the top of the building.
Alternatively, if you speak in a normal voice while standing on the summit,
you can be heard quite clearly by people on the ground as much as 150 meters
away.

Similar strange acoustic properties have been identified in the nearby Great
Ball Court, a large field 160 meters in length, flanked by two temples, where
a faint whisper at one end can be heard quite easily from the opposite end. 5

There are further examples of unusual acoustic properties in other Mayan
structures. One is the Temple at Tulum on the Yucatan coast, which gives off
a long, low howling sound when the wind is at a certain velocity and blowing
in a particular direction. Another intriguing example is the Temple of the
Magician at Uxmal, built, according to Mayan legend, by a mysterious race of
dwarfs who only had to whistle in order to make the heavy blocks of stone
rise into the air. If you stand at the base of this pyramid and clap your hands,
the sound emerges from the top as an eerie chirping, quite unlike the original
sound vibrations. At another famous site at Palenque, which consists of three
principal pyramids, it is possible for three people to stand one at the top of
each of them and engage in a three-way conversation.

Possibly Collins’s most interesting observations concern Egypt, and in
particular the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid. Many observers have
noted how voices sounded in this chamber have unusually resonant
properties. It is as if this effect, among many others of course, was
intentionally created. Collins suggests that this unusual sound property might

have something to do with the fact that the “Pythagorean” 3-4- 5 triangle is
incorporated into the chamber’s whole design.

This fact can be observed by describing a diagonal from one lower corner
of the end wall up to the opposite top corner, which, if the baseline of the
floor is included, results in a perfectly proportioned 3-4-5 triangle. The same
applies to the huge block of granite incorporated in the wall immediately
above the entrance to the chamber. The fact that the chamber is exactly twice
as long as it is wide means that the 3-4-5 symmetry is an intrinsic feature of
its whole structure. 10

As Collins notes, this particular geometrical configuration expresses three
significant harmonic proportions that together produce the keynote in a major
scale, as with the notes (based on the scale of C major) D (re), E (mi), and G
(so), for example, which generate the vibrations of the keynote C, i.e., the
magical Do, which appears at the beginning and the end of every major scale.
The combined frequencies of these three notes relate to one another in the
same way as the combined ratios of the 3-4-5 triangle.

The red granite “sarcophagus” in the chamber also possesses unusual
acoustic properties. When Flinders Petrie organized a team of workmen to
lever one end of the sarcophagus up off the ground some twenty centimeters,
so that he could take accurate measurements of its dimensions, he just
happened to strike the tilted coffer with a hard implement and was impressed
by the deep, resonant sound it produced, rather like a bell.

Another interesting feature of this coffer is that its external volume is
exactly twice that of the internal volume. And this ratio of 2:1, as we noted,
corresponds to the length of the entire chamber in relation to its width. In
musical terms, of course, this proportion is highly significant, because it
expresses the ratio between the two extreme notes of the major musical scale,
where the last note, Do, of the octave vibrates at twice the frequency of the
first note, also Do. In view of the vast number of possible variables in
dimensions that the builders could have opted for, I think we can reasonably
assume that these proportional symmetries did not occur simply by chance.
Indeed, given the fact that the Hermetic Code was the central theme of
Egyptian metaphysics, one would be extremely surprised and puzzled if such
harmonic proportions were not present, in the King’s Chamber or anywhere
else. The whole of the Great Pyramid itself, remember, is a massive
representation of the pi symmetry, the “trinity of octaves,” so it would have
been perfectly natural for the designers to have incorporated expressions of
the same musical system in its most impressive internal features.

In a later chapter we shall be looking again at these lost techniques of the
builders of the Giza necropolis. As I have said, I believe these methods were
based on a complete understanding of the universal harmonies described by
the Hermetic Code, but this in itself remains a rather abstract idea, a bit like

the hippie notion of tuning in to “good vibrations” as a means of inducing a
sense of well-being. There is much more to the Hermetic Code than that,
however. It is a universal formula with many facets, and certain of them, as
we shall see, are by no means vague or abstract, but scientific in every sense
of the word. But in order to appreciate the full implications of this belief
system, we first have to examine some of the wider applications of the code
itself.

Finding a theory capable of unifying the whole body of our empirical
knowledge into a coherent whole—a “theory of everything”—is currently the
ultimate scientific goal. Now, I’m no specialist, but after a great deal of
painstaking thought and deliberation, I have come to believe that the
Hermetic Code could well be what we are searching for—the answer to
practically all of our most fundamental questions on life and the universe.
Obviously this is hardly a minor claim in the great evolutionary debate, but
throughout my years of questing I have always borne in mind that I am
propagating here not my ideas, but those of the enigmatic “god of wisdom”
Hermes/Thoth, one of the greatest minds ever to have existed.

In order to appreciate just how far-reaching this belief system really is, we
must for the time being return to the present and examine some of the
fundamental discoveries of modern science. Some of the concepts about to be
discussed are extraordinary to say the least, and may at first seem difficult to
grasp, illogical even. But there will be no mathematics involved here—we
need only have a general idea of the nature of the strange world now being
described by scientists, enough to enable us to compare it with the star-strung
universe of the Egyptian high priest. Therefore, as a starting point, we shall be
looking into the nature of what is perhaps the most important and familiar
phenomenon in existence. This is light, the “creative rays,” which,
Yogananda claimed, could somehow be manipulated by the trained mind of
the yogi. This is saying, in effect, that there is some kind of accessible
interface between mind and light.

Now these “creative rays” are actually composed of what are today known
as light quanta, or photons, subatomic components classified as “virtual”
particles, which means that they have no measurable mass. As we shall see in
the following chapter, photons have been shown to exhibit some strange,
almost ghostlike properties. And they are not alone: there are, down in the
physicist’s microworld, other minute components engaging in paranormal
activities, in particular electrons, the particles that give all infinitesimally
small atomic nuclei a hard, voluminous outer shell and hence the property of
materiality as we know it. Moreover, the photon, as well as existing in the
form of visible light and other rays of the electromagnetic spectrum, is also
the “force carrier” of all electromagnetic interactions, which means all
interactions between particles of matter, between electrons. In other words,

when matter forms or decomposes by interacting with environmental
conditions, it does so through the constant emission and absorption of
photons. Light, therefore, as well as being a type of radiation capable of
inducing in us visual sensation, is also the universal agent of change.
Therefore if Yogananda’s claim is correct, that these “creative rays” can
somehow be influenced by the trained mind, we already have a possible
explanation as to how psychokinesis might work.

Yogananda, who always followed closely the progress of modern science,
noted that the word “impossible” was becoming less prominent in man’s
vocabulary. That was back in 1946. Since then it seems to have disappeared
altogether, leaving in its stead a plethora of “improbabilities.” Physicists
know that, in the quantum world of subatomic particles, the impossible can
and does happen. For example, it has been discovered that certain categories
of virtual particles are created out of “nothing” in what most people think of
as “empty space,” borrowing energy from some unidentifiable cosmic
storehouse only to disappear without trace nanoseconds later after paying
back the energy loan. Billions of these massless entities are apparently
popping into and out of existence in every cubic centimeter of space in a
manner that might reasonably be described as ghostlike. So if you don’t yet
believe in the paranormal, either talk to a physicist or turn the page.

The Electron and the Holy Ghost

A round the beginning of the twentieth century, a new era of scientific
enquiry began, and with it came some startling discoveries concerning
the nature of matter. Previously, classical physicists had thought of the
material universe as “deterministic,” that it obeyed the established
Newtonian/Einsteinian laws of motion and gravity, and that all material
processes could in general be predicted with experimentally verifiable
accuracy. But when physicists started probing atomic structures and their
components, they discovered that they behaved in random, uncontrollable
ways. In order to account for the peculiar dynamics of this strange
underworld, scientists developed a new kind of physics, known today as
quantum mechanics.

This new science is remarkable, because its practitioners not only believe
in the paranormal, but can prove experimentally that it is a reality.

It all started with the investigation of subatomic particles, the smallest
entities yet detected in the universe, the components of atoms, of light and of
just about everything else. Originally it was thought that they were simply
particle-like points in space, but recent discoveries have shown that the
“particle” observed is only the detectable trace of a much more complex
entity, whose overall presence reaches far and wide.

The first hint that this was so came from investigations into the nature of
light itself, which is emitted by light sources in discrete “particle packets,” or
quanta, of electromagnetic energy called photons.

It was noted that a thin beam of light shone through a tiny pinhole in a
partition with a dark screen or photographic plate behind it creates a small
circle of light on the plate. If there are two holes in the partition close
together, the image on the back-plate forms two circles of light over-lapping.
In the area where they do overlap, however, there are intermittent dark bands,
where obviously no light is present. This has been attributed to a familiar
wave-mechanics phenomenon known as interference, and it shows that the
light is emerging from each pinhole as waves, some-times overlapping and
reinforcing one another, and sometimes canceling one another out—hence the

dark, lightless bands. Actually, the wavelike nature of light was first
recognized as long ago as 1803 by the Englishman Thomas Young, using
nothing more than a flame, a partition with two narrow slits and the dark
backdrop upon which the pattern appeared.

Now, if single photons are fired one after another from a light gun over a
given period of time, when the photographic plate is subsequently developed
the interference pattern, logically, should not be there, because a single
photon, presumably, cannot “interfere” with itself. Curiously, however, the
interference pattern invariably does appear. The photon, it seems, can do
whatever it chooses in its own surreal world. It can clap with one hand,
creating interference patterns out of nothing as if in collaboration with some
unseen, ghostly counterpart. Stranger still, when a photon detector is engaged
to “see” what is going on when the photons emerge from the holes, the
interference pattern disappears. Apparently we only have to “look” at a
photon and it changes its nature completely.

Light, then, is a wavelike phenomenon. At least, that is what every-one
thought until Einstein came along with a completely different interpretation of
it. He formulated some equations to account for a phenomenon known as the
“photoelectric effect,” which is the effect of light shining on a metal surface,
whereby electrons are emitted by the metal, causing an electric current to
flow. His calculations proved, theoretically, that light—the photon—is a
particle. This was later experimentally verified, and it was for this discovery,
not the famous Theory of Relativity, that Einstein received his Nobel Prize.

Later discoveries made by physicists in the 1920s, notably those of the
French aristocrat Louis de Broglie and the Austrian Erwin Schrodinger,
showed that the electron, one of the fundamental components of all atoms,
also has both particle and wave properties.

So what exactly is light, this ghostlike, photon entity? It is a particle with
wavelike properties, a wave with particle-like properties, a mysterious,
diminutive something that actually reacts when we “look” at it. If we leave it
alone, it behaves like a wave, but as soon as we start to measure its
movements, it flips over into particle mode. Classic abracadabra: now you
“see” it, and when you do, it responds, “curls up,” and changes its nature
completely.

Another breakthrough experiment, again demonstrating that there is a great
deal more to these wave/particles than first meets the eye, was the “twin
particle” experiment conducted in 1982 by Alain Aspect and his team at the
Institute of Optics in Paris.

Originally outlined by the theoretical physicist John Bell in 1964, the
experiment was devised to test an apparent absurdity in the rules of quantum
mechanics, first pointed out in 1935 by Einstein and two colleagues, Boris
Podolsky and Nathan Rosen. Basically it concerned one of the most

controversial rules of quantum theory, which says that subatomic particles are
interconnected in a way that classical physicists believed was impossible.

It was discovered that certain subatomic processes result in the creation of
pairs of particles with identical properties. For example, when an electron and
its antimatter opposite—a positron—come into contact and annihilate one
another, they coalesce into two light quanta, two photons, which then zoom
off in opposite directions at the maximum speed allowed by nature—the
speed of light. Quantum physics states that, irrespective of how far apart these
twin quanta travel, when they are measured they will always be seen to have
the very same angles of polarization. That is, at the precise moment of
measurement of one or another of these particles, its twin somehow “knows”
which angle is to be agreed upon. Consequently there must be some sort of
instantaneous communication going on between them.

Another curious feature of quantum mechanics arises from what is known
as the “uncertainty principle,” which was first expressed in 1927 by the
German physicist Werner Heisenberg. According to this principle,
wave/particles do not have a definite position in space and time, which means
that their locations can only be expressed in terms of variable statistical
probabilities collated over the course of many duplicate experiments. The
“uncertainty” arises from the fact that it is not possible to measure
simultaneously, with a high degree of accuracy, both the position and the
momentum of a moving particle. Measuring one aspect, say the position,
affects the momentum, and vice versa. In other words, the very act of
observation changes the primary state of the wave/ particle. We noted this
strange property earlier in the behavior of the photon, which, when targeted
by a photon detector, switches over from wave to particle mode. The point is,
in their virgin state, wave/particles do not have exact locations. Depending on
how they are measured, they can manifest as a specific point, or as a fuzzy
cloud of wave-like energy.

The Danish physicist Niels Bohr had a long-standing dispute with Einstein
and his colleagues over the true nature of this so-called action at a distance
between twin quanta. Einstein rejected the notion because it seemed to imply
that there was a “superluminal” (faster than light) transference of information
operating between the two coordinates, and the Theory of Special Relativity
states absolutely that nothing on a material level of existence can travel faster
than light. Bohr’s answer to the problem, which is generally accepted by the
majority of today’s physicists, was that there was in fact no superluminal
communication taking place, and that Einstein’s error lay in viewing twin
particles as being independent, self-contained phenomena. Bohr reasoned that
if subatomic quanta do not really exist until a probe of some kind causes them
to “curl up” and manifest one of their measurable properties, then it was
meaningless to consider them as separate things. Quantum systems in their

natural, “unmeasured” state are indivisible from one another, and what we
observe as being apparently unrelated subatomic events are in reality in a
constant and immutable state of interconnectedness, even if they are on
opposite sides of the universe.

When John Bell first thought up an experiment that could verify or
disprove this idea, technology hadn’t yet developed to a level at which it
could produce instruments with an accuracy and sensitivity sufficient to carry
it through. This is why it took until the early 1980s for Alain Aspect and his
group finally to take up the challenge.

The experiment involved creating a stream of twin photons by heating
calcium atoms with high-energy lasers, and then allowing them to fly off in
opposite directions through lengths of pipe. At the end of each pipe were
special filters that deflected each twin toward either one of two polarization
detectors. The accuracy of the instrumentation ensured that all the crucial
stages in the experiment could be performed in so brief an instant that there
would be insufficient time for even a beam of light to traverse the space
between the two particles. And, sure enough, as quantum theory had predicted
mathematically, each photon was always able to manifest simultaneously
exactly the same angle of polarization as its twin. Consequently, physicists
now believe that the connection between two such related quanta must be
“nonlocal,” which means that no matter how far apart they are they always
remain composite parts of a single, dynamic, interconnected system.

So we know that twin photons generated from a single impact event travel
out from the source of their origin at the speed of light. Now this is significant
because, according to the physicist, to an observer moving at such a velocity,
time and space as we perceive them would both cease to exist. As speed is
increased, they say, time slows down proportionately, eventually reaching a
complete standstill at the speed of light. Simultaneously, space gradually
contracts, eventually into nothing, no space whatsoever. What scientists are
positing here, therefore, is a dimension of existence in which space and time
do not exist. This is why the photon, itself perpetually existing in this strange,
“spaceless” world in which time stands still, can instantaneously “transmit”
information to a twin—because the impulses carrying the data have no
“space” to pass through: they are already there, so to speak.

Clearly we are talking now of an alternative reality to the one we are all
familiar with, quite literally another dimension, and it is a world as curious as
any found in fairy tales. In this alternative, quantum world, all entities, in
moving at the speed of light, must effectively occupy, at one and the same
instant, all possible locations along the line of passage. No matter how long
the line as observed from a stationary frame of reference, the photon
simultaneously exists everywhere along it. Like the Holy Ghost or the spirit
of Muhammad or the Buddha, it is “omnipresent.”

It is difficult to imagine what it would be like to see the universe through
the “eyes” of the photon. There would be no distance between stars and
galaxies, continents, you, or me; there would be no space, no ticking of
clocks, and no aging. The moment a photon is created, say, inside a distant
star, at that very same instant it could be entering the retina of an observer
zillions of miles away. Its creation and annihilation is in fact one single¬
impact event, captured for all eternity in a frozen, timeless instant.

Similarly, if we ourselves could attain the speed of light and cross over into
this other reality, theoretically we would be godlike. Just like the photon we
could exist everywhere simultaneously, “visiting” remote constellations
simply by focusing on them; and our conception and our death would be
perceived as one and the same event, a single, permanent feature in the
timeless, unfading fabric of creation. Presumably, once created, everything
existing in such a dimension must exist literally forever; and what might be
observed in the laboratory as, for example, the creation and annihilation of a
humble photon is merely a cross-section of a much greater and more complex
reality in which the observed event, which might have taken only a
microsecond or two to unfold, continues to have a permanent existence
independent of time.

According to Einstein, extraordinary changes would occur to a physical
body if it could ever reach the light barrier. Its length, together with the length
of the trajectory in space along which it were traveling, would become zero,
and its mass would become infinite, expanding at right angles to the direction
of motion into a vibrant sheet of wavelike energy of immeasurable size.

Now, in crossing the light barrier, any physical entity would, in effect, be
transcending the fourth dimension, the line of time, and passing over to a
quite different dimension existing beyond time. And if we refer to time as the
fourth dimension (after the three dimensions of space: line, plane, solid), then
the next in succession—what I called in my last book the plane of light—is
the fifth. This is the “nonlocal” world of the photon quantum.

What is emerging here, in fact, is an overall cosmic picture of a succession
of dimensions, from zero point to a line, a line to a plane, a plane to a solid,
and subsequently the continuous existence of a solid along the line of time.
These four different perspectives are easily recognizable, but the fifth in the
ascending scale, as physicists have discovered, needs more than a little
intuition to identify. In a later chapter we shall discuss in more detail these
different dimensions, as they provide a convenient way of fixing our position
in the cosmic scheme of things.

The point to note here is that this fantastic fifth dimension is definitely
there. We know this because physicists have proven it mathematically. This is
highly significant, because it raises a most interesting question: which of the
two dimensions is nearer to reality, the time-less, spaceless, nonlocal world of

the photon, or the world we perceive, a world of sense objects, ticking clocks,
night and day, birth and death? The answer, of course, at least as far as the
physicist is concerned, is that the nonlocal world of fundamental quanta is the
primary reality, and that the world perceived in time by our ordinary senses is
at best incomplete. This is precisely what Einstein was referring to when he
wrote in a letter to the relatives of a deceased colleague, “People like us, who
believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future
is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” 1

What is particularly interesting about this curious nonlocal dimension of
the particle physicist is that it almost perfectly matches the worldview of
many so-called primitive peoples, of the aboriginal shamans, of the writers of
many of the world’s great scriptures and, perhaps most significantly, of the
Egyptian priesthood. Remember the Hopi, whose shamans perceive only an
“eternal present” and whose ceremonial dance results in those involved
experiencing the collapse of the whole universe into a single event. In a
similar vein we have the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom and scriptural writers
from every major culture, to whom the concepts of eternity (timelessness) and
infinity (spacelessness) were common fare.

As I described earlier, the psychedelic experience can result in the same
kind of impression, that is, of a world in which time seems to stand still.
Speaking personally, my own “extratemporal” experiences were impressive in
the extreme, and it is unlikely that I will ever forget those uplifting feelings
that we human beings could live forever.

Possibly such perceptions are the result of what Colin Wilson sees as right-
brain, intuitive thought processes—of the kind he believes to have been used
by the possessors of ancient “lunar” knowledge, which was unified and
enabled people to see things as a whole. The Hopi’s concept of an eternal
present seems to express just such a unified world-view, in which everything
in the entire universe condenses into a conceptual singularity, multiplicity
becomes unity, all becomes one.

Now let’s return to another strange idea that has echoes in the present, one
that was first expounded at least as long ago as the time of the Greek
philosophers Pythagoras and Thales. This is the notion that matter itself is
“psychic,” that it possesses some kind of awareness of its environment.
Probably very few scholars have ever given any serious consideration to such
a seemingly fanciful claim. It’s a quaint idea, one might think, but we
shouldn’t take it to heart. And yet, curiously, some of the latest discoveries of
modern science actually lend support to such a view.

We have already mentioned the peculiarly responsive behavior of the
photon, which behaves like a wave when left unobserved and as a particle
when targeted by a detector, and also the now proven reality of nonlocal
(timeless, spaceless) interactivity between twin quanta.

In an attempt to explain the principle of nonlocality and the idea of a vast
web of interconnectedness permeating the whole universe, the University of
London physicist David Bohm posited the existence of what he called
quantum potential. He saw this as a new kind of energy field that, like gravity,
pervades the whole universe, but whose influence does not weaken with
distance.

Bohm first recognized a possible indication of this quantum potential
through his work on plasmas, gases comprising a high density of electrons
and positive ions (atoms with a positive charge). He noticed that the electrons,
once they were in plasma, began to act in concert, as if they were all part of a
greater, interconnected whole. For example, if any impurities were present in
the plasma, it would always realign itself and trap all foreign bodies in an
exclusion zone—just as a living organism might encase poison in a boil.
Bohm observed also a similar, orchestrated mass movement of electrons in
metals and superconductors, with each one acting as if it “knew” what
countless billions of others were about to do. According to Bohm, particles
act in this way through the influence of the quantum potential, a subquantum
force matrix that somehow coordinates the movement of the whole.

It appears that when plasmas are rejecting impure substances and
regenerating themselves, they look very similar to swirling masses of well-
organized protoplasm. This curious “organic” quality led Bohm to comment
that he often had the impression that the electron sea was, in a sense, “alive.”
He possibly did not intend this to be taken too literally, that the electron mass
was living in the same way as an amoeba, but the evident highly coordinated
symmetries of the plasma convinced him that the electrons were responding
to one of many “intelligent” orders implicit in the fabric of the universe. He
believed that order exists in many different degrees, some forms being much
more ordered than others, and that as a consequence the things we see as
disordered at our ordinary levels of perception may in fact be perfectly
ordered when viewed in a more objective way.

To illustrate this point, imagine yourself as a microcosmic visitor in a
living cell, observing amid a writhing sea of biomolecules—proteins,
enzymes, amino acids, and the like—all busy exchanging energies, whizzing
past you in a flurry of hyperactivity. What you would see might appear to be
virtual chaos, a seething marketplace full of eager bargain-hunters, pushing,
gathering in random groups, shouting, haggling. But, in fact, all this frenzied
activity, appearing on the face of it to be an unending display of random
physical actions, is totally governed by the hidden DNA of the cell, possibly
one of the most organized and beautifully proportioned structures in the entire
universe, and producing, as a direct result of the cell’s activity, a greater
organism of an infinitely higher order.

So these electron symmetries, which Bohm called plasmons, appear to be

following hidden instructions encoded somewhere in the subquantum fabric
of the universe. But even where we observe no apparent orchestrated activity,
where masses of electrons seem to be acting randomly, we may simply be
trying to view them on the wrong scale—rather like our microcosmic
onlooker in the biochemical marketplace of the cell.

Bohm was ultimately to conclude that the ordinary world as seen through
orthodox scientific experimentation is really an illusion, something like a
holographic image, and that somewhere behind this lies a much deeper and
more meaningful level of reality—the holographic “film,” as it were, from
which the image originates. This metaphor of the universe as a living
hologram subsequently became the central theme of Bohm’s investigations,
which have been summarized by Michael Talbot in his book The
Holographic Universe. We can take another look at the wider implications of
this important concept later.

Bohm’s views on consciousness in relation to matter are also interesting.
He believed that consciousness itself is actually a subtle, highly rarefied form
of matter and that forms of intelligence exist, in correspondingly different
degrees, in all kinds of material substances. “The ability of form to be active,”
he said, “is the most characteristic feature of mind, and we have something
that is mindlike already with the electron.” 2

As it happens, Gurdjieff and Ouspensky were saying much the same thing
in the early part of the twentieth century, that everything, including all our
finer thoughts and aspirations, has a material existence and could,
theoretically, be weighed and measured. On the subject of matter as we know
it, Gurdjieff had this to say: “In addition to its cosmic properties, every
substance also possesses psychic properties, that is, a certain degree of
intelligence.” 3

Do these observations seem at all familiar? They sound decidedly “Greek”
to me. Bohm’s electrons, negatively charged wave/particles that orbit the
nuclei of atoms at velocities approaching the speed of light, are what give
matter its substance, its apparent solidity. And if electrons exhibit “the most
characteristic feature of mind,” then this means that the Greeks were right all
along and that all material things are endowed with “psychic” properties.

In fact, Bohm then took this highly mystical worldview a giant leap farther
by suggesting that not only are “inanimate” objects like rocks and stones in
some way alive and intelligent, but so too is all energy, all time, all space—
everything. As we noted earlier, Sri Aurobindo expressed a similar view when
he said that if there were a single point in the universe that were not
conscious, the whole universe itself would be unconscious.

The principle of nonlocal interconnectedness is hereby taken to the
absolute limit, where even so-called empty space is seen to be full of

meaning, brimming with an infinite store of primordial intelligence, the
underlying formative matrix for everything existing, including ourselves.
Thus all the phenomena we observe in the physical universe are simply
“ripples” on the surface of an unimaginably vast ocean of deeper meaning.
This hidden world Bohm called the implicate or enfolded order, the
subsurface dimension that gives rise to the phenomena we observe with our
senses, in the explicate, unfolded order. So the manifestations of all forms are
the product of endless enfoldings and unfoldings between these two very
different but mutually interconnected dimensions.

In this way a wave/particle, like an electron, is described not as one thing,
but as a nebulous stream of interchangeable energies enfolded throughout the
whole of space. When it is measured by an investigator, what is observed is
merely one property of the “greater electron,” which has simply responded to
some probe or other by unfolding into the explicate order.

Obviously the ancient Greeks would have known nothing of the strange
properties of the subatomic particle. Nevertheless, they still somehow
managed to establish a view on the mindlike nature of materiality that accords
with the latest discoveries of modern science. How? Was it a lucky guess?
Did someone perhaps tell them? Or was it just plain old-fashioned intuition?
Of the three possibilities, I suspect that the first is the least likely. For reasons
that will become clear a little later, I am inclined to believe that the Greeks
received this wisdom from their predecessors, but that intuition played a large
part in their understanding of the teachings they inherited.

So what else is “Greek” in this present era of scientific discovery, with its
particle consciousness, photon “telepathy,” and so forth? Is there any other
knowledge that these ancient peoples possessed that might be relevant to this
enquiry? Indeed there is: there is the knowledge that they received directly
from the Egyptians in the form of the Hermetic Code, which says that
everything in this universe manifests strictly according to musical principles.

Once again we can see how strangely “modern” is this view, because
scientists themselves are now speaking more and more in terms of a musical
universe that endlessly vibrates, and of physical phenomena all possessing
unique resonances of their own.

For example, in his book Other Worlds, Paul Davies describes the way
electrons orbit the nuclei of atoms in a regular order, whereby only stationary
patterns will occur. He compares the phenomenon to the standing wave-
pattern of air in a particular set of organ pipes, where only certain established
notes are permitted because the patterns of air-waves must fit into the
geometry of the pipes. Similarly, only certain “notes” (frequencies, energies)
are accommodated by the atom. When transitions occur between the normal
energy levels, electrons emit characteristic colors—streams of photons—and
these are the visual evidence of what Davies calls “this subatomic music.” He

continues:

We can therefore regard the spectrum of light from an atom as similar to the
pattern of sound of a musical instrument. Each instrument produces a
characteristic sound, and just as the timbre of a violin differs markedly from
that of a drum or a clarinet, so the color mixture of light from a hydrogen atom
is characteristically distinct from the spectrum of a carbon or uranium atom. In
both cases there is a deep association between the internal vibrations
(oscillating membranes, undulating electron waves) and the external waves
(sound, light). 4

There are other musical relationships between atoms and their components.
For example, all atoms are members of a whole, integrated family, ranging
from the lightest, hydrogen, with one electron tracing a lone orbit around its
nucleus, to the densest, heavily radioactive atoms, which have many electrons
orbiting the nucleus in seven permitted energy levels. Remember that there
are seven successive “energy levels” in the major musical scale. Obviously
the eighth, transcendental “note” of this fundamental atomic scale is the
whole phenomenon, consisting of all atoms everywhere.

Further, a recently developed classification system known as the theory of
quantum chromodynamics suggests that beneath the materiality of the atom
there are other essentially musical symphonies being played by nature.
Scientists are currently classifying a certain category of subatomic particles
according to a system known as the eightfold way. The theory is so called
because it puts certain routinely observed “particle molecules” known as
baryons, pions, and mesons together in families of eight. The term was
originally coined by the American physicist Murray Gell-Mann and was
intended as a pun. He was apparently familiar with the “eightfold path to
enlightenment” devised by the Buddha, and presumably felt that the name
would add a lighter note to his complex mathematical theory. Doubtless the
idea that the Buddha’s belief system is in any way scientific would make
Gell-Mann’s toes curl. But, being unashamedly what the science writer
Richard Morris has referred to as “one of those deluded mystics who manage
to see parallels between theories in physics and ideas associated with Eastern
mysticism,” I would suggest that this is precisely the case, that it is no mere
coincidence that the Buddha’s musical interpretation of reality should so
easily and naturally blend in with the foremost ideas of today’s scientists. The
“eightfold way” of the Buddha is a variation on the Hermetic Code, and like
the “eight steps of learning” of his Chinese counterpart Confucius, it was
founded on the idea that the whole universe is an essentially musical structure
and that to realize this, to tune in to this fundamental reality, one had to
conform to the laws and forces controlling it.

Thus, if we look closer at this chromodynamic system of classification, we

shall see a quite familiar pattern emerge.

There are supposedly eight low-mass baryon wave/particles making one
octet, eight pions forming a second octet and eight vector-mesons making a
third—twenty-four in all. Now, this same family of particles also comprises,
in addition to the octets, a complex triplet. This means that each of the eight
particles in an octet is also a triplet, made up of three smaller particles, which
Gell-Mann called “quarks.” As we see, the stmcture of each octet (or octave)
of triplets is identical to the symmetry of the I Ching, with its eight trigrams.
And there is more. Gell-Mann’s theory originally called for three kinds of
quarks, called up, down, and strange—a subatomic “trigram.” But, then, to
these were subsequently added three more types of quark, called charm,
bottom and top. Enter the hexagram. All we need now to complete the picture
is the number 64. It would be highly fitting if we could find it, because sixty-
four is not only the number of hexagrams in the I Ching, it is also the number
comprising the council of Brahmins who, according to legend, foretold of the
impending birth of the Buddha. In fact, as I pointed out in The Infinite
Harmony, this particular number has surfaced not in quantum
chromodynamics, but in what is known in physics as superstring theory.

The central idea in superstring theory is that subatomic wave/particles are
in reality infinitesimally small strings made of space. These strings vibrate
endlessly over an infinite range of frequencies, and their interactions give rise
to the observed characteristics of all known particles. You really can’t get
more intellectually obscure than the theory of superstrings, and I am
personally completely baffled by it, involving as it does no less than ten
different dimensions (three of space, one of time, and six of God-knows-
what) and a system of higher mathematics guaranteed to make the layman’s
eyes glaze over in seconds. But no matter; all we need to know here is that
this incredibly complicated system has created a superstring, out of nothing
but space, that has precisely 64 degrees of movement associated with it. This
supersymmetric system can apparently account for all subatomic quanta, and
is capable, says the science writer Timothy Ferris, of “drawing all matter into
an elegant picture in which particles’ attributes are seen as the vibrations of
strings, like notes struck on Pythagoras’ lyre.” 5

So we’re back to Pythagoras again, the original philosopher, a
contemporary of the Buddha born five and a half centuries before Christ, who
taught that everything in the universe obeys musical laws and who, like the
yogis of India, believed that matter was “psychic.” And both of these ideas, as
we have seen, have now gained a metaphysical foothold in the mind of the
modern scientist.

Now, if consciousness is material in some way—as Gurdjieff and Bohm
both believed—and if matter is conscious, though on an entirely different
scale, then could the higher possibly influence the lower, and vice versa?

Pythagoras would very likely say yes to the former proposition, possibly
citing the mysterious powers of Orpheus and Amphion as examples. But he
would also, being what today might be called a natural mystic, have believed
that the psychic presence in matter could indeed influence human beings.
People today of a sensitive or intuitive inclination often feel that nature
speaks to us in many different ways. Mountains and forests, for example, as
many people instinctively know, have a particularly powerful presence. So
too do many ancient artifacts, such as the Great Pyramid or the Taj Mahal, the
Cathedral of Notre Dame, or a statue like the Sphinx.

Ouspensky recognized a similar close relationship between himself and
nature. He describes one of his drug-induced experiences in his second major
classic, A New Model of the Universe: “Everything was living, everything
was conscious of itself. Everything spoke to me and could speak to
everything. Particularly interesting were the houses and other buildings that I
passed, especially the old houses. They were living things, full of thoughts,
feelings, moods and memories. The people who lived in them were their
thoughts, feelings, moods.” 6

In another passage, he preempts the modern physicist by describing the
world he was seeing as “a world of very complicated mathematical relations”:
“this means a world in which everything is connected, in which nothing exists
separately and in which at the same time the relations between things have a
real existence apart from the things themselves; or possibly, Things’ do not
exist and only relations exist.” 7

Sri Aurobindo saw the world in exactly the same way. In his view, all
apparent separateness on the physical plane is simply an illusion. In the state
of enlightenment, he said, the unity of everything is perceived as a living
reality, but as one descends from the higher to the lower states of
consciousness, a progressive “law of fragmentation” takes over and “things”
appear once more as isolated, separate entities.

And science, of course, now supports this view. As we have seen, all
subatomic particles are also waves of different frequencies, and this means
that everything is composed of a vast, interconnected web of interference
patterns. Talbot, in The Holographic Universe, suggests that our brains
mathematically construct this so-called objective reality by decoding these
varying frequencies that are really projections from another dimension
existing beyond space and time. So perhaps the great ocean of waves and
frequencies “out there” looks solid and real to us only because our brains
automatically reprogram all this “fluid” information into the familiar form of
the sense objects making up our world. In reality, however, everything is a
vast sea of highly resonant interference patterns. The sun and stars and the
planet we live on, the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx, even the brain itself—all

these physical structures are in essence composed of overlapping waves.

In the last chapter we discussed the work of Robert Jahn and Brenda
Dunne, whose experiments with the randomevent generator and the “pin-ball”
machine provided compelling evidence for psychokinesis. Having found
evidence of this ability in a large proportion of their subjects, they came to
some interesting conclusions concerning the possible nature of such a process.
They proposed that since all physical phenomena possess a particle/wave
duality, then perhaps consciousness does too. When in a particle-like state,
consciousness would be localized inside the skull, but when in a wave mode,
like all waves, it can produce effects at a distance.

In a similar vein, though not in relation to psychokinesis, the Cambridge
mathematician Roger Penrose has also considered the effects of quantum
processes in respect of the workings of the human mind. When speaking of
“action at a distance” between twin particles (non-local quantum
correlations), he suggests that such phenomena could be involved in
conscious thought processes over large regions of the brain itself, and that
perhaps there is a direct relation between a “highly coherent quantum state”
and a correspondingly high degree of awareness.

Jahn and Dunne have suggested that phenomena themselves are actually
products of the combined interference patterns created by the wave motions
of matter and the wavelike aspect of consciousness. They believe that
psychokinesis occurs through an exchange of certain information between
physical things and the human mind, not as a single directional flow from one
to the other, but rather as a mutually interacting “resonance” operating
between the two. These resonances sound something like the relations
between “things” described by Ouspensky in the passage quoted earlier.
Significantly Jahn and Dunne reported that the more successful volunteers
often described a sensation of feeling “in tune” with the device.

Again, this is precisely what Indian philosophers and yogis have been
saying since the dawn of their culture, that matter is responsive and that it is
composed of resonating interference patterns, principally those of light itself.
In his major work On Yoga, Sri Aurobindo describes a sphere of existence
beyond space and time comprising a “multicolored infinity of vibrations,” of
waves. Physical reality, he said, is simply a “mass of stable light” 8 —which is
precisely the conclusion I came to way back when I was experimenting with
various hallucinogens. But all of this “stable light,” according to the yogi, also
possesses a measured degree of consciousness. This is apparently how yogi
masters are able to influence the physical world: they have perfected a way of
making direct contact with its rudimentary consciousness. Yogananda says
much the same thing in his book Autobiography of a Yogi —that matter is
simply “an undifferentiated mass of light.” The “law of miracles,” he said, “is

operable by any man who has realized that the essence of creation is light.” 9
So light has a very special place in the belief system of Hindus, which of
course is why their most important annual festival—Diwali—is known as the
festival of light. In fact, Hindus, Buddhists, and Eastern philosophers in
general all emphasize the importance of light in their cosmological view of
the world. Tune in to it, they say, and a whole new world unfolds. And so it
would, for science tells us that light, the photon quantum, exists and operates
in a timeless, spaceless, nonlocal realm. This, in my view, is the “eternal”
world of the Hopi shaman, who can hold a “spaceless” universe virtually in
the palm of his hand; the “infinite” world of the Egyptian priesthood, who
taught that the soul of the godking can exist for “eternity”; the “heaven”
identified by all the great revelationists in history, by people who have
succeeded in glimpsing beyond the veil and bequeathed to us their
illuminating testimonies of the extraordinary things they witnessed.

And, clearly, the prime mover in this nonlocal dimension is light, the Holy
Ghost. In this chapter we have seen how the modern scientist interprets this
important phenomenon. In the following section we shall see what the
primitive dreamers of former ages had to say about it.

Further Light

T he phenomenon of light is celebrated in all of the major religions. If you
read your Bible, Koran, or Upanishads, you will see that it is always
spoken of in glowing terms.

In Autobiography of a Yogi, Yogananda quotes freely from the Hebrew
and Christian Scriptures to emphasize the importance of light with respect to
mankind’s innate spiritual quest. He notes, for example, that God’s very first
command was, “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3). He also quotes from
Matthew 6:22, a verse that runs close to Jahn and Dunne’s idea of
consciousness operating in tune with the wavelike nature of reality: “The light
of the body is in the eye. If, therefore, thine eye be single, thy whole body
shall be full of light.”

In the Koran, in the chapter entitled “Light,” Muhammad uses the term to
describe the creative power of Allah: “Allah is the light of the heavens and
the earth. . . . Light upon light, Allah guideth unto His Light whom He will.”

Similarly, in ancient Persia the principal god, Ahura Mazda, was associated
specifically with light. It is said that when the prophet Zoroaster achieved
enlightenment, it was through the agency of a spirit that led him to the
formless light of the creator. The alchemical element fire was so sacred to the
Zoroastrians because at night it was a continuous source of the creative light
of Ahura Mazda.

In early Greece, the sun and its light were revered in the form of the gods
Helios and Apollo. According to myth, Helios, father of the hero Phaeton, had
the ability to “see all things” and was enthroned amid rainbows (light) and the
hours, attended by the four seasons. An almost identical description of this
all-seeing creator is to be found in Revelation, where St. John depicts God
sitting on his throne in heaven, encircled by the colors of the rainbow (“seven
lamps of fire,” Revelation 4:5).

The traditional idea of a sun-king is an important one, appearing in cultures
all around the world. In ancient Egypt, a pharaoh’s name often ended in the
suffix Re or Ra (“sun”) to indicate his divine status, as in Menkaura (Greek
Mycerinus), alleged builder of the third Pyramid of Giza.

Similarly, in Central and South America, Aztec, Inca, and Maya legends all
speak of an ancient god, a cosmic creator who appeared from the eastern sea
soon after a major catastrophe had obscured the sun. Known by various
names—Kontiki, Viracocha, Kukulcan, Quetzalcoatl—this god is said to have
brought back the sun and its light, and with it civilization and a new way of
being.

This ancient theme of light after darkness is the key to virtually all
midwinter festivals in the northern hemisphere. Like the Zoroastrians, the
peoples of Bronze Age Europe used fire burning through the night to invoke
the return of the sun, its warmth, and its light.

In numerous other long-standing traditions, teachers, priests, and shamans
have consistently attributed to the sun and its light, or the stars and their light,
divine or supernatural significance. The Egyptian priest-astronomers,
however, were the first to place the sun (Ra) at the center of a cosmological
belief system. Now this, I would suggest, was not simply an abstract notion of
giving thanks and praise to the giver of life. Nor was it just the sun itself that
was of prime importance, but rather its light. The Great Pyramid was known
to the early Egyptians as Khuti, “The Lights,” not only because of the
dazzling reflective properties of its original, highly polished casing of white
tura limestone, but because light itself was the key to their entire system of
belief. This is an important and until now unrecognized feature of Egyptian
metaphysics, and it represents something of a departure from recent
suggestions that the Egyptian religion was either a “star cult” or a “sun cult.”
In reality, it was neither and it was both, the common feature being light
itself, which is emitted by all stars. In later dynasties, major temples were
carefully constructed along axes aligned with the first rays of the rising sun on
specific solstices or equinoxes, a particularly striking example of which is the
Temple of the Sun—Ammon Ra—at Karnak. Ammon, or Amun, the “Hidden
One,” was said to be the power behind the sun (that is, its light) that keeps the
balance of life and creation in the universe.

Given the fact that the sun is the dominant star in our sky, it seems
perfectly natural that early man should have revered it in one form or another.
But the Egyptian worldview, that mankind’s future “spiritual” evolution is in
some way connected with the starry world, the sun included, was not simply
idol worship based on blind faith or primitive superstition. On the contrary, it
was a carefully thought out scientific theory, the theory of transcendental
evolution, that holds that life, or consciousness, has the potential to evolve,
through the systematic application of the principles of the Hermetic Code,
into higher states of being, into cosmic scales of awareness.

The ancient Egyptians, I believe, saw consciousness, or “spirituality,” like
everything else, as a form of resonance operating over a whole range of
hermetically related frequencies. So the more harmonious the mind becomes,

the finer and more penetrating are the frequencies at which it operates and
therefore the higher the scale of its psychological or spiritual existence. And,
to the Egyptians of the early dynasties, this “higher scale,” as we have
previously noted in the astronomical alignments of the Sphinx and the
Pyramids of Giza, seems to have been closely associated with the stars, with
Orion’s Belt, with Sirius, the constellation of Leo, and in fact every other
major constellation in the great wheel of precession, whose immensely long
cycle, as we noted in a previous chapter, is encoded in some of mankind’s
most ancient myths.

In this way we can see that the Giza necropolis is not simply an old, worn-
out signpost showing the way to Tombstone. It is, in effect, a giant cosmic
pointer, one that naturally directs the attention of all contemplating its
mysteries skyward, toward the higher, stellar scale of existence. More than
that, incorporated within the dimensions of the Great Pyramid is the
sophisticated mathematical relationship known as pi, which is first and
foremost an expression of the Hermetic Code, the code by which all evolution
proceeds, from DNA upward, to the conscious mind of mankind—and
beyond. And then, significantly, we have the old Egyptian name for the Great
Pyramid: Khuti, “The Lights.” In my view we are being told here, in clear and
precise terms, that the vehicle by which consciousness can transcend onto this
higher scale is none other than light itself. Light and consciousness, in other
words, are complementary aspects of the ongoing evolutionary process of
creating higher and more sophisticated forms of “life.”

We can describe such a process very easily in musical or hermetic terms.
We know that there are seven fundamental notes in an octave— Do, re, mi,
fa, so, la, ti—and that there are seven fundamental color frequencies in the
spectrum of light: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The
eighth note, Do, of an octave is a repeat, at a higher pitch or frequency, of the
first base note, also Do. Being in turn the first base note of the next evolving
octave, this eighth note automatically becomes the medium through which the
impetus created by the given series of notes transcends onto the scale above.
In the same way, the eighth “note” in the visible scale of the electromagnetic
spectrum—white light, Yogananda’s “creative rays”—can also be envisaged
as having transcendental properties, being the medium through which
evolutionary consciousness can move on to a higher scale and so realize its
optimum potential. Thus we might say that this quantum leap, from the line of
time, the fourth dimension, to the plane of light, the fifth dimension,
represents one fundamental octave of evolution, the magical transition from
the lower Darwinian scale of existence up into the infinitely higher scale, the
home of the mythical gods of the Egyptian pantheon.

The rather startling implication is that the ancients’ vision of an eternal
sphere—“heaven,” or the starry world—and the nonlocal plane of light

described by today’s physicists, are each referring to one and the same level
of reality. In other words, the mysterious quantum universe in which light
exists, with its infinite web of instantaneous information highways and its
zero dimensionality, has been “seen” at first hand and subsequently described
by the priesthood of a civilization that existed five thousand years ago.

Obviously this is a personal and somewhat speculative interpretation of the
religion of the Egyptians. I’m out on a limb, so to speak. But years of
reflecting on the overall effect of Egyptian metaphysics on the human race, on
the way it has permeated through to every major religion in history and even,
as we have seen, into the disciplined mind of the modern scientist, has
convinced me that the orthodox view of this ancient culture is unjustifiably
restricted and ungenerous. These people, I believe, knew as much about life,
the human psyche, and the universe at large as we do now. I would go even
further and suggest that they may have understood a great deal more, albeit in
a different way. Clearly there were men of unparalleled genius living back
then in Egypt. We have unquestionable proof of this: we have the Great
Pyramid, “The Lights,” the greatest and most complex building ever
constructed in stone, we have the detailed precessional data encoded in their
myths and, perhaps most importantly, we have the Hermetic Code, the
“theory of everything.”

Having established that the Egyptian religion was, in fact, a theory of
evolution, we can go beyond theory and look for a practical application of the
principles involved. To do this, we need to focus on what is known as the
“pyramid ritual.” According to Bauval and Gilbert, this was the initiation
ceremony conducted inside the Great Pyramid that was designed to assist the
soul of the dead pharaoh on its transcendental journey to the stars.

Basically, they believe that it involved two ceremonies. The first of these
took place in the Queen’s Chamber, whose southern shaft is now believed to
have been targeted on Sirius—the star of the goddess Isis—as it culminated at
the meridian in 2550 BCE. Here the son of the dead pharaoh traditionally
performed a ritual called “opening the mouth.” This was carried out with an
implement made of meteoric iron—the sacred adze—that was used to pierce
the embalmed mouth of the mummy, an act that was supposed to restore new
life to the pharaoh. After this, the second ceremony was performed in the
King’s Chamber, whereby the soul of the pharaoh, now charged with a new
kind of life force, was freed to fly up the southern shaft, which Bauval
suggests was originally targeted on Zeta Orionis, the star of Osiris.

On first impression one might think that these two rituals, however broad
and imaginative in concept, served no practical purpose whatsoever, being
merely an embellishment of an abstract notion of a life after death. But in my
view this whole ceremony was merely an exemplar and as such was not
designed exclusively for the liberation of the soul of one dead pharaoh. The

ritual was for all initiates and could be performed by anyone virtually
anywhere, with or without a Great Pyramid. It is a detailed description of a
simple but highly effective alchemical “trick” performed by the creative
mind, whereby consciousness is put first into a fundamentally passive mode,
symbolized by the feminine aspect of universal creation, the goddess Isis.
This does not mean a mind that is idly passive, like one absorbed in, say,
watching television, but one that is consciously and actively receptive—a
passive force in tune with the greater cosmos, as opposed to an empty
receptacle soaking up images from a screen. A mind properly controlled in
this way automatically becomes a fertile place in which new perceptions, new
concepts, can germinate and come to fruition. The entirely new, active mode
of thought engendered in this process is symbolized in Egyptian ritual by the
transcendental journey made by the soul to the home of the god Osiris. This
simply represents a new level of consciousness, a higher degree of cosmic
awareness. Intuition, one suspects, is one of its manifestations.

So the pyramid ritual is a symbolic description of the process of
transcendental evolution, the process by which the human mind ascends to a
higher scale of existence in an essentially musically structured universe. This,
I believe, is the key message of the Egyptian mysteries, and it is precisely this
same idea that lies at the root of the world’s major religions, all of which were
set in motion by men who fully understood, and lived by, the principle of
psychological harmony. This is why they repeatedly emphasized the
importance of composing the mind in a certain way, through meditation,
contemplation, prayer that ends in a silent gesture of submission, or whatever.
These exercises were designed to create a state in which the mind is open—
like the pharaoh’s mouth—and so receptive to greater cosmic forces. And
what are these forces? Well, according to such as the Egyptians, the Greeks,
and the yogis of India, these forces are, in fact, electromagnetic.

The vehicle of all our visual impressions is, of course, light itself. A
passive mind with a visual cortex focused on its environment absorbs light
quanta by the billion. This is normal; it is what our retinas are designed to do.
But possibly a mind operating not at an ordinary level of awareness but in a
state of “optimum psychological resonance” might be capable not only of
absorbing external stimuli—light quanta, impressions, and so on—but also of
assimilating them in a vastly more productive and effective way than is
normally possible. This, I would suggest, is the true basis of medieval
alchemy, a kind of “biometaphysical” assimilation of impressions, whereby a
balanced mixture of psychological elements is fused together to make
spiritual “gold.” Put simply, this is the process of the “transmutation” of one’s
impressions into finer, much more precious “substances,” namely concepts.
We should note here that the Arabic word alchemy has its roots in Egypt,
which was known in old Arabia as the Land of the Chems—the Egyptians.

Alchemy means, literally, “the Egyptian way.” It is also the origin of our own
word chemistry, a philological legacy that, if nothing else, demonstrates just
how potent and far-reaching these Egyptian influences can be.

It may seem something of an oversimplification of this elaborate pyramid
ritual to say that it is nothing more than a description of a single alchemical
process, a simple trick of the mind. But then it has frequently been
acknowledged, particularly among scientists, that the most elegant ideas and
theories are often the most simple, sometimes so much so that, once known
and understood, they become obvious. Perhaps, then, these Egyptian
mysteries, whose purpose must have been obvious to the people who created
them, can also be understood without recourse to masses of technical data—
simply by using basic common sense.

In fact, the “trick” in question is straightforward only in theory. In practice,
it can be a most difficult thing to accomplish, at least for sustained periods.
Yogis say that it takes years to master the art completely, to learn to compose
the mind for periods long enough for new concepts to take root within it. But
this is leading on to wider psychological issues involving detailed systems of
self-discipline, the development of powers of concentration, of the will, and
so on. We can return to this question in a later chapter. For the present, it is
the theory itself that is of primary concern and in particular the idea that
“creative light rays”—the Egyptian khuti —play a fundamental part in the
whole musically structured process of evolution.

Khuti itself—the Great Pyramid—was known in Chaldea as Urim middin,
which means “Lights-measures.” The name is significant because it suggests
that the monument was something more than an elite place of initiation or a
mere symbol for a solar cult: that in fact the Egyptians had quite literally
encoded within it measurable data relating to the phenomenon of light.

When one thinks of “lights-measures,” the first thing that comes to mind is
the speed at which light travels, which is about 300,000 kilometers per
second. Physicists regard this speed as an absolute physical law; nothing, they
say, can travel faster than light. In Einstein and Herman Minkowski’s famous
equation relating energy to matter, E = me 2 , c 2 is the constant velocity of light
multiplied by itself. The square of the constant, therefore, is an important
number in theoretical physics because, when it is multiplied by a factor of m
—the mass of a given thing—it gives a value for the amount of nuclear
energy latent within it.

So, to the obvious question: is it possible that this particular “lights-
measure”—the velocity of light—is encoded somewhere within the design of
the Great Pyramid, or in texts relating to it, or in the Giza necropolis as a
whole? Most academics would no doubt regard such a notion with the same
kind of derision that theories about Atlantis and holy space-invaders have
engendered over the years. After all, these people supposedly hadn’t even

invented the wheel back in 2500 BCE, so how could they possibly have had
any inkling of scientific absolutes?

Despite such an obvious contradiction, we can be reasonably sure that the
Egyptians, like today’s physicists, regarded light as the ultimate phenomenon,
a yardstick by which all things could be measured. This is not to say that they
ever attempted to calculate the velocity of moving objects in terms of distance
and time, but that they measured or perceived things—light included—as
forms of resonance obeying musical laws. These are laws, remember, that
were expressed symbolically, not only through the pi convention but also
through myth, in particular the myth of the original pantheon of eight gods
who, it is said, all appeared simultaneously out of an “island of flame,” an
island of light.

Light, therefore, seems to have been viewed as the most vibrant of all
phenomena, an octave of resonance operating at absolute or optimum
frequencies—in effect a musical constant.

In the light octave, as in any other, there are eight fundamental “notes”—or
colors—the seven primary ones and white. The combined harmonic value of
these eight “notes” corresponds to the overall frequency at which light
resonates—the constant rate. This concept of an “eight-note constant” is
particularly interesting, because if we follow the example of Minkowski and
multiply it by itself we end up with a value for the square of the constant of
sixty-four “notes.” This is significant because the Greeks associated the Great
Pyramid with another interesting number relating to an “Egyptian” system
known as the Magic Square of Mercury (Mercury is a Romanized name for
Hermes/Thoth). This is the number 2,080, the sum of all the factors from 1 to
64. The “Minkowski shuffle,” it seems, is a very old trick indeed.

I’m no scientist, and higher mathematics gives me vertigo, but it seems to
me, as I have stated previously, that the modern quantum view of a nonlocal
universe in which light, the omnipresent Holy Ghost, is the prime mover, was
at the very least intuitively perceived by the metaphysicians of ancient Egypt.
Let’s say they somehow attained a higher level of consciousness, which
enabled them to tune in to the quantum field, to penetrate the plane of light,
where everything, as it were, resonates at the constant rate. (Actually there
may be certain evolutionary processes operating in the universe that resonate
at the constant rate squared, and even at frequencies infinitely higher—but
that’s another chapter in an ongoing saga. We can come back to this idea at a
later stage.)

Of course, there is one fundamental difference between the old Egyptian
science of “lights-measures” and the modern quantum description of light: the
former science not only encompasses “values” for the constant, and the
square of the constant, it also recognizes the phenomenon of light as an
essentially musical or hermetic manifestation, an octave. More than that, this

visible spectrum of seven combined frequencies also has three principal
aspects connected with it, which we identify as the three “primary” colors. So
light is, in effect, a “triple-octave” structure; it is an electromagnetic
manifestation of the pi symmetry, the Hermetic Code.

It is now generally accepted that this same code is the basic blue-print of
the geometry of the Great Pyramid, “The Lights,” whose height (481.3949
feet) stands in relation to its base perimeter (3023.16 feet) as the radius of a
circle stands in relation to its circumference. Therefore, if we multiply the
height of the Great Pyramid by 2pi, we obtain a precise value for the
monument’s base perimeter: 481.3949 x 3.14 x 2 = 3023.16 feet.

It so happens that the value of pi is incorporated in the dimensions of
another unique monument, also a pyramid, located on the opposite side of the
Atlantic. This is the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan in Mexico, which is
also, in my view, dedicated to the phenomenon of light. Whereas the angle of
slope of the Great Pyramid is 51 degrees, 51 minutes, the angle of slope of the
Pyramid of the Sun is approximately 43.5 degrees. The base perimeter is
2932.8 feet and its height is (or was) approximately 233.5 feet. Obviously the
2pi relationship cannot be applied here, because the Pyramid of the Sun has a
much gentler angle of slope than that of the Great Pyramid. But if we
substitute 4pi into the equation and multiply it by the height of the Pyramid of
the Sun, we once again obtain an accurate value for the measurement of its
perimeter: 233.5 feet x 3.14 x 2 = 2932.76 feet.

What we have here, then, are two quite distinct “solar” cultures, separated
by a great expanse of ocean and (possibly) time: the builders of both went to a
great deal of trouble to construct gigantic pyramids with dimensions and
proportions indicating a knowledge of the pi relationship.

And there is more. This same ratio has also been identified very recently in
the structural dimensions of other important megalithic constructions of the
ancient world, namely Stonehenge and another example of a pyramid, Silbury
Hill in Wiltshire, both in southern England.

In his book Thoth, Architect of the Universe, Ralph Ellis points out that
the two central pillars in the “inner horseshoe” formation at Stonehenge, the
two “trilithons,” which were originally capped by a slightly overhanging,
curved lintel, would in their original state have given a graphic representation
of the Greek letter pi. There is nothing particularly remarkable about this in
itself. As Ellis himself acknowledges, there are “Arcs de Triomphes” in many
ancient and modern cities. But, according to Ellis, the dimensions of the two
trilithons, the most finely dressed stones of the entire monument, confirm
mathematically that the pi symmetry was recognized by its designer.

Ellis uses as his units of measure what he calls the Zil yard and the Zil foot.
A Zil yard, equivalent in length to the Old Saxon yard, is 1.004 meters. In the
1960s, Alexander Thom, a professor of engineering at Oxford University,

established that Neolithic sites such as Stonehenge, Avebury, and many
others in Western Europe had been designed using a unit he called the
Megalithic yard, equivalent to 0.83 meters. But Ellis believes that his ancient
measures are equally valid factors in the geometry and dimensions of such
monuments as Stonehenge. His line of reasoning in this respect is a little too
involved to detail here, but if we take the Zil foot as being one third of an Old
Saxon yard and use it to measure the height of the two trilithons and the
distance between the centers of them, we find that all-too-familiar ratio:
height, 22 Zil feet, width, 7.

Ellis shows further that this same ratio is incorporated in the dimensions of
the step pyramid of Silbury Hill, which is now believed to have been
constructed in the same era as the Pharaoh Zoser’s Third Dynasty step
pyramid at Saqqarah. Whereas the Great Pyramid has a perimeter equal to 2 x
pi x height, and the perimeter of the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico is equal to
4 x pi x height, the Silbury pyramid’s perimeter, whose angle of slope is
exactly 30 degrees, is equal to 3.5 x pi x height.-

We thus have four extremely ancient structures from widely separated
cultures, three of them giant pyramids, the dimensions and proportions of
which all indicate a knowledge on the part of their designers of the pi
relationship. In the case of Stonehenge and Silbury Hill, apart from their
dimensions or astronomical associations, they stand mute, unsupported by any
long-standing myths relating to their creators. Fortunately this is not the case
with the cultures of Egypt and ancient America, whose legends abound with
stories describing the godlike qualities of the creators of their extant
architectural masterpieces. And when we begin to compare the myths from
the Americas and from Egypt we find that the pyramid structure is by no
means the only common factor. Graham Hancock has already pointed out the
similarity in the facial features of the god Viracocha depicted in sculptures in
South America, and Osiris in Egypt, both of whom are portrayed as bearded,
light-skinned Caucasians. In addition, we have the evidence of the stmctures
themselves, all of which have been constructed out of blocks of immense
proportions. But there is also another significant common factor in the
traditions of these two cultures, and this is light.

We have heard how Osiris and his resilient band of survivors materialized
simultaneously from an “island of flame.” And the most characteristic feature
of a flame, of course, is the light it generates, which again reminds us of the
old Egyptian name for the Great Pyramid: khuti —“The Lights.”

In some of the legends of the Maya, the god Viracocha is said to have
landed with a number of companions on the shores of the eastern sea
following some kind of global catastrophe so calamitous that it had even
obscured the sun. Viracocha apparently then set about civilizing the
Americas, bringing back the sun and its light. So, in the context of this ancient

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myth, as with the myths of the life of Osiris, light and the wisdom of this
great civilizer are very closely connected.

As we have noted, the idea that spiritual or psychological harmony is
intrinsically connected with light is one of the most enduring in history. Read
the book of Revelation, for example, one of the most powerful of scriptures,
and you will see musical structures and references to light leaping out from
every one of its twenty-two chapters. Similarly, the Passion itself, an eight-
day event that culminated in Christ transcending onto the greater scale above,
is in essence virtually identical to the myth surrounding the life, death, and
resurrection of Osiris. Significantly, the “Passion” of Osiris, which was first
enacted publicly by the Egyptian priesthood in Abydos during the Twelfth
Dynasty, consisted of eight consecutive performances.

According to Christian tradition, on the eighth day of the Passion, Jesus
floated upward on a cloud to heaven. The cloud is not without symbolic
meaning, because it was through a cloud that God is said to have spoken to
Noah and later to Moses of his covenant, symbolized by the rainbow, the
spectrum of light, the “seven spirits” of the God of Revelation.

Many other examples of religious doctrines embracing one or another
aspect of musical theory have been discussed at length in The Infinite
Harmony. But the important point about all of these belief systems is that
through this common principle of a harmonious development up through the
earthly scale of our origins and on to a “heavenly” scale, these highly potent
teachings, anachronistic though they may appear, are even today continually
drawing the attention of billions of devotees upward. It’s as if all of
mankind’s higher thoughts and aspirations are inevitably light-bound, heading
—quite literally—for the sun and the stars.

The fact that these belief systems are still forces to be reckoned with
suggests to me that “religious” concepts and precepts, being hermetic, or
harmonious in every way, are quite naturally fixed in the memories of whole
populations, not merely for a few years or so but for centuries and millennia.
This, I believe, is what Gurdjieff would call real or “objective” art.

In the ordinary sense, of course, we cannot touch, weigh, or measure
religious concepts and symbols: they are “metaphysical.” But they exist, in
one form or another, in all our minds. We noted earlier how a number of
investigators have independently suggested that people’s thoughts, if they are
forceful enough, may be as real as the ground on which we stand. Bohm and
Gurdjieff, for example, each believed that consciousness is actually a rarefied,
currently unmeasurable form of matter. If this were so, then, theoretically, this
ephemeral form of materiality known as a “concept,” once created, would
have the potential to exist independently of the individual mind that
conceived it. This would, perhaps, explain why the extraordinarily resilient
ideas and concepts of the Egyptians or the Greeks, or of individuals like

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Muhammad or Isaac Newton, Moses or Einstein, are still around for all to
“see,” because, being in essence psychologically harmonious, they are highly
resonant “things” in their own right. The Egyptians, I believe, regarded
concepts in precisely this way, as a qualitative form of resonance operating
according to musical laws. Viewed as such, religious, philosophical, and
indeed seminal scientific concepts and ideas can be envisaged as
metaphysical “notes” in the unfinished symphony of mankind’s evolution.

Go at any time into a cathedral, a mosque, a synagogue, or a science faculty
and you will witness the direct effect of these evolutionary metaphysical
“notes,” these concepts, on all those within. All of these human activities, all
of the emotions and thoughts involved, are “light-bound,” the residual product
of human evolution, slowly gathering and increasing in rarefaction toward a
condition of optimum psychological resonance. Generally it’s a slow process,
but this is because most social animals live not by the higher ideals and
precepts of a Christ or a Buddha, but by Darwinian principles, through which
changes, or beneficial mutations, happen only very rarely. Fortunately,
perhaps, we don’t all have to live like apes, because a way out of the
Darwinian mode has already been charted by our early ancestors, and the sun,
the stars, and even the galaxies themselves are all stations en route.

All this, of course, has staggering implications, because it suggests that the
ancient Egyptians were in certain respects psychologically more advanced
than we are today. Through some kind of practical application of the
Hermetic Code, a key feature of which was the “pyramid ritual,” these people
managed to “enlighten” themselves, to climb up onto the higher plane of
light, and go down into the quantum universe of the photon quantum. The
hermetic phrase “As above, so below” expresses this concept perfectly.

The plane of light—the physicists’ “quantum field”—permeates the whole
of the material world existing in time. And, as we have noted, the
omnipresent photon is the “force-carrier” of all quantum processes, the
intermediary between all electromagnetic interactions. So when matter
changes, say, by transmuting under intense heat and pressure, as when
carbon-based compounds turn into diamond, or by decomposing, as in the
oxidation of metal or the weathering of stone, photons are continually being
absorbed or radiated by electrons in kaleidoscopes of highly resonant
particle/wave activity. So if, as Yogananda asserted, it is indeed possible for
the disciplined mind to tune in to the optimum harmonic frequencies at which
photons resonate, and thereby enter the timeless, spaceless heaven of the
ancients, then we are considering here access to a higher scale or plane of
existence that in fact reaches right into the very heart of the electron, one of
the basic constituents of all matter.

We have already seen that, according to many ancient myths, the Egyptians
and their Native American counterparts used “music,” or some form of sound

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technology, as an aid in their construction techniques, particularly in respect
of the movement of heavy blocks. We also noted Andrew Collins’s
investigations into sonic technology in his book Gods of Eden, in which he
describes eyewitness accounts of travelers to Tibet in the 1930s who saw the
apparent levitation of stone blocks actuated by priests using numerous
customized instruments. According to one witness, the mysterious Dr. Jarl,
the use of musical or sound instruments by the priests in these demonstrations
appeared to have been “accompanied” by silent “players” in the drama,
namely the two hundred or so monks standing in rows eight to ten deep
behind the musicians themselves, whom Jarl suggested might have been
contributing toward the procedure by applying some form of coordinated
psychokinetic force to influence the outcome of the event.

We are talking here of something very similar to what Colin Wilson has
called the “group-mind” situation, the notion expressed way back before the
time of Plato in the form of the Greek concept of a state of homonoia.
Possibly, therefore, the instruments used by these Tibetan priests were
effective primarily because they had been devised and subsequently activated
by a highly trained collective of psychologically harmonious individuals,
enlightened people whose minds were already “in tune” with what Schwaller
de Lubicz described as “all the rhythms and harmonies of the energies in the
universe.”

The highest and most resonant of the “energies” alluded to here is, of
course, light itself. As we have noted, the velocity of light is an absolute
physical law. It is also the key to the timeless, nonlocal plane of light, the fifth
dimension, defined mathematically by physicists as a sphere of existence in
which there is no time and space. This is the dimension that I believe is
described in myth by the Egyptians as the Kingdom of Osiris or the Duat,
which refers both to the starry world above (the higher plane of light) and the
mysterious underworld below (the nonlocal, quantum field of the subatomic
particle). And Osiris, of course, who had the ability to perceive both of these
domains simultaneously, was head of the musical pantheon of eight gods,
whose principal monument —the Great Pyramid—was primarily associated
with the phenomenon of light, which is itself a musically structured
phenomenon. Thus we have a whole series of very close connections between
the “builder gods,” music and light. Add to this equation a correspondingly
high level of consciousness (which we know existed at that time, because “it”
conceived of the Hermetic Code) and we may well have all the ingredients
necessary for the optimization of any activity, whether it be building a
pyramid or simply sweeping a temple floor. Of course, identifying all the
ingredients is one thing, but understanding how to combine them, and in what
measure, is quite another. It is this distinction, one suspects, that marks the
real difference between the ancients’ intuitive right-brain knowledge system

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and our own fragmented left-brain method, which is the difference between
feeling something in one’s bones and merely knowing certain associated
“facts.”

Therefore any number of us today might go out into a meadow en masse
and try to mimic the exercise described by Jarl, detail by detail, with
disappointing results, because we would be merely aping, lacking the
experience derived from long periods of disciplined, serious work involving
systematic exercises in meditation, in “stilling” and sub-sequently developing
the powers of the mind. Heavy blocks of stone would very likely remain just
that, solid lumps of matter locked in a universal and inviolable gravitational
field, in which everything is permanently endowed with a tangible property
known as “mass.” But then we are not trained ascetics; we are predominantly
secular, with secular demands made upon us, and we have neither the time
nor the inclination to spend years acting out the “pyramid ritual” in a
disciplined way. Maybe if we had, like Yogananda, for example, or Jarl’s
Tibetan hosts, we might see “things” in an entirely different light.

The possible methods of manufacture and construction employed by the
stonemasons of ancient Egypt are currently the subject of much heated
debate. By and large, everyone seems to be genuinely baffled.

Currently in focus are a number of controversial suggestions as to the
engineering techniques used by these “primitive” construction teams, such as,
for example, Christopher Dunn’s ideas about sonic/ ultrasonic stone carving
and drilling as outlined in his book The Giza Power Plant. The latest data,
both the pros and cons of Dunn’s ideas, were for a time posted regularly
online, so we need not dwell on them here: suffice it to say that the question
of machining techniques in the distant past is far from resolved. Andrew
Collins has also contributed to the debate with his investigations into the
ancients’ sonic technology and the possible use of “sonic platforms” in the
raising and transportation of their megalithic blocks. The description of the
stone-raising techniques of the Tibetans by Dr. Jarl further implies the
possible involvement of psychokinesis in the procedure: use of the homonoic
technique.

Inevitably orthodox scholars will reject such notions outright. The general
consensus is, of course, that the ancient stonemasons and builders used
“primitive” methods only. Presumably this even applies to the four
gargantuan monoliths incorporated several courses up in the retaining wall of
the Temple of Baalbek. These blocks, remember, whose combined mass is
estimated to be a staggering three thousand tons, were cut, perfectly shaped,
and then transported to Baalbek from a quarry several hundred meters distant.
While it may be difficult for us to imagine a scenario in which these giant
stones were made to resonate in such a way as to make them temporarily
weightless, the proposition is no more fantastic than the conventional

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position, which holds that these giant blocks were transported this distance
and then raised using only ropes, rollers, and wooden levers. Indeed, of the
two scenarios, the first seems more likely: it does at least fit the bill, whereas
the “primitive” answer patently does not. And then we have the “musical”
myths, of course, which speak of “builder gods” who could make blocks of
stone float through the air simply by whistling or playing sound instruments.
Significantly, there are no myths about “magic” ropes or “charmed” levers.
There is only music—music and a “union of minds.”

So what these myths tell us, in fact, is that the ancient builder gods had
somehow discovered a way to effect a powerful psychic interaction between
mind and the elemental world of matter. Sound may have played an important
part in the procedure, but consciousness itself, through some kind of union
with light, would have been the prime mover.

We have noted that Jahn and Dunne’s experimental research has
consistently produced statistical data indicating that most people possess a
weak psychokinetic ability. They believe that psychokinesis is possible
because consciousness itself is a kind of particle/wave phenomenon, with its
wave mode, like all waves, capable of producing effects at a distance. Like
the ancient Greeks and the yogis of the East, they do not see these
psychokinetic effects as one-way processes, but rather as complementary
exchanges of “resonance” between the thinker and the object.

Not too long ago, ideas like this would have been summarily laughed out of
court, but when one hears today’s scientists talking of particle consciousness,
of “mind-like” electrons and “telepathic” photons, it begins to look as if
anything is possible. Furthermore, the suggestion that the mind can somehow
generate sufficient force to collapse the wave-packets of quantum systems
outside the brain is in no way ruled out by these latest observations. In fact,
when considering the nonlocal “action at a distance” between correlated
photons, one might reasonably say: if fundamental particles can do it, then the
human brain itself, an almost supernaturally well-coordinated mass of trillions
upon trillions of highly active wave/particles, can perhaps do it infinitely
better.

Interestingly, scientists are now trying to understand all physical
phenomena not as isolated entities, but as integral parts of a single but much
wider picture of reality, one that, significantly, also includes the mind of the
observer. Particles, we are told, manifest as such only when certain of their
properties are “seen,” when they have been detected by an investigator—
usually through annihilation of the particle and analysis of the debris. Without
the participation of an observer, it seems, “particles” as such don’t exist; they
remain, as Bohm says, “enfolded,” in a wavelike state of limbo. So the two
aspects of quantum reality—the observer and the observed—are now seen as
integral functions of the same phenomenon. Obviously, introducing this

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psychological element into scientific investigation is an important
development, because it is leading scientists on to question the nature of their
own consciousness. Possibly, therefore, the next generation of physicists will
ultimately become “yogis” in their own right, able to experience for
themselves the fundamental laws they have for so long been trying to
formulate. Certainly, if there is a continuation of present trends by which the
dividing line between scientific thought and metaphysics becomes ever
fainter, we would do well to watch this space.

We will be returning later to the question of some kind of psychic element
being involved in the construction of the ancient buildings of Egypt and the
Americas. But in the case of the Giza necropolis in particular, another
important question is, of course, why? Why did these early masons take the
trouble to build on what is, even by modern standards, an incredibly vast
scale?

The answer, it seems to me, is that they were totally and selflessly
committed to the task of transmitting the essence of their ideas about light,
music, and consciousness out into the exoteric world, and they obviously
realized that the most effective and enduring way to do this was by “writing”
all this data not on perishable parchment but in stone. Thoth himself, the
originator of the Hermetic Code, whose followers designed and constmcted
the Giza site, was known in ancient times as the “scribe of the gods,” a writer
no less. We have all heard it said how much mightier is the pen than the
sword. Nowhere is this adage more applicable than at Giza, where the
“scribes” used quills the size of pneumatic drills and wrote in gigantic, three-
dimensional “letters” across acres of bedrock.

The magnificent architecture of these Masonic scribes seems astonishing to
us today. But the old and weathered physical remains of this great builder
culture are really only a tiny part of the greater edifices constructed by these
remarkable individuals.

So the Great Pyramid, the most impressive monument to light ever created
on Earth, massive and imposing as it is, is really no more than a foundation
stone upon which has been constructed another, infinitely vaster,
metaphysical structure, a creation of sorts, whose indeterminate dimensions
are even to this day expanding ever outward and upward. I am referring here,
of course, to the ongoing evolution of human consciousness, which began its
present stage of development at the time the Great Pyramid was designed, and
which has ever since been guided subconsciously by the all-embracing
hermetic principles embodied within it.

The Hermetic Code, therefore, is an evolutionary code. It describes exactly
how DNA and the genetic code operate in the creation of greater organic
structures, and for the last five thousand years it has been the basis of every
major religion on Earth, movements designed specifically to facilitate the

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continuing evolution of human consciousness into higher “scales” of
existence. Everything else we might surmise about the knowledge of the
originators of this code is secondary to this fundamental concept. The
Egyptians were brilliant architects, master craftsmen, highly accomplished
astronomers possessed of the details of geodetics and precession, but they
were first and foremost evolutionists, people who fully understood the
underlying harmonies and rhythms inherent in the creative processes of nature
and who conducted the whole of their lives in accordance with them.

So the “Egyptian way,” the art of the alchemist, was the path of “creative
evolution,” an organic system of development and spiritual growth that fully
complemented the evolutionary forces of nature. In the following chapter, in
which we look at some of the ideas of the modern evolutionist, we shall see
that this remarkable system is as meaningful to us today as it was to the
ancient Egyptians.

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Live Music

W e have seen how the modern scientific description of physical reality,
in many ways echoing the voices of thinkers long passed, encompasses
the idea that everything, even something as seemingly inert as a lump of rock,
is in some inexpressible way alive. David Bohm summed up this latest view
by describing the electron, the most substantial component of matter, as a
mindlike entity. The “choreographed” movements of electrons in plasmas and
metals reveal that there are hidden orders implicit in the greater quantum
field, where everything appears to be interconnected and potentially “aware”
of the presence of everything else. So, in the opinion of many modern
physicists, nothing in this universe is truly dead: everything resonates,
communicates, radiates, and absorbs. And, as we have seen, there is a clear
musical pattern to it all.

Now, when we consider entities that are organic and alive in the sense in
which we normally understand the term, we find once again that there are
clear musical symmetries evident in their underlying stmctures. Specifically,
the biomolecular world, as I explained in the Introduction of this book, is an
endlessly unfolding symphony of “live” music, of genetic harmonies and
interpenetrating organic scales. Remember that the Hermetic Code, which is
in essence a musical system, describes in precise detail how the genetic code
works.

It is interesting that this altogether remarkable fact has not yet been
acknowledged by the scientific establishment, even though it was first made
public back in 1994. This is, however, not just any old “fact” we are asking
these scholars to consider. It is an all-pervading, fundamental tmth, one that
carries with it the unavoidable and, perhaps, unpalatable, conclusion: that the
latest picture of the organic world being described by modern biologists, like
the physicist’s description of the underlying structure of matter, is basically
just a cover version of the original canon first revealed by the original
hermeticists. What we are saying here, in effect, is that the historian’s
mysterious “huntergatherers,” who populated the more temperate regions of
the Earth at the dawn of recorded history, were apparently more in tune with

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life’s creative processes than any scientist alive today. We have proof of this.
We have the Hermetic Code, the code of life itself, described by a simple
formula that embodies an idea in circulation for untold millennia, an idea that
is, in fact, so profoundly relevant to us all that it will never fade away.

By way of finding further proof in support of the above heresy, we must
now make another “musical” journey through time. It’s a very long road
indeed that you are about to travel, for we shall be going way back, beyond
the eras of the Greeks and the Egyptians, back to the music of the Neanderthal
race and further still, beyond even the time of the dinosaurs—right back, in
fact, to point zero, to the very first evolutionary “note,” the first primordial
spark of life on Earth. As we shall see, the Hermetic Code has been in
evidence practically from the very beginning.

The present, most widely accepted account of our origins is of course the
Darwinian theory of evolution, which asserts that you and I and the
consciousness we are endowed with happened to have evolved here on Earth
purely as a result of blind, accidental physical and biochemical processes.
This basic concept, the random evolutionary development of life, has in the
last few years become virtually a scientific dogma. When we compare ancient
and modern ideas on evolution, however, we find that the latter is but a pale
imitation of its predecessor. This is not to say, of course, that Darwinism is
not a valid theory of evolution, only that it doesn’t go far enough. So let’s see
in what respects this great theory falls short of the original described by the
priests of Old Kingdom Egypt. We can begin with the experts.

In a recent book, River out of Eden, Professor Richard Dawkins, author of
several influential books on evolutionary theory, attempts to explain the
whole phenomenon of life in terms of Darwinian principles. This is a theory
that he fully endorses and which, he says, displays “a sinewy elegance, a
poetic beauty that outclasses even the most haunting of the world’s origin
myths.” 2

Already, it seems, I am inescapably and completely at odds with one of the
world’s foremost proponents of current evolutionary theory, who clearly
believes that the modern scientific interpretation of our creation is superior in
every way to the ancients’ description of mankind’s origins. So let’s see.

Dawkins’s lucid account of how life evolved on this planet constitutes an
impressive argument in favor of the theory of natural selection. According to
this view, all living creatures are indirectly descended from a single, primitive
ancestral species, which evolved and diverged into new species over billions
of years through random copying errors in DNA replication. Many of these
mutations of single genes will have had deleterious effects on the functions of
the host organism and actually reduced its chances of survival in the world.
Very occasionally, however, a gene-copying error resulted in a change in the
organism’s functioning that happened to be beneficial in life, improving its

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performance in some way and so increasing both its chances of survival and
its ability to produce equally successful descendants.

Clearly Dawkins has little time for the Creationists’ arguments against the
apparently random, ungodlike nature of gene mutation and natural selection.
To be fair, Creationism (as interpreted by modern theologians) is not a theory
at all; it is simply a blind faith, whose advocates have haphazardly concocted
a rather flimsy file of uninformed criticism of Darwinism, none of which
provides convincing evidence for their ideas.

There is a paradox here. While Creationists have been busy nitpicking at
scientific theory, they have all along been in possession of the complete
evolutionary picture. The whole story is there, as we shall see, in their
scriptures. And this account includes a detailed description of the newly
discovered biomolecular world, albeit only as part of a much broader and
more comprehensive theory of evolution.

The commonest criticism of Creationists relates to one of the main
problems of Darwinian theory, the difficulty it has in explaining how such an
intricate organ as, say, the human eye was formed. What, for example, did the
intermediate, developmental forms of such a sophisticated organ look like?
What kinds of beneficial evolutionary functions did these earlier, rudimentary
conglomerates of cell tissue facilitate before they evolved into a state that
actually bestowed upon the host organism the ability to even recognize the
difference between light and darkness, let alone “see”? Darwin himself said
that he could never imagine the eye, with all its structural complexities, as
having evolved through random variation and selection alone. Dawkins
disagrees. In fact, answering this rather difficult question is, he assures us, “a
doddle.” Half an eye, he argues, is 100 percent better than no eye at all, 1
percent better than 49 percent of an eye, 1 percent worse than 51 percent—
and so on, providing an evolutionary scenario that suggests a gradual, hit-and-
miss process of development.

Now this might seem at first to be a fairly reasonable line of deduction. But
then, what about a measly 1 percent of an eye? One percent, 2, even 3 percent
would be so far removed from an organ that sees, or even one only half-
formed, that it is difficult to envisage what kind of survival advantages these
first crude mutations would have given to the evolving species. Would 2
percent of an eye, for example, give a creature even the slightest hint that one
of its natural predators was about to pounce from a short distance away?

There are other complex evolutionary developments that are difficult to
explain solely in terms of Darwinian theory—for example, the evolution of
fins and wings. We are told that fins evolved into hands and that arms evolved
into wings. But of what use were these different functional structures during
the in-between stages of development? What advantages over others would a
species existing through the proposed transitional stages have with an

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appendage that was neither arm nor wing, but a bit of both? If and when
traces of the existence of such peculiar creatures are ever found in the
fragmentary fossil record, then perhaps a little light might be shed on the
problem. To date, none have been identified, and one can only speculate on
the reason. The Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould has suggested that
such transitions may have been discontinuous, rapid changes, invoked by
single crucial genes that somehow managed to cross over concurring
pathways of development and so affect the structure of the whole organism in
a much more radical way.

The only creature remotely resembling an “intermediate” that has been
identified in the fossil record is the archaeopteryx, a raven-sized creature with
a reptilian skull and birdlike wings. Its wings were fully formed, however, a
fact that has prompted many biologists to classify the archaeopteryx not as a
true intermediate but as a completely developed bird. Indeed, it is difficult to
imagine how any true intermediate with a confusing complement of half-
formed wings could have survived at all. Should it attempt to fly away from
danger, or jump? In that almost comical split second of indecision it would
probably have been summarily dispatched by some ravenous carnivore. This
might account for the fact that no half-formed wings have ever been identified
in the fossil record. Presumably such unfortunate creatures would have been
hopelessly ill-equipped to survive long enough in a ruthless, lex talionis
world to produce offspring in sufficiently large numbers.

Returning to the question of the eye for a moment, if Darwin’s theory isn’t
quite the whole story, could there possibly be other factors involved in the
formation of such a complex organ? That is, could there be other agencies
involved in the evolutionary process that might be to some extent responsible
for the eye’s amazingly intricate development?

I would suggest that there is at least one agency that might be worth
considering here, a phenomenon that is intrinsically connected to the eye like
no other. Furthermore, it is all-powerful and omnipresent, and occupied a
uniquely important position in the belief system of the first true
“Creationists.” This, of course, is light, the Holy Ghost, the “Rainbow
Covenant,” the agent of all visual sensation. Obviously if there were no light
in the first place, an organ built to perceive it would never have evolved. We
know that primitive sea creatures living at the bottom of the deepest oceans,
where no light ever reaches them, are devoid of normal photon receptors. So
the mere presence of sufficient light is enough to induce the development of
organs capable of assimilating it. Remember also that light itself, as well as
being the agency by which objects are made visible, is also, as the ancient
Egyptians were aware, a musical phenomenon. With its seven fundamental
frequencies (the spectrum) and its three distinct “primary” frequencies, it is a
perfect electromagnetic model of the “triple octave,” of the Hermetic Code,

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which describes the evolutionary development of all organic processes,
including, of course, the process of the development of the eye.

The “river” in the title of Dawkins’s book refers to the stream of digital
information flowing through time in the form of DNA, branching and forking
on its way, and giving rise to new species in the process. When one species
mutates off a daughter species, the river of genes forks into two, and if the
two tributaries diverge for long enough, perhaps through the external
influence of geographical variables, the two species then develop quite
distinct and different characteristics. At one stage, apparently, in one of these
branches, Mitochondrial Eve was born. This is the name given to the most
recent common ancestor of all modern humans, a member of the species
Homo sapien sapiens who probably lived in Africa between 100,000 and
250,000 years ago. 3

The name of this “hybrid from Eden” is derived from the term
mitochondria, which are vital, energy-producing “particles” existing by the
thousands in all our cells. They help to convert energy from food molecules
and then store it for distribution as and when required. The significant point
about mitochondria is that they have their own DNA. Unlike the main DNA
housed in the nucleus of the cell, which becomes almost totally scrambled in
every new generation every time a sex cell is made, mitochondrial DNA is
passed down relatively unchanged through the female line only. It is therefore
a very useful tool for long-term genealogists, who can use it for dating
common ancestors within species. This is how Mitochondrial Eve has been
identified and dated.

Dawkins is particularly fond of Mitochondrial Eve, and he contrasts her, as
a scientific hypothesis, with the Eve of Eden. He believes his “scientific
truth” to be of greater interest and, I quote, “more poetically moving” than the
original myth. 4

Presumably, at the time of writing this, Dawkins was unaware of the
existence of the Hermetic Code, of the fact that it is identical in every way to
the genetic code, and also of the fact that all major creation myths are in
effect variations of the same, original theme. This, as we have seen, is not
simply the spurious product of primitive superstition and folklore, but a
genuine scientific theory, presented symbolically in the clearest of terms: it
states simply that all creative processes are the product of forces described by
the two fundamental laws of nature embodied in the pi convention, the law of
three and the law of octaves. Clearly, it is only in this context—that is, from
the hermetic perspective—that the original story of the Eve of Eden can be
truly understood. In fact, as I explained in The Infinite Harmony, much of
the Hebrew Scriptures, from the creation of the world and the story of Eden,
through to the charmed lives of Noah, Joshua, Moses, David, and Solomon,

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contains innumerable symbolic musical references to the Hermetic Code, to
the theory of transcendental evolution. And, remember, the creation myth of
Genesis is just one example, one old “fairy tale” from the Middle East. There
are many more, of course—Chinese, Vedic, Zoroastrian, Christian, and so on
—and they tell exactly the same tale, providing a truly accurate description of
the natural processes of creation. Think of the I Ching, and how perfectly its
overall format corresponds to the structure and symmetry of that remarkable
biochemical code used by DNA. Are we to believe, then, that the emergence
of these identical symmetries are both merely the product of “accidental
mutations”? I really don’t think so. One of these symmetries—the genetic
code—just might have originated by chance, though personally I doubt it,
given the fact that the physical universe itself is structured along the very
same musical symmetries. But then, when we see exactly the same
symmetries being repeated yet again in a higher scale of evolution, that is, in
the mind of man, it begins to look as if it might be people like Dawkins, and
not the ancient mythmaker, who is unwittingly purveying the fairy tale.

This repetition of identical symmetries in scales both “above” and “below”
is important, because it suggests that there is an underlying unity and sense of
purpose in all life. This purpose, quite clearly, is to evolve, and to do so
musically, transcendentally—just as DNA has done over the past four
thousand million years. You see, the DNA symmetry is not only “resonating”
in our blood and in our bones, the same symmetry is also active in our minds,
enlivening them, vitalizing them, coaxing them ever upward. Possibly this is
why I am sitting here now, writing all about this symmetry, because, deep
down, somewhere inside me, DNA is telling me to.

This now leads on to an important question: who or what told DNA how to
behave? Dawkins’s answer is unequivocal: no one, nothing; it found its way
quite by accident, stumbling blindly through geological time, through endless
cosmic and geophysical cataclysms, ice ages, or whatever.

It is true that much of DNA’s evolution on Earth has been erratic and at
times very chancey, with many of nature’s experiments (like, say, dinosaurs)
going drastically wrong. But remember, underlying all this apparent random,
selective evolution is the symmetry of DNA and the genetic code, a symmetry
that, as we have seen, is actually controlled by the forces described by
nature’s two fundamental laws. So this is in no way simply the product of
chance. DNA’s distinctive form and method of evolution is an inevitable
consequence of these natural forces: it was preordained by nature itself.

It seems to me that the main problem with Dawkins’s position is that there
is little or no music in it, no allowance made for the evident hermetic
symmetry of the biomolecular world. This is where ideas old and new really
diverge, because the mythmakers, the originators of the Hermetic Code, of pi
and the “triple octave,” knew all about this music and about the laws and

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forces that conduct it.

As we have seen, the Hermetic Code is much more than a mathematical
tool. It is a universal blueprint for all evolutionary or creative development,
and its distinctive inner symmetry is to be found in the biomolecular and
physical structures of all forms of life. We see this not only in the sixty-four-
word/twenty-two-note amino acid “scale of resonance” but also, for example,
in the overall physiology of human beings, with their three nerve complexes
responsible for sensation, emotion, and perception, and their eight sets of
endocrine transformers, the glands responsible for secreting into the
bloodstream all the drugs and hormones necessary for enabling reaction to
external stimuli. Thus, all human beings, and in fact all living things, are
hermetically composed; they are all in their relative scales evolutionary
“triple octaves” with the inherent potential to achieve a state of “optimum
resonance.”

The living cell uses these hermetic symmetries to sustain itself and to
develop. Ultimately it attains the necessary condition of “optimum resonance”
and so acquires the supernatural power to self-replicate. Through a systematic
sequence of exponential growth patterns it then combines with its fellow cells
to create a whole new world for itself, a massive, complex, conscious
organism. Such an organism constitutes a higher dimension for the cell, a
higher “scale of being.”

The theory of transcendental evolution, the essence of which is contained
in the now familiar phrase “As above, so below,” asserts that, at the human
level of existence, it is possible for individuals to emulate the living cell and
to achieve a similar condition of “optimum resonance.” Traditionally this
unique condition of being has been most commonly acquired by following
certain tried and tested “religious” codes of conduct—the idea being that such
practices eventually endow the individual with special powers: to “self-
replicate” in some way, to create whole new worlds, to penetrate up into an
infinitely higher scale of existence, the scale which ultimately became known
as heaven.

So pi itself, the blueprint for the evolution of all life, is also the blue-print
for the evolution of consciousness. It represents an exact scientific description
of the optimum metaphysical frequency, an “immaculate” psychological
wavelength accessible to us all, through which mankind can ultimately break
free from the ponderous mode of evolution characteristic of the “naked ape.”

Thus, the Hermetic Code describes the fundamental organic matrix upon
which we have all been constructed. Whatever else we might care to think of
ourselves, we are fundamentally walking “trinities,” triple octaves of
resonance, comprising our sensations, emotions, and perceptions. And
according to the originators of the theory of transcendental evolution, the
three nerve complexes controlling these vital functions can be systematically

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developed up to a point where they all “resonate at optimum potential” and so
acquire the power to transcend on to a higher scale of existence. Clearly such
a condition of being is a far cry from our present evolutionary state. As
Gurdjieff and Schwaller both said, somewhere along the line our ancestors
lost the plot and slipped back into a rudimentary Darwinian mode. I believe
the mythmakers and metaphysicians of ancient days foresaw this decline, and
that this is why they went to such great lengths to project the Hermetic Code
out into the greater sphere of humankind’s collective consciousness. They
knew that this sacred concept would lie dormant, like a seed in the soil of the
subconscious mind, but that sooner or later this seed would germinate, take
root and grow, and ultimately flower and bear fruit. This description is not
intended to be taken as a metaphor. The process outlined, as we shall see
subsequently, is organic from beginning to end. And so it is that today, now
that our level of comprehension has reached, as it were, the necessary “pitch,”
we are witnessing a worldwide “Egyptian renaissance,” what we might call a
new flowering of awareness and appreciation of the great wisdom and
remarkable abilities of the metaphysicians of ancient times. Accordingly the
Hermetic Code itself has surfaced once again, and its symmetries have been
recognized, not only in all the major scriptures and in the dimensions of
ancient pyramids all over the world, but also in our blood, in the white ray of
physics, and in the underlying structure of the entire physical universe. In
truth, now that we have eyes to see, we find that these symmetries are
everywhere.

I stated above that I believe that the growth and development of
consciousness is an organic process. Logically it has to be, because the
Hermetic Code and the genetic code are fundamentally one and the same
system. And, in fact, this organic correlation is further compounded in the
ideas of Pythagoras, the main proponent of hermetic theory in ancient Greece.

The Pythagoreans themselves left no written records. The “Golden Verses,”
whose authorship is generally attributed to their founder, may be authentic,
but they are scanty and fragmented and contain no hermetic data as such.
What the Pythagoreans did leave for posterity, however, was a comprehensive
array of esoteric symbols: numerical, geometrical, and, of course, musical.
The language of symbolism was their way of recording and transmitting their
ideas, and when we examine the most “sacred” of these symbols, we often
find that they possess a number of distinct but related facets. Of course, pi is
the prime example: it conveys mathematical, geometrical, musical, mystical,
and even scientific truths, all neatly condensed into a single, imperishable
sign. Another significant symbol to which Pythagoras attached great
importance was the sacred “Tetrad.” This was expressed by placing ten
pebbles on the ground like so:

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o o
o o o
o o o o

Like pi, this is in essence a musical symbol, another symbolic expression of
the Hermetic Code and was referred to in Pythagorean schools as the model
of the gods. Also described as the source of nature, the Tetrad was seen as the
fundamental matrix upon which to create the perfect individual, a “model” of
the gods.

When we look at the configuration of the ten pebbles, we see that they are
laid out in a 4-3-2-1 format, the whole depicting an evolutionary process
developing from bottom to top. It so happens that this distinctive pattern of
development describes perfectly the four distinct stages in the synthesis of
amino acids, the very building blocks of life.

It will help to remind readers here that the DNA molecule works with the
four chemical components, or “bases,” of the genetic code. These are used to
construct small molecules known as RNA triplet codons, comprising three
bases each, which then serve as templates for the production of amino acids.
The amino acids are then, in turn, assembled into the much more complex
protein chains.

The Hermetic Code, as we know, is primarily an expression of the law of
triple creation, which holds that everything is composed of trinities within
trinities. This means that the three individual octaves embodied within pi are
in themselves triple octaves, making nine octaves in total, or sixty-four
“notes”—precisely the number of RNA codon combinations.

Look at the musical structure of the formula pi when set out in
diagrammatic form:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

I.I.I.I

DRMFSLT DRMFSLT DRMFSLTD

12 3 4

As we see, the Hermetic Code, just like DNA and the genetic code, is
constructed upon four fundamental “base notes.” These are represented in the
base line of the Tetrad, which we have noted consists of four pebbles. If we
now follow the successive stages in the synthesis of the amino acid, we see
that the Tetrad describes this process exactly. Thus, from the four nitrogenous
bases, DNA programs three of them at any given time (RNA triplet codons)
to produce two distinct properties (amino acids are both acidic and alkaline)
of one biochemical unit in a higher, more complex scale of existence, that is,
one of the twenty-two evolutionary signals at the amino acid/protein scale of

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development.

There is one particularly detailed description of the Tetrad, written more
than 1,500 years after the Pythagorean era, which is especially interesting,
because it demonstrates even more convincingly how perfectly in tune these
hermetic initiates were with the vital process of the creation of life, even to
the extent of understanding the dual nature of what was being conceived in
this way. The text in question, dealt with in some detail in The Infinite
Harmony, is a tenth-century Egyptian commentary on the Koran, the Tafsir
ol-Jalalayn, which gives an account of Muhammad’s famous night journey to
heaven. It begins with him riding on the back of a quadruped, sees him
prostrating himself three times in prayer, after which he is offered by the
angel Gabriel two cups to drink from, one of wine and one of milk, and
finally, after wisely choosing the milk, escorted in triumph to the first of the
“seven heavens.”

Clearly this commentary on the Prophet’s spiritual awakening is describing
a hermetic process, the organic “flowering” of Muhammad’s consciousness. It
is a clear description of the pattern of evolutionary development of the Tetrad,
which, as we have noted, depicts with absolute precision the way in which
Watson and Crick’s famous double helix is evolving through time. The two
symbols of wine and milk are especially significant, because they describe
perfectly the dual, acid/ alkali properties of the amino acid.

We have now established that hermetic is genetic. This means, in effect,
that certain fundamental aspects of consciousness—ideas, concepts,
revelations, and so forth—are metaphysical genes and are produced in exactly
the same way as are amino-acid chains.

Interestingly, this particular idea (or “gene”) was first tentatively put
forward by Richard Dawkins himself in his highly acclaimed first book, The
Selfish Gene. Dawkins defines this new kind of replicator as a “unit of
cultural transmission,” or of “imitation,” one still in its infancy but which
“already is achieving evolutionary change at a rate that leaves the old gene
panting far behind.” 5 His chosen name for this metaphysical phenomenon
— meme, from the Greek root mimeme (hence, mime, mimic, copy)—has
since been incorporated into the main corpus of our language and has
spawned a whole new embryonic science: memetics.

Examples of memes are numerous. Dawkins cites things like tunes, ideas,
catch phrases, fashions in clothing, ways of making pots and of building
arches. In fact, the list could be endless, because it would encompass anything
invented by any given individual, good or bad, positive or negative, that is
subsequently copied by another or others. This would include concepts as
diverse and far removed from one another as fascism, belief in god, a
scientific theory, the wheel, a literary genre, computer hacking, praying,
killing, or whatever. Memes are likened to viruses, willy-nilly infecting or

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contaminating brains as they hop from one to another like subquantum fleas,
apparently going nowhere in particular. This means that they are not seen as
conscious agents but, like genes, as agents of “blind natural selection.” So
memes, or ideas, another form of replicator, are everywhere, floating
awkwardly around in the primeval soup—the soup of human culture—
endlessly parasitising our brains at every twist and turn. Even the great
religions, philosophical movements, and the concepts of the most influential
figures in human history can be classed simply as parasitic “meme
complexes,” all swimming around in a chaotic meme pool.

Memes are seen as agents of blind natural selection, but the evident
longevity of the most enduring creations and inventions of man have to be
admitted. As Dawkins explains, an individual’s genetic input to the ancestral
line is halved as each generation comes forth, so it doesn’t take long for it to
reach negligible proportions. The memetic influences of the more notable
figures in history—like Socrates, Leonardo, Copernicus, and Marconi—are
still going strong. 6

Although he makes an oblique reference to the power of the organized
church, whose architecture, rituals, music, art, and written tradition he
describes as “a co-adapted stable set of mutually-assisting memes,” 7 Dawkins
sees nothing special in religion per se. Indeed, he is well known for being
particularly vociferous, and perhaps with good reason, in his condemnation of
the Christian fundamentalist elements in certain southern states of America,
where attempts have been made to keep Darwin’s theory off the educational
curriculum. In some states it is still obligatory for schools to teach the naive
literal interpretation of the Biblical creation story alongside Darwin. Of
course millions will agree that studying scripture of any religious persuasion
can enrich and stimulate the mind, if only by freeing it to speculate on
dimensions beyond the restrictive confines of mere survival. Possibly
Dawkins himself would agree that written traditions are not all bad. But the
Biblical version, along with all the other major doctrines referred to in this
book, is a hermetic work, an all-encompassing treatise on universal
symmetries, and to present it simply as a factual account of the origin of the
world and of mankind not only misses the point entirely, but alienates
virtually everyone of a scientific or rational bent, and in so doing actually
hinders the flow of a vital stream of important knowledge. If such a state of
affairs were to continue, the “soup of human culture” would simply stagnate.

Understandably, therefore, Dawkins tends to focus on peripherals, on the
negative or contradictory aspects of formalized religion, such as the Christian
idea of hellfire or the meme for religious blind faith, loosely referred to as the
god meme. This, in my opinion, is where he misses out on the most important
line of enquiry, one that must logically take us right back to the creators of

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these long-lived religious movements. In the case of the Christian
phenomenon we need of course to focus primarily on the deeds and words of
Jesus Christ, and to do this we have to strip away practically all of the
subsequent trappings and subjective embellishments of the formalized
hierarchy. If we do this we end up with the kernel of all Christian preaching—
the original “meme complex”—expressed by Jesus himself through the
unchanging symbolism of what is known today as the Passion. And what
immediately becomes apparent when we look at the symbolism involved is
that the eight days of Easter week, from Palm Sunday to the Sunday of the
Resurrection, describe a musical event, an octave of activity, beginning on the
note Do and ending, after seven intervals, on the very same note. So clearly
the message encoded here is hermetic, a scientific description of the organic
evolution of Christ’s consciousness, which, like Muhammad’s, successfully
transcended on to the greater scale above.

Given that the Hermetic Code is the blueprint of all religious symbolism,
we might say that it is one of the oldest memes floating around. More than
that, like RNA or DNA in the gene pool, it is ubiquitous, and so deeply
immersed in the human psyche that it looks to be unstoppable.

We now know that the Hermetic Code has many facets, expressing
mathematical, musical, geometrical, scientific, and even cosmic truths, all
ingeniously condensed into a single, imperishable sign: 22/7. One might say,
then, that this code is a meme complex in its own right. But is it, as Dawkins
assumes it must be, an unconscious entity, merely an agent of “blind natural
selection”? The answer, it seems to me, is far from decided. In fact, it is
difficult to see how the Hermetic Code could be defined as a blindly evolving,
unconscious replicator. It was intentionally created and subsequently
disseminated by the mind of some unknown genius for a specific and entirely
selfless purpose—to enlighten lesser mortals on the ways of Nature and so
facilitate the ongoing evolution of man’s collective consciousness. And it is
still with us today, this code, as vital and resilient as the day it was conceived,
an undiminishing beacon of metaphysical light shining into every nook and
cranny of human endeavor. Even in the modern Western world, where secular
influences predominate and the so-called god meme is in recessive mode in
the majority of human brains, the fundamental components of the Hermetic
Code are everywhere, in the symmetries of the material world of elementary
particles and biomolecules, in music, legend, folklore, fairy tales, customs,
and so on, stretching right back to the dawn of civilization. Just think of the
number 7, every other person’s lucky number. So evidently appealing is this
particular meme, if you won the national lottery with the number 7 and
multiples thereof, you would almost certainly be sharing your diminished
prize money with thousands of others. Of all numbers, this symbol, which is
of course a symbol of the octave, is without doubt one of the most efficient

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“replicators” in the entire development of human thought.

The point is, the Hermetic Code is not just any old brainchild. It is not a
fashion, a craze, a catch-phrase, a political ideology, or a computer virus. It is
an all-embracing concept, which not only describes the process of evolution
but actually facilitates its ongoing development. In view of its uniqueness, it
would be inappropriate to classify it along with the common meme. For this
reason I choose to differentiate between memes and evolutionary concepts by
referring to the latter simply as metaphysical genes. This would apply to all
significant concepts, such as, for example, the highly potent symbolism of the
Passion of Christ, the eightfold ways of the Buddha, Zoroaster, and
Confucius, the structures of the I Ching and of the tarot pack, or the
symmetries of creation described in Genesis, in the Koran, or in the
cosmogeny of the builders of the Giza necropolis. These ancient concepts
have survived for millennia and look set to last for many more to come. There
are modern concepts, too, which might fall into the same category. For
instance, Gurdjieff s system is likely to prevail because it is essentially a
hermetic phenomenon, a faithful “copy” of the original. Arguably Darwin’s
rudimentary “conception” is in there too—along with the revelations of such
as Watson and Crick or Einstein. Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity is a
particularly potent “metaphysical gene” and has changed our view of the
world forever. Not only does it focus on the constant properties of light, the
Covenant of the Ages, but also, with its implications for the elasticity of space
and time, it provides us with an intuitive glimpse into another dimension, the
timeless, spaceless world of the great Egyptian sun-god, the plane of light.

So what is their attraction? What makes significant concepts such good
replicators? The answer, in my view, is their hermetic content, their
evolutionary bias. It is this kind of impetus that ordinary people like you and
me somehow find irresistible, even if only on a subconscious level. But of
course anything, any invention that serves to promote the evolution of
consciousness, must by its very nature be based on “sound” principles and
therefore be psychologically harmonious. Possibly, therefore, it is this integral
harmony, or the quality of resonance intrinsic to the concept, that explains the
secret of its longevity. This is to say that concepts possessing a high degree of
resonance seem to be endowed with a special kind of metaphysical power, the
power continually to “self-replicate,” by harmonizing, blending in, with
billions of human brains.

So the significant concept, the metaphysical gene, is an evolutionary
impulse; it has an inherent tendency to rise above the surface level of the
“soup of human culture” and, in musical or hermetic terms, is much more
psychologically resonant than a mindless catchphrase or the latest gizmo.

In Dawkins’s view, memes, or metaphysical genes, have nothing
equivalent to chromosomes: “In general memes resemble the early self-

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replicating molecules, floating chaotically free in the primeval soup, rather
than modern genes in their neatly paired, chromosomal regiments.” 9

Evolution is considered to have kicked in when the early replicators in the
primeval soup began not merely to exist but to construct for themselves
containers as vehicles for their continued existence. The replicators that won
through were those that built “survival machines” for themselves to live in. So
genes came first and the machines— chromosomes, cells, plants, animals,
people—came afterward. We might say, then, that the first true survival
machine was the DNA molecule, the chromosome. This would imply that, at
the next scale of development, the scale of human consciousness, ideas and
concepts will eventually build “survival machines” for themselves, possibly
beginning with the metaphysical equivalent of the chromosome. Dawkins
assumes that this hasn’t happened yet, that memes, or metaphysical genes,
whether in isolation or in loosely affiliated complexes, are still drifting
clumsily through space and time like spores in the wind.

There is, however, an alternative way of looking at metaphysical genes,
one that sees the “chromosomes” housing them—their “vehicles”—as already
existing. To understand this we need first to look at DNA itself, the original
chromosome. One of the chromosome’s functions is to create proteins, which
it does by sending out copies of parts of its internal structure in the form of
triplet codons. These are ejected into the chemically rich liquid membrane of
the cell to do their work, to code either for one of the twenty amino acids or
for one of the start-stop signals. The amino acids are then assembled by other
genetic components into molecular chains. A chain of amino acids makes a
peptide, a chain of peptides makes a protein, and the protein codes for one or
another of a multitude of chemical processes in the evolutionary development
of the entire organic body, the whole “machine.”

If we subsequently apply this model to the world of memes, we might say
that the metaphysical chromosome is the brain itself, so that a momentary
thought or idea would function as some kind of metaphysical amino acid, or a
cluster of them, and a full-blown concept, with all its cognitive applications,
would be the equivalent of a metaphysical gene. The product of such a
“gene,” continuing to evolve and self-replicate in millions of other human
brains, we might regard as the metaphysical equivalent of the biologists’
greater protein macromolecule.

If this is really how it is, and the evolutionary processes “above” are in
essence the same as the processes “below,” it would require an explanation as
to how a three-dimensional organ like the brain could possibly be regarded as
a scaled-up replica of the DNA double helix. This will be the subject of the
next chapter.

Earlier I suggested that this “organic” process of transcendental evolution,
of “journeying to heaven,” involved attaining what I call an optimum degree

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of psychological resonance, one that would ultimately be “in tune” with the
constant frequencies of light quanta. The implication of this is that light and
consciousness are, in effect, opposite sides of the same metaphysical coin—
the “coin” itself being the metaphysical equivalent of the amino acid, the
transcendental product of an enlightened mind. Now this product—this
impulse, idea, or concept—like the amino acid, is derived primarily from
three basic components or “bases,” namely sensation, emotion, and
perception. The concept that arises from the harmonious interaction of these
three metaphysical “bases,” just like the acid/alkali structure of the amino
acid, must also have a dual nature, which means that these products of
consciousness should have a complementary opposite. This must be light
itself. Light is, after all, the primary agent of all visual sensation. It is also the
most resonant “octave” in existence. Most importantly, however, it is a
perfect electromagnetic blueprint of the Hermetic Code.

The unraveling of the digital molecular structure of the DNA double helix
has been hailed by Dawkins as the most revolutionary scientific discovery in
history, an achievement that, he believes, should be honored as much as the
works of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Whether or not this will, in the event,
turn out to be the case remains to be seen, but it seems to me to be a tall order.
The Athenian adepts almost certainly achieved their present status primarily
because they were all fully “in tune” with the tenets of hermetic theory.
Socrates, for example, the first of the great trio and Plato’s mentor, is known
to have received personal instruction from the Pythagorean School on the
island of Samos. In addition, all three were known to have respected and
familiarized themselves with the “musical” traditions of the legendary Persian
Magi.

The Greeks, of course, believed the original source of all this hermetic
wisdom to have been the ibis-headed Egyptian god Thoth. Known to the
Greeks as Hermes Trismegistus (“Thrice-greatest Hermes”), he later became
associated with the Roman god Mercury, the messenger of the gods. Most of
the extant literature relating to Hermes belongs to the post-Christian era, and
scholars in general doubt his historical authenticity. But of course, someone,
somewhere, revealed the Hermetic Code to the human race, so by whatever
name this individual was then known, we can be reasonably sure that the
originator of Revelation certainly did, at some remote period in prehistory,
walk upon this earth.

We have already established that this remarkably astute observer
understood fully how life is created. The symmetry of the Hermetic Code and
the symmetry of the genetic code match too precisely for us to think
otherwise. But in case there is still some doubt in the reader’s mind, it is
perhaps worth noting here another intriguing detail in the legends of
Hermes/Thoth, one that, to me at least, is so fitting as to be more “poetic”

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even than Dawkins’s Mitochondrial Eve. The rod or wand of
Hermes/Mercury was known as the caduceus. He is depicted holding it in
Botticelli’s painting La Primavera. The wand itself, said to have had
awesome magical properties, was surmounted with two wings and entwined
by two serpents. It is a perfect double helix.

Significantly, this same design also appeared in ancient America, and in
much the same context, that is, as a symbol adopted by a legendary man of
high learning. In Fingerprints of the Gods, Graham Hancock describes a
statue in Teotihuacan near Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, of the mythological
civilizer of ancient South America, Viracocha. A bearded, Caucasian figure
with features identical to the early depictions of the Egyptian god Osiris,
Viracocha is wearing a ceremonial robe, on either side of which is engraved
the image of a serpent, coiling from bottom to top. In another representation,
Viracocha holds a thunderbolt in each hand. A thunderbolt, of course, is a
stylized representation of a helix, and Viracocha is holding two of them.
Further north, incidentally, Viracocha’s Mexican counterpart, Quetzalcoatl,
had as his symbol a plumed serpent—again very reminiscent of the plumed
caduceus of Hermes.

Possibly the most impressive ancient representation of the double helix I
have yet encountered is the pyramid Temple of Kukulkan (the name for
Quetzalcoatl in the Mayan dialect) at Chichen Itza, in northern Yucatan,
Mexico. This is what Graham Hancock has to say about this remarkable
structure:

Its four stairways had 91 steps each. Taken together with the top platform,
which counted as a further step, the total was 365. This gave the number of
complete days in a solar year. In addition, the geometric design and orientation
of the ancient structure had been calibrated with Swiss-watch precision to
achieve an objective as dramatic as it was esoteric: on the spring and autumn
equinoxes, regular as clockwork, triangular patterns of light and shadow
combine to create the illusion of a giant serpent undulating on the northern
staircase. On each occasion the illusion lasted for 3 hours and 22 minutes
exactly. 10

Two serpents coiling up to the sun, like starbound DNA. Esoteric, yes, but
entirely comprehensible in the light of the theory of transcendental evolution.

Such remarkable similarities in ancient global symbolism may lead us
reasonably to suppose, as Hancock, Bauval, West, Wilson, and others have
suggested, that these legendary civilizers—Viracocha/

Quetzalcoatl/Kukulkan, Osiris/Thoth/Hermes—if not one and the same
individual, were an elite group from a forgotten race of people. Possibly they
were survivors of the cataclysms of the last ice-age melt-down, who
successfully disseminated their profound understanding of the laws governing

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creation and evolution across the entire planet at an unknown period of the
distant past. But how distant?

Dawkins says that Mitochondrial, or African, Eve, was the first member of
our own species, Homo sapiens sapiens, to produce descendants successfully.
She is thought to have appeared possibly as recently as a hundred thousand
years ago. Before her there were more primitive hominids, such as the
Neanderthals (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis), Homo erectus, and its even
more remote ancestors, Homo habilis and Australopithicus, the earliest
having been dated to around four million years ago.

So a great deal has happened in the evolution of the hominid over the last
hundred thousand years; for Eve, the mother of the modern human race, is
thought to have been little more than a cunning savage, a successful fighter
and breeder, an unwitting, cutthroat product of DNA’s relentless bid for
immortality.

This conventional picture of the primitive “savage” dominating the world
stage around one hundred thousand years ago is by no means accepted by all
scholars. We have noted already how Stan Gooch has shown that the
predecessors of African Eve—the Neanderthals—were in their own way a
highly evolved culture, people who were closely observing the heavens as
long ago as 75,000 years ago and were capable of calculating cosmic events
such as the long-term cycles of the moon and the periodicity of the planets. It
also seems that not all of them were merely fighters and breeders, for they
engaged in huge communal mining enterprises. Gooch cites as evidence for
this large-scale redochre mines and quarries recently discovered in southern
Africa. Some of the mines have true mining tunnels, and these immense hives
of highly organized human activity have been accurately dated, with the
earliest, around one hundred thousand years old, corresponding exactly with
the long-term genealogist’s latest possible date for the appearance of African
Eve. It should also be noted that red ochre had no material value and so would
have been used for ritual purposes only, indicating that the Neanderthal’s
world was not solely an arena of survival, but also had a strong spiritual side
to it. This is further confirmed by the archaeological evidence mentioned
previously, namely the stone altar discovered in a cave at Drachenloch in the
Swiss Alps, in which had been enshrined seven bear skulls. Obviously seven
is a crucial number here, not only because of its obvious association with the
natural rhythms and harmonies of nature, but also because of its association
with a celestial counterpart, the seven stars of the Great Bear. Even as early as
75,000 years ago, it seems, the Neanderthal consciousness was already
nurturing the rudimentary elements of the theory of transcendental evolution,
possibly little more than twenty or so thousand years after the appearance of
African Eve. By about 35,000 BCE, Eve’s descendants had migrated across
the habitable regions of the Earth and all but wiped out the Neanderthal.

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Today only a few bones and tools are left to testify to their existence. Indeed,
according to the American geneticist Mark Stoneking of the University of
Berkeley, who has done extensive research on mitochondrial DNA, there
aren’t even any original Neanderthal genes left in mankind’s gene pool. The
evidence suggests that the modern human—Cro-magnon, Homo sapiens
sapiens —was an extremely vigilant and ruthless exterminator. As Stoneking
says, there are no non-African mitochondria in the genetic makeup of any
individual living: “It looks like there wasn’t any mating going on between the
resident females and the migrating males—at least none that produced a
lasting genetic legacy.” 11

However, as Gooch’s research has shown, they certainly left a lasting
symbolic, or metaphysical, legacy. We see this, in part, in the astronomical
observations of both the Neanderthals and our forebears, the exterminators.

For example, the constellation of the Great Bear was called by the ancient
Egyptians the Mother of Time and was later regarded in India as the heavenly
home of the septarishi, an embodiment of the seven properties (rishi) of
creation. We thus have a definite link between the mythological and
astrological beliefs of the “primitive” hominid existing in the depths of the
last ice age and those of the priest-astronomers of Old Kingdom Egypt and
Vedic India. One would expect such links to exist, of course, because that’s
exactly how evolution works. Successful ideas are like successful genes and
are passed on in exactly the same way, with or without the cognizance and
cooperation of the host “organism.” The symbolism of the number seven is
one such “gene,” and it has been with us since the dawn of civilization.
Gooch not only identifies this number in the findings at Drachenloch, but also
in another symbolic configuration known as the Cretan Labyrinth, which took
the form of a sevenfold spiral leading to a central point. This design appears
in both the pre-Columbian Americas and in Minoan Crete—hence its name—
which suggests that it originated from a common, extremely ancient source
dating back, Gooch suggests, as much as 20,000 years. A simpler, less
standardized design has been found on a Palaeolithic mammoth bone from
Siberia, which again pushes its origins back at least as far as the time of the
bear cult of the Swiss Alps, circa 75,000 years ago. This same “ritual
labyrinth” is also found in the symbolic designs of Cornish, Rajastani, Hopi,
Finnish, Welsh, and Etruscan art, all of which feature spirals with seven turns.

In Greek mythology, Theseus was told by Ariadne that the maze, or
labyrinth, consisted of one left-handed, seven-coiled path spiraling in, and one
right-handed path spiraling out—a kind of double-helix configuration through
which the initiate “danced” his or her way to freedom—or to enlightenment. 12

Now let’s return for a moment to the conventional view of the hominid’s
recent development, that the archetypal caveman was superseded by the

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slightly smarter but equally cutthroat Cro-Magnon type around 35,000 years
BCE. Some 25,000 years later, after enduring possibly the most treacherous
and uninhabitable climatic conditions ever faced by mankind (the last ice-age
meltdown), these people foregathered in and around the more temperate
regions of the world.

Now contrast this hungry, flint-wielding creature with the kind of human
being that lived in the Fertile Crescent about five thousand years ago. From
Egypt to Mesopotamia there occurred, quite suddenly, an unprecedented bout
of civilized activity. Great cities and highly refined cultures, the likes of
which had supposedly never been seen before on Earth, grew and blossomed
in the space of a few centuries. Suddenly man had learned to build on an
unbelievable scale—not just any-old-how, but with an expertise and precision
that even today’s architects and engineers, using the same kinds of tools as
the ancient builders are supposed to have used, would find very difficult to
match, let alone surpass.

As is usual when trying to assess the incredible achievements of these
“children of the hunter-gatherers,” we shall take the classic example of the
Great Pyramid, undoubtedly the largest and most complex building ever to
have been constructed in stone. Each of its two and a half million or so blocks
of limestone averages 2.5 tons in weight, and some of the larger granite
blocks incorporated hundreds of feet up in its interior structure weigh as much
as 70 tons. On top of all that, this monument, towering almost 150 meters
above the Giza plateau, was originally sheathed in a two-and-a-half-meter-
thick, exterior limestone casing of blocks weighing around fifteen tons apiece.
These blocks were irregular in shape underneath and had to be made to fit the
cruder contours of the core masonry, but, quite remarkably, their exposed
surfaces were perfectly flat and polished so that they shone like glass. Further,
each of these blocks, equivalent in weight to about thirty family-sized cars,
was set with cemented joints only a fraction of a millimeter wide.
Archaeologists and astro-archaeologists alike tell us that this remarkable
building was erected around 2500 BCE, and ah of the available evidence
supports this dating.

So what was our primitive forebear doing for a living in the Fertile
Crescent a millennium before this era? According to the current historical
scenario, the natives had barely learned to tame grass, let alone their restless
minds; they were merely surviving. But then, quite suddenly by evolutionary
standards, the natives not only learned to build on an unprecedented scale, to
write and to administer vast social enterprises, they also conjured up the
remarkable Hermetic Code, pulling it out of nowhere, like a rabbit out of a
hat, and then mankind suddenly came of age.

Now this, I would suggest, is a massive developmental leap. According to
Darwinian theory, macromutations seldom occur in nature, and if they do they

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usually result in some kind of chronic deformity of the organism, which
generally results in extinction. Yet here we have an example in nature of a
genuine macromutation—in this case in the mind of man—despite the fact
that it seems to break the fundamental Darwinian rule of natural, selective
evolution.

So, what exactly happened? Is the Hermetic Code really the chance product
of a random macromutation in the brain of a fortunate member of the species
Homo sapiens sapiens, or was it purposely introduced by some kind of
external force?

Possibly we shall never know. Some of the authors mentioned earlier have
suggested that there existed, toward the end of the last ice age, around
15,000-11,000 BCE, a high civilization that was almost completely destroyed
in a massive global catastrophe. Dozens of myths and legends from all over
the world describe such an event, which apparently culminated in the Great
Flood. An unprecedented rise in sea levels would have been a natural result of
emergence from the last ice age, when there was a rapid deglaciation of vast
regions of the Earth’s surface.

The legends from America and Egypt all say that there was only a handful
of survivors of this great cataclysm, seven or eight in number. In the Judaeo-
Christian tradition these survivors are known as the Noahs, a seafaring people
with extreme foresight who knew how to build and sail ships across oceans.
They had also been initiated into the secrets of the Hermetic Code, as the
biblical records clearly show. 13

Elsewhere Noah and his companions (or similar survivors) were known by
various other names: Osiris or Thoth in Egypt, Viracocha in Peru and Bolivia,
Quetzalcoatl in Mexico, Yu the Great in China, Manu in Vedic India,
Deukalion in Greece, Utnapishtin in Babylon— the list goes on, through more
than seventy flood legends from cultures worldwide.

If these myths are in fact describing an actual event, then it is entirely
possible that some of the survivors of an earlier civilization passed on the
main tenets of their knowledge to the early settlers of the Fertile Crescent. So
when ancient scriptures speak of “divine intervention” on the part of the
“gods” from heaven above or whatever, possibly they are merely referring to
the dissemination of a superior knowledge to a less advanced race, a perfectly
logical transference of consciousness from spheres “above” to spheres
“below.”

Of course, the Darwinist theory of gradual change through chance
mutations actually lends support to this idea that civilization is much older
than historians would have us believe. Even so, the question of whether or not
the concept of the Hermetic Code, however old it may be, originally evolved
gradually or appeared quite suddenly in the fertile mind of a single
inspirational genius remains unanswered. Perhaps the experiences of some

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modem “geniuses” can provide us with a clue here, for it is a well-known and
accepted fact that scientists themselves very often experience moments of
inspirational perception, intuitive insights that transcend logic.

A typical example is the strange experience of the German chemist August
Kekule, who, after spending several hours laboriously working through a
mundane textbook, fell into a dispirited half-sleep, in which he saw long rows
of atoms dancing before him, wriggling like snakes. When one of the snakes
suddenly seized its own tail with his mouth, Kekule awoke to the realization
that he had just “seen” what he had been long seeking—the precise chemical
structure of the benzene ring.

Similarly, Henri Poincare, the French mathematician, said that the solution
to a particularly difficult non-Euclidean geometry problem he had been
grappling with came to him quite suddenly, at a time when he was idly
thinking about something far removed from mathematics. Another great
pioneering scientist, the astronomer Johannes Kepler, said that the discovery
of his famous third law came to him as “a glimpse of light”; and Einstein,
whose own “glimpses” into the mysteries of space and time are the stuff of
modern legend, had this to say of scientific investigation: “There is no logical
way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of
intuition.” 14

Perhaps, then, it was something like this flash of intuition (a macromutation
of the mind) that was responsible for the conception of the Hermetic Code by
Thoth/Osiris/Viracocha or whoever. Or it may be that the idea evolved
gradually from the earlier instinctive impulses of the Neanderthals. We shall
possibly never know exactly how this change came about, but in any event we
can see that successful macromutations do, in fact, occur frequently in nature.
A flash of intuition is precisely that.

As I said, Darwinists exclude macromutations from the evolutionary
process on the grounds that gross physical changes are invariably detrimental
to living organisms. And yet, regarding the origin of the very first intelligent
entity to appear on this planet, the DNA-RNA complex, evolutionists’
arguments for a gradual appearance are not entirely convincing.

Scientists now believe that the first biomolecular self-replicators were free-
falling, bacterial RNA strands. Exactly what form their self-replicating
predecessors took no one knows. Dawkins cites a proposal made by the
biologist A. G. Cairns-Smith that the precursors to organic self-replicators
might have been something like inorganic crystals, growing, say, in different
sorts of clays, constantly transported every-which-way by ever-changing
waterflows.

In fact, crystals do, in a sense, “grow,” one into another, the first array of
geometrically aligned atoms and molecules acting as a template for the next.
As they grow, crystals also produce, on occasions, flaws (mutations) in their

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molecular structure, which are then “copied” by the subsequent developing
layers. Crystals also possess right- and left-handed properties, that is, two
varieties—two or more kinds being the necessary prerequisite for the
phenomenon of heredity, where “like begets like.” However, as Dawkins
himself points out, crystal molecules only act as templates for the formation
of molecules in their mirror image. So, in this particular instance, like does
not beget like. Chemists have been trying for many years to “trick” inorganic
molecules into breeding other molecules of the same handedness, but the
natural forces at work in the inorganic molecular world are seemingly
indifferent to such deception. If you start cultivation with a left-hander
crystal, you end up with an equal number of left-and right-handed molecules.
Thus, says Dawkins, “although the function of an earlier, non-organic self¬
replicator didn’t involve ‘handedness,’ a version of this trick was pulled off
naturally and spontaneously four thousand million years ago.” 15

It seems to me that this statement is somewhat lacking in scientific clarity.
In fact, the suggestion that some kind of evolutionary “trick” was
spontaneously “pulled off” all those years ago has a distinct air of the
magician about it, a familiar, sleight-of-hand, “Hey, presto” quality, which
suggests to me that its author is really a Creationist at heart, one who does
believe in some form of “immaculate conception” taking place here on Earth
way back at the dawn of geological time.

The analogy Dawkins uses in his book The Blind Watchmaker is that
inorganic crystal growth, producing mutational flaws over billions of years,
happened, quite accidentally, to act as a kind of crude “scaf-folding” for the
building of a sophisticated biochemical “arch.” Once the final “center-stone”
of the arch fell into place (one of the four bases, perhaps?), then the
previously formed crystal “scaffolding,” greatly superseded by its
biomolecular successor, involved, or collapsed, into extinction. The now
animated “arch,” the biomolecular descendent of this extremely primitive
inorganic ancestor, eventually evolved blindly into entities like Jesus or
Einstein, Hermes, Dawkins, and ourselves.

According to Dawkins, “the digital revolution at the very core of life has
dealt the final, killing blow to “vitalism”—vitalism being the apparently
mistaken notion that living material is deeply distinct from nonliving material.
This is certainly true in respect of the individual electrons and atoms of which
living matter is composed, but when considering the overall symmetrical
structure of entire biomolecules, and the harmonious distribution of the
electrons and atoms within these beautiful, dynamic, musically stmctured life
forms, then the fundamental difference between, for example, a molecule of
the protein hemoglobin and a molecule of water is surely glaringly obvious.
Ergo, vitalism—my kind at least—is very much alive and kicking.

We thus have two extremely advantageous macromutations in the

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otherwise uneventful story of the evolution of life on Earth: the quantum
transition from salt crystals or whatever, via something or other, to living,
writhing, hermetically composed bacteria; and the incredibly rapid
metamorphosis, over a period of time which by Darwinian standards is
infinitesimally small, of African Eve into Marie Curie or Rosalind Franklin.

But are successful macromutations really so very rare? Have they only ever
happened at the beginning and at the end of this current evolutionary episode
on planet Earth? Perhaps not. For example, the transition from the single
chemical base to the amino acid is a huge developmental leap. Again, the
transition from amino acid to protein molecule is also a massive step. And
what about the transition from bacterial RNA to the first self-contained cell,
or the first cell to a multicellular structure and so on, to the fish, the reptile,
and the bird, the mammal, the hominid, and ultimately the civilization-
builder?

Evolutionists will argue that these marked changes in development only
look like macromutations, that they are in reality composed of untold billions
of small, gradual, mutational steps. This may be so, but at some point in each
of these evolutionary lines there must have come a point during the transition
from one stage of development to another when a clear distinction between
the two was finally cast. A bird is only a bird when it is a bird, not before.
And we know that, at some point, birds definitely did come into being. When
this happened, when the first feathered creature finally took flight, a greater
macromutation occurred.

Perhaps the evolution of the Hermetic Code proceeded along similar lines,
where a rudimentary instinctive awareness of the natural rhythms and
harmonies of nature took root in the primitive consciousness and then
gradually began to develop into a coherent belief system. One can envisage a
scenario whereby this process of recognition might have continued to evolve
to the point where all the fundamental components of the Hermetic Code
were instinctively incorporated into ritual practices, possibly without any
conscious intervention on the part of any single individual. At a certain stage,
however, someone, or a group of people, must have realized that the separate
components of this instinctively adopted number symbolism could be
incorporated into an overall cohesive theory of evolution. Even if we don’t
know exactly how and when, we know this happened, because the Hermetic
Code “happened.” Gradualists, if they were to accept that the Hermetic Code
is everything I say it is, or even that it exists, would probably argue for a slow
dawning of this cosmic awareness, a step-by-step method of advancement.

But, as we have seen, there is plenty of room for any number of successful
macromutations in the long, fragmented story of our evolution, and one
cannot doubt that the “eureka” moment has been experienced untold times by
millions of human minds for tens of thousands of years. And this process, as

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we have noted, eventually culminated in the emergence of the Hermetic Code.

If, as I believe, the Hermetic Code was a genuine macromutation,
introduced by an extremely powerful external force into the receptive
consciousness of the Fertile Crescent, then perhaps the first, hermetically
composed biomolecular self-replicators, which evolved along exactly the
same hermetic principles, also received, right at the very beginning of the
evolutionary chain, an external “leg-up,” to get them started.

What I am suggesting is that there may be very real, unseen forces in this
universe that dictate that the evolution of DNA-based, or musically
structured, life forms must inevitably, as and when conditions permit, occur
everywhere in what is, after all, a musically structured arena. This is to say
that the evolution of life on Earth, or anywhere else, far from being a chance,
random event, is in fact an irresistible, natural process, dictated from start to
finish by the natural forces of the universe itself. And these are forces that, as
we have seen, are described in meticulous detail by the two fundamental laws
of nature embodied in the Hermetic Code.

It is now generally believed that life, in some form or another, very
probably exists elsewhere in the universe, though to what extent scientists can
only speculate. The astronomer Frank Drake, in his book Intelligent Life in
Space, formulated an equation designed to give some idea of the likelihood of
life existing in other star-systems in our galaxy. The equation contains seven
approximate factors, including the rate at which new stars form in our galaxy
each year, the proportion of planetary systems that might harbor planets with
a suitable physical environment, the smaller fraction of such planets on which
life might actually get started, the number of years life is expected to survive
on each planet—and so on. To get to the point, his answer, for our galaxy, is
five-to-one against just one other planet in the Milky Way harboring any form
of life whatsoever.

In the next chapter we shall be exploring this question of “alien” life in
more detail. Being neither an astronomer nor mathematician, I will not be
using long equations or intergalactic telephone numbers to explain why I
believe that Drake has got his sums drastically wrong. In fact, all the reader
needs to follow the line of thought to my own conclusions is some ordinary
common sense, an essential pinch of intuition and, of course, a basic
understanding of the Hermetic Code, the “theory of everything.”

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Extraterrestrial DNA

I n this chapter we shall be considering some of the further implications of
the theory of transcendental evolution. As we have seen, the neo-
Darwinian theory of evolution is unfinished: it explains only the evolutionary
development of organic bodies in the local biosphere of planet Earth. The
theory of transcendental evolution, however, presents the whole picture, and it
tells us that the process is continuing at an even higher level, beyond the
confines of the physical brain of man, into scales of existence that ultimately
encompass the whole universe. Before I try to explain how such a mechanism
might work, however, we need first to get back to basics, to the fundamental
components of the material world.

In previous chapters, we noted that the ancient Greeks had some rather
unusual ideas concerning the nature of matter. They believed that all material
things are “psychic”—alive—and that they are influenced in some
fundamental way by music. Today we find that modern scientists have proved
them right on both counts. They have discovered mindlike qualities in the
electron and “organic” traits in plasmas, and they have identified eightfold
musical symmetries in the two major physical scales of the microworld: the
atomic and the chromodynamic. Then, of course, we have light, the eightfold
symmetry of the white ray, with its curious twin photons that can
simultaneously “feel” what the other is feeling, even if they are light years
apart.

Further, we have seen that similar hermetic symmetries are also evident in
the biomolecular world, with its sixty-four codon combinations and twenty-
two evolutionary amino-acid signals. This means, therefore, that the whole of
the microworld, from wave/particles to biomolecules, conforms very closely
to the Greek view, which is that the entire universe is built, scale
superimposed upon scale, of crystallized, ever-vibrant music.

We thus have three fundamental harmonies in evidence in the microworld:
the chromodynamic, the atomic, and the (bio)molecular. Underlying all of
these scales, of course, is the all-pervading harmony demonstrated by the
“twin photon” phenomenon, the “actions at a distance” called by Roger

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Penrose “nonlocal quantum correlations.” The whole universe is perpetually
in motion and all wave/particles are continuously interacting and separating,
which means that the nonlocal aspect of quantum systems is a general
characteristic of nature. Clearly this represents, in the physical world, a
harmony of the highest possible order. It is one thing to say that the universe
is a harmonious entity because it is constructed entirely upon the eightfold
chromodynamic and atomic matrices, but nonlocality suggests that there
exists a far deeper interconnecting harmony underlying all physical
phenomena, where everything is resonating at the very same subquantum
frequency, everything is “in tune” with every other thing.

We now come to another very ancient idea, which again seems to have first
surfaced in the time of the early Greeks: the notion that the whole universe is
itself a living, sentient being.

The Greeks had a name for this creature, this universe. They called it the
Zoon (pronounced “zohon”), the modern dictionary definition of which is
“morphological individual, the total product of a fertilized ovum.” Of course,
the originators of this particular concept might not have defined it in such a
precise way, but it seems obvious that they believed that the universe was an
animal, living, hence the notion of zoology, the study of the living, of which
Richard Dawkins himself is a professor. So the Greeks, I believe, regarded the
cosmos as having somehow been conceived and then born, that it
subsequently grew and is still growing, and that all systems within it, from the
Earth and the planets to the sun and the stars beyond, are vital components in
the living body of the whole.

As we know, the Greeks also believed, like the Egyptians before them, that
the universe exists and operates according to musical principles, that is
according to the fundamental laws described by the Hermetic Code. And the
Hermetic Code, as we have seen, is identical in structure to the genetic code.
This means that the universe, according to these traditions, is, in effect, an
immense, multidimensional complex of evolving genes, that is, it is a
biological entity. Let us note here that there is no ambiguity whatsoever in
this ancient worldview. These people stated, in very clear and precise
scientific (that is, musical) terms, that the Zoon is a zoon, so we may safely
assume that they meant what they said.

Now this may seem like a tall order, asking us to believe that we exist in
the living body of some mighty beast, some “god” of potentially infinite size.
But then, not too long ago ideas about the hermetic symmetries involved in
the creation of life, of “psychic” matter and of “universal music” would
almost certainly have been regarded by scientists as being simply the fanciful
products of primitives’ dreams. And yet, ultimately, time has proved the
ancients to be fundamentally correct in these particular aspects of their
worldview; music is indeed everywhere, both inside and outside us, or

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“above” and “below,” and the basic components of matter continually
resonate and even communicate, being by no means truly inert or “lifeless.”

So now these ancient thinkers once again reach forward through thousands
of years of time to confront us with another strange idea, one that has never,
as far as I am aware, been seriously considered either by alternative theorists
or orthodox historians. This is the proposition that the whole universe is a
living organism, quite literally, a biological entity.

I must admit that when I was initially confronted with this rather strange
idea of a living universe I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. It was difficult
to see how the greater components of the cosmos—such as all-consuming
black holes, exploding supernovae, collapsing clouds of interstellar dust and
all the other cataclysmic events taking place out there—could ever be
construed as life. On the face of things, the proposition seemed absurd, or so I
at first thought. But at the back of my mind I harbored a sneaking suspicion
that these ancient people, who were so knowledgeable in other respects
concerning the nature of reality, were not just simply fantasizing about their
“living god,” but had some basis for their belief.

So I began to investigate, to search for evidence of this. It seemed at first an
impossible task. After all, if the universe is a sentient being, where is its
“head,” its “heart,” and all the other organic components necessary for a body
to exist? Answer: nowhere to be seen. Nevertheless I kept looking, scouring
books on cosmology, astronomy, and astrophysics and the like. I learned quite
a lot about the cosmos that was to stand me in good stead for what was to
follow, but there were no obvious clues in the writings of modern scientists as
to the possible nature of the creature I was searching for.

But then, after long deliberating and vacantly scratching my head, I
suddenly experienced one of those familiar “eureka” moments when, out of
the blue, a new perspective dawned in my mind. Not surprisingly, perhaps,
the answer—or at least, a major clue on its trail—came not from the modern
scientist but from Hermes himself.

The clue lies in the now familiar saying of Thoth/Hermes, “As above, so
below.” What this undoubtedly means is that the world above—the greater
cosmos—is fundamentally the same as the world below, the world of man.
Obviously the scales are vastly different, but, according to Hermes, their
inherent structure is based on the same hermetic blueprint. And remember, the
Hermetic Code and the genetic code are also identical in every way, so we
can see quite clearly that, in respect to the world of man and the world of the
cell, the hermetic dictum just quoted is directly and exactly applicable. The
genetic code operates in the microcosm, the world of cells, and the Hermetic
Code operates in the mesocosm, the world of man. And each of them, of
course, shares a common purpose, which is to facilitate the processes of
creation, of evolution.

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Now DNA is quite clearly the prime mover in the biomolecular world. It is
DNA that employs the genetic code to manufacture amino acids, which other
organic components then assemble into proteins. The purpose of proteins in
the biomolecular world is clear; they engineer all the complex chemical
processes that build a living body. So what happens when the human mind
employs the Hermetic Code? Does it, as I have already suggested, produce
the metaphysical equivalent of amino acids? Possibly. At least it produces
ideas, thoughts, and concepts, which are born of our conscious ability to
emote, sense, and perceive.

So on to the obvious question: are these concepts integral parts of a much
bigger evolutionary process that takes place somewhere “out there”? That is,
if the genetic code describes an organic process, is not the Hermetic Code
similarly describing an organic process, but one that operates on a much
greater and more rarefied scale? If this is the case—and I am, of course,
proposing that it could be—then there would probably be in existence other,
greater, organic components out there in the macrocosm that could somehow
assemble these metaphysical “amino acids” (thoughts, concepts, and so forth)
into the conceptual equivalent of protein chains. As I said moments ago, the
purpose of proteins in the biomolecular world is to engineer all the complex
chemical processes that are necessary to build a living body.

As the reader will by now have realized, what is being implied here is that
the human mind is a form of “double helix,” a chromosome in the nucleus of
a living cell in the body of a much greater being. And then, further, possibly
the “mind” of this greater being is also but a single-cell nucleus in a being on
an even greater scale . . . and so on, but not, as we shall see, ad infinitum.

So let us now follow this lead as we were probably intended to and turn our
attention skyward, toward the heavens. If Thoth/Hermes is right, one would
expect there to be signs of this “extraterrestrial” life up there in the
macrocosm—massive, cosmic, organic structures, not unlike the structure of
our chromosomes. And what do we find up there in the greater cosmos?
Significantly, there are spirals and helices, literally everywhere, in all
potential solar systems, in all galaxies. In the case of our own solar system,
we see the planets encircling the sun, but as the entire system is perpetually
moving at great velocity through space, the path traced by each planet is, in
fact, a spiral. Similarly, most galaxies are spiral galaxies, which is meaningful
in itself, but even so-called elliptical and irregular galaxies all revolve around
a galactic center—maybe a black hole—and all of them are hurtling across
the universe at tremendous speeds, so the trajectory traced through space-time
by every star is a true spiral, a helix. Furthermore, we ourselves, as we sit,
walk, or even sleep on the surface of the Earth, are actually tracing spirals
through space: the whole planet spins like a top as it moves ever onward.

It is true, of course, that DNA is a double-helix structure, but in the

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biomolecular world there are many single-helix structures—viruses, bacteria,
and so forth—composed of single strands of DNA’s close cousin, RNA.
Moreover, when we think we see a single spiral out there in space, we are not
necessarily taking in the whole picture. That is, there may be “invisible”
helices that we also need to identify. In a typical galaxy, for example,
scientists have discovered that the visible spiral arms, composed of stars—of
light—are enveloped by an accompanying magnetic field that actually spirals
around each of the arms. Again, in the solar system there are several planets,
each one spiraling along its respective trajectory, but if you consider the
combined paths of any two of them in relation to one another, the result, quite
clearly, would be a double-helix configuration. The point is, it is the helix
itself, whether single, double, or even multiple, which appears to be the basic
design for all evolutionary phenomena, above and below.

Is it not highly significant, therefore, that the Egyptians and the Greeks, in
whose belief systems the firmament above was so important, should have a
principal god of wisdom whose symbol was a magic wand known as the
caduceus, featuring a double helix in the form of two entwined serpents
surmounted with wings? Clearly this symbol, like the Great Pyramid, which is
aligned so precisely with key stars in the Duat (sky), is inducing us to look
heavenward. The same can be said of the serpent/thunderbolt symbols of
Viracocha and the plumed serpent of Quetzalcoatl, of which the most
impressive depiction of ah is the effect at the spring and autumn equinoxes of
the sun’s light undulating like a serpent up the northern staircase of the
Temple of Kukulkan at Chichen Itza, Mexico.

After I had identified these “serpents in the sky” it seemed to me that the
most logical thing to do would be to be to try to follow their trail and see
where it might lead. This was, after ah, the route taken by Osiris and Thoth,
and all of the other principal “civilizers” of the ancient world.

The fact that Sirius and Zeta Orionis, the two most important stars in
Egyptian cosmology, are targeted by the southern shafts of the two principal
chambers of the Great Pyramid suggests that the pyramid itself provides a
vital link between worlds above and below. The name of the Great Pyramid
—“The Lights”—suggests further that light is the cosmic intermediary, the
interface between man and god, the earth and the stars. And light itself, as we
have noted, is a musical phenomenon: the most resonant octave in existence.
Therefore music is the key. But then music is a hermetic phenomenon, and
the Hermetic Code describes exactly how the genetic code operates, and how
organisms grow.

What I believe is implied here is that we, in our quest to discover the
secrets of the universe, have literally to evolve our way to the stars, to grow
so as to be able to touch the firmament merely by holding out our hands. The
kind of “growth” we are talking about here, of course, is the evolution of the

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mind, an “alchemical” process of development that leads ultimately to a
condition of optimum psychological harmony and an awareness of the
nonlocal realm of heaven, the timeless plane of light. Here, Osiris/Orion is
everyone’s immediate neighbor.

So let’s now try to envisage how this spiritual growth might develop. By
this I mean the process by which consciousness can eventually tune in to the
nonlocal dimension, or to the metaphysical frequencies characteristic of light
quanta.

We have seen how, in the microcosm, the most powerful transmitter of
intelligent data is the DNA double helix, which codes for complex
biochemical processes with such precision that it can create the brain of a
human being. In the microworld, this evolutionary music played by DNA
represents a harmony of the highest possible order.

The human brain, the ultimate product of DNA’s evolutionary
development, is more than just a biological organ like a heart or a liver. It
possesses self-awareness and can perform a whole range of extra-biological
or metaphysical functions—intellectual, speculative, intuitive, or whatever.
This is to say, the human brain, like the double helix from which it originates,
can generate transcendental influences. Through literature, artifacts,
buildings, and so on, it can transmit “biometaphysical” signals to spheres far
removed from the physical body in which it exists. Thus the designers of the
Great Pyramid, for example, or the I Ching, or the authors of the Christian
Scriptures, the Koran, or the Upanishads, living in the remote past in distant
parts of the world, are still speaking to you now through these and many other
contemporary commentaries. These works are, in effect, transcendental
phenomena, metaphysical genes, coded to synthesize—in the mind of the
human being—higher, more complex, modes of cognition.

As we can see, both the DNA double helix and the human brain function in
strikingly similar ways. In the concluding chapter of The Infinite Harmony I
suggested that the conscious/subconscious aspects of the human brain, with
its right and left hemispheres, could be regarded as the metaphysical
equivalent of the acid/alkaline aspects of the DNA strand, with its “right” and
“left” nucleotide chains. Both work with the same hermetic/genetic blueprint,
with its four “bases,” its sixty-four possibilities and its twenty-two
transcendental or evolutionary “signals.” Thus the music being played in the
microcosmic processes of evolution is being echoed, note for note, in the
mesocosmic scale above, in which the human mind is the principal player. So
the ancient dictum “As above, so below” means, quite literally, that the only
difference between the DNA double helix below—the chromosome—and the
fully functioning human brain above is simply one of scale. Both work with
exactly the same numbers and combinations of forces and components, but
the components themselves are graded accordingly, the bases used by DNA

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presumably being of a less rarefied form of resonance than the “bases” from
which higher frequencies of consciousness are developed.

So what exactly are these “bases” from which consciousness is created? In
the Hermetic Code they are symbolized by the four base notes—the four Dos
—of the triple octave, which correspond to the four base pebbles of the
Pythagorean Tetrad discussed in the last chapter. Now these bases, like the
free-floating chemical bases in the living cell, would theoretically be
everywhere, all around us, waiting to be scooped up by the double helix of the
mind, combined into more resonant units, and finally passed on for future
synthesis at a higher level of development. These bases, I would suggest,
come to us in the form of our impressions, namely our sensations, emotions,
and perceptions, the trinity, or triple octave, within us all. There is a fourth, of
course, a crucial, transcendental base, the product of the harmonious
interaction of the first three, which, if fully developed, manifests in the form
of our concepts, our conceptions.

We have here, I think, the origin of the much misunderstood Christian
notion of the “immaculate conception.” Jesus’s teachings, for example, in
being psychologically harmonious, were immaculately conceived, born of a
conscious, highly developed mind. We know they are immaculate because,
just like the equally resilient concepts of, say, Pythagoras, the Buddha, or
Muhammad, they have ultimately harmonized with the evolving psyches of
billions of individuals.

You could, of course, argue, as Dawkins might, that these world-wide
religious and philosophical movements have evolved purely by chance and
that they have played on the inherent weaknesses of desperate human beings
wishing to escape the tedium and pain of Darwinian existence by clinging on
to vague, unfounded promises of an afterlife in Paradise. Doubtless the
element of escapism is a contributory factor in the development of many self-
help cultures, past and present, but the fact that the world’s major religious
movements are all based on the principles of “esoteric music” embodied in
the Hermetic Code strongly suggests that accident really has very little to do
with it. Just think for a moment: What are the chances of your ideas, or those
of Darwin, Einstein, or Dawkins (or your own modern hero or heroine),
entering and attuning with the minds and hearts of whole races of people?

Significantly, in the microworld of the cell, “immaculate conceptions,” or
macromutations, are the very life-blood of creation. All evolutionary
advancements, all transcendental developments, are “immaculately” created:
amino acids, protein molecules, eyes, legs, wings, brains. So of course Jesus
was immaculately conceived. But then so was African Eve, Tyrannosaurus
rex, and, paradoxically, the AIDS virus. Life is like that.

So if the human brain is a form of chromosome, a metaphysical double
helix, then presumably it is also an integral component—a “cell nucleus”—in

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the greater body of an infinitely more complex, macrocosmic “organism,” a
creature that, one assumes, is formed from the collective evolutionary
consciousness of the entire human race.

As a matter of fact, a scenario not dissimilar to this was put forward in the
early 1950s by the American writer Rodney Collin in his book The Theory of
Celestial Influence. I have quoted at length from this unique work elsewhere.
Collin was a close associate of Ouspensky, and he spent several years
compiling this scientific interpretation of Gurdjieff’s original ideas. The book
has not yet received the worldwide acceptance long overdue to it, but I
believe the time will come when the writings of all three of these highly
innovative thinkers will be recognized as great achievements.

In the final chapter of his book, entitled “Man in Eternity,” Collin tries to
imagine the form and structure of the greater “body” of the human race.
Everyone, he says, creates an invisible thread of converging energies as he or
she lives along their own particular line of time, each thread being unique to a
human being. If one imagines, across the centuries, billions upon billions of
these threads, crossing and interlacing with one another, varying in “color”
and intensity according to the kind of life lived, then there emerges a figure so
intricate that it is, in fact, a solid, the “solid of humanity”:

Of this solid we can even have a certain vague apprehension. It will be, as it
were, a sort of solid tapestry, composed of billions of threads, which in spite of
their inconceivably elaborate weaving, appear all to lie in the same direction
which is eternity. We can even suppose each of these threads to have a different
nature or color, according to the level of energy which dominates its totality of
lives. And we might find that in large areas or periods of humanity, a certain
nature or color dominates the whole design—the red of purely physical
existence, the yellow of intellectual activity, or the green of moving skill and
sensation. Remembering the existence of men with conscious souls, and with
conscious spirits, we shall also suppose threads of different materiality which
stand out from the fabric in a quite exceptional way, which impart life to the
rest, and about which the whole design of the solid body is formed. For those
threads are threads only in our metaphor. In fact they are alive and their total
mass is alive. They are the cells and capillaries and nerves of a body, the Adam
Kadmon of The Kabala, Mankind. 1

Adam Kadmon has appeared elsewhere in ancient mythology. He is the
titan Atlas of the Greeks, who, remember, believed that the human race could
change the world if it could harmonize itself into an overall coherent state of
homonoia. And if the earlier-discussed evidence for psychokinesis is
accepted, together with the recognized power of “group consciousness,” by
which a fully grown individual can be lifted with very little physical effort,
then we can say that the kind of “resonances” obtained in such an orchestrated

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process of thought are real, they must have some sort of substance. According
to the theory of transcendental evolution, this substance, the living stuff of
consciousness, is created in precisely the same way as are all other
manifestations of life, that is hermetically, genetically. Thus evolutionary
consciousness itself is quite literally composed of metaphysical signals, or
“notes,” which have been copied from “genes” housed in the electrochemical
structure of other mesocosmic “helices,” other human brains.

The characteristic spiral form of DNA has been photographed in its totality
through a process known as X-ray diffraction. It is clearly a double helix, and
all DNA molecules in every living plant or animal are stmctured in exactly
the same way. This DNA does not suddenly appear fully formed: it develops
in a linear fashion over a given period of time. As the parent DNA ladder
“unzips” at one end prior to cell division, and free-floating bases link up with
the open ends of the split rungs, two identical chromosomes are formed. 2

It might be argued that the description “double helix” cannot reasonably be
applied to the two hemispheres of the brain, which look more like three-
dimensional segments of some weird exotic fruit than the structural features
of a chromosome. But of course, like DNA, we must assume that this
metaphysical “chromosome” does not appear read-ymade, but requires a
given period of time to develop its overall form, and that this unfolds in a
linear fashion. Time is the line and the period in question is a lifetime. And
what exactly happens during the lifetime of an individual brain? Remember
that the two hemispheres have a physical existence on the surface of a planet
that is spinning endlessly on its axis as it soars through space. Therefore, each
hemisphere is in fact tracing a spiral, a helix, through space and time. Taken
together the overall configuration is, of course, a double helix.

So the human brain is an evolving double helix developing in time, at one
end of which lies conception, at the other, death. All that happens between, all
our experiences in life, both conscious and sub-conscious, define the
particular “color,” or quality, of each evolving mesocosmic “chromosome.”
The most successful or the most resonant of the “genes” in these
chromosomes, like, say, the “bright,” enduring ideas and concepts of those
such as the Buddha, Christ, or Muhammad, are those that are replicated most,
in succeeding generations, by other metaphysical chromosomes, other human
brains.

The DNA structure of living cells has two sides to it, two chains made up
of sugar, phosphate, and nitrogenous bases, each side being a mirror image of
the other. The two chains are held together by the bases: adenine, thymine,
cytosine, and guanine. Adenine always links up with thymine, and guanine
always joins with cytosine. Similarly the human brain, as we have seen, also
has two sides to it, the conscious processes of the left hemisphere and the
subconscious processes of the right. As with DNA, these different aspects of

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the two hemispheres are inextricably linked to one another by “bases,” by our
experiences in life, born of our sensations, emotions, perceptions, and
conceptions.

This, then, forms the core of the ancients’ view of mankind’s evolution.
Consciousness is an organic phenomenon, it develops according to the
dictates of the Hermetic Code, and its natural inclination is to grow upward
and outward, toward the stellar scale of existence, the nonlocal plane of light.
So as consciousness evolves, the whole of the human race, like the pyramid
builders of the ancient world, will be working together in states of ever-
increasing harmony to build, in a higher dimension, a vastly more complex,
macrocosmic structure. Theoretically such an entity would either possess, or
would be evolving, a “brain” of its own, an immense “solar” helix that, in
terms of scale and complexity, would be as far removed from the individual
mesocosmic double helix—the human brain—as the mesocosmic double
helix is from microcosmic DNA. If this is true, then we should expect to find
the main components of this helical structure in the cosmos above.

We already have a clue as to the manner in which this awesome,
extraterrestrial life form might evolve. This arises from a suggestion I made
previously, which is that the creative processes in the metaphysical world of
the human mind involve some kind of interplay between light and
consciousness. This is to say that these two complementary yet quite distinct
phenomena are the main components of conception/ creation, opposite sides,
as it were, of the same metaphysical coin.

Excluding starlight, the source of all light in our solar system is the sun.
And the source of all consciousness, as we know it, is the Earth. Thus we see
that this macrocosmic structure, exactly like its micro- and mesocosmic
counterparts, has two fundamental aspects to it.

In the case of the DNA molecule, its two main characteristics are its acidic
and its alkaline properties. Its function is to take in data in the form of
individual chemical bases, which it then transmutes “up” into the more
resonant RNA components, finally transmitting them back out into the
cytoplasm, the liquid membrane of the cell, for future synthesis. Similarly the
human brain, with its conscious and subconscious characteristics, also takes
in data—impressions, perceptions, and so forth—that it then transmutes into a
kind of metaphysical “light,” subsequently radiated out into the world in the
form of ideas, concepts, and the like.

So, with regard to the double helix in the sky, we might say that the sun is
its “acidic,” or conscious aspect, and that life on planet Earth is the
manifestation of its “alkaline” or subconscious aspect. Presumably the
celestial double helix too would take in data of some kind, which it would
then transmute up and radiate out, but exactly what form this might take is
perhaps a question that only Adam Kadmon him-self could answer. However,

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we can speculate. If there are macrocosmic “bases” up there, they must be
pretty big, and the biggest components of the solar system are the other
planets and asteroids, all of which radiate some kind of magnetic influence
out into the greater system.

Significantly, the ancient Greek pantheon of the gods, Zeus and his
celestial family, was closely associated with the sun and the planets, each of
which was regarded as being imbued with life. They also referred frequently
to the “music of the spheres,” believing that the whole solar system is a
hermetic creation. And hermetic, of course, is genetic, organic.

It so happens that this “music of the spheres” is not simply folk-lore, but
fact. Rodney Collin noted that the major and minor conjunctions of the
planets all “beat out” certain rhythms that can be numerically defined in a
regular sequence of harmonic intervals developing in time. When he
subsequently made a comparative table of these conjunctions, he discovered
that the figures obtained, taken as vibrations, represent the relative values of
the fundamental notes of the major scale.

As he says, the periodicity of a planet’s magnetic influence follows the
time necessary for it to return to the same relative position of closest
proximity to Earth. Collin takes as the point of departure of each planetary
cycle the moment when the sun, the Earth, and the given planet are in a
straight line. The cycle of that planet is thus the time that elapses before such
a conjunction occurs again; it is the “interval” between the recurring moment
when the three magnetic forces of sun, Earth, and the given planet act
together in the same way.

Mercury and Venus repeat their maximum magnetic effect every eight
years, the asteroids every nine, Jupiter twelve, Mars fifteen, and Saturn thirty.
When these various rhythms are superimposed one sees an interesting
sequence of harmonic intervals, each stage of which is marked by the major
conjunctions of one or more planets. Every twenty-four years Jupiter
completes two full cycles, Venus and Mercury, three each. The next
significant stage occurs every twenty-seven years, at which the asteroids
complete three full cycles. Every thirty years Mars completes two cycles and
Saturn one. Every thirty-two years, Venus and Mercury each complete four
cycles. Every thirty-six years, Jupiter runs through three cycles and the
asteroids complete four. The next stage is forty years, during which Venus
and Mercury each run through five cycles. Every forty-five years Mars
completes three cycles and the asteroids five. Finally, every forty-eight years,
Jupiter completes four cycles and Venus and Mercury each complete six full
cycles. This sequence is constant, repeating itself endlessly.

We thus have a table of the numbers of years, beginning at 24, rising up
through 27, 30, 36, 40, 45—and ending on 48, exactly double the value of the
number we began with. This is significant, for not only does this series of

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numbers conform to the relative values of the notes of a major scale, exactly
like an octave of music, it also expresses the ratio 1:2. Collin concludes: “And
we are reminded of old stories that this same musical scale, ascribed by
legend to the Pythagoreans, was invented by a special school of astronomers
and physicists, to echo the music of the spheres.”

When we tried to envisage the “double helix” formed from the two
hemispheres of the human brain as they interact along the line of time, we
noted that the true form of the whole evolving phenomenon spans the life of
the individual, from conception to death. The “double helix” of the solar
system exists in an even greater dimension, and so in terms of size and
duration of existence must be as far removed from the mesocosmic scale of
the human brain as the human brain is from the microcosmic scale of the
individual cell’s chromosomes. Consequently we must try to view the basic
chromosomal structure of the “solar being” in relation to the cycles of the
planets, and in particular of Earth. We might say, therefore, that this
macrocosmic “chromosome” started to develop when Homo sapiens sapiens
first began thinking in simple concepts and that it will continue until such
time as consciousness on Earth ceases to exist. It is about one hundred
thousand years or so since the Neanderthal or early Cro-Magnon first started
mining for red ochre in southern Africa, not long after the beginning of the
last ice age. It is believed that the ochre was for ritual rather than practical
purposes, suggesting that the evolution of “consciousness” was well under
way by then. So the solar being of mankind is at least a hundred millennia
old.

Over this expanse of time, the helical patterns traced by the components of
the solar system as it spins like a giant Catherine wheel through space form an
immensely long and complex figure. Collin describes this four-dimensional
structure in his own unique style:

The planetary paths, drawn out into manifold spirals of various tensions and
diameters, have now become a series of iridescent sheaths veiling the white-hot
thread of the sun, each shimmering with its own characteristic color and sheen,
the whole meshed throughout by a gossamer-fine web woven from the
eccentric paths of innumerable asteroids and comets, glowing with some sense
of living warmth and ringing with an incredibly subtle and harmonious music. 3

Collin did not identify this structure as a “chromosome” as such, but the
reference made to its living warmth was certainly intended to be taken
literally. As he says a little further on, “the solar-system is, in some way
incomprehensible to us, a living body.”

The Greeks, as we have seen, shared much the same view, but they also
believed that this immense, musically structured entity is a conscious being
with a mind of its own. Presumably this would be a mind that, like ours, takes

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in external data—impressions of some kind— and out of them constructs the
macrocosmic equivalent of concepts. Clearly the possible nature of such data
is incomprehensible to us. If the body of the solar being is constructed from
metaphysical “amino acids,” that is from our concepts coupled with light,
then the “mind” of the entity would inevitably function with much higher,
more rarefied energies, perhaps operating at velocities far greater than the
speed of light. According to Special Relativity, of course, nothing can travel
faster than light. Physicists have in the past tried to overcome this limitation
by dreaming up a new kind of particle, a “tachyon,” a hypothetical entity,
existing in a higher dimension, that travels back-ward in time at speeds
greater than the velocity of light, but never below it. Theoretically the tachyon
cannot exist, but even if it did, we might never know it, because any particles
moving (backward in time) at such a phenomenal speed could never be
detected by any known scientific means.

At any rate, if the solar “mind” is a reality, then there must be some form of
energy sustaining it. And if light is the limiting factor in the mesocosm, then
perhaps the limiting factor in the greater scale above is in some way directly
related to it.

As it turns out, in the Hermetic Code we have a clue to the possible
relationship between these two scales. The key number is 64, the number of
amino-acid templates in a living cell, the number of hexagrams in the I Ching.
Sixty-four is the square of the constant number 8—8 being the symbol of the
octave, the fundamental component of pi, and the basic matrix of all creative
processes.

Remember also that this number was closely associated with the Great
Pyramid, which was itself closely associated not only with the phenomenon
of light but also with the stars, with the stellar scale above. It seems to me
very unlikely that the symbolism involved in the whole pyramid phenomenon
should be accidental or arbitrary. The details are too precise for that. We have
the Great Pyramid itself, “The Lights,” designed and constructed by the
followers of the god of wisdom, one in a pantheon of eight gods, whose
symbol was two entwined plumed serpents, and whose “Magic Square”
embodies all the numbers from 1 to 64. Surely we are being told here that the
key to transcendental evolution is the square of the constant, that the sacred
metamorphosis from man to god described in the pyramid ritual represents the
squaring of one’s possibilities. Possibly this is why the ancient names for the
Great Pyramid are in the plural: Khuti, “The Lights,” in Egyptian and Urim
middin; “Lights-measures” in Chaldee and Hebrew.

So, while modern science denies the possibility of superluminal (faster-
than-light) motion, the ancients’ description of cosmic events strongly
suggests that, in one way or another, it is an attainable reality. Of course the
limitations imposed by Special Relativity refer to matter as we know it, the

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smallest components of which are sub-atomic or virtual wave/particles.
However, the scale of materiality need not necessarily end with the
wave/particle. Readers may recall that the physicist David Bohm’s research
led him to conclude that consciousness itself is a form of matter. But if
consciousness is a form of materiality, it is clearly one of an entirely different
order than the kind we can detect or measure, and so may not be bound by the
normal laws of physics.

Now there are, in fact, phenomena in existence, such as correlated photons,
for example, the nonlocal connectedness of which produces in the observer
the illusion that something passing between them is “moving” at speeds far
greater even than the square of the constant velocity. We shall return to this
question of nonlocal communication later, as I believe it may provide a
mechanism by which information can be transferred across the entire
universe, from one macrocosmic “organism” to another, in less time than it
takes to blink.

For the moment, however, we can tentatively hold on to this idea: the value
of the square of the speed of light may be the diffusion speed of the
interactive “resonances” of the solar mind.

Now we must move on—always upward, of course—and continue the
incredible journey first made by the serpent gods of wisdom.

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Interstellar Genes and the Galactic Double

Helix

I n the four-dimensional structure of the solar system’s long body we have
seen how the planetary trails, all encircling the white-hot thread of the sun,
form immense helices in space. If we imagine each of these individual sheaths
to be coupled in some way with the greater spiral motion of the sun, as there
are nine planets, we can say that there are nine “solar” helices. One of these,
formed by the combined motion of the Earth and the sun, is fundamentally
different from all the others, in that it contains life, consciousness, you, and
me. This particular double helix is the “brain” of the solar being, the mind of
Adam Kadmon.

But, of course, if this solar being is indeed organic, a “chromosome,” then,
theoretically, like all helices it too would have the capacity, in a still higher
dimension, to create, to build even greater, more complex forms of life. So,
just as DNA forms the nucleus of a cell in a physical body, and the human
brain forms the nucleus of a cell in the solar body of mankind, so too would
the mind of this solar being form the nucleus of a cell in the greater, galactic
body. This further quantum leap, from the scale of the solar system to the
vaster galactic scale, means that the human brain, earlier defined as the
mesocosmic double helix between DNA below and the solar configuration
above, now becomes a microcosmic entity in a yet larger existence, in which
the solar being represents the mesocosmic creative force, and the galactic
body the macrocosmic. We shall take a closer look at these relative scales
later in this chapter.

In the last chapter we noted that Rodney Collin had discovered that the
orbital cycles in the planets of the solar system produce major and minor
conjunctions in time, whose relative values correspond very closely to the
harmonic proportions of the major scale. This legendary “music of the
spheres” was frequently alluded to by the writers of ancient Greece: it was
referred to by Plato as the “song of the sirens.” The hermetic symmetry of
these planetary motions, as I have suggested, is an indication that there are
genetic, organic processes operating in the planetary sphere.

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It so happens that, very recently, further evidence has come to light
concerning the relationship between the masses of certain stars that seems to
indicate that this planetary harmony may extend far beyond the solar system,
out into the galaxy.

While I was working through the second draft of this book, which did not
then include what follows, I received a phone call from Colin Wilson. He said
he had been asked to review an updated edition of a book by Robert Temple
called The Sirius Mystery, first published in 1976, in which there was some
very interesting cosmological data that he felt would be of interest to me.
Colin had already seen a hastily written first draft of this book and had been
kind enough to offer some suggestions as to its presentation and format. So he
knew exactly where I was coming from and promptly realized the relevance
of Temple’s conclusions to my work. He duly sent me a copy of The Sirius
Mystery, which I had first read many years ago, but this new edition, as he
had promised, proved to be very interesting indeed.

Temple is the man who introduced to the world the Dogon tribe of Africa,
whose ancient and secret traditions contain very precise astrophysical data
about Sirius and two other invisible stars in the Sirius system that have only
been discovered in recent times. These two hidden companions of Sirius are
known respectively as Sirius B, a white dwarf star first photographed in 1970
by Irving W. Lindenblad of the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington,
D.C., 1 and Sirius C, a red dwarf star whose existence was only officially
confirmed in 1995 by the French astronomers J. L. Duvent and Daniel
Benest . 2 The Dogon, it appears, were well ahead of their time.

Temple believes, reasonably enough, that this knowledge came to them in
the remote past, probably from Egypt. Then he advances the theory that the
Egyptians and the Sumerians obtained this knowledge directly from highly
advanced amphibious extraterrestrials from the Sirius star system. He cites as
part of his evidence the prominence in certain myths of amphibious creatures,
half-man, half-fish, who were said to have founded the first civilizations in
the Fertile Crescent. The leading “fish deity” was known under various names
on the eastern flank of the Crescent, although in Egypt there is no major god
answering to the description given. In Babylon and Assyria this god was
known as Oannes (possibly an early form of the name John); in Sumeria,
Enki; and to the Dogon tribe in Africa, Nommo.

I have to say that Temple’s idea of amphibious spacemen flying in from
Sirius with their superior wisdom is not my favorite explanation for the birth
of Earthling civilization. A more plausible theory is that the ancient civilizers
appearing in all the major myths, said to have survived a Great Flood, landed
on the shores of their new homeland in boats—hence the emphasis on the
element of water. This proposition is further supported by the theory of

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transcendental evolution itself, as interpreted in many ancient legends, in
which the basic element of water is primarily an evolutionary symbol,
expressing the central importance of the passive, “watery” element in the
process of creation (see chapter 9).

So, according to the theory of transcendental evolution, superior or
“extraterrestrial” intelligence actually develops from below. And it grows,
evolves, organically, ever upward, toward the stars. Temple’s view therefore
appears to be upside down. His arguments in support of his theory are
extensive, suggesting technical maneuvers on the part of the “fish gods” that
defy comparison with anything ever accomplished on Earth, including the
construction of the Great Pyramid. These include the use of water-filled
spaceships capable of interstellar flight, and also the construction of Phoebe,
the smooth-surfaced, tenth moon of Saturn, which Temple believes may be an
artificial, water-filled satellite constructed, or perhaps “inflated,” by these
fishlike creatures and used as a kind of staging post on their intermittent
journeys to and from Earth.

Notwithstanding our obvious differences concerning the true nature of
“alien” life, Temple has discovered some interesting new facts concerning the
Sirius system and our own sun, which appear to link both star systems with
the Giza plateau, in particular with the Great Pyramid and the second Pyramid
of Khafre (Chephren).

As the Great Pyramid has an apparent Sirius connection (that is, the
southern shaft emanating from the Queen’s Chamber, which targeted Sirius as
it culminated at the meridian at the time of construction of the Great
Pyramid), Temple proposes that it might be a representation of the “invisible”
star, Sirius B, and that the slightly smaller Pyramid of Khafre represents our
own sun. This view might appear to fly in the face of the suggestion made by
Robert Bauval that the three Giza Pyramids represent the three stars of
Orion’s Belt. The whole necropolis, however, as we have seen, is
extraordinarily multifaceted, so it would hardly be surprising if we were to
find yet more information relating to the Sirius system encoded within the
design.

Temple begins by comparing the sides of the slightly larger base of the
Great Pyramid (755.79 feet) with the sides of the base of the Pyramid of
Khafre (707.75 feet), calculating that the sides of the Great Pyramid are
1.0678 times those of Khafre’s. He then notes, using the newest available
astrophysical data, that the mass of Sirius B is 1.053 times the mass of our
sun. As he says:

The correspondence is thus accurate to 0.014. However, even this tiny

discrepancy may be highly significant. For 0.0136 (which rounded off is 0.014)

is the precise discrepancy between the mathematics of the octave and the

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mathematics of the fifth in harmonic theory, where 1.0136 is referred to as the
Comma of Pythagoras, and was known to the ancient Greeks, who are said to
have obtained knowledge of it from Egypt. 3

As a matter of fact, I have already discussed the Pythagorean Comma in
my earlier book, in which I proposed that it was intended to highlight the
fundamental difference between ordinary, practical music and what I call
“esoteric” music—ordinary music, I believe, having been considered by the
Pythagoreans as being slightly “off-key” from the true harmonic constant
from which life is created.

Temple expresses much the same idea in his revised version of The Sirius
Mystery, in which he calls the discrepancy of 0.0136 (rounded off to 0.014)
the Particle of Pythagoras: “Essentially, one could say that it expresses the
minute discrepancy between the ideal and the real.” 4

Temple’s “ideal” music in this context is what I would call “esoteric.”
“Real” music therefore is ordinary practical music. The harmonic deviation
described by the comma is significant, raising the wider issue of how this
discrepancy might have been rectified by the Pythagoreans: how they
transformed ordinary music into what Temple calls the “ideal” kind. I have
dealt with this in some detail in The Infinite Harmony, where I suggest that
the marginal imperfection of ordinary music was connected with the
“glitches” of the major scale. As I pointed out in the introduction of this book
when introducing Gurdjieff’s exposition of the law of octaves, these
“glitches” are identified as the two points in the octave where the rate of
increase in pitch frequency between one note and the next retards, that is
where there are not full tones but only half-tones: between the notes mi-fa
and ti-Do. This inherent deviation in the line of development of an octave in
ordinary, practical music is the underlying pattern of development of all
natural phenomena, and accounts for the vast multiplicity and variety of
physical forms in the universe. Thus, while the music of our favorite
composers and artists sounds perfect to our ears, the Pythagorean Comma
indicates that it is never quite so.

“Ideal” music, however, the esoteric music of the Greeks, is organic music,
the music of the Hermetic Code and the genetic code. This very special kind
of music actually takes account of, and rectifies, the discrepancy highlighted
by the Comma. Essentially, of course, this is the “music of the mind,” the
music from which life itself is created. It is Egyptian alchemy, which
involved the application of the law of octaves as a mode of being, but with a
very slight yet crucial additional input in each developing scale at precisely
the two semitone points mentioned above. This means that a fully developed
“psychological” or organic octave is composed not of seven stages, as in a
normal scale, but of nine, because it includes within it the two extra impulses

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at the points of the missing semitones. If we remember that each of these nine
stages, according to the second fundamental law of nature, is itself an octave,
then quite clearly we have a genuinely perfect scale consisting of sixty-four
“inner notes” (9x7 + 1, the 1 being the final Do).

Readers wishing to explore in greater depth the theory of the “missing
semitones” may care to consult the relevant section of my previous book, 5 but
for the present we must return to the main cosmological theme of this chapter.

Temple goes on to reveal that the precise value of 1.053, which we have
noted has only very recently been identified as the exact ratio of the masses of
Sirius B and our own sun, was very accurately expressed by the
astronomer/mathematician Macrobius in the fifth century CE in the form of
the “sacred” fraction, 256/243. Macrobius claimed that this fraction, which
was also referred to by several of his contemporaries, was used in harmonic
theory by people who he himself referred to as the ancients.

Temple suggests that this apparent harmonic connection between Sirius B
and the sun—stars that, on a universal scale, are virtually neighbors—might
in fact be implicit throughout the universe, at least between localized white
dwarf stars and ordinary stars like the sun. The wider implication is that all
types of stars could have relative masses corresponding in some way to the
established ratios of harmonic theory, that is, with the ratios embodied within
the Hermetic Code.

One possible way of explaining this long-range coordination, says Temple,
is to regard the two solar systems as inhabiting the same “cell” of space. This
idea has emerged from a new area of research known as Complexity Theory,
which involves the study of the sudden appearance and disappearance of
order in the greater cosmos. It has been noted that something that looks very
much like instantaneous communication occurs in such “cells,” “whereby
huge macro-regions of space behave as if their elements were not separated
by spatial or temporal distance, and the ‘cell’ engages in what is called ‘self-
organisation.’” 6

We have already identified what appears to be a microworld equivalent of
this kind of process in plasmas, where billions of electrons simultaneously
perform coordinated movements, exactly as if they were all communicating
non-locally. Another example cited by Temple is the Benard cell, a thermal
phenomenon caused by convection in a fluid, in which millions of individual
molecules instantaneously align. He also notes that there are other similar
phenomena in nature, such as the simple sponge, which can transmit stimuli
from one end of its body to the other at apparently “impossible” velocities, as
if the whole creature were a single giant cell or neuron. This is not dissimilar
to the proposition made by Roger Penrose, the Cambridge scientist mentioned
in chapter 4, who suggested that “non-local quantum correlations” might

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occur between widely separated regions of the brain, thus enabling billions of
individual neurons to respond as a coherent whole—a microcosmic equivalent
of the Greek concept of homonoia, a “union of minds,” or, in this case, of
neurons.

Obviously the principle of nonlocality is hard for us to understand. It defies
ordinary logic and excludes the time and space familiar to our ordinary
senses. But while the nonlocal realm—what I have called the plane of light—
might be difficult to conceptualize, there is a sense in which music itself can
provide an explanation for the kind of simultaneous coordinated action we
have been considering here.

This centers around the eighth and last note of an octave, Do, which, once
struck, simultaneously becomes the first note of a higher octave, a greater
scale. Such a note has dual properties, existing in two different scales at one
and the same time. So let’s say that the whole range of biochemical vibrations
produced by neurons in the brain or in a sponge develop inwardly as an
octave, and that ultimately this octave begins to vibrate, to resonate, at its
optimum potential. When this occurs, the entire evolutionary scale becomes
fused into one final note, Do. In this way ah separate components of the scale
not only become simultaneously interconnected with ah other components, no
matter what their “position” in the scale, they also become simultaneously
connected, through the ultimate note, with the next scale or dimension above.

In the same way the RNA codon template, created by DNA from three inert
chemical bases, or three harmonious “octaves” of chemical resonance,
simultaneously becomes a single new biochemical “note”— an amino acid—
one of twenty-two comprising the greater scale above. Thus, although the
process is essentially linear, taking place in time, there comes a point where a
kind of simultaneity definitely does occur, where lower scales are suddenly
transcended, and where time and space count for nothing. The same could
apply, of course, to the higher scales of biochemical evolution, perhaps when
the amino-acid chain transmutes “up” into the scale of the protein
macromolecule, or when the protein evolves up further into the scale of
organs, or of glands, bone, tissue, and so on. In ah of these transitional stages
of evolution there must be points where the notes in one scale ah combine to
strike simultaneously a single new note up into a greater scale. Therefore,
these “nonlocal correlations,” in addition to being a general property of nature
at the quantum level of existence, probably manifest at many different levels
on the evolutionary ladder.

As Temple says, if a simple sponge can defy space and time at the bottom
of the sea, then it is not unreasonable to suppose that these greater “cells”
above can do so within the galaxy.

Inevitably, perhaps, Temple is ultimately drawn to consider the possibility
that such macrocosmic cells, which he calls Anubis cells (Anubis being the

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jackal-headed deity of the Egyptian pantheon associated with the “dog star”
Sirius), may be alive. “The vast Ordering Principle,” he says, “may be an
Entity .” 7

Quite so. Hermetic is genetic, and the musical symmetries evident in the
planetary sphere of our solar system, and in the mass ratio of Sirius B and our
sun, indicate that this life force may be prevalent throughout the entire
universe. Remember also that the basic structure of all life-bearing
phenomena is the spiral, the helix—and the entire cosmos, as we have seen, is
positively teeming with these “serpents in the sky.”

Our own solar system is comprised of nine such serpents, all coiled around
the path of the sun, while the motion of the sun itself traces an infinitely
greater helix winding around the central path of the galactic center.

The most distinctive of the nine “lesser serpents” described above is, of
course, serpent Earth, from which has developed the evolving “solar mind” of
the human race. Of course, if this greater helix is a cosmic “chromosome”
developing in an organic fashion deep inside some kind of cell nucleus, then
logically one would expect to find the greater body of the host cell all around
it. In this case, the most obvious structure in evidence is that of the solar
system itself.

Interestingly enough, when we look at the solar system in relation to the
greater body of the Milky Way, its position appears strikingly similar to that
of certain ordinary living cells. We could compare it, for example, to the
position of a single blood cell in the human body. Like the solar system, a
white corpuscle is structured around a central nucleus, or “sun.” Floating
around the nucleus are smaller components of varying size, complexity, and
energy content, such as enzymes, mitochondria, ribosomes, RNA, and so on.
These components all exist inside the body of the cell, floating around in a
watery medium, a liquid membrane known as the cytoplasm. Beyond the
walls of the individual blood cell and separating it from all others is more
fluid membrane.

The boundary of the cosmic “cytoplasm” of the solar system might be
defined as the sphere of the sun’s immediate magnetic and gravitational
influence, the sphere in which all the planets, asteroids, comets, and other
orbiting materials are contained. The “cytoplasm,” however, or the medium in
which the components of the solar system exist and operate, would be
infinitely more rarefied than the liquid membrane of the cell, or even the air
we breathe on Earth, but it must be just as real nonetheless and it similarly
must fill the whole system. Possibly this medium is light itself or, rather, the
entire spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, which extends far beyond the
boundaries of the solar system and is the medium in which all greater cosmic
systems exist.

The spiral galaxy, consisting of billions of these “solar cells,” is composed

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mainly of hydrogen-burning stars, vast, interstellar clouds of cosmic dust, or
nebulae, and, one assumes, billions upon billions of planets, all whirling
around a central nucleus of super-dense energy—a black hole, perhaps. And
this great cosmic firework, with its immense spiral arms, as well as spinning
around its central axis, is also hurtling through space at a velocity of around
six hundred kilometers per second. Therefore, as with the solar helices, if we
wish to perceive something of the galaxy’s true form, we must try to visualize
it not in the timescale involved in taking a frozen snapshot of it, a few
seconds or a minute or so, but in that of the galactic being itself. In such a
scale, a few “seconds” might be equivalent to hundreds of thousands or even
millions of our years. So, if the four-dimensional structure of the galaxy could
somehow be captured by time-lapse photography, after a few of its “seconds”
or “minutes” we would see something very similar to the long body of the
solar system described by Rodney Collin, an immensely elongated,
shimmering spiral of electromagnetic radiation coiling toward infinity—
another true helix.

This image of a long helical body really only describes the basic physical
or four-dimensional form of one of these macrocosmic “chromosomes.” But,
like the DNA strand in a cell nucleus, the brain housed in a skull, or the
creative solar mind of the human race, its overall complexity and influence
would far exceed the scale of its origin. In fact, what we see when we look at
the contents of the nucleus of a cell, a cerebral cortex or a solar system is
merely a simplified cross-section of the whole entity.

For example, we look at a DNA strand and see only a relatively simple
chain of chemically encoded digital instructions. Yet scientific investigation
has shown us another, much more powerful dimension to DNA: it reaches out
and indeed controls all of the creative functions in every part of the greater
“world” in which it exists, that is, in the entire body of the host organism.
Thus a single gene located in the chromosome of the first reproductive cells
of an evolving organism may ultimately determine such features as the color
of hair or eyes, the configuration of bone structure, and other complex
characteristics.

Similarly the human brain can be scientifically reduced to its simplest form
by describing it as a mass of neurons interacting through chemical reactions
and electrical impulses, all comfortably housed in a protective covering of
hard bone. But quite clearly the skull itself does not even remotely define the
real boundaries of the brain’s existence. The brain, like the chromosome, is
merely the physical manifestation of a much greater, profoundly more
complex entity, one capable of thinking conceptually or of dreaming up
imaginary worlds, that of traveling backward in time through memory or
alternatively speculating its way into the future. It can transmit information to
other brains, it can intuit, impress, inspire, it can even, many believe,

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communicate telepathically, directly influence physical objects, predict
coming events, and so on. In effect, like the DNA double helix, the brain is
potentially as big as the “world” in which it functions.

The solar helix, or the collective mind of humanity, would clearly be of an
order of consciousness far more advanced than any we could imagine. The
“organism” in which this helix is housed would be composed of the entire
body of mankind’s accumulated wisdom, every idea, theory, or belief system
that has ever been conceived, or ever will be. Trying to understand the true
nature of such a being, whose life span would be measured in hundreds of
thousands of our years, would involve studying, in the minutest detail, every
intellectual and spiritual discipline known or yet to be developed. Like the
two orders of helices below it—the human brain and DNA—we would expect
the solar helix to exert creative influences reaching way beyond its own scale
of existence, out into the greater body of the host galaxy.

In the same way we see the greater galactic helix as composed of
symmetrical, localized concentrations of matter and energy traveling through
a given region in space, but its greater presence, or the totality of vibrations
issuing from it, spreads far and wide. We know the galaxy is formed like it is
because there are four fundamental forces (“bases”) keeping it together: the
short-range strong and short-range weak nuclear forces, the gravitational
force, and the electromagnetic force. The electromagnetic radiation emitted
by all the stars of a galaxy spreads out at the speed of light in all directions,
extending over distances of billions of light years from the source of origin.
Therefore, the outer limits of all the light that has ever been emitted from the
galactic helix, together with the outer limits of the gravitational influence it
has exerted from the time of its formation, represent the greater body of the
galaxy itself. Thus, as with the DNA double helix, the human brain, and the
solar helix, we can say that the potential influence of the galactic “mind”
would also be as immense and complex as the “world” in which it exists.

Scientists will argue that a galaxy cannot conceivably possess any kind of
consciousness, that it is simply an involving, runaway mass of chemical
elements randomly exploding and flying off in all directions according to
basic physical laws. But then, the often-violent electrochemical reactions
taking place inside an active human brain could also be described in much the
same way—and yet we know that consciousness dwells there. Similarly the
superactive speed-of-light fusion of electropositive elements combining,
through photon interchange, with electronegative elements in the atomic
chemistry of dynamic, evolving biomolecules would also give the appearance,
to a microcosmic onlooker, of being a purely physical, entropic process. But
we know that this entropy observed in the genetic microworld is basically an
illusion, for from it evolve immense, harmoniously proportioned, and long-
living organic structures.

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In the case of the solar being, whose extraterrestrial body, remember, is
constructed from the metaphysical “gene pool” of mankind’s collective
consciousness, disorder seems, at least on the surface of things, to be
endemic. Go into any large town or city on a normal day and observe the
inhabitants going about their business, rushing, pushing, shouting, hustling,
absent-mindedly moving around in random directions, each of them in a
private world of their own, with hardly ever a thought for the planet we live
on, or the solar system within which it rotates, or the galaxy on high. No
homonoia here. Elsewhere men are warring with and killing one another in a
hundred different regions of the world, famines are ravaging millions of
helpless and innocent victims with merciless regularity, global ecological
disasters are occurring almost daily. All this evident confusion is
“cacophony,” a general manifestation of the social animal at its worst, with
consciousness locked in a materialistic, dualistic stupor. No homonoia here
either.

And yet beneath all this apparently chaotic activity there is, in fact, an
underlying current of metaphysical harmony that has been continuously
flowing throughout recorded history in the form of hermetic ideas.
Fortunately for us, and presumably also for the Helix above, these concepts,
being psychologically sound, are infinitely more “resonant” than the crass
“isms” that man is prone to preach. This is precisely why, just like successful
genes in the evolutionary processes of the microworld, they are so faithfully
replicated and passed on for future generations by millions of other human
minds.

This solar being, whose metaphysical “body” we have just described, is but
one of around one hundred billion in our galaxy alone. If we assume that
these beings possess “minds” with a degree of consciousness of some
macrocosmic order, then presumably their “thoughts” or “concepts” would
also have substance to them and would in turn be synthesized at a higher level
in the construction of an infinitely greater galactic body. The real nature of
such godly thought processes lie beyond our ordinary comprehension, but the
manner in which they evolve must in principle be identical to the evolution of
the helices below—the DNA molecule and the human brain. Therefore, the
“concepts” or evolutionary signals engendered by the solar being above us,
assuming they are of an “immaculate” order, would simultaneously be passed
on, or transmitted, to other solar beings in the galaxy. So, like the dominant or
active genes of DNA, or the hermetic ideas of creative mankind, the more
successful of the “ideas” conceived in the solar helix will be replicated by
other conscious beings in its “world.” This will construct the body of an even
greater organism—the galactic being.

But what about the mind of this greater entity? Where is it? How does it
operate?

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As I said earlier, the body of the galaxy is composed of billions of
individual solar systems, or solar “cells,” but its mind, evolving
transcendentally out of the collective consciousness of all the solar beings in a
given galaxy, is identifiable in the overall four-dimensional helical structure
of the galaxy itself—the galactic “chromosome.”

The order of consciousness of the solar being, as we have seen, is complex
enough in itself, but it can, nevertheless, be explained in fairly rational terms,
that is, as a composite structure formed from the entire body of humanity’s
collective consciousness, its accumulated secular and esoteric wisdom. But
when considering the kind of “consciousness” our own Milky Way might
possess, which clearly would exist and operate in a scale of being
unimaginably greater than the solar scale, we are touching on possible
processes so refined and ultra-resonant that they must remain for us
hypothetical in our present state of evolution. This does not, however, prevent
us from speculating on the nature of these projected “galactic vibrations.”

Possibly the most distinctive features of these galactic vibrations would be
their relative pitch frequencies and their rate of transmission. These higher
creative processes would operate with degrees of resonance far more rarefied
than those emanating from the helices below.

When we considered the solar helix, we identified its two principal
properties or components as the active emanations of the sun (light) and the
passive, metaphysical vibrations of the Earth (consciousness). These, I
suggested, were “light” and “consciousness” of a different order from the
light and consciousness of our ordinary world. Significantly the nature of the
more rarefied light of the solar helix is described by the Hermetic Code and
by the Magic Square associated with the Great Pyramid—“The Lights”—as a
squared phenomenon, the square of the constant. Such, therefore, would be
the nature of the “light” of the solar helix. The nature of the more rarefied
consciousness of the entire human race would therefore have to correspond
accordingly, and would presumably be as far removed from ordinary
consciousness as the speed of light is from the square of the speed of light.

The galactic helix, however, whose scale of being is at least one hundred
billion times more extensive that that of the single solar helix, would probably
be engaged in an exchange of energies moving, or vibrating, at frequencies
far in excess of the square of the speed of light. As we know, Special
Relativity asserts that nothing can travel through space faster than the
constant velocity. But of course we have seen from the nonlocal connections
existing between interacting quanta that information can “travel”
instantaneously from one to another— through the quantum field, where
space and time simply don’t exist. Possibly this is how these great galactic
beings, whose sheer magnitude make even the square of the speed of light
seem hopelessly inadequate as a universal rate of intelligence transmission,

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might “speak” with one another.

We are now poised to make a final ascent to the very summit of Jacob’s
evolutionary “ladder,” beyond the scale of the “angels” (suns) and the scale of
the “archangels” (galaxies), and out into the realms of the Absolute scale—
the universe in its entirety. In this scale, the mighty galaxy, whose three-
dimensional form is measured in tens of billions of light years across, is but a
single cell in the body of its host. And just like all cells, the cells of planetary
organisms, the cells of the solar body (you and me), and the cells of the
galactic body (like our solar system), this greater galactic mind must
ultimately have the ability to create, in the greatest scale of them all, the
ultimate, universal being.

Before we continue our journey across the universe, it is worth reflecting
for a moment on the overall evolutionary picture we have just been
describing. This is a picture, remember, that was first outlined by Egyptian
metaphysicians in the third millennium BCE and that was neatly summed up
in the phrase “As above, so below.” Now you may or may not accept this
scenario of ascending, living scales as the real thing, but whether this view is
literally true or not, it is nevertheless unique in the entire history of
philosophical thought in that it provides a very plausible answer to two of the
most fundamental and puzzling questions of all, questions that, as I explained
in the introduction of this book, were the cause of much consternation to me
as a boy: why are we here? Is there life after death? The theory of
transcendental evolution pulls no punches here: it answers these two
questions in a quite straightforward and unambiguous way.

According to this original creation theory, we are here as a direct result of
nature’s grand design, all of us being—potentially at least— vital and integral
parts of a much greater evolutionary process. This process begins in the
“primordial waters” (with the DNA-RNA complex), it then evolves up
through the consciousness of sentient beings like ourselves, then further still
into “angelic” (solar) and “archangelic” (galactic) form, ultimately to flower
into the superconscious “mind” of the universe itself—the ultimate “helix.”
We are a crucial link in the chain.

On the second question—of life after death—hermetic theory is equally
emphatic. Of course there is life after death, for death itself, the final note,
Do, at the top of one’s own personal scale of evolution, is also the first note of
the greater scale above. By this account, not only is there life after death, but,
compared to the ordinary timescale of the modern hominid, it would be, as the
ancients have always said, a “life everlasting.”

The implication of this upward evolutionary motion is that the universe
seems destined to become fully conscious of itself. But then perhaps it is
already; it is certainly old enough to have come of age by now. Maybe this is
why photons are so acutely aware of happenings in the greater quantum field,

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or why billions of electrons in plasmas and metals can act as if they already
know what billions of other electrons are about to do. It’s as if there is a
general “awareness,” even at the most basic level of material existence.

Sri Aurobindo said that the universe was wholly conscious and that if just
one point in it were not so, the whole fabric would break down into a lifeless
void. He was merely echoing the Greeks, of course, but the message remains
the same, which is that the universe is, in fact, already conscious of itself, and
that it is merely waiting for us to realize this and contribute toward its
maintenance. Perhaps this is why the God of the ancients was said to be so
concerned for our well-being. We are his life-blood.

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The Hermetic Universe of Ancient Times

B y now readers might appreciate how important and significant are the
evolutionary ideas of the ancients, and in particular the musical
revelations of the Pythagoreans. We know, however, that Pythagoras, like all
other great spiritual leaders, was merely passing on knowledge that came
originally from the priest-astronomers of ancient Egypt. Possibly the
Egyptians also inherited the main tenets of this wisdom from the fabled flood
survivors of ancient myth, who themselves could possibly have received
instruction from an even earlier race. This continuous evolutionary line
appears to have originated in the belief system of the “primitive” Neanderthal,
who regarded the number 7, the fundamental symbol of the octave, as sacred.
The seven bear skulls found in the stone altar at the Neanderthal site at
Drachenloch in Switzerland indicate that this sacred number symbolism dates
back at least 75,000 years.

With the Greeks, however, came a much more overt, logical description of
the theory of transcendental evolution, which the Pythagoreans neatly
summed up in the two key esoteric symbols already discussed, namely the
classical formula pi, 22/7, and the original “philosopher’s stone,” the Tetrad,
illustrated by placing ten pebbles on the ground in the shape of a 4-3-2-1
triangle.

The Tetrad was called by the Pythagoreans the “model of the gods” and the
“source of nature.” It was thus regarded as the blueprint for the development
of all evolutionary phenomena, above and below: the 4-3- 2-1 format of the
symbol is in fact a remarkably accurate blueprint of the processes involved at
the biomolecular level, for it describes perfectly the sequences of genetic
processes involved in the synthesis of amino acids.

The formula pi is also an expression of the same evolutionary process. So
the four-base/tripleoctave symmetry embodied in the classical convention,
22/7, which can be expressed diagrammatically like this:

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

I.I.I.I

DRMFSLT DRMFSLT DRMFSLTD

12 3 4

denotes the first two levels of the Tetrad:

o o o
o o o o

The two higher stages in its evolutionary development, marked by the two
pebbles at the third level and the single one at the apex, are a combined
expression of the greater “trinity” above.

When this model is applied to the higher evolution of the individual, the
combined four-and three-pebble stages, with their four-base/tripleoctave
symmetry, represent the fundamental qualities of all human beings—walking
trinities with the capacity to sense, emote, and perceive. By and large, we can
all do these things to greater or lesser degrees; they are perfectly natural
human functions. The next two stages in the Tetrad, however—the third,
denoted by the two pebbles, and the fourth, with its single pebble at the apex
—stand for higher human functions that unfortunately are not universal. This
is where what we might call “original thought” comes into play, which is the
harmonious product of a balanced combination of our sensations, emotions,
and perceptions. This spark of real consciousness is denoted by the first of the
two pebbles at the third stage of our evolutionary Tetrad. The second pebble
represents the other side of this metaphysical coin: light itself. The topmost
pebble therefore symbolizes the final, transcendental note of this whole
musical process. Generally referred to nowadays as a “concept,” this signal,
harmonious and therefore transcendental, then continues to exist as a single
new note in the greater scale above. We see from the genetic code that the
“greater scale,” the scale up from the base scale of the four chemical bases,
consists of precisely twenty-two higher notes—twenty amino-acid signals and
the two signals coding for “start” and “stop”—a triple octave. It follows,
therefore, that the greater scale into which the conscious mind can input is
also structured as a “triple octave,” a “trinity” above.

We can now try to apply the process described by the Tetrad to the greater
cosmic scales outlined in the last two chapters. If solar beings and galactic
beings are for real, they should fit easily into an overall hermetic picture of
universal events.

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As we have noted, the Greeks believed that all cosmological entities like
the planets and the stars were conscious beings, and that the universe itself
was a living animal—a zoon—and therefore completely organic in nature. We
have seen how such an organism might develop, through an ascending
hierarchy of scales, from biomolecules to galaxies. Remembering that there
are exactly four of these fundamental scales, we can envisage the whole
universe as being a vast, cosmological representation of the Hermetic Code
itself, a multidimensional Tetrad:

Do Do Do Do

I.I.I.I

•f Absolute helix

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

....

DRMFSLT DRMFSLT DRMFSLTD

12 3 4

DNA Human brain Solar helix Galactic helix

One of the most significant features of this diagram is that the four orders
of intelligence depicted, from DNA to the galactic helix, are each represented
by the note Do. That is, they are all manifestations of the very same note; only
the scale is different. This, of course, is precisely what is being alluded to in
that all-embracing dictum of Thoth, “As above, so below,” which tells us that
the symmetries of the processes of creation are the same at every level of
existence, above us, below us, and in between, of course, in our minds.

So these four basic orders of intelligence or life all resonate at compatible
frequencies, with each successive note, Do, vibrating, according to musical
theory, at exactly twice the pitch and frequency of the preceding one. An
octave, remember, is a measure of the doubling of the rate of vibrations in a
given scale. This indicates that there are unique, tangible connections between
the four “base notes,” the vibrations of each being whole-number coordinates
of the greater evolutionary scale.

Theoretically the super-resonant galactic helix, representing the ultimate
note, Do, of the third and final evolutionary octave, would ultimately have the
power to strike a single new note up onto the greatest scale of them all: the
universal scale. What happens beyond that is anybody’s guess. I have found
myself trying to envisage here a dynamic, cyclic scenario, whereby a given
proportion of the energies created by the galactic helix reenters, possibly
through the quantum field, the primary DNA scale. After all, some thing,
some kind of force or intelligence, is ensuring that the universe manifests and
evolves strictly according to the laws described by the Hermetic Code, and

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the most obvious choice as to the possible source of this intelligence surely
must be the ultimate product of the whole evolutionary process. Remember
that the galactic helix, the fourth and last base note of our universal triple
octave, is in fact reinforcing, at a higher pitch and frequency, the first base
note of the entire scale, represented by DNA. But DNA is not simply a note.
It is also an entire scale, and the first “note” of this primary DNA scale would
have to be one of the base notes of the genetic code, one of the four inert
chemical bases. Conceivably therefore, it could be at this stage, on the level
of the simple inorganic molecule, that the creative vibrations of the galaxy
above reenter, through the quantum field, the endless cycle of life. Thus the
chemical base might seem inert from a scientific perspective, but in reality it
may have already been imbued by the powers above with some sort of
mdimentary, radarlike intelligence, providing it with at least enough
awareness to be in the right place—the living cell—at exactly the right time.

REINCARNATION

As an interesting aside, it is worth pointing out that the process of evolution
described above hints at a possible explanation for the emergence of the
Buddhist and Hindu beliefs about reincarnation, which is also a cyclic
description of evolution.

The Pythagorean concept of metempsychosis, or the “transmigration of
souls,” expresses much the same idea. Pythagoras regarded the soul as a
fallen angel locked within a body and condemned to a cycle of rebirths until it
has rid itself of all impurities. The cycle being described, from birth to death
to birth again and so on, could be regarded as being, in a sense, circular,
where the evolving entity keeps returning back to the point of departure, or to
the moment of its conception. But then, if the soul were improving its lot at
each turn, this would imply a slight “upward” movement after each cycle, one
lifetime being superimposed on top of the next in ever-ascending circles. This
is significant, for, if we were to draw an imaginary line tracing the path of this
recurring entity as it gradually evolved, the overall figure so described would
take the form of the most fundamental configuration of all evolutionary
processes—a helix.

Unfortunately this question of recurring lifetimes represents something of a
departure from the main thrust of this study. A detailed investigation would
require a great deal more time and space than I currently have. Possibly some
time in the future we might be able to investigate this subject in more detail,
but for the moment we shall continue our search for evidence in support of
the ancients’ view of a living cosmos.

THE CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSE

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The Greeks’ definition of the universe—a zoon—is wholly unambiguous.
They regarded the whole cosmos as the biological product of a fertilized
ovum, a living, organic creature conceived through some form of procreative
activity. By whom or in what is clearly the most profound mystery of all.

Whatever its genealogy, however, most origin myths agree that the present
universe was created, or rather conceived. Take the example most familiar to
Christians: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” 1

In Genesis, the creation or conception of the universe is described as
having taken place in a watery medium, which in ancient scriptures always
has a feminine or passive connotation: “And the spirit of God moved upon the
face of the waters.” 2

Then comes the moment of conception, the initial act of (pro)creation:
“And God said, 'Let there be light’; and there was light. . . . And God divided
the light from the darkness.” 3

So the primordial cosmic “ovum” divided into two complementary yet
quite distinct proto-cells, one light, one dark, or one active, one passive.

In a similar vein, the Vedic version of universal origins asserts that God
“first with a thought created the waters, and placed his seed in them.” 4 This
again suggests that the origin of the universe was primarily a natural
biological event.

In Vedic literature there are hymns dedicated to the god of the primeval
waters. This is Indra, the god of rain, who is said to have released the waters
to flow into the cosmic ocean and to have revealed the creative light of the
god Agni—the sun.

To the early Greeks too, water was considered a primary element of
creation. The philosopher Thales, for example, believed that the Earth floated
on water, which was the medium from which all life evolved. Much the same
view was held by the Pythagoreans, who thought that sunlight penetrated the
primeval slime of the Earth to generate life.

Of all known origin myths, the Egyptian account is possibly the oldest.
Thus each of the above examples is merely a reprise of the original theme,
first set out by the priests of Hermopolis, the spiritual seat of Thoth.
Hermopolitan myth speaks of eight principal gods who appeared
simultaneously on the “Island of Flame,” which rose like a hill from the
eternal waters.

As we can see, virtually all of these creation myths agree on two
fundamental points: first, that before the universe/world/life came into
existence, there were only endless or eternal waters—the passive, negative
element—and second, that the creative act itself involved the introduction of
light, or a flame—the active, positive element. Very often this fusion of forces
is described as having occurred through the intervention of a god or gods—

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the universal mediating principle. Excluding this latter allusion to “divine
intervention,” we are left with a description of the universe’s creation that in
fact bears striking similarities to that currently on offer from modern science.

THE SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVE

Possibly many readers will already be familiar with the “big bang” theory of
the origin of the universe, a proposition first put forward by the Belgian
priest-astronomer Georges Henri Lemaitre in the 1920s. This is now generally
accepted as the most likely explanation of how matter, space, and time came
into being. A persistent background microwave radiation spreading out
evenly across the entire cosmos and with a temperature of around 3.5 Kelvin
(3.5 degrees above absolute zero) was recorded by the radio-astronomers
Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias at Bell Laboratories in 1964. Most scientists
now agree that this radiation is very probably the residual vibration of the
creation of the universe, of the biggest bang in history.

But what exactly was it that originally went bang? Lemaitre suggested that
the universe had been born from a single primeval quantum of potential
energy, a kind of superdense mother of all atoms. After the initial cataclysmic
explosion, this primordial “atom” began dividing so rapidly and energetically
that it eventually gave rise to all the matter in the universe. As the first atomic
nuclei (protons and neutrons composed of quarks) proliferated, with quantum
duplication taking place at a phenomenal rate, space and time simultaneously
unfolded to accommodate them. This means that before the primordial
quantum split asunder and the resultant superhigh energies began to radiate
out from the “epicenter,” there was no space, no time, nothing except the
original quantum itself.

Lemaitre realized that quantum theory supported this idea of space and
time appearing after the big bang. As we saw earlier, in quantum mechanical
calculations, space and time are statistically meaningless in respect to
individual events involving subatomic quanta. Therefore, if the universe did
originate from a single, self-duplicating quantum, space and time would not
have existed at that point; they would not have appeared until the primordial
“atom” had duplicated in sufficient quantities to produce a significant number
of measurable quanta.

According to big-bang theorists, the universe was in thermal equilibrium
during its earliest development and was filled with the most intense light
traveling out in all directions (“And God said, ‘Let there be light’”). The
temperatures involved at this stage would have been in the trillions of
degrees. The original wavelength of these first generations of photons would
have been very short, but as space expanded it stretched out the wavelength of
the light, so producing a one-way shift to lower and lower temperatures—

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white light shifting to blue, blue to red, and so on. The present cool state of
the universe, barely 4 degrees Celsius above absolute zero, is the end result of
this fifteen-billion-year-long fireworks display.

Within half a billion or so years after the primordial conception the force of
gravity caused pockets of high-density dust clouds and atomic nuclei to
condense into galaxy formations. We can still observe such a process at work
in the creation of proto-stars (“baby” stars) forming as dense clouds of cosmic
dust collapse inward, such as is currently being observed in the Large
Magellanic Cloud system, a member of our own immediate cluster of local
galaxies.

Individual stars within these galaxies are all born as protostars. As they
develop through high-energy nucleon collision caused by gravitational
collapse, these baby stars rapidly approach maturity and ultimately “ignite,”
converting hydrogen to helium at a phenomenal rate. At this stage they are
classed as mature, “main sequence” stars—like our own sun in its present
state. Main sequence stars, after billions of years of relatively constant, active
life, eventually metamorphose into old-timers—red giants. Red giants then
either degenerate gradually to become static white or brown dwarfs, or they
reach a critical energy level and explode as supernovae. A supernova is a star
that has become pregnant with a vast store of nuclear energy and ultimately
explodes, projecting massive quantities of radiation and heavier chemical
elements back out into the cosmos, where it is then recycled. It’s an
interesting reflection that every single atom of which you and I are composed
came from exploding supernovae out there in deepest space.

Until very recently it was thought that any region of space was much the
same as any other—that galaxies developed relatively undisturbed by other
concentrations of mass. This view of a uniform distribution of galaxies was
initially supported by data obtained from high-altitude flight experiments
using redeployed U2 spy-planes. These experiments, coordinated by the
American astrophysicist George Smoot in 1995-96, appeared at first to show
that the universe is expanding uniformly and with a constant speed in all
directions. However, more accurate experimental procedures later revealed
that this was not so and that in fact galaxy densities are not strictly
homogeneous and that there are huge clusters of galaxies gathering in some
regions and vast expanses of empty space in others.

Our own galaxy is a member of a relatively small local cluster, all hurtling
through space at a velocity of around six hundred kilometers per second.
Current theory holds that the extraordinarily rapid motion of these massive
bodies is caused by the gravitational pull of a very large concentration of
mass situated a great distance away. This “Great Attractor,” as it is called, is
thought to be another, incredibly vast cluster of galaxies, a kind of
supercluster situated millions of light years distant. These greater galactic

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“cluster cells,” varying so dramatically in size and luminosity, indicate that
the expanding universe is far from symmetrical, that its “body,” like yours, is
lumpy and uneven and much more structured than had previously been
thought.

Astrophysicists have now discovered the “seeds” of these structural
characteristics in slight fluctuations in the cosmic background radiation,
which suggests that they must already have been present in the fabric of the
universe as little as 300,000 years after the big bang. These early seeds were
the primordial imprints of creation, “cosmic genes” in which were encoded all
the characteristics of the universe as it exists today.

Science currently recognizes four fundamental forces in the universe: the
weak and strong nuclear forces, the electromagnetic force, and the
gravitational force. An instant after the big bang, however, there was only one
unified force: matter was indistinguishable from energy, and the first
mdimentary quanta—the quarks—had not yet been formed. These high-
energy conditions at the very beginning of time are now the focus of much
attention. Scientists believe that a fuller understanding of the nature of
universal origins will come through a rational convergence on the first
moments after this unique moment of “conception,” when only one unified
force existed and where the laws and the components of the universe were
much simpler than they are today.

In his book Wrinkles in Time, George Smoot uses an interesting analogy to
describe the nature of his work. He compares the quest to understand the
origin of the universe by converging on the moment of creation to that of
tracing the evolutionary development of the human being back to his or her
origins. The human being is an immensely complex entity with definite and
unique physiological, emotional, and psychological characteristics. But if we
trace such an entity back through its life toward the moment of its conception,
it appears progressively simpler in structure, until ultimately we find a
uniform set of relatively simple digital instructions encoded within the
chromosomes.

Smoot is obviously using this comparison between the universe and the
individual only as an analogy, but, like so many cosmologists and
astrophysicists today, he seems particularly fond of biological metaphors. For
example, he says that “the universe appears to be as it is because it must be
that way; its evolution was written in its beginnings—in its cosmic DNA, if
you will.” 5 He also talks of “quantum self-replication” taking place at an
explosive rate very soon after the primordial event, much the same as
individual cells self-replicate at an “explosive” rate as a living organism
rapidly “expands” after conception.

Another example of the use of “bio-cosmic” metaphor is given by
Professor Paul Davies in his book The Last Three Minutes, in which he

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discusses a proposition made by a group of Japanese physicists working on
the idea of “false” and “true” vacuums. A false vacuum is an excited vacuum,
a region of so-called empty space in which a great deal of quantum activity
(particle interaction) is still present. The natural tendency of a false vacuum is
to decay to its lowest possible energy state—a true vacuum. The Japanese
postulated an alternative process based on a simple mathematical model,
where a small bubble of false vacuum surrounded by a true vacuum would
inflate and subsequently expand into a larger universe in a big bang. Davies
uses the analogy of a rubber sheet (representing the true vacuum of an
existing universe) blistering up in a given place and ballooning out to form a
“baby universe,” connected to the original universe by a “wormhole,” the
opening of which would appear to an observer in the mother universe as a
black hole. The black hole then evaporates and finally disappears, pinching
off the “umbilical cord”—the wormhole—leaving the baby universe, a high-
energy false vacuum, to grow and develop independently.

Here again we have a scientist using what appears in recent times to have
become the accepted idiom for describing cosmological processes—the
biological metaphor. Popular books on cosmology and astrophysics now
abound with such terms, and one begins to wonder whether this is simply a
fashionable trend, or is it, perhaps, some deeper influence affecting the
development of human consciousness.

We touched earlier upon the possible nature of this influence, when I
proposed that human ideas or inventions could be regarded as the
metaphysical equivalent of the amino acid, or perhaps a chain of amino acids.
A string of related ideas, which together make up what we would call a full¬
blown concept (such as the Hermetic Code, for example), we might call a
metaphysical “gene,” or perhaps a chain of genes. Now genes can be either
“dominant” or “recessive,” active or passive. They can lie dormant in the
human genome for generations and they can reemerge once more as dominant
genes anytime conditions become favorable.

Perhaps this is what is happening now in respect of the Hermetic Code. It is
surfacing once again, and while science has been systematically proving the
existence of hermetic symmetries at all levels of material and biological
creation, simultaneously there has been a great upsurge in awareness of the
remarkable achievements and beliefs of our remote ancestors. Remember, the
Hermetic Code has been the dominant feature of human consciousness many
times before, in the time of Muhammad, for example, and of Jesus, Zoroaster,
Pythagoras, Buddha, Confucius, Moses—the list goes on and on, back into
the mists of time. It is entirely possible, therefore, that we are currently
witnessing—participating in, even—the beginnings of yet another renaissance
in the development of human consciousness, the emergence of a new,
“modern” version of the oldest creed on Earth, one that naturally requires us,

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either consciously or unconsciously, to reinvent the hermetic universe.

Arguably the best example of the recycled concept currently on offer is the
theory of universal origins proposed by the physicist Lee Smolin. Smolin has
suggested that there may be a kind of Darwinian natural selection taking place
among universes and that the emergence of organic life and conscious beings
is a by-product of this process. In other words, he is proposing that the
universe is a zoon.

Clearly this “natural” conclusion is just about as close to the process I am
trying to envisage as it is possible to come, for not only does it agree with the
known scientific facts concerning the origin of the universe, it also happens to
fit all the criteria of the hermetic view of creation.

We earlier noted Smoot’s discovery that galaxies, like stars, are grouped in
clusters—cluster cells—and even superclusters. This gives a universal
structure and pattern of development very reminiscent of the way living cells
gather together in clusters to create a variety of organs, bone, muscle, nerve
tissue, skin, and so forth. So perhaps the Great Attractor, the immense
supercluster toward which our local group is surging, is an “organ” of some
kind in the body of some great being: its “heart,” an “eye,” or even its
“brain.” If this were the case, then the relatively small local cluster of galactic
life forms, on the back of one of which we are presently riding, might seem
lowly and insignificant, but like, say, a blood cell entering into a vital organ
of the body, our galaxy would be a contributor to life itself.

THE METAPHYSICAL PERSPECTIVE

Many readers will probably be aware that this hermetic picture of an
evolving, organic cosmos is completely at odds with the orthodox scientific
version of events, which holds that the universe is essentially an involutionary
phenomenon and that, given enough time, all physical systems within it must
ultimately descend into chaos. The basis of this assumption is the most
fundamental scientific law, the second law of thermodynamics, which says
that energy has a natural and irreversible tendency to dissipate. This is what is
apparently happening in the universe all the time, where high-density pockets
of energy are unevenly distributed, mainly in stars, but also in planets and
interstellar space. All this energy is continually dispersing, and on our own
planet this is what provides the impetus for all the chemical reactions that
make life possible.

Unlike closed physical systems, which simply “waste” their energy,
biological systems are highly organized entities, continually evolving into
states of ever-increasing complexity. They are intelligent, in tune with their
environment, and so are capable of “exporting” entropy (disorder, chaos) and
of bringing in energy from outside themselves to sustain their own

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regenerative and creative processes. As a cell grows and ultimately self-
replicates, it is continually taking in energy from its environment and using it
to manufacture essential biomolecular components. Similarly we ourselves
take in “free energy” in the form of food, air, impressions, light quanta, and
so on—all of which are residual products of the greater, entropic movement
of a thermodynamic universe. Thus, say scientists, organic systems do not
actually violate the law of thermodynamics; they are simply able to
temporarily evade the overall degenerative process as and when physical
conditions are favorable. So we are all, in a sense, living on borrowed time.
When the primary source of our energy—the sun—begins its inexorable
descent into chaos, life on Earth will become history. Life in time, that is.

But what about the proposed higher forms of “life” discussed earlier? What
about all the solar beings in all the galaxies and ah the galactic life forms
existing throughout the entire universe? Surely such entities, once created,
would continue to exist and to evolve over billions of years irrespective of the
dissipative physical energies harnessed in a given, isolated planetary system.
Thus the heart of the solar cell— its sun—may die, but its “higher self,” or the
creative “genes” synthesized during its lifetime, must live on in the greater
galactic scale. We earlier ascertained that solar and galactic helices, if they
are a reality, would exist in other, greater dimensions—on the plane of light,
for example, or in the quantum field—where there is no time as we know it
and therefore no frame of reference within which to define a degenerative
dispersal of energy, an increase in entropy. This would explain why a photon
can travel across the entire universe and still maintain the maximum velocity
possible—because at the speed of light it is free from the ordinary ravages of
time.

Clearly, therefore, there could be processes in the universe that continue to
unfold irrespective of the directional flow of time. What is more, if these
higher organic life forms do indeed exist, and all solar and galactic systems
are by and large becoming more and more “conscious,” then we might say
that the overwhelming tendency of the greater universe is to become less and
less “chaotic” as it evolves.

In The Infinite Harmony I suggested that the human animal, composed of
billions upon billions of cells, is, in effect, a universe in miniature, whose
highly organized structures and functions are created from the coordinated
activity of a host of chromosomes, or microcosmic “galaxies.” Such a body is
conceived and then born, after which it grows through successive stages of
development until it reaches maturity. Ultimately it gives up the ghost and
subsequently releases its component particles, through natural decay, back
into the entropic void. It is, however, possible for the human being’s
emotional, psychological, and spiritual output to continue long after the body
has passed its prime and begun its inexorable descent back into the ocean of

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chaos. Furthermore, even when a given individual is defined as “dead,”
though virtually no trace of his or her physical existence remains in space and
time, the overall influences generated during his or her planetary existence—
ideas, impressions, concepts, and so on—can persist, as in the well-
documented cases of history’s major religious figures, for millennia. In a
sense, these influences exist independently of the ordinary time of the
individual, whose life span is measured only in decades.

Obviously, therefore, if the universe is alive, then presumably what is being
observed through the eyes of astronomers and astrophysicists represents only
its physical body developing in time. Its higher conscious functions, that is its
“emotional,” “psychological,” and “spiritual” worlds, would be invisible to
us, ostensibly because such processes would be operating in spheres that
reach way beyond the boundaries of the physical body, in the realms of the
other realities already discussed, in which statistical notions of space and time
lose all meaning.

These “spheres” and their respective boundaries are the subject of the next
chapter. We have already divided the cosmos into four fundamental scales or
orders of “intelligence”: DNA, the human brain, the solar helix, and the
galactic helix. But it is possible further to integrate these four scales into a
more comprehensive cosmic picture by considering them in respect of another
essentially hermetic concept, based on the assumption that the hermetic
universe, a four-centered, living entity, exists and operates within an overall
framework of seven interpenetrating dimensions.

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The Hierarchy of Dimensions

W hile the “organic” universe is constructed from four basic orders of
“intelligence,” hermetic theory tells us that this creature must exist
within the framework of an octave, that is, of seven, or even eight,
dimensions. Most people recognize only the three dimensions of space and
perhaps the fourth dimension of time, a greater “line” along which everything
moves, as it were, in the direction of eternity. But the true picture, as we shall
see, may be much wider in perspective, much more holistic than the reality
we ordinarily perceive.

Let’s start at the beginning, with the zero dimension, which in geometry
would be defined as a finite point. If this point were to move in any direction,
it would trace a line. A line is a one-dimensional entity and can be defined by
its length only. Two dimensions would unfold if, for example, the whole line
were to move in a sideways motion, so tracing a plane, having both length
and breadth. Similarly, three dimensions would be described if the whole
plane were to move in any direction at an angle to its surface, thus tracing a
solid, with length, breadth, and height. We ourselves, at our most basic level,
are three-dimensional entities, and so are the familiar sense-objects that make
up our world.

As we see, a greater dimension unfolds every time a new direction is
described. A moving point describes a line, a moving line describes a plane, a
moving plane describes a three-dimensional solid.

Now all three-dimensional objects are also, in a sense, moving in another
quite different direction. They are all getting progressively older, they are all
existing along their line of time, their fourth dimension. This is the highest
dimension that can be perceived in our ordinary states of consciousness.
Hermetic theory, however, calls for at least seven of these expanding spheres,
so in order to identify these otherworlds, we obviously need to stretch our
imaginations somewhat and reach out beyond the realm of sense experience.
Physicists have already paved the way in their attempts to conceptualize the
next dimension up from the line of time. This is the curious realm of the
quantum, the nonlocal arena of inner space existing beyond ordinary time. We

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can describe it in simplified terms as the dimension that would unfold if the
line of time were somehow to move in a direction perpendicular to itself, so
tracing a greater “plane.” This is the fifth dimension, the “plane of light”
discussed in earlier chapters.

We have seen how the first three spatial dimensions describe a line, a
plane, and a solid. And if, as hermetic theory says, “above” is intrinsically the
same as “below,” with a difference only in scale, then we should expect a
similar relationship to exist between the higher dimensions. Therefore, if the
fourth dimension of time is a “line” and the fifth, the nonlocal sphere, is a
“plane,” then the boundaries of the sixth would define what we might call the
“solid” form of the ultimate reality.

One might assume that this cosmic hierarchy of dimensions must end with
the sixth, but we have already established that, if the cosmos is hermetic, it
must be structured as a fundamental octave, so one would consequently
expect the hierarchy of dimensions to reflect this order. We can therefore
make one final conceptual leap by positing a seventh sphere, which could be
defined as the medium in which the whole universal phenomenon exists.
Paradoxically, however, this seventh dimension could lead us right back to
the very (zero) point from which we started, for in such a reality, even the
“medium” in which the universe exists (its street, city, planet, or whatever
else might constitute its “space”) might simply be the equivalent of a finite
point in an unimaginably greater sphere.

We thus have seven interpenetrating dimensions coiling one out of another
in ever-increasing spheres, beginning with a point and ending on a point. If
we now remember that an octave also begins and ends on the same note, we
can see that the hierarchy of dimensions fits in perfectly with the hermetic
description of the universe.

Now that we have a relatively ordered picture of this seven-dimensional
“ladder,” we can try to ascertain our position within it. I hope readers will
find this at the very least an interesting intellectual exercise and, at best,
perhaps a way of understanding that, hidden deep within our nature, we
human beings do in fact have a deep and profound affinity with the wider
universe.

We can begin with one of the basic premises of hermetic theory, which
says that what is above is the same as that which is below. Taken quite
literally, this means that all of us are microcosmic copies of the universe itself
—“images of God.”

If this is so, then this miniature universe of “galactic” or chromosomal life
forms must exist within the framework of seven dimensions, the equivalent of
three spatial dimensions, one of time, and three more ascending spheres,
corresponding to the “plane of light,” the “solid of reality,” and, finally, the
inexpressible seventh dimension, the “medium” in which the whole exists.

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Now if chromosomal DNA is the microcosmic equivalent of the double
helix of the mind, we can say that, like the brain, it is housed in a three-
dimensional structure living in its own dimension of time and that there must
be other dimensions existing above and below it. Below the three-and four¬
dimensional scale of DNA, an intelligent, organic molecule, we have the scale
of the much smaller inorganic molecule. The difference between inorganic
and organic is vast. They are literally a dimension apart, and so we can
consider the inorganic molecule as a relative manifestation of a two-
dimensional plane. Moving on down, we come to the atomic scale, the
equivalent, perhaps, of a one-dimensional line. Finally we have the
chromodynamic scale of the electron and other subatomic waves and particles
—points in space.

We now come to the dimensions above these chromosomal life forms, the
dimensions existing beyond their space and time.

To identify these we need first to consider the overall lifetime of this
miniature universe—that is, the human being—and the huge developmental
leap from the DNA double helix to the double helix of the mind. All of this
takes place in time, at least from the atomic scale upward. (Subatomic quanta,
remember, exist in a timeless, nonlocal, zero dimension.)

Obviously DNA’s scale of time is vastly more compacted than the
timescale of the conscious human being. The cell is born, it works frantically
all its life, and then it dies, or rather divides, in a matter of hours, days, or
weeks. But of course its influences—its genes—live on through the
chromosomes, endlessly dividing and multiplying for several decades. If the
single cell could have any conception of its own time and, like us, speculate
beyond its own experiential existence, several decades would seem to it like
an eternity. And if some form of superior microcosmic intelligence were to
suggest to the cell that its “soul,” after death, or division, would in fact live
for eternity, this humble little grafter might find such a notion a shade
fanciful. And yet, this is precisely what does happen. The cell’s influences, its
genes, continue to be passed on through millions and billions of generations
of other cells until the greater organism—its “universal host”—ultimately
expires. Thus we might say that the body of the host organism not only
represents a higher dimension for the cell, it is also one into which the cell
can actively input evolutionary data. Let’s call this dimension the
chromosome’s equivalent of the plane of light, the timeless, “eternal” fifth
dimension.

The sixth dimension of our miniature universe, like the “solid” form of the
ultimate reality described earlier, must be of an order infinitely greater and
more complex than the fifth, planelike sphere—that is, the greater physical
body inhabited by all of the organism’s cells. It would be a dimension that
would unfold if an entirely new direction were taken, that is, if all the cells in

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the body of a living organism were to combine and expand in some way, as a
line expands into a plane and a plane into a solid. This, I would suggest, is
where the consciousness of the organism kicks in, where the double helix of
the mind, the ultimate creation of DNA, is finally formed. Clearly creation of
the conscious mind of this miniature universe is a genuine transcendental
phenomenon, existing and evolving in an infinitely higher scale of being to
that of the single cell. This would be the cell’s sixth dimension. To this higher
conscious mind, the “eternity” of the individual cell, or the sum of all the
lives of all of its body’s cells, is perceived as but a single lifetime. What is
more, the mind of this greater being, the cell’s “god,” possesses self-
awareness and is fully conscious, not only of its own physical existence
(which is the entire universe to the cell), but also of its environment, of its
world at large and, perhaps, of other beings similar to it. From the perspective
of the cell, therefore, this inexpressible environment, the home of its
microcosmic universe, would be the seventh-dimensional medium in which
its sixth-dimensional god exists.

As we see, the seven dimensions unfolding in the biomolecular world are
related in the same way as the greater universal framework of dimensions
described earlier: point to line, line to plane, plane to solid, then further on to
a greater “line,” a greater “plane,” a greater “solid,” and, finally, a “medium”
in which the whole exists.

If we now apply the DNA model to the greater scale of existence of the
human brain, then we can say that the successful “genes” created by the
double helix of the mind—its ideas or concepts—exactly like the genes of the
individual chromosome, can in fact last for “eternity”; that is, they can exist in
the fifth dimension, on the timeless plane of light, or within the collective
consciousness of the entire human race. Genes can do that; they can permeate
through to every cell in the body. Likewise, objective concepts can do exactly
the same thing; they can permeate through to every other conscious mind on
the planet. More importantly, however, if the theory of transcendental
evolution holds true, such concepts would also in the process be actively
contributing toward the creation of an infinitely greater, universal
consciousness.

So “God” is a six-dimensional entity. And so, in a very real sense, are you;
only the scale is different. But, of course, this mighty macrocosmic being
would be six-dimensional only to us. From the perspective of the DNA strand
or that of the individual cell, our “God” would represent six dimensions
squared, which means that the “medium” in which the universe exists would
represent seven dimensions squared. Add to this the eighth—point zero—and
we arrive at our now familiar hermetic concept, which holds that the ultimate
creative element is the product of the square of the constant.

So far we have identified two coexistent and interpenetrating “universes,”

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the one in which the cell exists and the greater universe in which we ourselves
exist. DNA forms the nucleus of a cell in the body of its six-dimensional
“universe”—the human being—and the double helix of the mind is the
nucleus of a cell in the body of a greater six-dimensional universe existing as
some godlike being of inexpressible form and character.

Now, just as the double helix of the mind evolved from the cumulative
work of hundreds of billions of cells and chromosomes, then we would expect
a similar process to develop in the next scale of evolution, the scale of the
solar helix already posited. So as the solar body grows out of our concepts, a
higher six-dimensional “mind” should eventually evolve from it. This would
be the “mind” of our perceived “universe,” our God. But this solar mind, like
DNA and the human mind, must also be a “chromosome,” a creative, organic
intelligence existing in the nucleus of a cell in the body of its “universe,” in
the next scale up, the scale of the galactic helix. And again, if the whole is
developing hermetically, then ultimately an even greater “six-dimensional”
galactic “mind” would evolve, presumably functioning as a “chromosome” in
the greatest scale of them all—the “body” of its universe.

Thus each scale has its own “universe,” and they are all inextricably
interconnected, each being six-dimensional in relation to the one below it,
each living and evolving in a seven-dimensional arena.

TIME: A ONE-WAY TICKET?

As we have noted, it is possible to differentiate between dimensions in terms
of their relative times. The individual cell’s time, for example, is very much
more compacted than the time of the human being. The “eternity” of the cell,
or the sum total of all the lives of all the cells within organisms like you or
me, is equivalent to a normal human life-time. Similarly the time of the
human being must be equally compacted in relation to the timescale of the
solar being, to whom our “eternity” would likewise be perceived as but a
single lifetime. By the same token, the lifetimes of all solar beings—their
“eternity”—would be a single lifetime to the galactic being, whose own
“eternity,” the sum of the life-times of all galaxies everywhere, would in turn
represent the lifetime of its god, the ultimate universal entity.

Time, therefore, is variable, relative. But what is it exactly? Is it something
that flows like a metaphysical river, gathering up everything in its wake? Or
is the whole phenomenon, as mystics and shaman have always believed,
simply an illusion? According to the experimentally verifiable theories of
modern physics, of course, the shaman and priests have been right all along;
time doesn’t really exist. If you were able to travel at the speed of light, the
“river” of time would apparently cease to flow. At least, that’s how the
scientist sees it. But hermetic theory hints at another possible scenario. It

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suggests, in fact, that this state of timelessness described by the physicist is
also an illusion of sorts: the “river” still flows but at a rate so lacking in
apparent motion as to be imperceptible through ordinary scientific
investigation.

The speed of light, or the speed of the constant, defines the boundary
between dimensions four and five, between the time dimension and the plane
of light, where time as we know it slows down to a virtual standstill.
Therefore speed, or rate of vibration, is the key. The faster you move, or the
quicker you “vibrate,” the slower time flows and, relatively speaking, the
longer you live.

Now, if reaching the constant speed of light would gain us entry into the
fifth dimension, one might suppose that the even higher sphere, the sixth,
could be accessed in much the same way, but with one crucial difference—the
“velocity” barrier, or the required rate of “vibrations,” would no longer be the
speed of the constant, but rather the square of it. This is no arbitrary choice of
measure, of course. As we noted previously, it is one that is very subtly
encoded in the Magic Square of Mercury, which in turn was associated with
the Great Pyramid, known in ancient times as “The Lights,” or “Lights-
measures.”

We have now made our way up to the penultimate sixth dimension and the
timescale of the galaxy. So what happens here? Presumably time would still
flow, albeit at a rate we can only describe as a virtual standstill squared.

From here we have one dimension to go, the ultimate seventh, the medium
in which the whole exists. How fast would we have to move, or to resonate, in
order to look out through the eyes of God into his seven-dimensional Garden
of Eden? Once again, hermetic theory can provide us with a plausible answer:
the cosmos is a highly ordered musical entity, and so the characteristic
“vibrations” of each dimension must be harmoniously related to each other.
Therefore if the plane of light is accessed through the velocity of light and the
solid of reality is accessed through the square of the velocity of light, then the
seventh dimension, the medium in which this “solid” exists, might reasonably
be expected to unfold at the cube of this velocity. Here, “time” would truly
stand still, and genuine nonlocality would be a living reality.

A BRIEF RETROSPECTIVE

Confused? To be perfectly honest, so am I. Frequently. But then we are trying
to come to terms with the imponderable here, and leftbrain logic alone can
take us only so far in the quest for the ultimate reality. Eventually, it seems,
we have somehow to experience this multidimensional reality for ourselves,
and such experiences, as scientists are now aware, invariably involve a certain
amount of intuitive insight. Unfortunately, this power, which might be

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considered the modern equivalent of the shamanistic vision, is a faculty that
tends to appear only in sparse, random bursts. You cannot sit down and
willfully intuit your way out of an intellectual maze; it just seems to happen.
But these intuitive moments, these “macromutations” of the human mind, are
essential to our evolutionary progress; they are the very life-blood of
consciousness. Therefore not only should we pay heed to them, we should at
all times be looking for possible ways to cultivate the soil in which they grow
and thereby bring about an increase in their yield. The shaman uses
mindaltering agents to induce such states; the mystic uses intense study,
objective psychology, and rigorous discipline; the scientist simply relies on
chance—hence the fragmentary nature of our accumulated knowledge.

As a consequence, the evolutionary process I am trying to envisage, with
its plethora of scales and dimensions, very probably falls a long way short of
the complete intuitive picture perceived by the originators of hermetic theory.
I have personally had many vivid glimpses of this picture and have often felt
overwhelmed at the sheer enormity of the implications of the central concept.
At other times I have thought otherwise, that perhaps I might have lost the
plot somewhere along the line and recklessly allowed myself to be carried
along on the wings of my imagination. After all, who am I to pronounce on
the theory of everything? What gives me the right to probe the disciplined
mind of the modern evolutionist, the nuclear physicist, the theologian, even
God himself? Am I not simply wasting my time dreaming up imaginary,
incomprehensible worlds, when there are more practical things to do?

These and many other such thoughts have intermittently plagued me for
years, but deep down I have maintained a conviction that the Hermetic Code
is much bigger than me or my critics—or indeed all of us—and that it will
forever continue to exert its influence on human consciousness irrespective of
our individual prejudices and subjective experiences. I am therefore strongly
inclined to come down squarely on the side of those who created this
remarkable belief system, a genuine science, possibly the most highly evolved
of Earth’s inhabitants. These great visionaries were not only in tune with what
Schwaller de Lubicz called “all the harmonies and energies of the universe,”
they were also profoundly altruistic and deeply concerned about the future
development of mankind and of evolution per se. This is why they went to
such great lengths to transmit their knowledge of the sacred laws of nature,
because they knew that without it, without a clear understanding of the unity
of everything, we should never be able to handle what lies ahead. And so the
Hermetic Code is their legacy, a genuine seed of wisdom sown in distant
times, whose “genes” have permeated the entire body of human
consciousness. Not only does it explain exactly how and why the evolutionary
process unfolds as it does, it also lets us as humans know how we can become
a conscious part of it all, a truly remarkable gift to one’s successors.

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So the universe, as the ancient Greek initiates were saying two and a half
thousand years ago, is hermetic throughout, very much alive, the direct
organic result of some great cosmic act of procreation. We must therefore
assume that, like all organic creatures, this great cosmic entity will eventually
die. Scientific theory generally supports this view, i.e., that the universe was
conceived, that it is growing at an unprecedented rate, that it will eventually
reach its prime, and then start aging, eventually to dissipate all its energy
throughout space and time in a long, slow burnout.

But of course death, according to hermetic theory, is not just the final
“note” of one’s personal evolutionary scale, it is also the first “note” of the
greater scale above, the beginning, as it were, of a new, higher level of
existence. The creators of the Hermetic Code, for example, died, like all of us
must, but as we can all bear witness, their knowledge, their spirit, their higher
selves, have lived on.

So let’s suppose that the universe is destined to perish in what scientists see
as a long, slow “heat-death.” Will that really be the end of everything, as
cosmologists predict? Or will the process of evolution extend yet further, as
the universe’s “higher self” transcends to greater things? Obviously on this
point hermetic theory represents something of a departure from the scientific
position, because it calls for an ongoing organic scenario, where the
evolutionary processes above and below are seen as essentially the same.

These two opposing views might seem currently irreconcilable but, as we
shall see in the following chapter, both theories, ancient and modern, conform
to the same cosmic design. The main distinction between them lies in the fact
that cosmological theory, like Darwinian theory, is concerned primarily with
the physical body of the “organism,” whereas the hermetic theory of
transcendental evolution offers a much more holistic view, one that allows for
the natural death of the physical body, but which in addition takes into
account the wider, external influences created by the individual in life.

So now we find that the universe itself is also an “individual,” and that it
has definite and unique characteristics. As we noted earlier, galaxy
distribution is not strictly homogeneous, which means that the “body” of the
universe is lumpy and uneven like yours, the “seeds” of this design having
been identified in slight variations in the background radiation left over from
the big bang. As an individual, therefore, the universe, like you and me, may
have a destiny as well as a fate. Fate is the inevitable lot of all organic
creatures; it locks them into an irresistible life-death cycle that is beyond the
individual’s control. Destiny, however, is a potential, a future something that
is developed and determined in an individual’s lifetime and that is associated
with the “higher self.” In the case of the universe, we see that its fate is
acknowledged by science, but that its destiny is left completely out of the
picture. The next chapter is an attempt to rectify this imbalance by examining

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the established scientific viewpoint specifically in the light of hermetic
theory. As we shall see, this exercise leads to some very interesting and rather
startling conclusions.

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The Fate of the Universe

W e can begin here with the current scientific worldview, which holds
that the universe is basically a chaotic, expanding mass of space, time,
matter, and energy. The root of this assumption is the second law of
thermodynamics, which says simply that heat always flows from hot to cold
and never vice versa. This means that all the energy in the universe will
continually disperse far and wide until it is distributed evenly everywhere. An
involutionary process such as this, if it remains unchecked, will eventually
lead to a long, slow, heat-death for the universe; all matter will become icy-
cold and lifeless, its energy having been spread thinly throughout space,
remaining only as a residual vibration, like a faint whisper in an otherwise
silent void.

This rather depressing state of affairs, say cosmologists, should not concern
us too much, because it will take many billions of years of gradually
increasing entropy for such conditions to arise, and in any case the human
race will certainly not be around to witness this ultimate state of chaos. This
heat-death scenario implies, of course, that the universe is basically a closed
physical system.

An alternative to the above prediction is the idea of the “big crunch.”
Proponents of this theory suggest that the collective force of gravity will
eventually overcome all other forces. When this happens the entire cosmos
will at first cease to expand; then it will begin to contract again under the
cumulative force of gravity, increasing in temperature as galaxies converge,
the whole thing collapsing inward toward a final “singularity”—the big
crunch. This would mean the total annihilation of everything: space, time,
matter, energy.

There has been further speculation that the resultant singularity could
somehow trigger another almighty bang, so beginning a whole new cycle, a
repeated expansion of the universe out to the limits permitted by the critical
density of all its mass, only to contract again toward another mind-boggling
crunch—and so on, ad infinitum.

Interestingly enough, this description is very similar to the ancient Hindu

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version of cosmological events, which sees the universe continually appearing
and disappearing in a well-defined rhythmic cycle known as “a day and night
of Brahma.”

Physicists, however, doubt the possibility of endless cycles repeating
without change, pointing out that there are serious physical problems with
such a theory. We need not detail them here, but they apparently arise as an
inescapable consequence of the inviolable second law, which would call for
bigger and bigger cosmic cycles expanding with ever-increasing limits, until
eventually future cycles would become so long that conditions within them
would be indistinguishable from those prevailing in a big freeze.

Another interesting theory has been proposed by the science-fiction writer
Wilbur Wright in his book Time: Gateway to Immortality. Wright begins by
pointing out an interesting feature of the expanding universe, which is that the
galaxies farthest away from us are receding at velocities close to one-tenth the
speed of light. If these galaxies were eventually to reach the speed of light, he
says, they might coalesce into enormous balls of matter and energy,
ultimately contracting on themselves to become tiny, superdense neutron stars
or black holes. Wright then goes on to propose a similar fate for the cosmos
as a whole, suggesting that at the speed of light the tiny body resulting from
the collapse of the entire universe might rupture the fabric of space-time and
pass through into an adjoining continuum at high velocity and temperature.
The end result would be another big bang, and so the beginning of another
great cycle in the endless evolution of whatever it is that is evolving. Wright
visualizes an infinite succession of universes and interpenetrating voids
stretching from the unimaginably large to the infinitesimally small. As each
continuum empties, a fresh singularity from some microcosmic region
emerges to start a new cycle. As he says, nature abhors closed systems, so the
sequence from small to large would be open-ended and potentially infinite.

There are, in fact, a number of alternative cosmogenic theories currently
under consideration involving obscure phenomena like black and white holes,
antigravity and inflationary processes, the “false” and “true” vacuum
relationship, and so on. But clearly the most interesting of them all in respect
to this present investigation is the proposition made by Lee Smolin, which is
that there might even be a form of natural selection operating among
universes, of which the evolution of life and consciousness may be a direct
consequence. Smolin, of course, comes at this from the background of
classical science. As we noted in chapter 9, the astrophysicist George Smoot
has also opted for what looks set to become the “biological paradigm” by
asserting that the structured physical characteristics of the present universe
were already encoded within its “cosmic DNA” as early as a mere 300,000
years after the big bang. It is unlikely that these primordial “genes” simply
materialized out of nothing, so we may reasonably assume that they were

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actually encoded within the original “cosmic egg” at the very beginning of
time.

As we see, these ideas tie in perfectly with the hermetic description of
events, which tells us that the universe above is a living creature, a zoon, and
that the life and consciousness of sentient beings below or within it are
faithful recapitulations of the original hermetic blueprint, part of an
irresistible process that is vital to the sustained evolutionary development of
the whole. Thus, while the physical body of this multidimensional creature
may or may not be headed toward a final state of thermodynamic equilibrium,
the greater universe, if it is alive and conscious in some mysterious way,
could have emotional, psychological, and even spiritual sides to its existence.
These are aspects we would define as being associated with the higher
dimensions, in which the whole manifests as a six-dimensional phenomenon,
an open system that, exactly like planetary biosystems below, is able to export
entropy into its “environment”—the seventh dimension—and to
simultaneously import the energy needed to sustain its ongoing development.

If this were so and the universal chain of existence proved to be open-
ended and potentially infinite, then the second law would not be violated in
any way: energy of some kind could still enter from outside the system. This
external energy would not, of course, prevent the physical body of the
universe from ultimately dying. Like your own, if it is basically organic, then
eventually it must. But even if it were to die, through whatever means, one
would still expect it to have the capacity to pass on its hereditary
characteristics in some way. Possibly, therefore, the background radiation
fluctuations described by George Smoot as “cosmic DNA” are the result of
hereditary genes bearing the characteristics of some earlier parent universes.

THE “OTHER” UNIVERSE

As I have already implied, the transcendental “higher self” of the universe
(that is its psychological and spiritual natures) would have to be connected in
some way with the higher dimensions. The question is, How might such a
connection be established? How could an expanding, chaotic mass of purely
physical phenomena ever escape from the fourth dimension?

The distance to the edge of the universe, or to the outer wave of expanding
galaxies, is not known, but scientists have calculated that these galaxies are
moving away from us at around 10 percent the speed of light, as noted before.
No one knows whether the outer galaxies will ever attain the speed of light,
but if the universe has enough outward momentum to continue expanding at
an accelerating rate forever, then it is not unreasonable to suppose that this
could and very probably will happen. Attempts have been made to discover if
there is enough gravitating matter in the universe to cause it to contract again,

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but there appears to be an unknown quantity of “dark” matter out there, so
calculations have been necessarily speculative. However, Paul Davies has
been moved to remark, in The Last Three Minutes : “Taken at face value, the
galaxies seem to be flying apart so fast that they may indeed just ‘escape’
from the universe, or at least from one another, and ‘never come down.’” 1

Of course, if the galaxies did continue to accelerate unhindered they could
eventually reach the speed of light itself, to the threshold of a quite different
reality—the timeless, fifth dimension of existence. Wilbur Wright has
suggested that at this point the whole galaxy might coalesce into an enormous
ball of matter and energy, ultimately contracting upon itself to become a
superdense neutron star or a black hole. However, this would be an unlikely
end, one might think, for something so vibrant and radiant as a living cell in
the body of the universe.

So, assuming this did occur, that the outer galaxies effectively “escaped”
from the fourth dimension and reached the threshold of the plane of light,
then theoretically they would be freed from the consequences of the second
law of thermodynamics, which relies on the “arrow of time” to define any
increase in entropy, or any waxing or waning of energy content. On the plane
of light there would be no time mechanism with which to measure any kind of
change. Out there it is always midday: nothing waxes, nothing wanes,
everything just is. Presumably this is why the photon quantum, existing on the
plane of light, is potentially everlasting; if unhindered by matter, it can
maintain its vital spark and its maximum velocity for billions upon billions of
years. The background microwave radiation permeating the whole universe,
which scientists say is the residual vibration left over from the big bang,
consists of photons—light quanta—and these quanta have been moving at the
same maximum velocity from the moment they were first created. If these
photons can last from fifteen to twenty billion years, they can reasonably be
expected to last for another twenty billion years, and so on, in virtual
perpetuity. Clearly there is no evidence of advancing chaos in such a
dimension of existence, no increase in entropy as we would normally define
it.

What we have here, of course, in this future scenario of galaxies escaping
from the time dimension and “never coming down,” is a graphic example of
the universal process of transcendental evolution unfolding. These galactic
helices, the cells of the universal body, would effectively enter into a higher
scale of existence, a scale no less musical than the one below, but one that
encompasses an infinitely greater reality.

So let us now trace the origin of the galactic cell back to the point at which
the whole musical phenomenon first came into being. The big bang might be
said to represent the very first note, Do, in the greater fundamental octave of
universal evolution. Significantly, conditions of existence when this first note

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was sounded were such that there was no space, no time, and, therefore,
absolutely no entropy. We can envisage this universal octave as having
subsequently developed in all directions, from the first note, Do, of the big
bang, up through various intermediary stages, perhaps into the “re” of early
expansion and cooling, the “mi” of particle formation, the “fa” of the first star
formations, the “so” of galaxy formation, the “la” of the formation of
accompanying biosystems or habitable planets, and the “ti” of the appearance
of organic life and of observers like you and me. These are merely
hypothetical stages, but they all have one thing in common in that they
manifest in the fourth dimension of time. In addition, they all encompass
within their structures the three lower dimensions: solid, plane, line. Now, if
we accept the hermetic interpretation of cosmic events, we can say that the
time dimension, like everything else, is itself a fundamental octave, and that
the ultimate note, Do, at the top of this scale of development would be
sounded by all galaxies everywhere as and when they reached the light barrier
—a kind of celestial version of the sonic boom.

In the case of the major musical scale, we know that the first note and the
last are one and the same (Do), with a difference only in scale. By the same
token we can say that the first and last notes of the universal time octave
described above must also be in essence the same, again with a difference
only in scale. Logically, therefore, one would expect the conditions prevailing
at the moment of initial creation (no space, no time, no entropy) to prevail
also inside galaxies entering the dimension above. And so they would, for at
the speed of light, space contracts to nothing, time stands still, and everything
moving at such a velocity—like the photon—is in a permanent state of
thermodynamic equilibrium.

We have thus far followed the evolution of the universe from the big bang
to the superluminal boom of “escaping” galaxies and so traced the
development of one fundamental octave of universal resonance. According to
musical theory, of course, the ultimate note, Do, at the top of this scale would
not only be the last, it would also be the first note of the next scale above.
Therefore, any galaxies developing up to this stage, transforming themselves,
or a higher part of themselves, into five-dimensional entities would then have
the potential to evolve up through the next ascending scale of universal
resonance. So each galactic cell, upon reaching the threshold of the fifth
dimension, would then continue to expand in some way, to develop further as
its transcendental body approached nearer and nearer to speeds approaching
the square of the speed of light, into a six-dimensional, solid form. Just like an
individual cell in a growing planetary organism, the greater body of the
galaxy would steadily become pregnant with six-dimensional cosmic
“proteins.” In the organic world, a normal self-replicating cell that has
reached this condition of “optimum resonance” ultimately divides. Could a

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“pregnant” galaxy somehow do the same? If the universe is a closed system it
probably could not, but if it is open and organic, living in a seven-dimensional
arena, anything is possible. For evidence of such a process, which in our
timescale might be an extremely rare occurrence, we should perhaps be
looking for two galaxies coexisting side by side that are structurally mirror
images of one another.

If a galaxy could “divide” in some way, the question as to how this might
occur is even more perplexing. It has been suggested that at the center of all
revolving galaxies is a black hole, a monstrous, superdense,
supergravitational entity from whose clutches even light can’t escape. A black
hole would literally tear apart anything that came within its immediate sphere
of influence—its “event horizon”—including, of course, stars and their
planets. Certain astrophysicists have suggested that a black hole could act as a
kind of nonlocal conduit through which anything passing might subsequently
emerge “on the other side” into a totally different but coexistent space-time
continuum.

It is hard even to imagine the extraordinary sequence of events that might
transpire as the greater “body” of the galaxy transformed itself into a six¬
dimensional being. Once it had reached the first conceptual barrier—the
speed of light—and transmuted some kind of resonance through to the fifth
dimension, these transcendental vibrations would thereafter become a part of
a whole, new, wider reality. Earlier we noted that a higher dimension unfolds
every time a new direction is determined. In the case of the galaxy reaching
the light barrier, this new direction would be something akin to a lateral,
planelike development, spreading out at 90 degrees to the initial line of
movement. The original line of movement would remain just that—a relative
“line”—a cross-section of the greater five-dimensionality of the thing.
Similarly the transition of the galaxy from five-to six-dimensional form
would also proceed in an entirely new direction, so that its final condition
would be as far removed from its five-dimensional manifestation as a solid is
from a Euclidean plane.

So a galaxy that had successfully attained its final six-dimensional form
would have effectively evolved up through the second fundamental octave of
universal resonance, again from the first note, Do, sounded by crossing the
light barrier, up to the next fundamental note, Do, the second barrier marked
by the square of the speed of light. But even at

this stage or on this scale, at the beginning of the third octave of universal
development, the galaxy would still be in the process of evolving. We can
accordingly depict this overall cosmic process of the galaxy’s coming to
fruition using our usual diagrammatic format:

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. 4 . 4 ..,

Big bang Speed of light Tachyon vibration Instantaneity'^

I I I I I I I 1 I I I I I I I 1 I I I I I I -

DRMFSLTDRMFSLT DRMFSLTD

Fourth dimension

Fifth dimension

Sixth dimension

Time

Plane of light

Solid of reality

Obviously the mass of a galaxy could never accelerate beyond the speed of
light. It would have to remain either suspended on, or marginally below, the
plane of light. Any further superluminal motion, therefore, would have to
involve nonmaterial resonances. These metaphysical vibrations would
emanate from the material core, the galactic “chromosome,” and would then
proceed to develop in an entirely new direction, diffusing their energies, if not
yet instantaneously, then at speeds far greater than that of light. As to the
possible nature of these higher energies or forms of resonance, they might, as
I have already suggested in earlier chapters, be composite structures formed
from the conscious thoughts of sentient beings existing in the given galaxy.
Admittedly we are in the realms of science fiction here, but then
consciousness itself is a form of resonance, vibrant, energetic, alive, and its
very existence represents a new direction in which the galaxy can continue to
grow and develop.

So, if the galaxy itself is a chromosome, then, relative to the same scale of
existence, sentient beings like ourselves would be the metaphysical equivalent
of biochemical “triplet codons,” created and subsequently ejected by the
double helix above out into the cytoplasm (the planetary world in time),
presumably so that we can ultimately dictate the synthesis of the higher, finer
substances required for further evolution.

In the living cell, triplet codons act as templates for the manufacture of
finer, more resonant substances—amino acids, the building blocks of life.
Similarly, the human mind codes for the manufacture of metaphysical “amino
acids”—ideas, concepts, theories, and so on. Now, in the cytoplasmic
membrane of the cell, there are special enzymes that cause the newly
developed amino-acid chains to fold up into the more complex protein
macromolecules. Likewise, therefore, in the greater macrocosm there should
be components out there in the cosmic “cytoplasm” of the sky whose function
is to “fold up” our concepts and theories into immense, radiant, “protein”
structures. As I suggested in chapter 7, these cosmic “enzymes” may be
connected in some way with the sun and its planets (and perhaps their
moons), whose varying magnetic influences pervade the whole solar system
and whose orbital cycles are hermetically related to one another, endlessly
beating out in time the relative values of the major scale. We note further,

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from Robert Temple’s discovery that the Pythagorean Comma is expressed in
the mass ratio of Sirius B and our sun, that this hermetic symmetry could also
extend to the stars and even, perhaps, if the dictum of Thoth holds true at
every level, to the galaxies themselves. Certainly starlight is hermetically
structured, as indeed is all light—and it vibrates throughout the entire
universe. So it would be no exaggeration to say that there is music literally
everywhere, in the chromodynamic and atomic scales of matter, in DNA and
the genetic code, in the double helix of the human brain and the Hermetic
Code, in solar and galactic helices, in the octave of dimensions—even in the
“mind” of the universe itself.

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Inner Octaves

B y this stage readers will appreciate that the universe may have many
more facets than science currently allows. No longer do we see it as
simply a four-dimensional phenomenon involving according to
thermodynamic principles; it has now become a vibrant, essentially six¬
dimensional entity, possibly teeming with innumerable kinds of lesser six¬
dimensional life forms. These various life forms, as we have noted, occupy
various scales of existence on the evolutionary ladder, beginning at the level
of DNA and culminating at the scale of the galactic helix, all of them
coexisting within a framework of seven dimensions.

Now, this ascending “ladder” is not simply a progressive chain of separate
mngs placed one on top of another. If the whole universe is a living entity,
this means that it is a fully synchronized body, the vibrations of all scales
interpenetrating and reinforcing one another strictly according to the dictates
of the grand design. We might best view this evolutionary phenomenon as a
series of seven pulsating spheres of vibrations, each being contained within
the one above it, all of them sharing the same central point.

For example, linear DNA contains within it the whole atomic scale, an
infinity of “points,” or an endlessly variable sequence of nitrogenous base
pairs, each consisting of a few fundamental atoms. But it also contains within
it the seeds, or genes, of the greater scale above; it is the blueprint, the recipe,
for the creation of the entire organism. In the same way the organism of the
human being contains within it the whole DNA scale, an “infinity” of
biomolecules, and also, one assumes, the seeds or genes of the greater solar
body above. We can imagine the same process repeating itself up through the
galactic scale, to the ultimate, Absolute scale.

The hierarchy of dimensions is also integrated in the same manner. A one¬
dimensional entity—a line—contains within it an infinite number of zero¬
dimensional points and is a cross-section, a blue-print, of a greater plane; a
plane is comprised of an infinite number of one-dimensional lines and is a
cross-section of a greater solid; and a solid, in a similar fashion, contains
within it an infinite number of two-dimensional planes and is a cross-section

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of a greater four-dimensional entity existing along the line of time. Exactly
the same pattern would repeat itself in the metaphysical scales above, where
the four-dimensional line of time encompasses all three-dimensional
possibilities, the five-dimensional plane of light all four-dimensional
possibilities, and the six-dimensional “solid” form of the ultimate reality
embraces everything: points, lines, planes, solids, time, eternity.

Such a view expresses above all the holistic nature of the universe, on
which we shall be concentrating in the following two chapters. We are now
familiar with the idea of the complete interconnectedness of everything, a
principle that mystics and yogis have intuitively understood for thousands of
years and which scientists of the twentieth century latterly discovered through
the so-called nonlocal quantum correlations existing between widely
separated particles. But is there a way in which this somewhat tenuous and
abstract reality can be better understood? That is, if the entire universe is a
nonlocal arena of interpenetrating and mutually interacting vibrations, how
might such an all-encompassing process work? For example, how can
vibrations or wave/particles in one part of the universe be simultaneously “in
tune” with vibrations light years away? Or, alternatively, how could the
conscious mind of the mystic or the shaman or the LSD tripper connect with a
nonlocal reality?

In chapter 8, we noted that musical theory itself provided at least part of an
explanation for simultaneity, whereby the ultimate note of any given
harmonious scale can at one and the same time exist in other scales, above
and below. But can we determine what kind of mechanism allows these vastly
different scales to be so intimately linked?

As it happens, we can. And, not surprisingly perhaps, we need look no
further than the theory of transcendental evolution, the “theory of
everything,” for a major clue. This is the sacred number 64, the number of
infinite harmony, the key, as it were, to infinity. Primarily associated with the
Great Pyramid—a monument dedicated to light, or “lightsmeasures”—the
number 64 tells us that an octave of light is further subdivisible into eight
inner octaves.

Just for the record, this concept of inner octaves—an outline of which
follows in a moment—did not come to me directly as a result of my
preoccupation with the Hermetic Code. In fact, I first came across it several
years before I fully realized the Code’s significance. My source at that time
was Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous, the record of lectures given
by George Gurdjieff in Moscow and St. Petersburg at the turn of the twentieth
century. As I said in the introduction, Gurdjieff always claimed that his
system of knowledge was drawn from teachings reaching back into the
remotest antiquity, but even after reading everything written by or about him
it was some time before I made the connection and realized that the principle

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of inner octaves is in fact very neatly embodied in the Hermetic Code, the
oldest recorded teaching on Earth.

Gurdjieff tells us that all matter vibrates, resonates within, in the form of
octaves. Normally, when we speak of matter, we are referring to phenomena
of substance, things we can touch, see, or measure through some form of
scientific method. According to Gurdjieff, however, the property of
materiality spans the entire universal spectrum. “Everything in this universe
can be weighed and measured,” he said, “The Absolute is as material, as
weighable and measurable as the moon, or as man.” 1 The higher orders of
materiality, however, are much too rarefied to be regarded as matter from the
point of view of chemistry or physics; matter on a higher plane is not material
at all for the lower planes, but it permeates them nonetheless.

In his lectures, Gurdjieff often referred to a cosmological model known as
the “ray of creation,” which, he said, belonged to ancient knowledge.
Basically, it was an elementary plan of the universe, beginning with the
highest “world order” and ending with the lowest, so:

1. Absolute

2. All worlds

3. All suns

4. Sun

5. All planets

6. Earth

7. Moon

As we see, the ray of creation, like the hierarchy of dimensions already
discussed, represents seven planes in the universe, seven worlds, one within
another. (Pythagoras, incidentally, expressed this same view through his
geometrical symbol known as the Lambda, comprising seven concentric
circles.)

Gurdjieff then described this descending octave, or order of worlds, in
terms of the cumulative effect of the law of three forces at each successive
level. In the world of the Absolute, the three forces, being harmoniously
related in the fullest sense, constitute one whole. The Absolute world is
therefore designated by the number one.

In a world of the second order (all worlds), the three forces are already
divided. Such a world would be designated by the number 3. These three
divided forces, meeting together in each of these worlds, create new worlds of
the third order (all suns), each of which manifests three new forces of its own,
so that the number of forces operating within them will be six. In these worlds
are generated worlds of the fourth order (the sun), in which there operate
three forces of the second-order world, six forces of the third-order world, and

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three of their own, making twelve forces altogether. The process continues,
giving twenty-four forces in worlds of the fifth order (all planets), forty-eight
in worlds of the sixth order, of which the Earth is a part, and ninety-six in the
seventh (moon). It follows, therefore, that the number of forces in each order
of worlds, one, three, six, twelve, and so on, indicates the number of laws
controlling it. So the fewer laws there are in a given world order, the nearer it
is to the will of the Absolute; the more laws there are in a given world, the
greater the mechanicalness, the further it is from the will of the Absolute. We
live in a world subject to forty-eight orders of laws, that is to say, very far
from the will of the Absolute and in a very remote and dark corner of the
universe. 2

Following on from this descending pattern of accumulating laws and
forces, Gurdjieff then explains how the materiality of each world order differs
accordingly, becoming ever denser as it involves from the Absolute to the
moon. All matter, he says, including that of the world of the Absolute, is
composed of “primordial atoms.” Obviously these “atoms” should not be
confused with those described in ordinary physics; rather, they are certain
small particles that are indivisible only on the given plane. Only on world 1,
the world of the Absolute, are these particles truly indivisible. The “atoms” of
world 3 consist of three atoms of the Absolute world and so would be three
times bigger and heavier. Again, the “atoms” of world 6 each consist of six
atoms of the Absolute—and so on, according to the laws and forces described
above, with twelve primordial “particles” constituting an “atom” of world 12
and a corresponding increase in density as we pass further down through
worlds 24, 48, and 96. We thus have seven different orders of “materiality” in
the universe. Our ordinary concept of one order, said Gurdjieff, just about
embraces the materiality of worlds 96 and 48. The substance of world 24, he
said, is almost too metaphysical to be identified through ordinary scientific
method; and the even more rarefied substances of worlds 12, 6, 3, and 1,
have, to all intents and purposes, no identifiable material characteristics.

It is interesting to note here that in the early 1900s when Gurdjieff was
giving his lectures, the conventional atom was still the smallest “particle” of
matter known to science. But while Gurdjieff was speaking of these still finer
substances permeating the material world, Ernest Rutherford was discovering
the nucleus of the atom, Einstein was attempting to show that photons were
particles, and Max Planck was in the process of formulating his idea that
electromagnetic radiation was emitted by energetic sources in discrete,
symmetrical packages called quanta. Later discoveries, such as the existence
of neutrons and electrons within the atom, and of quarks literally everywhere,
all served to reinforce Gurdjieff’s idea that there are finer substances and
vibrations permeating the coarser ones. Nowadays, of course, even individual
quanta, the tiniest “particles” known to science, are also described as

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ephemeral, wavelike entities, suggesting the existence of a finer, more
rarefied manifestation of “materiality” than even the most minuscule,
pointlike quantum.

Clearly the claim that all matter everywhere is actually composed of the
fundamental and indivisible particles of the Absolute world has no arguable
scientific basis. As Gurdjieff himself said, the substances of the higher worlds
have no recognizable or measurable material characteristics. On the possible
nature of such materiality, however, we can speculate at least as far as world
order 3 (dimension six in the hierarchy), the world of “all worlds.”

Beginning with the lowest world order in the ray of creation, the moon, or
world 96 (an order of materiality that would also incorporate the interior of
planet Earth), we can say that the matter of this world would probably consist
for the most part of the heavy transition metals and all the superdense
radioactive elements.

The next world order in the ascending scale, represented in the ray of
creation by our own planet and its atmosphere (world order 48), would
incorporate matter comprising atoms of the lighter chemical elements, ending
with hydrogen, the least dense of them all. Accordingly the matter of the
world of “all planets,” world 24, might consist primarily of subatomic
particles. Beneath the “particle,” be it photon, electron, or whatever, lies the
even more rarefied wave-mode vibration. Let’s say that this wave aspect of
subatomic quanta represents the nature of the materiality of world order 12,
the world of our sun.

We have now come to the outer limits of scientific knowledge. On the
reality beyond the wave we can only speculate. Hermetic theory tells us that
even finer vibrations exist within these waves. Possibly, therefore, the next
order of materiality, that of world order 6, “all suns,” is consciousness itself,
the “substance” from which, as I suggested in an earlier chapter, all solar
helices are constructed. The materiality of the next world order—the scale of
the galactic helix—might be defined as a form of superconsciousness
(ordinary consciousness squared, as it were), a substance that, if it exists,
must be so rarefied that it must forever remain hypothetical. Finally, the
materiality of the primordial “atoms” of the Absolute world order, as we
might expect, defies all expression.

We now come to the concept of inner octaves. According to Gurdjieff, each
note of any given octave can be regarded as a complete octave on another
plane. Similarly, each note of these inner octaves is also a complete octave in
another scale—and so on, but not ad infinitum, because there is a definite
limit to the development of inner octaves (just as there is a definite limit to the
hierarchy of dimensions and the ray of creation). These inner vibrations, said
Gurdjieff, proceed simultaneously in media of different densities, continually
interpenetrating and interacting with one another. In a substance or medium

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consisting of, for example, the superdense atoms of world order 96, each of
which is a composite of 96 primordial “particles,” the vibrations or
oscillations active within this medium are divisible into octaves, which are in
turn divisible into notes. The medium of world order 96, like a solid piece of
wood saturated with water, is also saturated with the substance of world order
48. Now, the vibrations subsisting in the matter of world order 48 stand in a
definite relation to the vibrations in the substance of world order 96; each
“note” of the vibrations of world 96 contains a whole octave of vibrations in
the medium of world 48. These inner octaves, said Gurdjieff, proceed inward
to the very heart of all matter. The substance of world order 48 is in turn
saturated with the substance of world order 24, so that each “note” in the
vibrations of world 48 again contains a whole octave of the vibrations of
world 24—and so on through to the final phase, where the substance of world
order 3 is permeated with the substance of world order 1, with each note in
the vibrations of world 3 containing a whole octave of the vibrations of the
world of the Absolute.

As I mentioned before, Gurdjieff always claimed that the original teachings
from which his ideas were drawn—including the above description of inner
octaves—dated back to very remote times. How far back this teaching
actually does go is currently the subject of much heated debate among
alternative theorists and orthodox historians, but it was very much alive in
Old Kingdom Egypt, as we know from the previously discussed Magic
Square of Hermes and its associate number, 2,080, the sum of all the factors
from 1 to 64. Obviously 64 is the key. The Greeks, as we know, associated
the Magic Square with the Great Pyramid, “The Lights.” And light, of course,
is an octave of resonance, composed of eight fundamental “notes.” According
to Gurdjieff, each of these fundamental notes in an octave of ordinary light
would contain a whole octave of notes from the scale or world above. As we
see, this very principle is precisely encoded in the Magic Square.

Gurdjieff claimed that “objective music” (by which he meant the kind
played by such as Joshua and the builders of the Egyptian and Orphic schools,
which allegedly could move mountains of stone) was all based on these inner
octaves. Ordinary music, he said, cannot be used to reconstitute matter,
destroy, or build up great walls of stone, but objective music can.

The music being referred to here is, I believe, fundamentally psychological
music, the music of the mind, the music described by the Hermetic Code and
the I Ching, by the Greek and Egyptian mysteries, and, indeed, by the
established principles of all major religious disciplines. In Egypt, this
“religion,” the making of “celestial music,” was known as “writing,” the
sacred art invented by Hermes/Thoth, the art of striking harmonious
metaphysical “notes,” or thought patterns, up into the stellar scale of
existence, into the “heavenly” world inhabited by the gods. We must assume

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here that this does not mean “writing” in the ordinary sense.

So let us just imagine for a moment that the mind were conscious to the
degree that it could generate higher vibrations—inner octaves— that were in
tune with solar helices, world order 12 in Gurdjieff’s ray of creation.

As I have suggested, this level of materiality would be as fine and as
penetrating as the ghostlike wave mode of subatomic quanta, reaching, as it
were, beyond the particle itself into the very heart of the electron. It is not too
difficult to imagine some kind of process whereby such vibrations, if they
could be concentrated or focused to a sufficient degree of intensity, could
indeed have dramatic psychic and physical consequences. Theoretically such
rarefied “substances” could actually enter into objects—even blocks of the
hardest stone—and affect them from within.

No doubt most orthodox scholars will regard such a notion as entirely
fanciful, but not, I would hope, all of them. Times are changing, and scientists
are today having to rely as much on intuition and instinct as they are on
logical cognition in their attempts to come to terms with the baffling nonlocal
nature of the multidimensional universe. We might optimistically view this
scientific venture beyond the empirical world out into the metaphysical realm
of concepts, thought patterns, and vibrations, as evidence of evolution of the
transcendental kind, the beginning of mankind’s next momentous journey—to
the stars. If this is so, then the rationalist, whether knowingly or unknowingly,
may now be contributing actively toward this ultimate flowering of human
consciousness.

Take the ideas of David Bohm, for example, the “orthodox” scientist
mentioned in chapter 4, whose investigations into plasmas led him to
conclude that the electron is a “mindlike” entity. We may recall that he felt
instinctively that the “plasmon”—the electron sea—was alive, with billions of
individual electrons simultaneously engaging in a mass, instantaneously
coordinated action. This implies that electrons are somehow able under
certain conditions to “connect” with every other electron, and Bohm
recognized that the nonlocal nature of interactive quanta could account for
this kind of synchronized activity.

Impressed by the evidence for nonlocality, Bohm went on to develop what
at first appears to be a revolutionary new view of the universe. He suggested
that the whole of reality was like a living hologram, a “holomovement,” and
that what we see through ordinary methods of investigation is something like
a frozen holographic image, behind which lies a much deeper and more
meaningful level of reality. Now this idea may be new to science, but it is
revolutionary only in the sense that it has turned full circle: it has been held
before. In fact, this “holographic principle,” as we shall see, is basically an
updated scientific description of the mechanism of inner octaves and of the
principles of musical theory.

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The Holographic Principle

M ost readers will know that a hologram is a three-dimensional image
sculpted from a concentrated beam of light. The thing that makes this
possible is the wave-mechanics phenomenon known as interference. We came
across this in chapter 4, where we discussed the Thomas Young experiment,
in which waves of light passing through twin slits in a partition overlapped
and reinforced one another, producing an interference pattern on a dark
backdrop.

In the same way, a laser, which is a very pure form of light, can be used to
create extremely well-defined interference patterns. The hologram is
produced by splitting a single, concentrated beam of light into two. One beam
is then reflected off the object being photographed and the second beam is
directed at an angle toward the reflected light of the first. The interference
pattern created by the two beams is then recorded on film. The image on the
film actually bears no resemblance to the hologram it projects, however. Only
when another beam of light is shone through it does the hologram appear.

Impressive as these images can be, the most interesting aspect of
holography concerns the film itself, which possesses rather unusual
properties. Let’s say we have a piece of holographic film on which a certain
image has been recorded. It can be any image you like. If you were to cut this
piece of film in half and shine a laser light through any one of the two pieces,
you would find that each separate piece would still contain the whole image.
Even if you cut each half into quarters, eighths, and so on, each diminishing
piece, when illuminated by laser, will still project a complete image of the
object in focus, albeit becoming progressively less distinct as the pieces get
smaller. So every small segment of a piece of holographic film contains all
the information contained in the uncut whole. This is the holographic
principle.

In Bohm’s view, the physical world we see all around us is just like a
holographic image, basically an illusion, a kind of external tapestry of
subjective impressions composed of waves and interference patterns. Beneath
these tangible physical forms, he suggested, lies a deeper, “implicate” order

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of reality, in which everything exists in what he called its “enfolded” form.
Therefore what we see as physical phenomena are simply the explicate or
unfolded projections from this deeper, implicate, enfolded order.

In fact, this view of two fundamental orders of existence—i.e., of the
“image” and the “film,” or the explicate and the implicate—has exact
parallels in numerous esoteric traditions. For example, Buddhists call the
material world the sphere of the nonvoid. This is the normal world of sense-
objects, the explicate, unfolded dimension—the dimension in which the
“holographic” image manifests. The real world, existing beyond the nonvoid,
is the void, the dimension in which the “film” itself exists, the implicate,
enfolded realm, the progenitor of every thing, every “image” in the visible
universe.

Michael Talbot, author of The Holographic Universe, which provides a
general summary of Bohm’s ideas, quotes the Tibetan scholar John Blofeld
speaking on the nature of the two domains. Blofeld’s worldview, as we see, is
strikingly similar to Gurdjieff’s: “In a universe thus composed, everything
interpenetrates, and is interpenetrated by, everything else; as with the void, so
with the nonvoid—the part is the whole.” 1

A similar Hindu version of cosmic events mentioned previously describes
the motion of the universe as cyclical—an endlessly unfolding and enfolding
process, with each cycle lasting “a day and a night of Brahma.” It is perhaps
worth noting here that the Hindu creation myth says that twenty-four
“Brahman hours” are equivalent to 4,320,000,000 of our years, while four,
three, and two, followed by seven zeros is a perfect description of the
evolutionary development of the Pythagorean Tetrad, which Pythagoras
himself, remember, referred to as “the model of the gods.”

So the visible universe is created by Brahma. Brahma is one of the three
major gods of the Hindu “trimurti,” which itself, like all religious “trinities,”
is primarily an expression of the first law of nature, the law of three forces.
Brahma therefore represents the first, active force in the process of triple
creation, a force that originates in the implicate realm. From Brahma,
everything enfolded subsequently unfolds, like a holographic image, into the
explicate dimension. At the end of the “day” the world is “destroyed,” or
absorbed, by the god Shiva, the passive or negative force, which, in Bohm’s
terms, means that the unfolded again enfolds, from the explicate back into the
implicate dimension, after which it completely disappears into the body of the
third god, Vishnu, the omnipresent neutral force, the great cosmic mediator.
Vishnu then sleeps for a “night” in the sphere of “non-existence,” which
Hindus describe as the dimension of endless time, and then gives birth to
Brahma again. A new “day” unfolds, and the process endlessly repeats itself.
Vishnu’s role in this cosmic episode thus implies that there is an even deeper
level of reality beyond the implicate realm, what Bohm himself referred to as

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a kind of “ultra-implicate” reality.

We have, of course, already visited this rather special place; it is number 6
in the hierarchy of dimensions, the dimension existing beyond the fifth, the
plane of light—what I have referred to as the “solid” form of the ultimate
reality, the sphere of true “nonlocality.” In Gurdjieff’s “ray of creation,” this
would be world order 3 in the descending scale.

Like the Hindu description of the universal process, Bohm’s takes into
account the fact that things are never static. He saw the whole phenomenon as
in motion, hence his use of the term holomovement, which was meant to
include not only the evolving universe but also, crucially, the consciousness
of the observer. So when we see things through Bohm’s eyes, we are not
merely looking at the ever-changing hologram, we are an integral part of it.

Let us now consider the holographic principle itself, the fact that every
small segment of a holographic film contains all the information in the uncut
whole. Bohm’s hypothesis implies that we as individuals, each an intrinsic
part of the entire holomovement, must also, just like a segment of a
holographic film, contain within us a complete “picture” of the greater reality.

This, of course, is precisely the reality Gurdjieff described decades before
in his discourses on inner octaves. He said that if one understands the laws
governing the creation of inner octaves, it is possible, from observations made
in just one scale, to obtain the measurements of any other scale, because they
are all in a definite relationship to one another. Therefore there is no need to
study the sun, for example, in order to discover the nature of the “matter” of
the solar world, because this same order of materiality exists in ourselves. In
the same way we have in us the “matter” of all scales, for man is in the full
sense of the term, a “miniature universe”; in him are all the matters of which
the universe consists; the same forces, the same laws that govern the life of
the universe, operate in him; therefore in studying man we can study the
whole world, just as in studying the world we can study man. 2

Moses expressed the same idea more succinctly: “for in the image of God
made he man.”" And again, the holographic principle—the whole existing in
every part—can also be understood in terms of the basic rules of ordinary
musical theory. Each tone, semitone, quarter tone, and the like of a major
scale contains within it all the information necessary to recreate the entire
scale. That is, to determine the frequencies of all the sounds comprising a
harmonic scale or octave, it is sufficient to fix the frequency of just one of
them.

So the holographic principle, like so many other scientific discoveries
discussed in this book, is not an entirely new concept. It is simply a variation
on one aspect of a very old theme, the essence of which is encoded in the
Hermetic Code and in the number 64. Sixty-four is the key to the inner

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octave, the mechanism through or by which, said Gurdjieff, all scales of
existence are connected and proportionately interrelated.

The holographic model of the universe raises intriguing questions in the
spheres of psychology and parapsychology.

First, we now have neurophysiological evidence to suggest that the brain
itself may have holographic properties, in the sense that such functions as
vision and memory are distributed evenly throughout its structure. If true, this
would be significant in serving to reinforce Bohm’s idea that we are all part
of an immense hologram in motion, a holomovement, and also Gurdjieff’s
assertion that we are exact replicas of the greater whole. Obviously, if the
greater whole is by nature holographic, a holographic brain would be
precisely what, in Gurdjieff’s worldview, is required.

The holographic model also has possible parapsychological implications.
For example, in an attempt to explain how psychokinesis might work—an
uncharacteristically bold move for a mainstream scientist— Bohm cited the
“ultra-implicate” dimension as the most likely source of such forces. This
would be dimension six in the ascending hierarchy. The implicate dimension
of Bohm’s vision of reality would therefore correspond to the fifth, the
nonlocal plane of light, with the explicate sphere—dimension four—
corresponding with the line of time, expressed hermetically in Hindu myth as
a period of 4,320,000,000 years.

So, like Gurdjieff, the Greeks, and the Egyptians, Bohm believed that the
human mind could in fact access this higher dimension—the ultra-implicate,
six-dimensional abode of Vishnu—and through it directly influence the
physical world.

We are now back to the idea discussed in chapter 3, in which we
considered the possibility that the ancient builders of the first civilizations
might have moved their giant blocks of stone using some kind of psychic
assistance.

Mind over matter? Admittedly the proposition sounds fantastic, but then so
did the prospect of men on the moon little over a decade before it became a
reality. Indications are that the next stop could be Mars or possibly one of the
moons of Jupiter—a much greater feat than a hop to the moon, but few people
today doubt that this kind of enterprise is within our capabilities. Of course
the developmental leap from my mind or yours to one capable of defying the
known laws of physics would be massive indeed. And yet the myths, the yogi
masters, Gurdjieff, and latterly David Bohm all speak of such powers being
accessible to the human being. Gurdjieff and Schwaller de Lubicz, as we
noted, both believed that such powers were common currency in the ancient
world and that somewhere along the trail of time our ancestors somehow lost
the understanding of how to use these powers. Whether such a “Golden Age”
actually existed or not, in light of the archaeological evidence we have

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discussed, where blocks of stone weighing from two hundred to twelve
hundred tons have been carved, transported for miles, and then perfectly
placed and oriented to form massive symbolic structures, I personally believe
that ruling out some kind of hitherto unrecognized psychic or psychological
factor in the lives and works of these ancient peoples would be injudicious.

As we have seen, the idea of mind—or “music”—over matter is as old as
civilization itself, having originated with the men-gods of mythology. We
noted Graham Hancock’s observation of certain Native American myths that
tell us that music—whistling, the playing of trumpets—caused heavy blocks
of stone to float through the air like feathers in a breeze. Exactly the same
kind of stories appeared in ancient Greece, recounting the exploits of such as
Orpheus, son of the god Apollo and the muse Calliope, whose playing of the
lyre “enchanted the trees and rocks and tamed wild beasts.” 4

Another hero was the “builder god” Amphion, son of Zeus and King of
Thebes, also a musician, who single-handedly built the walls of his great city.
So clearly, as Gurdjieff always maintained, music of some sort is the key to
the techniques used by these people. He further stated that such music
involved the use of inner octaves, an all-pervading symmetry of composition
that, he said, permeates everything, both man and the universe. Possibly there
was real music involved in the procedure, or at least sound vibrations, as in
case of the Tibetan demonstration described in chapter 3, which allegedly
involved the use of numerous drums and trumpets. But in addition there may
have been some form of psychological accompaniment, and it is here, one
suspects, that Gurdjieff’s inner octaves would come into play. Inner octaves
or “higher vibrations,” according to Gurdjieff’s view, can be accessed only by
a fully conscious mind; they correspond to an extremely high degree of
“psychological resonance,” a unique condition of existence, apparently
attainable by ancient man, now surviving only as a potential faculty in the
form of a lingering memory enshrouded in myth.

Scientists in general have a natural tendency to react negatively when they
hear talk of “vibrations,” particularly when what is being alluded to is an
immeasurable commodity. And yet, consciousness itself, whatever else it may
be, can reasonably be considered as a form of resonance. We can’t measure
these invisible forms of resonance directly, but we are, nevertheless, acutely
aware of their puzzling existence in a world as yet barely half understood.
Certain aspects of the rational side of consciousness, such as IQ, intellectual
argument, ideas, theories, and so on, can be roughly appraised, but the nature
of other aspects of the mind, such as its power to intuit, remain tantalizingly
beyond our understanding. So, if what we might call rational consciousness
can be conceived of as a form of energy manifesting in varying “degrees of
resonance,” then a faculty such as intuition, which clearly transcends all
logical thought processes, must function with even finer “vibrations,” that is

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with higher degrees of psychological or psychic resonance.

The same might be said of memory, a faculty that enables us to pick out a
familiar face in a crowd even though thirty years might have ravaged it since
last we saw it. It is invariably a very different face, and yet it is the same one,
and the brain can somehow recognize this, it can decode highly complex,
personal information that no computer could ever handle; it can “filter away”
the lines and the scars, the changing hues, and all the rest of the camouflage
of the years and simultaneously “see” the original face with pristine clarity.
This faculty is so familiar to us that we barely give it a second thought, and
yet it really is quite remarkable, way beyond the reach of modern technology.
But it is also much more mercurial in nature than ordinary thought processes,
such as the ponderous form of logical cognition required to write a page of a
book like this.

Unlike intuition, memory can, in fact, be experimentally observed, and
important new neurophysiological research now suggests that the brain cells
or whatever else is responsible for this extraordinary faculty are not housed in
any particular region of the brain, but are distributed evenly throughout its
structure. This suggests that memory at least, one of the primary functions of
the brain, is a manifestation of the holographic principle, the principle of
inner octaves, where the whole exists in every part.

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Quantum Psychology

The “Nonlocal” Brain

T he idea that the brain functions on some kind of internal holographic
principle was first suggested by a Stanford University neurophysiologist
named Karl Pribram. Pribram was initially concerned with memory, how it
works, and how the brain manages to store it. At the time he began his
research, well over fifty years ago, it was thought that memories were
localized inside the brain in the form of imprints known as engrams, chemical
codices thought to be housed within specialized brain cells or biomolecules.

Up to the present, engrams remain only hypothetical entities: none have
been identified or located, and Pribram began to doubt their very existence
during his 1940s work with the neurophysiologist Karl Lashley at the Yerkes
Laboratory of Biology in Florida. At that time Lashley was experimenting
with rats trained to perform various tasks, like finding their way through a
maze. He attempted to cut out the region of the rats’ brains in which the
memory of their learned skills was thought to be encoded, but he found that
no matter what section of the brain he surgically removed, the rats still
retained their memories. Even if their motor functions were chronically
affected, they still managed to negotiate the mazes successfully and find their
way to the larder.

From these findings, Pribram concluded that memories were not localized
in specific areas, but were somehow distributed throughout the entire brain.
He puzzled over this for many years, wondering how the brain could store
memories intact throughout its whole structure. So the construction of the first
hologram had a great impact on him, because it seemed that the process of
holography, which results in an image of the whole existing in every part of
the film, provided a plausible explanation of the nonlocal nature of memory.

Further experimental evidence in support of Pribram’s ideas resulted from
the work of Paul Pietsch, a biologist researching at the University of Indiana.
Pietsch’s work involved somewhat macabre experiments, primarily on
salamanders. He found that he could extract a salamander’s brain without
killing it, leaving the creature in a torpid state; when he replaced the brain, the
salamander’s physical functioning quickly returned to normal. In a

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subsequent series of several hundred operations, he systematically chopped
and removed different parts of the hapless creatures’ brains, shuffling the
right and left hemispheres, turning them upside down, back to front, even
mincing them. But when he replaced what was left, he was astonished to find
that their behavior always returned to near normal.

Skeptical at first of Pribram’s claim that memories are not focused on
specific brain sites, Pietsch ultimately concluded that this must be so,
otherwise a minced brain would surely result in a correspondingly
uncoordinated series of equally “minced” motor functions. The fact that this
clearly was not the case led Pietsch to the opinion that Pribram was right after
ah: that the holographic model currently provides the best explanation for
such an otherwise inexplicable property of the brain.

Pribram found further evidence to support this theory in another of Karl
Lashley’s discoveries, made during his experiments with rats, which indicated
that vision might also be holographic. Lashley found that even after major
surgical plundering, the nerve complexes controlling vision could still
function normally. As much as 90 percent of the visual cortex could be
extracted, yet the rats persistently retained their visual powers. It was
subsequently discovered that the same was the case with a cat’s optic nerve,
98 percent of which could be severed without seriously affecting its vision.

Previously it had been assumed that there was an exact correspondence
between the images seen by the eye and the resultant pattern of electrical
activity taking place in the visual cortex: that is, if you looked at a certain
physical shape, the same image would be projected onto the surface of the
cortex, like a photographic imprint. To find out if this was the case, Pribram
conducted a series of experiments to locate and measure the electrochemical
reactions in the brains of monkeys as they carried out a number of visually
centered activities. He could find no identifiable pattern in the distribution of
electrical activity, so it was evident that the visual cortex was not operating on
a one-to-one basis with the image it recorded. This fact, together with the
strange ability to continue functioning relatively normally even after drastic
surgical excision, led Pribram to conclude that vision, like memory, is
distributed evenly throughout the brain, which processes visual information
using some kind of internal holographic principle. This would explain why
even a small segment of the visual cortex is still able to construct everything
the eye sees. As Michael Talbot points out in The Holographic Universe, the
interference patterns on a piece of holographic film bear no discernible
relationship to the images encoded on it. If the visual cortex were similarly
functioning holographically, this could account for the fact that there is no
one-to-one correspondence between the image seen and the pattern of
electrical impulses activated on the surface of the brain.

Pribram believes that the brain could be using wave patterns to create these

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internal “holograms.” Active brain cells (neurons) radiate electrical impulses
from the multiple ends of their branchlike antennae, which expand outward
like ripples in a pond. Electricity is in essence a wavelike phenomenon;
therefore, as the impulses spread throughout the brain, they must be creating
an overall web of interpenetrating waves and interference patterns. In
Pribram’s view, it is this wavelike interconnectedness that gives the brain its
holographic properties.

Now, according to Bohm, the observer and the observed—the holographic
mind and the holographic universe—should in no way be considered as
separate entities, but more as interacting coordinates of the self-same
“holomovement.” This in turn implies that some kind of connecting principle
exists between the two, and the terms that are now most frequently used to
account for this possible function are: vibrations, resonance, waves, and
interference patterns—all words, in fact, that are used to describe events in
the nonlocal world of the quantum physicist. It is for this reason, and not
because it is fashionable, that I use the term quantum to describe the kind of
psychology that might be involved in connecting with the greater whole. And
as we have noted, this nonlocal reality is strikingly similar to the world
described by Gurdjieff, a greater sphere in which everything is seen as being
inter-connected through the “holographic” mechanism of inner octaves. This
is also, as I suggested in earlier chapters, the “eternal” world—the Duat—of
the ancient Egyptians, who regarded the phenomenon of light, the prime
mover in the nonlocal, quantum world, as sacred, as an octave of resonance,
each note of which is composed within as an octave, giving sixty-four
interpenetrating “notes.” Clearly, therefore, this notion of interpenetrating
vibrations, intrinsic to the world of the quantum physicist, is one of the oldest
testaments on Earth.

Bohm was obviously not what we might call a run-of-the-mill physicist. To
begin with, practically alone among his peers, he was quite prepared to tackle
the prickly subject of psychokinesis, “mind over matter,” a proposition that
has been a complete anathema to most scientists ever since Newton
discovered what were long considered to be inviolable laws, the fundamental
physical laws of motion and gravitation. Basically Bohm believed that
psychokinesis might result directly from the essential common feature of both
consciousness and the fundamental wave/particles of matter: an underlying
“awareness” of certain information relating to the world at large. Like you,
electrons and photons have the ability to respond to meaning, or to make
positive use of external data. Bohm likened the process in the microworld to
that of a ship on automatic pilot, where the radarlike wave function of the
electron, for example, provides the particle aspect—the “ship”—with
information about its environment. The implication is that the frequencies at
which the “radar” works can be tuned into by the mind; that, in effect, the

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mental processes of one or more people could possibly be focused on
frequencies of resonance that are in concert with the generative vibrations
controlling material systems. By their very nature, such processes would
involve forces other than those currently known to physics. They would arise
as a result of what Michael Talbot calls a nonlocal resonance of meanings, a
kind of interdimensional alchemical dialogue between mind and matter—
something like the nonlocal alchemy taking place between correlated photons,
or electrons in plasmas, but possibly involving resonances of a much higher
or finer frequency. Therefore, in order to accommodate psychokinesis and
perhaps other inexplicable phenomena such as telepathy, precognition, and so
on, “ordinary” nonlocality must be superseded by what Talbot calls a “super
non-locality” 1 —which in Hindu terms might be described as the unknowable
process operating in the hidden world of the Great Mediator Vishnu,
described as the sphere of “endless time.” This would be Bohm’s “ultra¬
implicate” sphere, our sixth dimension.

We noted previously that Gurdjieff regarded the processes involved in
psychokinesis in much the same way, that is, as the result of a mutually
interacting resonance between mind and matter. But he was much more
explicit than Bohm, for not only does he provide us with a mechanism for
such interaction (the inner octave), by the very nature of the octave itself he
further presents an entirely cohesive worldview expressed in terms of exact
musical symmetries and proportions. And, according to Gurdjieff, these same
symmetries and proportions are present in man because the individual is, in
effect, a “miniature universe,” what Bohm might call a holographic imprint of
the deeper, ultra-implicate reality. Gurdjieff, however, then qualified this
comparison by stating that a complete parallel between man and the world
can only be drawn if we take man in the full sense of the word: “that is, a man
whose inherent powers are fully developed. An undeveloped man, a man who
has not completed the course of his evolution, cannot be taken as a complete
picture or plan of the universe—he is an unfinished world.” 2

In quantum terms we might say that such an individual has not yet acquired
a nonlocal condition of “optimum psychological resonance” and so is unable
to project psychokinesis influences out into the hierarchy of dimensions at a
high enough or deep enough level. “Height” and “depth” are each seen in this
context as properties of the greater, nonlocal reality, in the sense that the
higher or finer vibrations—the inner octaves described by Gurdjieff and
embodied in the Magic Square of Egyptian and Greek metaphysics—
penetrate deep into the heart of everything.

For me, the most important aspect of “Gurdjieff s system” (he would never
claim it as his own) is the way the individual’s place in the cosmic scheme of
things is so clearly defined. It seems that we all have a place in this

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worldview. In our case, this “place” is presently the planet of our origins.
Significantly, however, Gurdjieff’s system also provides us all with a purpose
in life, one that offers a way of striking out into deepest space and enhancing
the very presence of the planet on which we were born. Our raison d’etre, he
said, is to evolve, to develop and expand our consciousness to the degrees of
resonance at which it can encompass these higher dimensions, way beyond
the scale of planet Earth and the solar system, and even the galaxy. Of course,
as I have suggested several times, the fact that this system is based, like DNA
and the genetic code, on musical principles and symmetries means that this
kind of “spiritual” growth—the development of human consciousness from
the scale of its origins up to a greater scale above—is, like all creative
processes, fundamentally an organic mode of evolution.

Gurdjieff said that ordinary “socialized” human beings are little more than
complex machines, automata, living under the forty-eight orders of laws
governing life on Earth (world order 48 in the “ray of creation”), constantly
reacting, mostly involuntarily, to external stimuli. The laws and forces
governing each of the worlds in the ray of creation, he said, are entirely
mechanical, manifesting and interacting strictly according to the law of triple
creation. So the evolution of the human psyche, or the development of what
yogis and mystics call “cosmic consciousness,” is seen here as a metaphysical
journey up through the higher worlds and dimensions, at each stage of which
the individual frees him or herself from a certain and definite number of the
prevailing laws and forces of the particular world order in which they exist.
For example, according to Gurdjieff, we on Earth are separated from the
“Absolute,” or the ultimate scale, by forty-eight mechanical laws. If we could
free ourselves from one half of these laws we would be one stage nearer to the
Absolute scale of existence and subject only to the twenty-four laws
governing the next world order—the overall planetary sphere. Again, freeing
ourselves from half of these laws would gain us access to the next world, the
sphere of the sun or the solar system, where we would be subject to only
twelve mechanical laws—and so on, with six laws controlling the world of
“all suns,” that is all solar helices, and three laws, three fundamental forces,
controlling the greater world of the galactic helix.

This familiar description of the natural process of transcendental evolution
embodies the essence of Gurdjieff’s system of self-development, which was
designed specifically to assist his students in systematically freeing
themselves from these mechanical laws. No “miracle,” he said (by which he
meant psychokinesis, telepathy, and so forth) occurs as a result of the
violation of these laws; a miracle can only be a manifestation of the laws and
forces of a higher world.

Obviously the scientific community in general is opposed to the idea that
the mind can engage in paranormal activities: it requires evidence that is

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measurable in some way. Shamans, yogis, mystics, and teachers of esoteric
wisdom, however, do not. They appear to “measure” things, phenomena,
experiences in a very different way from the modern scientist; that is, they
assess and comprehend nature not only logically, with their minds, but
holistically, that is with their whole being.

Ouspensky recognized the difficulty in observing the paranormal by purely
scientific means after a period during which he experienced a number of
telepathic encounters with Gurdjieff. These occurred during and after a field
trip to Finland with Gurdjieff and a small group of his students a short time
before the Bolshevik uprising. Just prior to this, Ouspensky had been taking
part in a series of rigorous mental exercises and short but intensive fasts,
which induced in him an unusually excited and nervous state.

One evening Gurdjieff called Ouspensky and two others to sit with him in a
small room of the country house in which they were staying. Gurdjieff
proceeded to show them some physical movements and postures, after which
he gave them a brief talk on certain matters recently under discussion. It was
at this point that Ouspensky had an experience he would never forget.

It all started with him beginning to hear Gurdjieff s thoughts. He said that
Gurdjieff was talking to those present in the normal way, when suddenly he
noticed that among the words Gurdjieff was saying were separate “thoughts”
that were intended for him alone: “After a while I heard his voice inside me as
if it were in the chest near the heart. He put a definite question to me. I looked
at him; he was sitting and smiling. His question provoked in me a very strong
emotion. But I answered him in the affirmative.” 3

To the obvious astonishment of the other two present, this intermittent
“conversation” lasted for about half an hour, with Gurdjieff posing questions
silently and Ouspensky replying in his natural voice. The substance of this
dialogue Ouspensky declines to detail, but it seems that the questions posed
by Gurdjieff were very difficult and sometimes of an extremely personal
nature. Eventually Ouspensky became so agitated and disturbed by the
proceedings that he hurried out of the room and escaped into the surrounding
forest to try to gather his thoughts.

When he returned to the house it was dark. Unaware that Gurdjieff and the
others were having supper on the veranda and thinking everyone had retired
for the evening, he went to bed. But then, after a while, he began to feel a
strange excitement and his pulse began to beat forcibly. At this point he once
again heard Gurdjieff’s voice inside his chest. This time, however, he was
able to reply to the question mentally and it seems that Gurdjieff “heard” and
responded.

Much to Ouspensky’s obvious discomfort, this extraordinary state of affairs
continued for several days. Eventually the group traveled back from Finland
to St. Petersburg and then met at the main railway station to see Gurdjieff off

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on a train bound for Moscow. Ouspensky then reports, “But the miraculous
was still far from ended. There were new and very strange phenomena again
late in the evening of that day and I “conversed” with him while seeing him in
the compartment of the train going to Moscow.” 4

You can make of this what you will. Ouspensky, as he reports in his book,
experienced other unusual states of awareness at this time, some of which, as
he himself admits, he may have imagined. But when speaking of these
extremely lucid telepathic encounters with Gurdjieff, his account is quite
precise and unequivocal. As far as Ouspensky was concerned, he was
communicating with Gurdjieff through an entirely different and much more
efficient mode of transmission than ordinary vocal means.

So, if telepathy is a reality, how does it work? The answer currently on
offer is, of course, “waves and interference patterns,” though of a kind far
removed from the wavelike form of subatomic quanta, of interactive
electrons, packets of light, and all the other subatomic paraphernalia currently
haunting the nonlocal world of local scientists.

The problem, as Ouspensky saw it, is that “metaphysical” phenomena
cannot be investigated by ordinary methods:

It is a complete absurdity to think that it is possible to study phenomena of a
higher order like “telepathy,” “clairvoyance,” foreseeing the future,
mediumistic phenomena and so on, in the same way as electrical, chemical, or
meteorological phenomena are studied. There is something in phenomena of a
higher order which requires a particular emotional state for their observation
and study. And this excludes any possibility of “properly conducted” laboratory
experiments and observations. 5

As we shall see, the reference here to the emotional state of the investigator
has a significant place in Gurdjieff’s interpretation of the theory of
transcendental evolution. The point to note here is that the paranormal aspects
of the human psyche described above were considered by Ouspensky, a
scholarly and rather stoic Russian intellectual, as phenomena deserving of
study, that is he believed them to exist.

Probably very few of us living in the modern world will ever experience or
witness real paranormal happenings. But of course, we all inhabit a
predominantly secular, “socialized” environment controlled outwardly by
legislation and underpinned by an economic substructure whose material
demands upon us leave little time for voyages “into the mystic.” This does not
mean, of course, that the mystic is simply a figment of mankind’s collective
imagination. In fact, as Michael Talbot points out in his book The
Holographic Universe, the evidence for paranormal psychic abilities as
manifested through thousands of individuals in history is too compelling not
be taken seriously. The number of serious researchers who believe that the

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holographic model can explain virtually all such phenomena is growing
steadily.

The psychiatric researcher Dr. Stanislav Grof, for example, who spent
several years studying the effects of LSD on thousands of volunteers, believes
that the essential features of “transpersonal experiences” (“trips”), such as the
sensation that there are no boundaries, no separate, unconnected elements, no
distinction between parts and the whole, are all details one would observe in a
holographic universe. He also thinks that the enfolded nature of space and
time in the implicate realm is responsible for the feeling of timelessness
experienced by so many of his volunteers. Unusual states of consciousness, he
believes, can penetrate through to the implicate, enfolded order of things and
modify phenomena in the physical world—the “images”—by “influencing
their generative matrix.” 6 Grof is saying, in effect, that the mind, as well as
being capable of moving objects through psychokinesis, may also, under the
right circumstances, be capable of influencing the source of these phenomenal
images—what Talbot calls the “cosmic motion picture projector”—and so
remodel the material world into any desired shape or form.

LSD—lysergic acid diethylamide—was discovered quite by accident in the
late 1950s in Switzerland, synthesized from a fungus that forms on rye grain.
Its effects on the human psyche were subsequently realized and explored
extensively by the psychedelic generation of the 1960s.

Several decades prior to this, Ouspensky was also undergoing some very
interesting “transpersonal experiences” of his own, induced by some other
form of mind-altering agent, possibly nitrous oxide, or “laughing gas.” In the
context of our investigation into the nonlocal world of the quantum
psychologist, his recollections of those experiences are highly significant.
This is what he has to say about these experiences in his book A New Model
of the Universe: “The new world with which one comes into contact has no
sides, so that it is impossible to describe first one side and then the other. All
of it is visible at every point, but how in fact to describe anything in these
conditions—that question I could not answer.” 7

Clearly this description is very similar to the observations made by Grof’s
volunteers, of a nonlocal world in which there are no boundaries, no
distinctions between parts and the whole, and everything is wholly visible
from any point of reference.

As Ouspensky discovered, the problem with short cuts like psychedelic
excursions is that they are very intense and sometimes traumatic— so much
so that the unprepared mind is often incapable of remembering even the
essence of its experience, let alone competently recording it. Ouspensky
himself said that during these states of altered awareness he found it
impossible to finish a simple sentence because, between words, so many

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relevant and interconnected impressions came to him that he simply couldn’t
keep track of events in the normal way: . . and these new and unexpected
experiences came upon me and flashed by so quickly, that I could not find
words, could not find forms of speech, could not find concepts, which would
enable me to remember what had occurred even for myself, still less to
convey it to anyone else.” 8

Obviously these kinds of chemically induced perceptions of different
realities are of limited value. They are stolen glimpses, so to speak, taken for
the most part by people whose mental powers are not sufficiently developed
and whose understanding is consequently limited. Possibly this is why
subjects under the influence of psychedelics are invariably rendered
speechless, unable to describe even a small part of their experience. Indeed,
being unprepared, many people have been shocked and even frightened by the
things they have seen. Doubtless, for every hippie who can still remember his
or her “transpersonal experiences,” there will be several that cannot
remember, or don’t want to.

Another interesting description of the wider reality, one that again
encompasses the kind of nonlocal dimension we are investigating here, is
provided by Paramhansa Yogananda in his earlier-mentioned book
Autobiography of a Yogi (1946). Unlike Ouspensky, Yogananda probably
experienced these perceptions not as a result of the use of psychedelic agents,
but rather through a heightened state of awareness induced by extensive yogic
exercises—in breathing, posture, meditation, and so on. In the chapter entitled
“The Law of Miracles,” Yogananda discusses in some detail his observations
concerning the phenomenon of light and its place in the cosmic scheme of
things. The passage quoted here, as one can see, is remarkably prophetic and
actually reads, in detail if not in style, like a page from Michael Talbot’s
book:

Motion pictures, with their lifelike images, illustrate many truths concerning
creation. The Cosmic Director has written His own plays and has summoned
the tremendous casts for the pageant of the centuries. From the dark booth of
eternity He sends His beams of light through the films of successive ages, and
pictures are thrown on the backdrop of space. 9

Remember that this particular “holographic” metaphor appeared in print
decades before the hologram was ever dreamed of. He continues:

Just as cinematic images appear to be real but are only a combination of light
and shade, so is the universal variety a delusive seeming. The planetary
spheres, with their countless forms of life, are nought but figures in a cosmic
motion picture. Temporarily true to man’s five sense perceptions, the transitory
scenes are cast on the screen of human consciousness by the infinite creative
beam. A cinema audience may look up and see that all screen images are

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appearing through the instrumentality of one imageless beam of light. The
colorful universal drama is similarly issuing from the single white light of a
Cosmic Source. With inconceivable ingenuity God is staging “super-colossal”
entertainment for His children, making them actors as well as audience in His
planetary theatre. 10

Like Bohm, the Yogi sees the psyche of the observer as an integral part of
the entire “cosmic motion picture.” As Yogananda himself saw it, we are all
of us legitimate members of the cast of actors in this universal pageant,
performing images, cast onto the “backdrop of space,” acting out plays within
a play, as real and as unreal as the images on a cinema screen.

Significantly, we are here reminded of the Hindu belief that the mechanism
that facilitates this great cosmic spectacle is in fact light itself—the “single
white light of a Cosmic Source.” As we noted previously, this is emphasized
in the principal annual festival of the Hindus, known as Diwali—the festival
of light. Yogananda said that Indian holy men, people who “know
themselves,” are able to “travel” at the speed of light and utilize the “creative
light rays” to bring into visibility any physical manifestation. The “law of
miracles,” he said, is operable by any man who has realized that the essence
of creation is light. This, he asserted, was the secret of psychokinesis,
telepathy, and so on, powers that manifest as a result of tuning in the
vibrations of the mind with the vibrations of light. Presumably such a meeting
of forces would create a whole new web of interference patterns (inner
octaves) and with it a whole new range of phenomena.

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QP2: The Universal Paradigm

A s we noted previously, the holographic principle—of the whole existing
in every part—can be expressed quite simply in terms of musical theory,
where each tone, semitone, quarter-tone, and the like of a major scale contains
within it all the data needed to recreate the scale in full. We noted in chapter 8
that the principle of nonlocality is also accommodated by musical theory, in
that the ultimate note at the top of a given octave, being also potentially the
first note of the next scale, can exist in two places/scales at one and the same
instant. In the same way, the top note of a given triple octave would exist in
four scales simultaneously. And so on.

Now, the two fundamental musical laws of nature embodied within pi —the
law of three and the law of octaves—tell us that all human beings are “triple
octaves” of resonance, walking “trinities” composed of our sensations,
emotions, and perceptions. In the Book of Revelation, which is one of the
most detailed and revealing hermetic texts in existence, this internal trinity is
symbolized by the image of the Woman in Heaven, the pregnant (fully
realized) goddess of the skies, whose “child,” after birth, becomes united with
God. Significantly, she is associated with three distinct sources of cosmic
radiation emanating from above, namely the stars, the planets (symbolized by
the moon), and the sun. 1

Assuming that these three “octaves” of the human psyche are harmoniously
composed, a transcendental, twenty-second “note” (the “child” referred to in
the above cosmological description by St. John) is then created. This is an
entirely new phenomenon capable of existing in a greater scale, a higher
dimension. We came across this extraordinary creation in earlier chapters: it
is the concept, the “immaculate conception” of Christian tradition.

The Hermetic Code, remember, as well as embodying within it the
holographic principle of inner octaves and of nonlocality, is also in essence a
description of an organic process of evolution. This is to say that the
individual’s relationship with the greater cosmos is “biometaphysical,” a
repetition, on a higher scale, of DNA’s relationship with its host organism.
We can thus regard the concept as being the metaphysical equivalent of the

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amino acid. As I explained previously, the amino acid is the transcendental
product of the RNA triplet-codon template, which is composed from three of
the four fundamental nitrogenous bases. In precisely the same way, the
concept, derived from the harmonious combination of three fundamental
“metaphysical bases”—sensation, emotion, perception—must also be a
transcendental phenomenon, an active, organic component in a higher, more
complex process of development.

If we note that the Book of Revelation associates these three fundamental
forms of human impulse with the forces operating in the trinity above—that is
the stars, the planets, and the sun—we can depict the structure of the human
psyche and its relationship with the greater cosmos like so:

Do Do Do Do

I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I

Conception

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

1 I I 1 I I I 1 I 1 1 1 I 1 I 1 1 I I I I 1

DRMFSLT DRMFSLT DRMFSLTD

12 3 4

1 2 3

Sensation Emotion Perception

12 3 4

Stellar Planetary Solar Animal

magnetism magnetism magnetism magnetism

As we can see, the entire “composition” of the human condition and its
relationship with the higher dimensions is described in perfect detail by the
Hermetic Code. The influence of the stars, the planets, and the sun in the
diagram above, I have called, for want of a better word, magnetic, although
the term orthodox scientists generally abhor— cosmic —might serve just as
well. The fourth metaphysical base, animal magnetism, is an internal power
source, and from it is derived the concept, the product of the harmonious
combination of the first three “bases,” represented in the diagram as the
ultimate note of the scale.

The idea that “cosmic vibrations” emanating from the spheres above might
in some mysterious way influence the human psyche has always been
anathema to modern science. Many scientists today, I am sure, would squirm
at such a possibility. And yet, in the light of the universal hermetic processes
referred to in practically every chapter of this book, the orthodox scientific
view appears completely untenable. Just think about it. Are we seriously to
believe that there is no connection what-soever between ourselves and the
greater cosmos, no continuity other than the purely chemical connection
between the atoms of which we are composed and the exploding supernovae
from which they originated? As we have seen, hermetic theory, a truly
universal theory, emphatically excludes this kind of isolationism, and it even
provides us with a coherent theoretical basis for such an exclusion. We have

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already seen this universal/hermetic connection in the way the seven
dimensions of the universe coexist and interpenetrate, and how the four “base
notes” of the entire evolving cosmos—DNA, the human brain, the solar helix,
and the galactic helix—each function on their own scale, quite literally, as
active, organic nuclei in the cells of the bodies of greater beings.

In Revelation, the four “base notes” of the trinity within us all (sensation,
emotion, perception, conception), which together represent a microcosmic
replica of the greater universal being, are symbolized by the four “beasts”
sitting at the foot of God’s throne—the lion, the calf, the man, and the
magical fourth, the “flying” (transcendental) eagle. The eagle, in this context,
is the concept, the product of animal magnetism. This is fire, the fourth “rare
earth” of the alchemists, a human condition that Gurdjieff would describe as
the law-conformable product of a real and independent will.

So, from the harmonious combination of the three principal “octaves” of
the human psyche is born the last fundamental “note” of the whole scale, the
transcendental fourth “base,” out of which proceeds our fourth faculty, our
ability to “immaculately conceive,” to formulate enduring concepts and, no
doubt, to perceive the world with a much greater degree of understanding.
Representing as it does the ultimate note in the scale of human evolution,
animal magnetism has qualities unique to it alone. It contains, at one and the
same time, all the vibrations contained within the twenty-one notes below it.
Furthermore, once this final link in the evolutionary chain of events is set in
place, the whole phenomenon—in this case the psyche of the individual—
resonates within as a unified whole, so that each of the twenty-two separate
components of the given triple octave, being harmoniously related in the
fullest sense, has nonlocal/holographic properties and contains within it all the
information needed to recreate all three scales.

Taking the principle one step further, we can say that the whole psyche of
the fully developed individual, all three inner octaves, also represents a single
new note in a greater macrocosmic scale existing far beyond the confines of
the brain. And if this greater scale of cosmic resonance is also harmoniously
composed, then the higher “notes” comprising it would also be integral parts
of a unified whole. Therefore each note of this greater scale (one of which,
remember, is the human psyche itself) would possess nonlocal or holographic
attributes and would therefore contain within it all the information contained
within the whole.

As we see, hermetic theory not only supports the notion that the psyche is
holographic within, it also accords with Bohm’s view that it is an interactive
part of a greater holographic process operating “out there.” As Gurdjieff said,
we are miniature universes, and within us are exactly the same laws and
forces operating in the greater universe. It is this very fundamental truth that
the enigmatic Egyptian “scribe of the gods” intended to convey to mankind

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when he first expressed the universal paradigm, “As above, so below.”

Over the last few thousand years of human evolution, this concept of
universal compatibility—this genuine “immaculate conception”— has
persisted in the traditions of civilization builders across the entire world.
Heaven is above, Earth is below, and the former dimension is accessible to
anyone living what preachers of religions call a “righteous” life, that is, a way
of being that reflects, and is compatible with, the prevailing laws and forces
of the higher world, of heaven.

So, what would it mean for an individual to achieve this kind of cosmic
consciousness? What might be going on inside the head of such a human
being?

In an earlier chapter I discussed the work of Robert Jahn and Brenda
Dunne, who conducted an extensive series of laboratory-controlled
experiments to test the psychokinetic abilities of ordinary volunteers. Having
concluded from their findings that such powers, albeit slight, do in fact exist,
they have proffered an explanation for them. Basically they believe that
consciousness itself, like all physical processes, possesses a kind of
particle/wave duality, and that, when it is in a wavelike mode it can produce
effects at a distance, for example psychokinesis or telepathy. If Ouspensky’s
previously mentioned telepathic encounters with Gurdjieff operated in such a
fashion, that is through interpenetrating waves of inner octaves, or
interference patterns, this means that such effects can span tens and hundreds
of miles, and even lock on to a moving train.

The obvious implications of the proposition put forward by Jahn and
Dunne is that the whole brain, when functioning at these higher levels of
awareness, begins to behave something like a single quantum or
wave/particle, whereby vast numbers of neurons occupying a given region of
the cortex simultaneously act in concert, resonating at a frequency common to
all the others—a kind of microcosmic version of what Colin Wilson calls the
“group-mind” phenomenon, whose collective power greatly exceeds the sum
of its parts. As I mentioned in chapter 4, the Cambridge mathematician Roger
Penrose has come surprisingly close to this idea by suggesting that “non-local
quantum correlations” between fundamental particles might be involved in
conscious thought processes activated in the brain, so that a greater degree of
awareness is possibly a direct result of this kind of “highly coherent quantum
state.” So perhaps neurons themselves can be induced to behave like particles,
engaging in nonlocal quantum correspondence with other neurons and
working as a single entity, as they seem to do in the case of the simple
sponge.

We now have plenty of evidence of this “group-mind” activity in the
quantum world, between electrons in plasmas, for instance, and in the
phenomenal, instantaneous alignment of millions of molecules in the thermal

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process of formation of the Benard cell. Another interesting example worth
considering is the phenomenon of superconductivity.

A superconductor is the name given to any material that can carry a
measured current of electricity with absolutely zero resistance. Normal
conductors, such as the copper wires of electrical appliances in the main
circuit of your home, invariably put up a certain amount of resistance to the
flow of the current. This is usually lost along the length of wire in the form of
heat energy. Under normal temperatures, known superconducting materials
behave in exactly the same way, partly resisting the flow of the current and
losing energy through a dispersal of heat. When they are cooled to
temperatures approaching absolute zero, however, at a certain stage there
occurs a magical transition, and the whole conductor seems suddenly to
switch over to an overall “coherent quantum state” with absolutely zero
resistance. It is as if every individual electron has suddenly transcended to a
higher level of concerted “awareness,” so that the whole conducting surface
begins to perform like a single giant electron.

I’m suggesting here that something very like this kind of “superunification”
may also occur in selected regions of the brain, where individual neurons,
given the right kind of impetus, can also transcend the ordinary physical
world of cause and effect and unite as a single giant neuron with extra-cortical
or transcendental properties.

But what kind of impetus is required to induce in the brain a highly
coherent quantum state? Curiously enough, superconductivity may provide us
with a clue here. We shall see how in a moment.

We are now assuming, of course, that higher states of awareness are indeed
a reality. Such states have been spoken of not only by respected illuminati
like Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, and prominent Indian yogi masters like
Yogananda and Sri Aurobindo, but also, as we have seen, by a number of
forward-thinking scientists in disciplines physical and metaphysical, ranging
across a wide spectrum of intellectual effort, from quantum mechanics to
clinical psychology.

As we know, yogis and other spiritual masters say that the higher
psychological frequencies required to pierce the veil of space and time are
accessed through work on oneself; through disciplined exercises in posture,
meditation, and contemplation; and other specialized activities. Clearly,
therefore, meditation, a process of stilling the mind, is a key factor.

To still the mind, as I have explained at length in The Infinite Harmony, is
to switch over from an active mode of thought into a passive mode. Now this
process is not dissimilar, in principle, to the cooling down of the
superconductor, which brings about a drastic reduction in particle activity
within its atomic structure. In effect, the superconductor becomes passive, and
when it does the miraculous transformation in its conductivity occurs and

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there is suddenly absolutely zero resistance to the flow of the current.
Something very like this, I believe, is what happens inside the brain when it is
stilled to a sufficient degree; it turns into a kind of metaphysical
superconductor, in which mode it puts up absolutely zero resistance to the
flow of the “cosmic current.”

In scripture, this process of switching over from active to passive mode is
generally expressed through the idea of offering some kind of “sacrifice to
God,” that is to the higher vibrations of this world. It might be a very personal
sacrifice, like giving up something dear to oneself, maybe a habit or tendency
(as in Lent or Ramadan), or perhaps some time (through prayer or
contemplation), or even something as seemingly mundane as your last-but-
one goat, which at the start of the Muslim festival of Eid is traditionally killed
and distributed to the needy.

At its heart, this sacrificial element is, in my view, the key to the whole
process of transcendental evolution. It is spoken of in many ancient esoteric
traditions, and I believe it refers principally to a psychological frame of mind
in which we as individuals give up our preoccupations with secular trivia and
switch over into an overall passive state. And this, of course, is precisely why
in religion so much emphasis is placed on meditation or contemplation. Only
a passive, receptive mind can take in active data, as a superconductor takes in
an electric current, and subsequently transmit this energy, or whatever, in the
most efficient way possible.

Significantly, this fundamental requirement—that is, that the mind must be
passive in order to conceive, or to create—is graphically emphasized in
Revelation, through the symbolism of the Woman in Heaven, a feminine,
passive, receptive entity, who duly conceives and subsequently gives birth to
a transcendental phenomenon—the Holy Child, the personification of the
“immaculate conception.”

Gurdjieff expressed this concept quite clearly during discussions with his
groups in Moscow and St. Petersburg. In one talk, for example, he mentions a
certain book of aphorisms, a collection of home truths gathered from
unnamed sages. The following quotations from it clearly emphasize the
importance of the passive element in the evolutionary processes of the mind:
“A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to
die he must first awake.” 2

We can interpret this passage in the following way. A man may be “born”:
that is he may, as Gurdjieff would express it, begin the course of his
evolution. In order to do this, he must first “die”: he must sacrifice everything
for the good of the work. In order to be able to sacrifice all for the good, he
must first “awake”: he must first realize the need for change in himself.

Another favored aphorism also gets right to the point: “When a man

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awakes he can die; when he dies he can be born.” 3

This is precisely what the alchemical process described in the ancient
pyramid ritual was intended to express. To be reborn as a god, as an “Osiris,”
the initiate first has to “die,” to become receptive, to open his “mouth,” his
mind. When this is done, consciousness, like all products of nature’s organic
processes, can continue to grow further and ultimately come to fruition.

As I have explained at length in The Infinite Harmony, the need for the
properly evolving mind regularly to “take time out” is actually the basis of all
major religious disciplines. This is why so much emphasis is placed on setting
aside, at the end of a working day, or week, a period of rest, a sacred interval,
a Sabbath. To this end, meditation, contemplation, devotional prayer, and
acknowledgment of forces or powers greater than our own are all valid
exercises in stilling the mind, in making it receptive to the unseen,
evolutionary forces permeating the universe. At the root of all this “religious”
activity, of course, is music, which is why the Sabbath has consistently been
associated with the number 7, the seventh note, ti, of the major scale, from
which is “born” the transcendental eighth note.

The concept of composing mind and body, as I have said before, is
relatively straightforward in theory, but in practice, as anyone familiar with
the subtleties of yoga will know, proper meditation, involving correct
breathing, posture, and thoughts—correct everything—is a very difficult thing
to sustain for prolonged periods of time. Yogis undergo years of disciplined
training to achieve mastery over themselves in this way.

It is clear that Gurdjieff drew some of his ideas from Hindu philosophy, but
his particular system of self-development was perhaps more pragmatic and
better tailored to the systematic Western mind. In principle, however, the
objective remains the same: the acquisition of spiritual and psychological
harmony.

Gurdjieff always emphasized the fact that the human being is
fundamentally a trinity within, a triple octave, possessing three “brains” or
“centers”—the moving center, the emotional center, and the thinking center.
He said that all three of these “brains” need exercise, need to be developed
together, in concert with one another. If only the thinking center is developed
at the expense of the other two, the result is an unbalanced individual—
something like the absent-minded professor who can never find his keys or
his umbrella. Alternatively, a highly developed physical “brain” coupled with
undeveloped emotional and thinking centers would result in an equally
unbalanced or disharmonious individual—the “beefcake” archetype; and so
on.

These three fundamental archetypes Gurdjieff referred to as “man number
one,” “man number two,” and “man number three.” All had something to
contribute toward the development of the whole, he said, but the alchemical

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formulas for getting the mix right were solely the property of “man number
four”—the “sly” man—possessor of animal magnetism, an individual who,
like the eagle beast of Revelation, could “fly” to places where the first three
could not.

The “places” in question are, of course, the nonlocal spheres discussed in
previous chapters, the higher dimensions existing beyond space and time: the
fifth, the plane of light; the sixth, the “solid” world of ultimate reality; and the
seventh, the medium in which all “solids,” all six-dimensional entities, exist
and operate.

As we have seen, the first of these higher spheres—the plane of light, or the
quantum field—has been pretty well charted by scientists. So this alternative
reality definitely does exist. If it did not, there would be no such thing as a
photon quantum, no means by which to gauge the maximum velocity allowed
by nature—the “constant” or speed of light—and the theory of Special
Relativity, with its implications for the “elasticity” of space and time, would
be meaningless. This concept may be difficult for us to understand fully with
only our ordinary logical thought processes, but the fact is that science has
proven beyond all reasonable doubt that the quantum picture is the primary
reality, and that our ordinary perception of both space and time is simply, as
Einstein phrased it, a “stubbornly persistent illusion.”

Nothing new here, then: after all, mystics and yogis have been telling us
this for centuries, that there is no space, no time, no separate, isolated
“things,” that heaven is eternal and its extremities infinite. And all of these
observations, as we have seen, are in accord with the quantum picture of
reality.

These days, of course, established religious disciplines, originally designed
for the express purpose of inducing in devotees the kind of altered states of
consciousness we have been describing, are for many people decidedly passe.
Others regard religion as little more than archaic mumbo jumbo, the “opium
of the people,” while the more vehement critics will argue that it has
ultimately been the root cause of more murder, war, and bloodshed than any
other human invention—as if man’s inherent selfishness and his insatiable
appetite for wealth and power had nothing to do with it.

Now there are, as we have seen, shortcuts to these higher planes of
consciousness, such as the use of chemical triggers like nitrous oxide and
LSD. Stanislav Grof’s research led him to conclude that psychedelic trips—
transpersonal experiences—are in fact voyages into the quantum or
subquantum field. Presumably there will also be a few million former hippies
out there who can remember experiencing the sensations of timelessness and
oneness. And if their lysergic acid was pure enough, and their constitutions
strong enough, they might also remember having the distinct impression, as
Yogananda did, that all material things are actually “undifferentiated masses

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of light.”

Obviously, however, the legitimate way of perceiving one or another aspect
of the wider reality is, quite simply, to work on oneself, to develop one’s
powers of cognition, and thus evolve. Gurdjieff said that work of this kind
was best performed in a school situation, in which each individual member is
able to assist, and can be assisted, in the execution of what he called their
“conscious labors,” that is labors done in the right frame of mind and spirit.
There is thus a subtle but important difference between ordinary work and
work for the sake of the Work. As Gurdjieff put it, there is more to be gained
from simply sweeping a floor with the right intent than there is from writing a
dozen books with the wrong one.

In one talk he likened the situation of the pupil to that of a prisoner locked
in a cell, whose only hope of escape is to enlist the help of others. One maybe
fashions him a rope, another steals him a key, a third perhaps acts as a decoy,
while a fourth sits discreetly outside the perimeter wall in the getaway car.
Thus, individual development within a school is in fact a joint effort, a
“group-mind” situation, in which all must contribute for the good of the
whole. Of course, once our escapee is free from his “prison,” there is opened
up a whole new range of possibilities for the comrades he left behind, for they
now have additional “outside” help.

And so, what of the possibility of raising the level of individual
consciousness? If we judiciously exclude the somewhat controversial method
of ingesting psychedelics, or of being fortunate enough to locate an authentic
school of self-development (beware of imitations), then it would seem, on the
face of things, that there are precious few possibilities for us to perceive
directly the kind of nonlocal reality described by physicists. But in fact this is
not necessarily so. As I said when discussing Robert Bauval and Adrian
Gilbert’s description of the so-called pyramid ritual performed by the priests
of ancient Egypt, this essentially “alchemical” or hermetic process can be
reenacted by anyone, and one doesn’t necessarily have to be inside the Great
Pyramid for it to be effectively performed. Indeed, there are situations in life
that can induce these receptive states of mind, nearly always bringing with
them a markedly greater perception of the wider reality, a greater appreciation
of the world about us.

For example, when in imminent danger of losing one’s life, the brain, or its
consciousness, appears to be capable of tuning in instantaneously to the
quantum field. Thus, survivors of violent events like car, train, or aircraft
crashes often speak of having “seen” their whole lives flash by them in an
instant. This kind of panoramic perception, in which an entire lifetime is
somehow condensed into a single brief instant, can only take place in a
dimension outside ordinary time.

The writer Graham Greene, a manic-depressive in his earlier years,

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experienced something very similar when, in a moment of recklessness that
would make ingesting psychedelics seem as harmless as taking tea with your
grandmother, he picked up a revolver and proceeded to play Russian roulette.
The hammer on the gun clicked, the realization that he was still alive dawned
on him and, as if a veil had suddenly been lifted from his eyes, the world
immediately appeared infinitely more rich and meaningful.

When consciousness suddenly “expands” in this way, the process appears
to be very similar to what happens when the latent energy inside a
microcosmic atom is released in a nuclear explosion and the resultant shock
waves reverberate out into the macrocosm, or the atmosphere, in the form of a
vast mushroom cloud. The physical brain housed in the skull is the “atom,” a
microcosm, a localized center of energy; consciousness itself, when operating
at the kind of frequencies triggered, say, by imminent danger, is a
macrocosmic manifestation of the selfsame energy.

Now there are, I believe, more gentle and amenable ways to expand
consciousness, to pierce beyond the veil of ordinary time and space. For
example, even something as simple as a hard-earned vacation can lift the
spirits and make one noticeably more appreciative of the vast richness and
variety of the world about us. In such situations, time can seem to fly by,
whereas in duller moments we say it drags.

But in reality, of course, the world itself does not alter in any fundamental
way; it is always full of wonder, and often all that is needed is a different
perspective, a change of scenery, for us to sense that this is so. We have all, at
some stage in our lives, experienced negative thoughts and emotions, felt
deflated, bound in time, locked inside a “miserable” day, inside an hour,
inside a tiny moment. At such times we see practically nothing of the world
about us. On the other hand, you might also remember how rose-tinted the
world looked when you had just “broken up” for the summer holidays, or
when you were young and first in love, or perhaps camping out under a
tropical sky with the stars so close you felt you could reach up and grasp
them. Such experiences as these are, in fact, genuinely magical, and if one
takes time out from the humdrum grind of secular living to reflect upon one’s
own life, they can usually be remembered quite easily.

Unfortunately, however, despite these illuminating incidents, we generally
live the major part of our lives only in the fourth dimension of time, a sphere
of existence that, in respect to the higher dimensions, is a narrow, essentially
linear and extremely restricted world. This is where ordinary consciousness
exists, isolated, like a faint spot of warmth moving along an invisible wire.
And if this wire, the line of time, is, as I have tried to explain in earlier
chapters, a sort of “cross-section” of a greater plane, then during such events
as transpersonal experiences, consciousness, like the energy of the atom
bursting out in a nuclear explosion or, perhaps, the mass of a galaxy as it

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draws toward the threshold of the speed of light, would theoretically expand,
stretching out laterally, “at right angles,” to the directional flow of the line of
time.

Significantly, Yogananda says much the same thing when speaking of
masters who are able to perform supernatural feats, that they “have fulfilled
the lawful condition; their mass is infinite.” 4
He says further:

The consciousness of a perfected yogi is effortlessly identified not with a
narrow body but with a universal structure. Gravitation, whether the “force” of
Newton or the Einsteinian “manifestation of inertia,” is powerless to compel a
master to exhibit the property of weight, the distinguishing gravitational
condition of all material objects. He who knows himself as the omnipresent
Spirit is subject no longer to the rigidities of a body in time and space. 5

Quantum psychology in a nutshell.

Not surprisingly, the Hindu tradition of Yogananda is steeped in hermetic
lore. Thus the individual is regarded, as in all religious systems, as a living
trinity, comprising a physical, astral, and mental body—the equivalent of
Gurdjieff’s three “centers,” the moving, the emotional, and the thinking.

In a short but remarkably perceptive book, The Theory of Eternal Life,
Ouspensky’s associate Rodney Collin, drawing from Gurdjieff’s original
ideas, tries to identify the possible nature of these three bodies.

The physical body, he says, is the one we are all familiar with, and is
fundamentally cellular in nature. The second, astral body, or the “soul,”
which, he suggests, grows as a result of developing the emotional center, is
basically a molecular manifestation, like, say, sound or scent. Being of a finer,
more fluid form of materiality, the astral body has powers unobtainable by the
physical body. For example, like sound or scent, it would be able to diffuse
many times faster than the cellular body moves. Further, a cellular body
moves only in a line, whereas a molecular body would be able to spread out
simultaneously over a wide area, like an aroma. Significantly, such a presence
would also be free of the force of gravity, a fact that reminds us of
Yogananda’s claim that such a force cannot affect those who “know
themselves.”

Collin then goes on to imagine human consciousness endowed with the
properties of matter in a molecular state. It could, for example, be present in
many places simultaneously. It could pass through walls, assume a whole host
of different shapes, even enter inside other human beings. Like musk, it might
“haunt” a place for several years; and if a molecular body the size of a human
being possessed the metaphysical equivalent of the “pungency” of mercaptan,
which retains its nature even when diluted in fifty trillion times its own
volume of air, it could be simultaneously conscious of every hectare of land

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in an area the size of China.

As Collin notes, The Tibetan Book of the Dead refers to this astral or
molecular body as the “desire body,” one that, unlike the gross physical body,
has the power to “go right through any rock-masses, hills, boulders, earth,
houses, and Mount Meru itself.” 6

The passage quoted is addressed to the dead person, and it implies that the
molecular or astral body can continue to exist after the physical body has
expired. It continues: “Thou art actually endowed with the power of
miraculous action. . . . Thou canst instantaneously arrive in whatever place
thou wishest; thou hast the power of reaching there within the time which a
man taketh to bend, or to stretch forth his hand.” 7

Remarkable as these powers might seem, however, they would still fall
short of the real thing, in that the astral body constitutes only one third of the
complete trinity, vastly more complex and energetic than the physical body,
but compared to the mental body born of what Gurdjieff called the thinking
center, it would still be relatively small and limited. This is why the quoted
passage finishes with a warning: “These various powers of illusion and of
shape-shifting desire not, desire not.” 8

As Collin says, both The Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Egyptian book
of the same name, along with many other ancient texts, all suggest that at the
death of the physical body this new body of molecular energy—the astral
body—is born. Buddhists believe that this acts as the vehicle of consciousness
in the interval between incarnations. In fact, in Tibetan, Egyptian, and
Peruvian rituals, fresh food and drink were set aside in the belief that the
smell or essence of it would nourish the soul of the dead person—a practice
Collin sees as clear recognition of the fact that the physical composition of the
“soul” is similar to scent, that it consists of matter in molecular state. He
suggests that this molecular body, like everything else, has to be created, and
that this is accomplished through a sustained accumulation of the finest
energies produced by the physical organism in life. And in order to do this, as
Gurdjieff said, individuals must first create in themselves a will of their own,
one that would empower them with the inner strength to restrain the wasting
of these energies through the usual negative emotions or impulses—anger,
fear, longing, envy, and so forth. This, according to Gurdjieff, is real alchemy,
the “transmutation” of coarser energies (human emotions) into finer ones, or
the transformation from an ordinary “individual” into one who is genuinely
undivided, and whose inherent willpower is consequently fully developed.

In chapter 4, Collin goes on to speculate on the possible form and function
of the third and last component in the human trinity, the harmonious product
of the thinking center, that is the mental or, as he calls it, the “electronic”
body. His ideas here are particularly interesting, because they bring us right

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back to the quantum field of the physicist, the plane of light.

As he says, molecular vibrations, like sound, diffuse about a hundred times
faster than physical bodies move, but “electronic” energy (by which he meant
light, the photon quantum), radiates nearly a million times faster still. Thus a
body composed of “electronic” matter, which Collin calls the “spirit,” could
travel instantaneously through three dimensions: that is along a line, like a
cellular body, over an area, like scent or a sonic boom, and throughout an
infinite volume of space, like the proverbial Holy Ghost.

Collin then tries to imagine what would happen if human consciousness
were attached to an electronic device, for example a bright lamp in a room.

First, the center, or heart, of the body would be the incandescent filament
of the lamp, but it would also include all the light emitted from it. A
consciousness attached to a body of this nature would contain within it all the
objects in the room: furniture, flowers, and plants, even its occupants.
Consequently it would illuminate or be conscious of every object from all
sides simultaneously. Everything in the room would, in a sense, become inner
organs of this electronic entity, and everything happening would be
happening inside it and would be sensed as its own life. Thus human
consciousness attached to a body of light, in including ah neighboring beings
within itself, would share the nature of “God,” in whom, it is said, all
creatures exist and have their being. It is precisely this principle of joining
together, says Collin, that lies at the root of both yoga, which means “union,”
and religion, which means, “reunion.”

The Tibetan Book of the Dead describes this form of consciousness as the
“Radiance of the Clear Light of Pure Reality.” The dead person, assuming he
possesses a “spirit,” is addressed thus: “Thine own consciousness, shining,
void and inseparable from the Great Body of Radiance, hath no birth, nor
death, and is the immutable light.” 9

According to Collin’s interpretation of Gurdjieff’s system, in order to
acquire a spirit, an electronic body, an individual must first develop a soul, a
molecular body. This is done by concentrating ah of one’s molecular energy
—one’s emotional output—to this single goal. Once this is achieved, the next
step would be to “infuse soul with spirit,” which means, in effect, that
individuals have to learn how to transmute molecular matter into “electronic”
matter, that is, “To split the atom and release internally a degree of energy
which only our own age can begin to measure.” 10

As we see, we once again find ourselves being drawn into the quantum
world inside the atom, the nonlocal realm of electromagnetic radiation, of the
photon quantum, the Holy Ghost, the Immutable Light of Tibetan Buddhism.

Inside the atom, the nuclear forces ensure that the constituent particles are
contained within definite energy levels. Thus the atom, together with its

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nucleus, is a hard nut to crack. Gravity also plays a part in it, though very
small, as all matter exerts a gravitational pull, however slight.

The atoms themselves are held together by the electromagnetic force,
which binds all matter. If its influence were removed, all material stability
would cease. Without the electromagnetic force, the chair you are sitting on,
or the ground on which you stand, together with the body you are presently
occupying, would dissipate, dissolve into invisible clouds of free-floating
quanta. There would be no molecules, inorganic or organic, only a
homogenous soup of fundamental components—quarks—bouncing off one
another in an endless display of randomness and non-interaction.

Now the force-carrier, or “gluon,” of electromagnetic radiation is, of
course, the ever-constant photon, the most special of all wave/particles. It is
unique primarily because it is the only phenomenon in existence capable of
inducing in us visual sensation. In other words, it is the medium via which we
receive most of our impressions or perceptions, the bridge, so to speak,
between mind and the empirical world. But bridges are for crossing, and in
the light of the evidence discussed in this chapter it would appear that this
particular one has been successfully encountered by many a free spirit, some
of whom, as we have seen, have left us with some extremely lucid accounts of
the extraordinary things they have witnessed on the “other side.” With one
voice, they speak of a miraculous, timeless, spaceless world, brimming with
consciousness and light, pulsating with waves upon waves of pure energy.

Scientists say that mass and energy are in fact different manifestations of
the same thing. This is significant, because consciousness, although we
cannot clearly define the phenomenon, can reasonably be regarded as a
manifestation of a subtle form of energy. And then we have the photon, the
other side of our metaphysical coin, a “virtual” particle that, having
practically no measurable mass, exists on the very edge of materiality.
Moreover, of all particles known to exist, only the photon has no antimatter
opposite; the photon is its own opposite. If you were to draw a line down the
center of a piece of paper and list all particles on one side and all antiparticles
on the other, the photon would have to be placed over the line. It is in every
sense a duplicitous entity, a shapeshifting Jekyll and Hyde, a particle and a
wave. Catch it if you can.

Thus we can see that the dividing line between mind and matter is in reality
extremely tenuous, so much so that one feels it would not be stretching
credibility too far to propose that a high degree of consciousness resonating
“in tune” with photon quanta might somehow temporarily neutralize the
electromagnetic force, thus making any form of matter present within the
sphere of neutralization “fluid.” It need only be a fleeting moment of fluidity,
imperceptible to the naked eye, but if actualized repeatedly in short, sharp
bursts, it could well be sufficient, say, effectively to reshape or move great

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chunks of stone with relative ease.

Such powers, in my view, are attainable, but I believe that they are simply a
by-product of quantum psychology, the transcendental evolution of the mind.
The Egyptians and the “builder gods” of ancient America, and probably their
mysterious forebears, the original initiates, were clearly past masters of the
art. It might be appropriate, therefore, to leave the last word to them.

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The Shapeshifters

I n this era of scientific rationalism, the subject of psychokinesis is, not
surprisingly, a virtual nonstarter. Even though we frequently hear or read
about individuals who have, or have had, supernatural powers, very few
people have actually seen, or even laid claim to seeing, proof of such things.
So if we exclude party tricks, table-turning, spoon-bending, fakirs on beds of
nails, and other such forms of light entertainment, there is really very little in
the way of what we might call the genuine paranormal in the day-to-day life
of modern man. But possibly this is simply a sign of the times: the overt
rationalism of science over the last few centuries may have dulled our
extrasensory abilities almost to the point of atrophy. As Ouspensky said,
phenomena of a higher order seem to require a certain degree of emotional
energy for their observation and study, and this would automatically preclude
ordinary experimental methods. This is not to say, of course, that scientists as
a whole are unfeeling, only that experimental observers’ personal level of
inner development, including their emotional state, is not yet considered an
essential factor in objective scientific investigation.

Paradoxically, however, quantum physics, the quintessential science of
rationalists, is a veritable hotbed of the paranormal, with its non-locality,
superconductivity, and the peculiar phenomenon known as “quantum
tunneling,” which involves specterlike virtual particles popping up
everywhere, out of nowhere, only to disappear again nanoseconds later,
leaving no measurable trace.

In the quantum world, practically anything is possible, even if highly
improbable, so why not so in the meso- and macrocosmic worlds, where
everything is, after all, made up of quantum systems, and where exactly the
same laws of physics apply?

Obviously individual quantum effects are too small to leave observable
traces on ordinary sense-objects. A chair remains pretty much the same chair
no matter how many “nonlocal” photons are absorbed or reflected by it. If the
chair behaved like a single microcosmic entity— like an atom of some kind—
things might be very different. It could be a chair one moment, a shimmering

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mass of waves and interference patterns the next, or perhaps both things at
once. Alternatively, if our atom-chair were to interact with a single photon, it
might suddenly change into another kind of chair, one of a different color
perhaps, or of a different materiality.

We noted previously how superconductivity belies experimental logic: the
conductor may suddenly and inexplicably change its state entirely. Under
normal conditions a superconductor is simply a mass of typical quanta:
protons, neutrons, and electrons; whereas in its supercooled state, the whole
entity subsequently begins to behave like a single unified system with quite
extraordinary properties. So superconductivity is in fact a paranormal
phenomenon. The conductor itself, although made of exactly the same stuff as
you or me, is a conduit, leading, quite literally, to a higher dimension, in
which a given electric current, in meeting absolutely zero resistance—the
ultimate passive state—can potentially flow on to infinity.

Admittedly this kind of observation still leaves us very little to go on in our
quest for evidence of psychic powers. But if today the paranormal is
conspicuous principally by its absence, this does not seem to have been the
case in ages long past. The scriptures, for example, by which I mean the
major bodies of religious and esoteric wisdom, all speak of the miraculous as
if, at one time, it was almost commonplace. Similarly, the legends and myths
surrounding the great civilizing heroes of the dawn of history—Osiris and
Thoth in Egypt; Viracocha, Quetzalcoatl, and Kukulkan in the Americas; the
Aryan Manu, Fu-hsi of Chinese tradition; or Orpheus and Amphion in Greek
legend—all feature these figures’ supernatural powers. Half men, half gods,
these civilizers could apparently move mountains. Certainly they must have
been tough cookies to have survived the most geocataclysmic period in the
history of Homo sapiens sapiens, not only the bitter climate of the last ice
age, but also its final, rapid meltdown and the subsequent catastrophic flood.

This alone is a remarkable achievement, but this giant of a race not only
outlived a seemingly endless hell on earth, they then went on to build like
giants, leaving a wealth of archeological evidence as proof of their still
unexplained mastery of stoneworking. Such individuals must have been the
most organized, resilient, and resourceful ever to have existed. No time then
for squabbles, fighting over possessions, petty neuroses, or living in the past.
Life was serious, and for a person to have survived the deluge would have
required, as a matter of course, nerves of steel, an unswerving will, a mind as
clear as crystal. A quantum mind, perhaps, the kind that sees the world—and
its pitfalls—non-locally: that is, from all sides at once, from “above,” so to
speak, from the plane of light, or even from the perspective of dimension six,
the ultimate vantage point.

What dangers might such a mind face? Possibly only one: the Fall
described in the Hebrew Scriptures and other ancient texts, the fall from

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grace, from overarching, “nonlocal” consciousness to the ordinary time-laden
psychological currency of today.

Significantly, there is an old Native American text indicating that the great
civilizers definitely did see things in a way very different from our own. This
passage comes from the Popul Vuh, the sacred book of the Maya. The italics
are my own:

They saw and instantly they could see far; they succeeded in seeing; they
succeeded in knowing all that there is in the world. The things hidden in the
distance they saw without first having to move. Great was their wisdom; their
sight reached to the forests, the rocks, the lakes, the seas, the mountains, and
the valleys . 1

This describes, quite clearly, perception of a nonlocal kind, a mind that
“sees” at a great distance as if there were no intervening space. Their sight
“reached to” everything, as if from all sides at once.

Upon first reading this text, I was immediately struck by the similarity
between the kind of “sight” with which the Mayan gods were empowered,
and the telepathic experiences of Ouspensky, during which, it may be
recalled, he was not only able to communicate with Gurdjieff, but also
simultaneously to “see” him sitting in his train compartment, heading for
Moscow.

The text of the Popul Vuh continues, describing the mysterious fall from
grace of this race of supermen, who had evidently displeased the gods. A
divine order was duly proclaimed: “Let their sight reach only to that which is
near; let them see only a little of the face of the earth .” 2 And then: “Their eyes
were covered and they could see only what was close; only that was clear to
them .” 3

But before the Fall, these people, according to legend, could not only see
non-locally, they also had awesome psychokinetic powers, induced through
special forms of music, with which they were able to move gigantic blocks of
stone as if they were made of polystyrene. There is no direct evidence to
support the mythmakers’ version of the methods used then, before even the
wheel and the pulley were invented. Nevertheless, according to widespread
archaeological evidence, ancient builders possessed a level of expertise that
seems eerily out of step with the established history of architecture.

Remember, in what are probably the oldest known buildings in Egypt—the
Sphinx and Valley Temples and the Oseirion temple near Abydos—the
average size of the limestone blocks is a staggering two hundred tons. These
enormous blocks have been positioned one on top of another with extreme
precision, yet the Sphinx enclosure, confined within an area enclosed in
natural bedrock from which the statue itself was carved, would have been too
small to admit a large number of workmen during construction of the adjacent

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temples. It is now accepted by the more progressive members of the
archaeological community—at least in private—that the Oseirion and the
temples of the Sphinx enclosure may predate the Fourth Dynasty by a
considerable length of time. It seems as if, the further back you go, the more
impressive and baffling the buildings are. Nevertheless, the Egyptians of the
Third and Fourth Dynasties, the successors of these mysterious master-
builders, also displayed spectacular stone-handling skills.

The Great Pyramid speaks volumes, of course, with its sheer magnitude
and precision. The finely dressed and precisely positioned granite blocks
hauled high up into the King’s Chamber each weigh upwards of thirty tons.
The chamber’s mathematical exactitude is also interesting, particularly in
light of the musical theory of transcendental evolution. Being exactly twice as
long as it is wide, it gives rise to the ratio 2:1, which is the ratio that defines
the first and last notes of the octave. Another interesting fact is that the GP
itself, as well as having the familiar classical pi relationship incorporated in
its dimensions and proportions, also appears to embody the “Greek” value of
phi, which naturally occurs in the relationship between the Great Pyramid’s
base and the length of its apothem or slope; that is, half the base length is in
the ratio 1:1.618 with the length of the apothem. Phi, like pi, is an irrational
number (1.61083); the geometrical proportion derived from it—known to the
Greeks as the Golden Section—was considered by the Pythagoreans to have a
particularly distinctive aesthetic quality, a visual harmony of great value when
expressed in architecture. It was subsequently incorporated in the structure of
the Parthenon, whose ruins even today inspire in us ah a deep sense of beauty
and harmonic proportion. The Greeks, of course, could feasibly have been
working from a long-extant blueprint, once the property of the ancient
Egyptians, and that, even then, if the Egyptians themselves are to be believed,
was a legacy from a much more remote era, called in the Pyramid Texts Zep
Tepi, the “First Time.”

A little later on we can take a closer look at this Golden Section, and we
shall see that phi, like pi, has applications way beyond the parameters of
geometry and architecture. We shah also see how, in light of the creation
process described by the Hermetic Code, there is a subtle but significant
connection between the two ratios.

It is now generally accepted that the dimensions of the so-called
sarcophagus in the King’s Chamber also incorporate exact mathematical
values and proportions: an internal volume of 1,166.4 liters and an external
volume of exactly double, 2,332.8 liters. Again, we can see here another
example of the 2:1 ratio found in the structure of the ubiquitous octave. This
remarkable artifact was apparently cut and hollowed from a single block of
exceptionally hard granite with measurable precision. How did the
stonemasons do this?

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As we noted in chapter 3, the archaeologist William Flinders Petrie was
impressed by the skill and expertise of the craftsmen responsible, but was at a
loss to explain how the work was carried out. He surmised that the
sarcophagus itself must have been cut out of the mother block with long
straight saws, perhaps with bronze blades tipped with jewels harder than
granite. However, as Petrie himself admitted, the only jewel hard enough to
cut granite so efficiently would have been diamond, which, as far we are
aware, was not known in Old Kingdom Egypt.

Petrie further puzzled over the method used to hollow out the sarcophagus,
proposing, from the evidence, that hollow, tubular “drills” up to 12.5 cm in
diameter were used to cut circular grooves in the granite, the cores of which
could then have been chiseled away with relative ease. Again, these strange
drills, powered by heaven knows what, are envisaged as having been jewel-
tipped. After examining a number of other drill cores collected at Giza, Petrie
estimated that the amount of pressure applied, shown by the speed at which
the drills had evidently cut through the granite, would have required a load of
at least one, or maybe two, tons.

Thus, according to Petrie, the ancient masons used tubular drills, their teeth
tipped with something as hard as diamond and applied with pressures of up to
two tons, revolving at speeds great enough to cut through granite as if it were
as soft as soapstone. As to how such devices were set and kept in motion,
Petrie could offer no explanation, but it would seem safe to assume that he
had firmly ruled out pedal power. In any case, wheels and pulleys were
supposedly unknown in ancient Egypt (an established archaeological “fact”
that might seem hard to reconcile with the use of high-powered, circular
drills). Somewhat mystifyingly, not a trace of any of these saws or drills has
ever been found.

Petrie was equally perplexed by a number of Fourth Dynasty diorite bowls
from Giza, on which, he observed, the engraved hieroglyphs had been drawn
with a remarkably fluid, free-flowing hand, showing no signs of having been
forcibly ground or scraped out. The lines of the inscriptions are extremely fine
—a fiftieth of an inch wide—indicating that the cutting tool must have had a
needle-sharp point. Bearing in mind that diorite is one of the hardest stones on
earth, so that the point of the instrument used must have been a good deal
harder—and again, supposedly applied with an enormous amount of pressure
—it is difficult to explain how such fine motifs were so easily and smoothly
inscribed. It is true that a modern tool could engrave designs on diorite with
relative ease, but such a process would not leave rough edges to the lines. On
the bowls identified by Petrie, however, there were such rough edges: the
diorite had been “ploughed out,” as if as soft as virgin soil.

Perhaps the most baffling examples of the Egyptian stonemason’s art are
the stone vases found in chambers underneath and around Zoser’s Step

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Pyramid at Saqqarah, many of which date from centuries before the Fourth
Dynasty. As I mentioned in chapter 3, Graham Hancock examined many of
these anomalous artifacts: some of them had long, thin, elegant necks and
widely flared interiors, often incorporating fully hollowed-out shoulders. As
Hancock says, this kind of workmanship must have been accomplished by the
use of some “as yet unimagined (and indeed almost unimaginable) tool.” 5
Such an instrument would have to have been narrow enough to pass through
the slender necks, strong enough to have scoured out the stone itself, while at
the same time capable of exerting precise upward and outward pressure in
order to shape the interior curves and shoulders. Hancock uses the word
scoured to describe how these vases might have been hollowed out, but it
would be interesting to see if the interior of the vessels, like the finely
grooved hieroglyphs on the diorite bowls, was in fact “ploughed out,” rather
as if the stone, at some stage in the process, had temporarily become soft,
pliable, fluid. But then, even if a tool for such a process had existed, this
would still not explain how the craftsmen were able to gauge the progress and
accuracy of their work, which proceeded, as it were, “in the dark,” inside the
stone.

The implications of all this are staggering, for we are not merely talking
here of a stone-carving technology greatly in advance of its day, but one that
is superior to our own. As Hancock says, no stone carver alive today would
be able to match the workmanship of these stone vases, even if he were using
the most advanced tungsten-carbide tools.

Speaking of which, whatever happened to all the tools that are supposed to
have been used by these preeminent artisans? As we have noted, no traces of
the long “bronze saws” have ever been unearthed in Egypt. The same applies
to the hardened, tubular “drills” supposedly used to hollow out great blocks of
granite. What is more, nothing approaching such devices has ever been
depicted in any tomb relief; neither have they been described or even
mentioned in any text.

And yet, the evidence that tools of this kind were used seems convincing.
Examining one particular drill core, Petrie noted that the spiral of the cut sank
one inch in a circumference of six inches, suggesting a rate of stone
“ploughing-out” that he described as astonishing.

Many features of the Great Pyramid itself are equally extraordinary. It is
extremely doubtful that even an army of modern stonemasons, using only
ropes, levers, ramps, and handheld tools, could ever match such architectural
mastery and precision. Measurements taken of its internal proportions and
angles, of external alignments and dimensions, have been described as
displaying a near-perfect symmetry. It should be remembered, however, that
the Giza plateau suffered a violent earthquake in the thirteenth century. It is
entirely conceivable, therefore, that prior to this the pyramid’s overall

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symmetry might, in fact, have been even more precise.

In the BBC publication Secrets of the Lost Empires, Mark Lehner,
described as one of the leading experts on the Giza Pyramids, says that the
Old Kingdom masons used only copper chisels and punches, even to dress the
harder granite and basalt blocks. His explanation as to how soft copper tools
(Petrie was unaware that bronze was not in use in Egypt prior to 2185 BCE)
could be used to cut and hollow out such incredibly hard stone is that the
workmen probably used quartz sand in a wet slurry: it was actually the quartz
that did the cutting. As evidence he cites the discovery of some cuts in the
basalt of the Khufu/Cheops Mortuary Temple that still retain a dried mixture
of quartz sand and gypsum, apparently tainted green from the copper saws.
This proposition is almost, but to my mind not quite, feasible, for we would
have to envisage a very large number of copper saws used in the cutting of
even one megalithic block, as the quartz would have to have cut both ways,
eating away the much softer copper tools a great deal faster than the granite
was cut. Also, the presence of so much wet slurry in a hand-powered cutting
process would surely have had a deleterious effect on the precision of the
work. The near-perfect symmetry of the granite sarcophagus in the King’s
Chamber makes one wonder whether it really could have been achieved in
this way. Furthermore, there is still the question of Petrie’s estimation of the
speed at which some of the granite drill cores had been cut, not to mention the
extreme amount of pressure that must have been applied to the point of
contact. As for how the engraved diorite bowls already discussed, and the
remarkable stone vases described by Hancock, were produced, we have yet to
hear of a plausible explanation.

Making no mention of these annoying little anomalies, Lehner describes
how he conducted field experiments to demonstrate how he thinks the
pyramids themselves were built. With a crew of forty-four, including a master
stonemason, it was intended within a six-week time-scale to quarry and
assemble 186 limestone blocks into a small pyramid, nine meters at the base
and six meters high. Of course, modern construction equipment was
employed in the operation. Flat-bed diesel trucks transported the blocks,
weighing from three-quarters of a ton to three tons apiece, and a massive
earth-mover was used as a crane to lift and maneuver them, slung from steel
cables. In addition, the workmen used iron hammers, chisels, and levers,
whereas the Egyptians, according to Lehner, had only copper tools and
wooden levers.

In the event, Lehner and his colleagues did manage, within the six-week
deadline, to construct a crudely dressed pyramid consisting of the specified
number of blocks. This prompted Lehner to conclude confidently that the
Pyramids of Giza, spectacular though they may be, were “very human
monuments, created through long experience and tremendous skill, but

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without any kind of secret sophistication.” 6 At no time did the project attempt
to cut and dress granite blocks in the manner suggested by Lehner as that
most likely to have been used by the Egyptians. It might be useful to see a
practical demonstration as to how this was accomplished, not with iron or
even bronze tools, but with the copper implements supposedly used by
Khufu’s masons. I find it hard to accept that relatively soft copper tools, even
if used in conjunction with quartz sand in slurry, could ever cut efficiently
through just about the hardest substances on Earth. Unless, that is, there was
another, hidden factor.

According to Lehner, the Great Pyramid itself, a “very human” monument
as he calls it, was built within Khufu’s forty-year reign. So let’s just think
about this for a moment: forty years seems, on the face of it, a very long time
for the construction of a single building. But, quite apart from the granite
blocks, there are approximately 2,300,000 individual blocks of limestone
incorporated in this structure, each weighing, on average, two and a half tons.

So, if all 2,300,000 of these blocks were quarried, transported, and set into
position in the allotted time (40 years, or 14,600 days), then the rate of laying
down—2,300,000 divided by 14,600—is 157 blocks per day. Dividing 157 by
a working day of, say, 12 hours gives a construction schedule of 13 blocks
every hour, one set in position every four and a half minutes or so, nonstop,
that is incessantly, day in, day out, often in extreme heat, through all four
seasons, for forty continuous years.

Already the incredible seems to have become a reality, but we haven’t yet
finished piling up the statistics. For example, it is unlikely that the building
work was maintained at a constant rate for twelve months of the year. The
annual flooding of the Nile would not only have hindered work on the Giza
plateau, it would also have demanded that a substantial proportion of the
available workforce be employed in the seasonal agricultural projects
necessary to sustain themselves.

So let’s reasonably assume that the builders worked constantly, not for
twelve, but for eight months of the year or, alternatively, eight hours a day.
We now have to envisage them laying down more than nineteen blocks every
hour—about one every three minutes. But even then, if Lehner and his
colleagues are correct in their assessments of the time involved and the
volume of work done, we could quite reasonably halve this allotted time yet
again. The reason? It is assumed that the limestone blocks (not to mention the
thirty-to fifty-ton granite blocks situated high up inside the core masonry)
were hauled up a wraparound spiral ramp built from gypsum and limestone
chips—in mass almost equivalent to that of the pyramid itself. So, while the
builders were busily hauling up and laying down the blocks, others were
presumably adding millions of tons of extra material to the very same ramp in
order to increase its height.

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Remember there were no cranes, earth-movers, or diesel trucks, no cables,
no iron tools—only ropes and wooden levers. As for lunch breaks, vacations,
strikes, and all the other very human needs of a large workforce, there seems
to have been little room left for such time-wasting in the life of the Fourth
Dynasty pyramid builder.

Given all this remarkable statistical data, one is inevitably left wondering
what kind of “human” enterprise we are considering here. It is not, in my
view, one that could be matched today, muscle for muscle, stone for stone.
Even if we doubled the proposed construction period to an unlikely eighty
years, we would still have to envisage the blocks of the Great Pyramid being
set into position at an unbelievable rate of, at the very least, nine or ten every
single working hour. Lehner’s team, if we include the accepted periods of
respite, managed to lay down 186 blocks into the form of a very crude
pyramid in six weeks, or 1,008 hours. This is the equivalent of laying down
about one block every five hours or so, or one block every three hundred
minutes. From the statistical evidence alone, we can see that the difference
between the rate that the Egyptians laid down their blocks and that of
Lehner’s team makes the efforts of the latter seem nothing short of pathetic.
Remember also that, unlike Lehner’s team, the Egyptians had only copper
tools and wooden levers, and supposedly had to build and maintain the
massive spiral ramp up which the blocks were to be hauled. At the same time
they needed to ensure that the pyramid itself, completely enveloped by this
alleged ramp, was kept in perfect alignment, not only with the cardinal points,
but also with the key stars above the Nile Delta. In addition, the workmen
also had to ensure that the angle of each slope remained at 51 degrees, 51
minutes, which is the angle that would naturally result if the relation of the
pyramid’s height to the perimeter of its base was exactly the same as the ratio
between the radius of a circle and its circumference.

In spite of its almost unbelievable level of precision and craftsmanship, we
can still agree with Lehner on one fundamental point: the Great Pyramid is a
very human monument. What he fails to emphasize, however, is that there are
many possible degrees of “humanness,” and that the degree of evolutionary
development attained by the Fourth Dynasty Egyptians must, on the basis of
the evidence they have left behind them, have been of an order in certain
ways vastly more advanced than our own. We are not talking here simply
about organizational skills and technological ability, but rather of the
fundamental physical, emotional, and mental capacities of thousands, possibly
tens of thousands, of highly developed, highly coordinated individuals, men
who must have been in possession of long-lost powers of the human will.

Skeptics may argue, along with Lehner perhaps, that this is not so, that,
given time, manpower, and finance—and the will, of course— modern man
could replicate anything the Egyptians accomplished, even without modern

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equipment. But think again: this is a single building enterprise involving
about six million tons of limestone and granite blocks, supposedly quarried
entirely by hand, transported in barges, and then physically hauled up a
narrow ramp, with the blocks being carefully positioned at the rate of several
every working hour, eight hours daily, month in, year out, for four whole
decades. I would suggest that modern man, if he were to attempt such a feat,
would first have to rediscover certain skills and attributes that the Egyptians
had and we definitely have not. As individuals, the people directly involved in
the project must have been more than just physically fit: they must have been
capable of sustaining their incredible physical output for very long periods,
continually, incessantly.

So, exactly what kind of physical power was it that these masons were able
to exert? They were not giants, after all: there are no broad-shouldered titans
among the teams of workmen depicted in tomb reliefs.

We have already mentioned Colin Wilson’s suggestion that the “group-
mind” technique might have been instinctively applied—a combination of
sheer determination of will and effort, of a belief that the gods could make the
blocks lighter (encouraged, perhaps, by priests chanting), and of a concerted
concentration on the maneuver in hand. We can add to this another possible
factor acknowledged by everyone— the familiar phenomenon of what is
known as second wind. We know that athletes involved in prolonged physical
events—marathons, intensive tests of endurance, and so on—can sometimes
experience a sudden transformation in their energy output and rhythm of
movement, whereby they can breeze along maintaining the same momentum,
but with apparently very little physical effort. Like superconductors, they
suddenly reach a stage where they can “change gear,” and subsequently
continue to function at a much more efficient rate. In superconductors, of
course, the switch from one state to another is an ultimate transition,
equivalent to accelerating up to the speed of light in the time it takes to blink.
Second wind appears to be a similar phenomenon, much less of a quantum
leap, perhaps, than the transformation from ordinary state to superconducting
state, but certainly a transcendental step in the right direction. If we suppose,
therefore, that those involved in the actual construction of the Great Pyramid
were able to induce in themselves, at will, something very like this, then
possibly the cumulative effect of an entire, close-knit team of men working at
this much more efficient rate might be sufficient in itself to “lighten their
loads” considerably—even without divine intervention. Then again, second
wind itself might be just one of many states of “humanness” attainable
through the development of individual will. There might be a third degree, a
fourth, and so on.

The final possibility, understandably too far-out to be taken seriously by
most modern investigators, is that there may have been a genuine psychic

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factor involved—at least in some of the more difficult and demanding tasks.
We are talking now of real, direct, psychokinetic effects in which the mind
itself somehow resonates at frequencies powerful enough directly to influence
physical quantum systems en masse, to make hard stone temporarily fluid for
example.

As we have noted, yogis have consistently claimed that such things are
indeed possible. Yogananda went much further, claiming that physical objects
can actually be materialized at will—provided one has a will, of course—an
idea that, as we have seen, has recently been touched upon by the modern
researchers mentioned in previous chapters: Stanislav Grof, for example, who
has tried to visualize a process whereby the mind influences the “generative
matrix” of things, or David Bohm, who suggested that psychokinetic effects
might be set in motion by individuals focusing on “meanings” compatible
with resonances underlying the wave-functions controlling all material
systems.

But, of course, even if material systems can somehow be influenced by
psychokinetic energy, hollowing out the widely flared interiors of stone vases
with narrow swanlike necks would still indicate a degree of craftsmanship
incomprehensible to us. Let’s say, for example, that we gave a modern
craftsman a relatively soft material, like graphite, say, or even wood, and
commissioned him or her to replicate, by any conceivable technological
means, one of the stone vases examined by Hancock. Could it be done?
Possibly, eventually, but such a task would inevitably involve the use of
electrically powered machinery, perhaps fiber optics of the kind used in
microsurgery for seeing inside the vessel, together with remote sensors to
gauge the accuracy of the work in progress— and probably other custom-
made tools of a kind not yet invented. If we were really to put our
hypothetical craftsman to the test and ask him or her to equal the skill and
dexterity of the ancient Egyptians by fashioning a vase made of actual diorite
or some other extremely hard stone, we might even imagine the additional
application of some form of ultrasonic cutting mechanism like that discussed
by the modern toolmaker Christopher Dunn. And all this, remember, to create
something that “primitive” man made by the thousands in the third
millennium BCE, or even earlier.

So we have a whole array of mystifying evidence, all of it “written” in
stone, that the orthodox archaeologist is unable to explain satisfactorily.
However, in other evidence painstakingly “dug up” and then promptly
disregarded by historians—namely the legends of the builder gods of ancient
cultures—we are told time and again that “magic” was involved in the
handling of stone, and that this magic somehow involved the use of music.
Clearly, if there is any truth in these myths, we are considering here the use of
“tools” quite unlike anything we know of or can reasonably imagine—

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mysterious musical devices with magical or supernatural powers. As we have
noted, the only explanation currently on offer is that these techniques had a
strong psychological element, perhaps something of the kind alluded to by
Grof and Bohm, mental tools that Gurdjieff described as vibrations—“inner
octaves”—and that his Hindu contemporary Yogananda called “creative light
rays.” And music and light are, of course, two of the most fundamental
manifestations of the Hermetic Code, the universal symmetry first revealed by
the builders themselves.

As we saw in the previous chapter, according to The Tibetan Book of the
Dead, the “desire body” of the individual—what Rodney Collin called the
soul, or the molecular body—can pass effortlessly right through rock masses,
boulders, and mountains. Presumably this would also include stone vases,
sarcophagi, and even great, monumental pyramids. We, of course, have no
proof that the soul even exists, never mind that it might be capable of
“miraculous action.” But then, as Ouspensky said, phenomena of a higher
order cannot be perceived in ordinary states of consciousness, so even if the
world is positively teeming with these molecular shapeshifters floating
effortlessly through anything that we would call “material,” who in this
present era of scientific rationalism would ever know?

The Tibetan Book of the Dead, however, was compiled possibly two
thousand years before the modern scientific quest, before the tentative and
guarded ideas of such as Copernicus or Kepler, Galileo, and Newton began
seeping in through the cracks of the old, crumbling structures of the formal
papal dogma. The Tibetan Book of the Dead is traditionally considered to be
a description of the properties of the soul observed by “souls” who had
personally experienced such “miracles” between reincarnations, like the
Buddha himself. In any event, however we view its validity, the assertion that
the “desire body” of the individual is a reality is quite straightforward and
unambiguous.

We can speculate further, deeper. If these reported sightings of the soul are
indeed valid and the “desire body” is endowed with what is described as
“miraculous action,” then what might the entity at the evolutionary stage
described in The Tibetan Book of the Dead as the “clear-light of the ultimate
reality”—Collin’s “electronic” body—be capable of? According to the
Tibetans, at this stage in the cycle, anything is possible.

Could it be, then, that the marvelous Egyptian artifacts found at Saqqarah
were created by supernatural means, that is by people whose minds, as Collin
says, were capable of “splitting the atom” and internally generating
psychokinetic energies that could somehow temporarily neutralize the
electromagnetic force, thus making granite or diorite soft enough to “plough
through” with any moderately rigid instrument? Sadly, we may never know.
We have the evidence, much of it inexplicable, that way back then something

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odd was in the air: exactly what, we can only speculate.

It seems reasonable to suppose, however, that the extraordinary mental and
physical powers of the Egyptian elite were in some way linked to what
Gurdjieff would call their level of being. As we have seen throughout the
whole of this book, all roads eventually lead to the Giza necropolis, so it is to
the creators of it that we must inevitably look for a final answer.

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“Al-Chem”—the Egyptian Way

E xactly how the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom attained such a high
degree of physical and mental development is, of course, a matter of
conjecture. My own view, discussed in some detail in The Infinite Harmony,
is that they did this by following to the letter the original precepts of Thoth, a
doctrine that describes a process of self-development enacted according to
musical principles, resulting in the creation of a very special type of
individual. However this may have been conducted in practical ways, it is
clear that the system employed by the ancient Egyptians really worked, for
these people succeeded in uniting harmoniously like no other nation in
history. They were, as the Greeks would have termed it, homonoic in the
fullest sense, people entirely of one mind, singularly dedicated to the task of
transmitting their highly advanced knowledge out into the collective
consciousness of the whole of mankind. And in this, as history bears witness,
they succeeded admirably, for the Hermetic Code itself, the symbolic key to
the Egyptian view of creation, subsequently became the blueprint from which
all of the major religious doctrines of the world have been drawn.

Historians tell us that to the ancient Egyptians religion was an entire way of
life, a mode of being quite unlike any code of conduct practiced today. The
concept of an afterlife, of an existence in the celestial home of the gods, was
very much more than just an imaginative belief system sustained by blind
faith and primitive superstition. To these people, the afterlife was an
attainable reality, one that could be realized by following the primary
example of Osiris and Thoth and the many other deities described as the
founding fathers of Egyptian culture and religion.

The symbolism invoked in the myth of the Judgment Hall of the Dead, in
which Thoth/Hermes is a pivotal figure, explains the Egyptian concept of
individual harmony as a passport to the afterlife very clearly.

In the collection of papyri known for convenience as The Egyptian Book
of the Dead, it is said that the ka, or the spiritual double of the deceased,
wanders through the darkness of the underworld in search of the Judgment
Hall and takes on the name of Osiris in the hope of being restored to life, like

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Osiris himself. The subject then enters the vast Judgment Hall, where Osiris,
described as having ten times the stature of the dead man’s spiritual double,
sits ready to oversee the proceedings. Between them is a giant pair of scales.
Subsequently Anubis, the jackal-headed god (usually associated with Sirius,
the “Dog Star”), and the hawk-headed Horns, son of Osiris (associated with
the sun), wait to superintend the ritual. Thoth, the ibis-headed scribe (whose
symbol is the moon) stands in attendance ready to record the result.

As we see, the symbolism described so far is unmistakably hermetic, an
expression of the universal law of triple creation, the same law that was later
encoded in toto in the later Revelation of St. John, who depicted the Woman
in Heaven, the queen of creation, wearing a crown of stars (Anubis), a robe
fashioned from the fabric of the sun (Horns), with her feet resting squarely on
the moon (Thoth).

To continue with the underworld ritual, a single feather, symbol of the
goddess Ma’at, whose name means “truth,” is then placed on one pan of the
scales, and the dead person’s “heart” on the other. Only if the two pans
remain perfectly balanced, that is, only if the individual’s “heart” is in perfect
harmony with Truth/Ma’at, can the ka win the favor of Osiris and ultimately
achieve immortality.

So this concept of universal harmony describes the principle of acting out
harmonious sequences of conduct and development in space and time. This
was the central theme of the “Egyptian way”: the science of music, of
alchemy, the way of the gods. As we have noted, this “way” was reflected
quite clearly in the three major creation myths of the Old Kingdom,
Memphite, Hermopolitan, and Heliopolitan, which all describe the miraculous
appearance of an enlightened group of eight principal deities. Exactly the
same underlying format, namely the octave, was also the basis of the annual
performance of the sacred Osirian mysteries, the first “passion play,”
traditionally reenacted in the form of an eight-act drama. Indeed, it is very
likely that everything the Egyptians did, whether building pyramids, enacting
sacred rituals, or simply walking down a causeway, was invariably performed
to the accompaniment of this universal music.

Even to this day, many orthodox Egyptologists still refuse openly to admit
that the pi symmetry was known and used by the ancient Egyptians. In fact,
we have persistently been told that they had no mathematics as such—a claim
that might seem hard to reconcile with the absolute geometrical symmetry and
precision of the Great Pyramid and with the exact mathematical relationships
evident in the King’s Chamber and the granite sarcophagus. Curiously, the
dimensions of the Great Pyramid yield proportions with a value closer to
“mathematical” pi (3.14159) than to the “classical” approximation (3.142857
rec.). However, with the original casing blocks now missing, and the whole
structure shaken by a major earthquake several hundred years ago, it is

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impossible to determine whether the original angle of slope was intended to
express the more accurate mathematical value of pi or its symbolic
equivalent.

In any event, it was the classical convention that played the key role in
Egyptian metaphysics. As we have seen, the Egyptian “model of the gods”
was based on the phenomenon of light itself (after which, remember, the
Great Pyramid was originally named), which modern science has since shown
to be an electromagnetic manifestation of pi. It is an octave of resonance, with
eight fundamental divisions in its overall structure: red, orange, yellow, green,
blue, indigo, violet, and, of course, the transcendental white. But it also has
three “primary” wavelengths: red, yellow, and blue, frequencies that make it
possible to subdivide further this fundamental octave into three subsidiary
scales, that is into a tripleoctave format. Therefore pi, like light itself, is
everywhere.

And so this universal symmetry—the Hermetic Code—was seen both as a
model of perfection and as a description of a precise mode of being, an
essentially musical system of conduct through which consciousness is, in
effect, able to complete the course of its development and so transcend onto
higher dimensions, greater “scales” of psychological “resonance.” We have
already noted a practical application of this “music in action” in the records of
Old Kingdom administrative procedure, where the vizier to the pharaoh, the
high priest and keeper of the mysteries, was given direct control over all
twenty-two “nomes” (districts) of Upper or Southern Egypt, while his deputy,
still perhaps undergoing various intermediate stages of initiation, was given
subsidiary control over just seven nomes.

This unique “musical” relationship between the two priests is particularly
interesting, because it brings us back to an idea discussed in earlier chapters,
in which I proposed that all creative processes, whether they occur below in
the microcosmic world of the self-replicating cell, or above in the double
helix of the mind of the shaman or master mason, are, in fact, organic in
nature. Remember, hermetic is genetic. It follows, therefore, that the process
of passing on knowledge from one individual to another, from teacher to
pupil, master mason to apprentice, was, in a very real sense, an organic
system, one that involved disciplined, harmonious conduct and, of course, the
subsequent systematic dissemination of the “immaculate” concepts by which
they were guided. Being, as it were, “psychologically sound,” these original
concepts were quite naturally replicated faithfully, “religiously,” in every
succeeding generation. Thus, despite two interim periods of destructive social
anarchy, the Egyptian way of life continued virtually uninterrupted for three
long millennia. This longevity, I believe, is the result of what is, in reality, an
organic process, whereby the original, highly potent ideas of the gods of the
First Time, exactly like successful genes in the biological heritage of

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dominant, evolving species, were repeatedly and faithfully “copied” in the
evolving metaphysical “gene pool” of the collective Egyptian psyche.

We know that in the natural course of Darwinian evolution successful
genes can survive all manner of catastrophes: ice ages, rapid meltdowns,
deluges, earthquakes, cometary impacts. In the same way, the hermetic ideas
we are dealing with here—the metaphysical equivalent of successful genes—
have survived all kinds of social upheaval: wars, dark ages, periods of total
ignorance and barbarism, inquisitions, revolutions, and so on. Therefore we
are not speaking in metaphor: we are talking about organic processes of
creation and evolution, both microcosmic and macrocosmic, which are
identical in every way, with a difference in scale only. This, of course, is
precisely what is being referred to in the hermetic dictum quoted many times
before: “As above, so below.” We can take this quite literally: the genetic
code of the microcosm is the medium through which greater organisms
evolve, and exactly the same pattern is repeated in the “cosmos” above, where
the Hermetic Code describes the process by which consciousness grows and
develops. There is a passage in a collection of post-Christian texts known as
the Corpus Hermeticum that comes close to expressing the same idea. The
god Thoth is here speaking to his son, Tat: “My son, Wisdom is the womb,
conceiving in secret, and the seed is the true good.” 1

As I have said, I believe that practically everything the Old Kingdom
Egyptians did was performed to the accompaniment, so to speak, of the
esoteric music composed by the founding fathers of Egyptian culture, the so-
called gods of the First Time. This implies, of course, that the entire Great
Pyramid construction project itself was also conducted in accordance with the
same principles. In other words, the whole project must have developed
organically, which is to say that the Great Pyramid in effect “grew” out of the
collective efforts of these very special people. We know that living organisms
developing from microscopic embryos increase their bulk and complexity
exponentially, two cells dividing into four, four into eight, and so on.
Possibly, therefore, the building of the Great Pyramid began relatively slowly
at first but, as the construction workers became more and more adept at their
craft, more “in tune” with the tasks in hand and with one another, the rate at
which the blocks were laid down would have increased accordingly, perhaps
building up to a final crescendo of activity of a kind that we today can barely
imagine. Indeed, were it not for the hard stone evidence at Giza staring us in
the face—nearly two and a half million pieces of it—most people of a rational
turn of mind would consider such a feat improbable, at least within the time
span allowed by orthodox Egyptologists.

We have already established that the exact number of years taken to enact
this remarkably harmonious performance is unknown, as indeed are the
methods used, so it is not possible to explore an incidental pet theory of mine,

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which is that there might have been some sort of correlation between, on the
one hand, the successive stages of construction and development of the
structure and, on the other, the harmonic ratios of musical theory.
Nevertheless, if the whole project, from start to finish, is viewed—as the
Egyptians viewed almost everything—as a hermetic phenomenon, then we
can say that the Great Pyramid itself, the first and foremost of the seven
wonders of the ancient world, also represents the final “note” of the
completed scale of enactment. And the final note of any major scale, as we
know from musical theory, has transcendental properties, because it is also
the first note of the greater scale above. In exactly this way, the Pyramid of
Khufu/Cheops can in fact be regarded as a genuine transcendental
phenomenon, whose universally harmonious proportions and alignments are,
even today, five thousand years after they were created, striking strangely
familiar chords in the minds of anyone prepared to take time and listen.

So we see that the Great Pyramid is in reality much more than a mere
building. It is a life-bearing, organic phenomenon, an “immaculately
conceived,” metaphysical “gene strand” of extraordinary resilience and
potency, in which is encoded the secret of life itself.

I certainly don’t expect a favorable response from the orthodox Egyptology
establishment regarding my musical/organic interpretation of the “Egyptian
way.” But this does not concern me unduly. The important point is to get
one’s ideas aired, to “sow the seeds,” and then let nature take its course—a
process in which I have a great deal of faith. If one ends up as no more than a
weed in Eden, there is still the possibility of a flowering of some kind. Surely
this is better than sowing nothing at all.

So, while I may not be “in sync” with orthodoxy—or even, for that matter,
with the ill-defined group of “New Age” thinkers at the cutting edge of the
Great Debate—everyone seems to agree on one fundamental and very
important point, which is that the Egyptian civilization was unique and very
special. Even orthodox historians are given to using superlatives and poetic
metaphor to describe the works of the first masons of this remarkable culture.

John Romer, for example, one of the most respected authorities on ancient
Egypt, describes the pyramids in a way I find particularly apt in respect of the
ideas discussed in this book: “the nuclear reactors of ancient Egypt, the throne
of the sun itself.” 2

In a sense, of course, there is more truth in this statement than Romer
himself would care to acknowledge, for the Great Pyramid— “The Lights”—
is indeed a nucleus of creative, intelligent data, an undiminishing beacon,
whose illuminating beams of metaphysical “light” are, even to this day,
radiating constantly out into the darker world of the ordinary human psyche.

As suggested in a previous chapter, the Giza necropolis was designed as a
mirror image of the sky above the Nile Delta, and the Great Pyramid itself, as

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well as being the repository of the wisdom of Thoth, also functioned as a kind
of ceremonial launchpad for the ascending, star-bound soul of the initiate.
This vital connection with the heavenly sphere, the stellar scale of existence,
is generally accepted by everyone. Romer himself expresses it: “By piling
form on form the Egyptians had created a shape so dramatic that, in unison
with its commanding position at the horizon, it joined heaven to earth, earth to
heaven.” 3

In certain texts, the pyramids are sometimes referred to as the “Mounds of
Horns”—an understandable name, given the fact that Horns himself was
essentially a solar deity. There is one verse of the Pyramid Texts that
describes how Horns, Osiris, and other mythical deities first initiated this
whole process of transcendental evolution. “There come to you ... the gods
who are in the sky, and the gods who are on earth. They make support for you
upon their arms; may you ascend to the sky and mount upon it in this its name
of ‘Ladder.’” 4

The “Ladder” in question is, of course, the ladder later perceived by the
Hebrew Scriptures patriarch Jacob, the “rainbow covenant” of the Israelites,
the phenomenon of light.

The Egyptians, it seems, had realized long ago that light is the vehicle of
consciousness, the medium through which the mind is able to transcend on to
the stellar scale of existence. As I have said, they did not simply believe that
this was so; they knew it, because they had firsthand experience of heaven.
How else could they have possibly come to terms with such mind-boggling
concepts as timelessness and infinity, concepts that, even in the earliest
periods, were an integral part of Egyptian metaphysics, as the passage quoted
in chapter 2 from the Old Kingdom poem referring to the godking clearly
shows: “His life-span is eternity, the borders of his powers are infinity.”

It should be noted that the relatively recent ancestors of the author of this
verse were supposedly primitive farmers, and that Egyptian civilization at this
time was allegedly barely a couple of centuries old—younger, in fact, than
our own. Yet here we have a scribe contemplating ideas of such an exalted
and sophisticated nature that, were you to attempt to discuss them today with
your neighbor, you might predictably be met with, at best, a glazed
expression. Curiously however, in scientific circles— among quantum
physicists, astrophysicists, and the like—such concepts as eternity—a
timeless dimension—and the infinite, spaceless realm of the nonlocal,
quantum field are common currency. Similarly, if one were able somehow to
travel at the speed of light and so see the world through the “eyes” of the
Holy Ghost—the photon quantum—the “heavenly” realm of the Egyptian
god-king would spring magically into view. Time would be perceived to
dissolve into eternity, and space would enfold into a nonlocal world of the

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kind observed by Ouspensky, with no borders, no “sides” to it.

Another significant feature of Egyptian metaphysics that has a distinctly
modern ring to it is the idea of the constant squared being the key to all
creative processes. In chapter 5, I discussed briefly the mathematical trick
devised by Einstein’s one-time tutor, Herman Minkowski, by which he used
the value of the square of the constant (speed of light) as a means of
determining the amount of pure energy stored in any given mass. As we have
seen, this idea seems to have been uncannily foreshad-owed by Egyptian
metaphysicians, who associated “The Lights”—the Great Pyramid—with
what was to become known in Ptolemaic Egypt as the Magic Square of
Mercury and the number 2,080, the sum of all the numbers from 1 to 64.
Sixty-four is the square of the constant number, 8, the number of full notes in
the major musical scale and the number of gods involved in the early myths
concerning creation. And today, of course, we find that sixty-four also is the
maximum number of RNA triplet-codon combinations comprising the genetic
code, the symmetry employed by DNA in the creation of all known forms of
life. Furthermore, it is surely no coincidence that the Hermetic Code itself, the
classical convention 22/7, can be further subdivided into three inner formulae,
thus producing from the original “triple octave” a composite figure of nine
octaves, sixty-four notes. As we noted also in chapter 4, this same number has
even cropped up in the superstring theory of subatomic quanta, which are
described rather mystifyingly as one-dimensional “strings” of vibrating
energy, and which are theorized as having 64 degrees of movement associated
with them.

The number 64 appears also in other ancient number systems. In the tarot
for example, there are fifty-six Minor Arcana cards (the number cards) and
twenty-two in the Major Arcana (the picture cards). The Major Arcana is a
symbolic representation of the triple octave, an expression of the formula pi.
And according to the law of octaves, this triple octave is also, on another
scale, a single octave comprising eight fundamental notes. If we subsequently
add these eight fundamental notes on to the Minor Arcana figure, we are left
with the magical sixty-four. Then we have the I Ching, of course, which I
discussed in the introduction of this book—an exact blueprint of the genetic
code itself, with its sixty-four hexagrams and eight fundamental trigrams.
Another interesting example is the old British measure of ground area—the
acre—640 of which constitute a square mile.

In the last chapter I mentioned the “golden mean” proportion, denoted by
the Greek letter phi, which naturally occurs in the relationship between the
Great Pyramid’s base and the length of its apothem or slope; that is, half the
base length is in the ratio 1:1.618 with the length of the apothem. Like pi, phi
is a naturally occurring ratio. It is expressed in a well-known series of
numbers known today as the Fibonacci series, named after the thirteenth-

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century mathematician who first noted them. Each number in the series is the
sum of the two preceding ones, like so: 1 + 1 = 2, 2 + 1 = 3, 3 + 2 = 5, 5 + 3 =
8, 8 + 5 = 13, followed by 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, and so on to infinity. If we
divide any given number with the one preceding it, an approximate value for
phi is obtained, which is usually rounded off to 1.618. So, for example, 233
divided by 144 gives 1.618055555556. The higher the numbers used, the
greater the accuracy obtained for the value of phi.

We noted previously how this proportion has a distinctive aesthetic quality
when incorporated in architecture, of which the Parthenon and the Great
Pyramid itself are the best-known examples. But there is also another
significant aspect of the golden mean proportion, one that has a direct bearing
on the central theory of this book. It seems that phi, like pi, also manifests in
the natural, organic world, the world created by the genetic/Hermetic Code.
As examples of this, we see the developmental stages of the spiral seed-
patterns of the fir cone and the sunflower. Any two of these stages taken
together always correspond with two consecutive numbers of the Fibonacci
series. The same is true of the spiral growth pattern of the nautilus shell. The
point is that this phi relationship as it manifests in the organic world is
intrinsically connected with the growth and development of spirals, helices, of
which the most prominent in the whole of nature is, of course, DNA. And
DNA, remember, is composed of precisely sixty-four components. We should
note also that all of the other “life forms” discussed in previous chapters—
principally the four-dimensional structure of the human brain and of the
“solar” and the “galactic” helix—are all spirals. Possibly there are harmonic
geometrical and mathematical patterns in the development and growth of all
of these helical structures, but this is a question that requires more space to
investigate than I can currently afford.

For me, I think the most impressive feature of this Egyptian world-view, of
an infinite realm inhabited by the gods above, is the fact that these people
appear to have actually devised a way for individuals to experience this
alternative reality for themselves, to become “gods” in their own right. We
are referring here, of course, to the way of the alchemist described by the
theory of transcendental evolution, a theory based on the concept of
harmonizing one’s inner faculties according the principles of musical theory,
and of striking metaphysical “notes” up into greater “scales” of existence.

Surely even the most skeptical observers would have to admit that the
formulation of an idea as farreaching as this, one that has practical as well as
theoretical applications, is in every sense a remarkable achievement. Indeed,
as I said in my last book, the Hermetic Code itself is possibly the brightest
idea ever conceived by man, the original “immaculate conception.” As such,
this concept represents an intellectual advancement of utterly staggering
proportions, one which, in terms of the kind of natural selective evolution

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envisaged by neo-Darwinists, can accurately be described as a genuine
macromutation of the hominid mind.

To summarize: in my view the Egyptians of the early dynasties were a
giant of a race, people who walked the earth with their feet firmly on the
ground, but whose minds and spirits knew no physical boundaries. They
existed in the infinite cosmic ocean; they were “quantum tunnellers,”
“superconductors,” denizens of the plane of light above and of the quantum
field—the “underworld”—below.

And their secret? How did they gain access to the nonlocal dimension so
effectively? How did they become conscious to such a degree that they were
able to see the universe from all sides at once, from above and below, inside
and out?

The myths tell us quite clearly that they did this by adopting the harmonic
principles of music as a code of conduct, a systematic, “religious” method of
harmonious psychological development, the original tenets of which were
ingeniously encoded in the “immaculate” pi convention. This, surely, is the
mother and father of all disciplines. It is alchemy, the “Egyptian way,” the
science of the followers of the enigmatic Osiris and Thoth, civilizers of “the
First Time,” who taught that all creative, life-bearing processes, including the
ultimate flowering of human consciousness, are products of the action of the
forces described by the two fundamental laws of nature—the law of three
forces and the law of octaves. The law of three, as we have seen, states that
every-thing created is the result of the action of three forces: active, passive,
and neutral. This is, I think, precisely what lay behind the symbolism of the
three major deities of the Egyptian pantheon, the origin of the all-embracing
trinity, with Osiris (male, active), Isis (female, passive), and Horns, the law-
conformable (neutral) product of the union of the first two. The second
fundamental law, the law of octaves, states that all things created are
composed within of eightfold symmetries— hence the broader Egyptian
pantheon of eight principal gods, said to have appeared simultaneously (non-
locally?) on the fabled “Island of Flame.”

THE FINAL ANSWER

The Egyptians are believed to have had a national motto, which inLatin
translates as memento mori, “remember you must die.” The word die is
generally taken literally, but I suspect that there was more to it than that. After
all, these people did not believe in the total extinction of the human being.
They believed fervently in a life after death, a life among the stars, with
Osiris, Isis, Horns, Thoth, and all the rest. So why did their national motto not
reflect this belief? Why not “remember you can live forever?” One can only
assume that these people did not need reminding of what to them was the self-

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evident reality of the afterlife. Old Kingdom Egyptians were almost totally
preoccupied with it, as the myths and the precise, star-bound alignments of
their architecture clearly show. The reference to “dying,” therefore, may have
some other, more esoteric meaning, and I suspect that this was precisely the
same meaning as that alluded to in the passages from Gurdjieff’s book of
aphorisms mentioned in the last chapter, one of which read, “When a man
awakes he can die; when he dies he can be born.” Memento mori, therefore,
was probably intended to remind initiates not of their mortality, but of the
way in which immortality can be achieved; that is, by dying to the illusory,
material world, by regularly adopting a passive role in the cosmic scheme of
things. There is a well-known biblical quotation that expresses the very same
principle: “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth
alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” The organic inference here is
particularly appropriate, because genetic processes, as we have seen, are
hermetic; therefore “fruits” of any kind, whether above in the mind or below
in the living cell, are created in exactly the same alchemical way.

So “dying” in life (meditating, making oneself receptive to greater cosmic
influences) was seen as a way of preparing individuals for death as we think
of it, a natural event, which to the Egyptians was seen not as a terminal event
but rather as an organic transition in an ongoing evolutionary process. We
might call this transition a macromutation of the human spirit, an ultimate,
mind-altering meta-morphosis, through which consciousness transcends on to
an infinitely greater scale of existence. This is the scale alluded to in the
symbolism of the two-winged caduceus, the magic wand of Hermes, a graphic
representation of the greater “double helix” in the sky. This principle is
clearly expressed in this verse from the text known as the Corpus
Hermeticum:

Do you not know, Asclepius, that Egypt is made in the image of Heaven, or so
to speak more exactly, in Egypt all the operations of the powers which rule and
work in Heaven have been brought down to earth below? Nay, it should be said
that the whole Cosmos dwells in this land and its temples. 6

So the Giza necropolis was designed as a kind of mirror image of the
Egyptian Duat, of the sky, principally to emphasize humankind’s star-bound
destiny. It is significant that the word Duat also meant “underworld.” Now,
perhaps, we can understand why. Above and below—the plane of light and
the quantum field—are one and the same nonlocal dimension. And incredible
as it may seem, the Egyptians appear to have been aware of this.

Continuing for the moment with our organic perspective, it is evident that
these people somehow succeeded in breaking free from the Darwinian mode
of evolution common to all, and quite literally macromutated, evolved
transcendentally, into a nation united, into a greater, single, homonoic

248

“organism.” What we are trying to envisage here is a kind of metaphysical
“chromosome,” a living, multidimensional structure, whose life-bearing data
—ideas, precepts, concepts, rituals, and myths—were designed or created
solely to build, on a macrocosmic scale, even greater organisms, “gods” if
you will, “Tetrads in the sky.”

We, today, are the inheritors of these metaphysical “genes” and, although
our general mode of evolution is characteristically Darwinian—“naturally
selective”—I believe that buried within the collective consciousness of the
human race there remains an underlying tendency to evolve transcendentally,
just as the Egyptians did. As we have seen, these enigmatic people not only
evolved into a race apart, they left behind them all the data required for us to
follow in their wake. They planted “seeds” as they passed through this world,
seeds of wisdom, of symbol, myth, and legend; seminal ideas, which, over the
millennia, have periodically germinated and come to fruition, and which
today are once again beginning to produce a whole “new” variety of
conceptual flora.

Modern science, for example, which seems to me to have been born out of
an instinctive need for the human mind to overcome the desolate, stultifying
climate of the Inquisition, is now poised to enter its transcendental phase.
Accordingly our attention is once again turning to things “above,” to the
cosmos itself, and to things “below,” to the quantum field and the nonlocal
realm being explored in scientific communities worldwide.

The early pioneers of the modern scientific movement—Newton, Galileo,
Copernicus, Kepler, and so on—began this present phase of metaphysical
growth when they started to observe the heavenly bodies and to understand
the forces controlling them. The ensuing process of scientific enquiry
culminated in the ideas of Albert Einstein, whose own attention was
eventually to focus, perhaps inevitably, on the constant light of the sun. In a
sense, therefore, through the concepts of this modern genius, the great
Egyptian sungod Ra has triumphantly returned, bringing with him a glimmer
of understanding, a timely recognition of the eternal, spaceless dimension in
which he reigns supreme.

So the ancients’ description of the constant realm of the god-king,
formulated by people to whom, one suspects, “transpersonal experiences”
were readily accessible, was subsequently reborn under its modern guise of
Special Relativity, the theory that finally turned logical thought upside down,
and that ultimately gave rise to the “new” scientific vision of a nonlocal
universe.

But, as we have noted, this modern “genestrand” of ideas is actually a
mutated form of the original “immaculate conception.” In reality the basic
components of the Egyptian way, exactly like the dancing genes in the DNA
of a newly fertilized ovum, have simply been “jiggled about,” but they remain

249

essentially the same components, the same genes. Even in King Solomon’s
day, it was understood that the esoteric traditions of the Judaic religion were
simply echoes of a much older theme: “and there is no new thing under the
sun. Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new? It hath been
already of old time, which was before us.” 7

Throughout recorded history there have been other, quite distinct,
mutations in human thought, characteristic variations in the evolving species
of nations. The Chinese, the Indian, Persian, Greek, Judaic, Christian, and
Islamic codes of life—all of these metaphysical “creatures” have been born
and have thrived in their own day as dominant gene-strands. Today these
same genes are in a passive or recessive mode; scientific ideas and concepts
have now superseded them. It may be argued that the Christian and Islamic
traditions are still dominant, active, but I would suggest that this is due largely
to extreme fundamentalist elements of a type that Jesus and Muhammad, both
of whom were relative paragons of compassion and tolerance, would be
unlikely to countenance if they were around today. But, in any event, all of
the major religions and esoteric traditions are still there, still alive (literally) in
the great gene pool of human consciousness. In subsequent generations they
may even become dominant again, may each undergo a sudden resurgence or
renaissance, as the human brain continues to develop and to adapt to
environmental variables.

The obvious conclusion to be drawn from this ongoing “metabiological”
process of thought is that the ancients had it exactly right, that the entire
cosmos—the real universe, as opposed to the four-dimensional physical
shadow perceived in our ordinary states of awareness—is indeed a living,
breathing creature like you, whose life-blood is none other than consciousness
itself. This in turn suggests that the whole universe, like any organic body, is
pulsating through-out with life.

Sri Aurobindo said that if a single point in the universe were unconscious,
then the whole universe would have to be unconscious. Scientifically we can
interpret this to mean that if the “mindlike” qualities of the photon or the
electron were removed, if “nonlocal quantum correlations” were to cease, the
whole cosmos would become a dark and lifeless void. Fortunately the great
ancient sun god is currently alive and well and gloriously omnipotent, and as
long as this universal archetype continues to inhabit our dreams and to be the
principal vehicle of our perceptions, the human race, it seems, will never be
alone.

So it is very likely that science fiction has been nearer to fact than many
people imagine and that there are “aliens” out there. If the universe is a zoon,
an immense, six-dimensional creature going around by the name of God,
there must be. But these extraterrestrials, no matter what form they might
take, are our brothers and sisters, metaphysical “proteinbuilders” just like

250

ourselves, created by, and acting under, the direct influence of “gods” of star-
strung, serpentine “chromosomes.”

Now, here’s a thought. If we are ultimately to turn science fiction into
reality and communicate directly and coherently with our extraterrestrial
counterparts across billions of light years of space, then the connection, one
suspects, will somehow have to be made, not through the use of impossible-
to-build “warp factor” starships, or hypothetical “wormholes” in the curved
fabric of space-time, or even radio waves, but through the metaphysical
frequencies of the nonlocal, subquantum (“underworld”) channel of
communication. The Egyptians, of course, have already made contact with
other beings; they have “died” and journeyed to the underworld and passed
the ultimate test of truth. And so, too, have all the other remarkable teachers
of hermetic wisdom mentioned in this book, individuals whose thoughts,
ideals, and concepts still flourish unceasingly in the collective consciousness
of the human race as it grows, a shimmering, multidimensional pyramid of
resonant data, up toward the heavens. These great souls have already been
born into spirit; they are, in a sense, already “out there,” communing with the
godlike inhabitants of the starry world, waiting patiently for us to join them in
the celestial celebration that never ends, a party to which, it seems, we have
all been cordially invited.

So when you think you’re ready, you might care to rendezvous at the Giza
terminal. Even if you get there only in your wilder dreams, it all adds up. The
more positive thought patterns we transmit out into the nonlocal energy field
(the plane of light, the “book of life”), the more we will ultimately get out of
it. Our input, however, if it is to have any lasting effect, will have to be
homonoic, that is, conducted through a genuine union of minds. Like the
pyramid builders we will all have to pull together and start integrating in a
true spirit of cooperation and openmindedness. Presumably the cumbersome
ego will have to be completely discarded. Remember the feather on the
balance in the Judgment Hall of the Dead, the symbol of Truth. What earth-
bound ego could possibly pass such a test of its real substance? None.

So think of the stages of evolution enacted in the metamorphosis from
caterpillar to butterfly as the evolving entity sheds its dense, gravity-bound
chrysalis and ultimately flies up into the sky, to a new life. Perhaps, through
living simply in compliance with the basic laws and forces of nature, this
could be you, the eagle-beast of Revelation, soaring to places ordinary
mortals can only dream about.

Collectively, as the human race fast approaches the new precessional Age
of Aquarius, we are facing a crucial and momentous decision: either we
evolve in harmony, transcendentally, united as one, in a higher dimension, a
greater scale of being, or we remain fragmented, divided, isolated in time and
space, a timid, provincial race dead from the neck up, enslaved by economic

251

obligations, eking out a meager existence on a sad little planet littered with
fossil dinosaurs, dodos, and countless other extinct species.

For my money, and for the sake of all around me, I feel strongly inclined to
go for the former option, to follow in the footsteps of the Egyptian high priest.
We can do it if we want to. It is basically a state of mind, but one that, as the
concept of the eternal trinity implies, can only manifest through the
harmonious interaction of the three fundamental forces of nature: active,
passive, and neutral, and in that order. Ordinary thought processes switch
from active to neutral and back again, endlessly. In this lies our greatest folly,
because the genuine passive element is always absent, which means that the
mind is never fully receptive, never able to assimilate external data in
sufficient quantities to stimulate growth. Remember the pyramid ritual, the
opening of the mummy’s mouth at the foot of the southern shaft of the
Queen’s Chamber, aligned to Sirius, star of Isis, the passive force of the
trinity. This is alchemy pure and simple, a description of the vital process of
opening the mind, of “waking it up,” so to speak. This, of course, is precisely
what genuine and sincere prayer, meditation, and numerous other yogic
practices were designed to do—to introduce the passive element into the
processes of mind, without which there can be no rhythm, no real harmony.
So here’s a tip: keep your “sabbath,” your period of “rest”—you can’t be fully
in tune with nature without it.

Significantly, we need only look to the microcosm, to the evolution of
DNA, to realize that the Egyptians themselves must have “sung” like
proverbial angels, for the “pyramid ritual” is, in fact, performed repeatedly by
all chromosomes, the “minds” of the biomolecular world. When the
chromosome is ready to act, it first relaxes the tension of one of its two
nucleotide chains; that is, it becomes temporarily passive. This, effectively,
opens up the double-helix structure, causing the paired bases within it to
separate, at which point, something quite “magical” occurs. Free nucleotide
bases floating around in the surrounding cyto-plasmic membrane are taken in
by the chromosomes. The chromosome then combines these bases into
“triple-octave” units—RNA codons, the microcosmic equivalent of concepts
—and subsequently ejects them again to carry out a specific evolutionary
function, which is to act as templates for the manufacture of amino acids, the
building blocks of life.

And what do all self-respecting, self-replicating cells do with these building
blocks? They build “pyramids,” of course: living ones, immense, six¬
dimensional organic structures capable of building even greater pyramids . . .

252

Notes

INTRODUCTION

1. P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 124.

2. It might be argued that seeing the numbers 7 and 8 as interchangeable
makes the identification of patterns too easy, but I think that any “natural”
configuration that conforms to this universal symmetry, that coincides at
the key “points of entry,” as it were (for example, points 3, 4, 7, 8, 22, 64,
and combinations thereof)—musical, geometric, genetic, conceptual—is, I
think, valid. So the 838 symbolism of the I Ching, or the “chessboard”
ground plan of the Giza Necropolis, is essentially expressing the same
principle as the 93711 format of the triple-octave “squared,” because the
product of each is 64. Similarly the number 64 in the genetic code is
obtained, not through an 838 format, or 93711, but through 43434—again,
with a product of 64. So these apparently disparate patterns do map one
onto another, but only at certain crucial points. One would not expect exact
superimpositions to be visible at every level, because the universe is
continually evolving, constantly in flux. But as long as the various
symmetries link in at these main “points of entry” the Hermetic Code is
valid. If anything, the fact that the code can be directly linked to all of these
various symmetries—and many others found throughout the natural world
—is compelling evidence of its extraordinary dynamism and universality.
This is precisely what one would expect of a “theory of everything.”

3. Michael Hayes, The Infinite Harmony, 17.

CHAPTER 1. THE SACRED CONSTANT:THE “JEWEL IN THE

CROWN”

1. William R. Fix, Pyramid Odyssey, 108.

2. R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, Sacred Science, 86.

3. Colin Wilson, From Atlantis to the Sphinx, 78.

4. Edouard Naville, “Excavations at Abydos,” cf. Corliss, 325.

5. Andrew Collins, Gods of Eden, 11.

6. Rand Flem-Ath and Colin Wilson, The Atlantis Blueprint, chapter 3, “The
Giza Prime Meridian.”

7. Peter Tompkins, Secrets of the Great Pyramid, 287-382.

253

8. Stan Gooch, Cities of Dreams, 99-100.

9. Ibid., chapter 10.

CHAPTER 2. A DIFFERENT WAY OF SEEING

1. Colin Wilson, From Atlantis to the Sphinx, 9.

2. Colin Wilson, The War Against Sleep, 89.

3. Colin Wilson, From Atlantis to the Sphinx, 10.

4. A. Erman, Pyramid Texts, the Literature of the Ancient Egyptians, 4f.

5. Colin Wilson, From Atlantis to the Sphinx, 242.

6. Ibid., 242.

7. R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, Sacred Science, chapter entitled “Magic,
Sorcery, Medicine.”

8. Colin Wilson, From Atlantis to the Sphinx, 246.

CHAPTER 3. MUSIC OVER MATTER

1. Carl G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 178-79.

2. John Bierhorst, The Mythology of Mexico and Central America, 8.

3. Harold Osbourne, Indians of the Andes: Aymaras and Quechuas, 64.

4. Mark Henderson, The Times, February 16, 2004.

5. Paramhansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi, 316.

6. Andrew Collins, Gods of Eden, 66-70.

7. Graham Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods, 262.

8. Andrew Collins, Gods of Eden, 82.

9. Ibid., 77-78.

10. Peter Tompkins, Secrets of the Great Pyramid, 101-3.

CHAPTER 4. THE ELECTRON AND THE HOLY GHOST

1. Pierre Speziali (ed.), Einstein-Besso Correspondence, 1903-1955, p. 538.

2. Michael Talbot, The Holographic Universe, 51.

3. P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 176.

4. Paul Davies, Other Worlds, 68.

5. Timothy Ferris, The Whole Shebang, 224.

6. Colin Wilson, The Strange Life of P. D. Ouspensky, 54.

7. Ibid., 50.

8. Satprem Satprem, Sri Aurobindo, or the Adventure of Consciousness,
219.

9. Paramhansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi, 316.

CHAPTER 5. FURTHER LIGHT

1. Graham Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods, 178.

2. Ralph Ellis, Thoth, Architect of the Universe, 3.11.

254

CHAPTER 6. LIVE MUSIC

1. Michael Hayes, The Infinite Harmony, 221-30.

2. Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden, xi.

3. Ibid., 52.

4. Ibid., 33.

5. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 192.

6. Ibid., 199.

7. Ibid., 197.

8. Michael Hayes, The Infinite Harmony, 154-57.

9. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 196.

10. Graham Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods, 95.

11. James Shrieve, The Neanderthal Enigma, 69.

12. Stan Gooch, Cities of Dreams, 49-53.

13. Michael Hayes, The Infinite Harmony, 27-39.

14. Linda Jean Shepherd, Lifting the Veil, The Feminine Face of Science,
215.

15. Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden, 142.

CHAPTER 7.EXTRATERRESTRIAL DNA

1. Rodney Collin, The Theory of Celestial Influence, 342.

2. Michael Hayes, The Infinite Harmony, 222.

3. Rodney Collin, The Theory of Celestial Influence, 81.

CHAPTER 8.INTERSTELLAR GENES AND THE GALACTIC DOUBLE

HELIX

1. Robert Temple, The Sirius Mystery, 3.

2. Ibid., 55.

3. Ibid., 24.

4. Ibid., 25.

5. Michael Hayes, The Infinite Harmony, 81-93.

6. Robert Temple, The Syrius Mystery, 28.

7. Ibid., 29.

CHAPTER 9. THE HERMETIC UNIVERSE OF ANCIENT TIMES

1. Genesis 1:1.

2. Ibid., 1:2.

3. Ibid., 1:3-4.

4. F. Max-Muller, The Laws of Manu, 1:8-9.

5. George Smoot, Wrinkles in Time, 272.

255

CHAPTER 11.THE FATE OF THE UNIVERSE
1. Paul Davies, The Last Three Minutes, 67-68.

CHAPTER 12. INNER OCTAVES

1. P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 86.

2. Ibid., 81.

CHAPTER 13. THE HOLOGRAPHIC PRINCIPLE

1. John Blofeld, Tantric Mysticism of Tibet, 61-62.

2. P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 88.

3. Genesis 9:6.

4. Compton’s Interactive Encyclopaedia, “Orpheus” entry.

CHAPTER 14. QUANTUM PSYCHOLOGY: THE “NONLOCAL” BRAIN

1. Michael Talbot, The Holographic Universe, 122.

2. P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 88.

3. Ibid., 262.

4. Ibid., 265.

5. Ibid., 265-66.

6. Stanislav Grof, Beyond the Brain, 91.

7. Colin Wilson, The Strange Life of P. D. Ouspensky, 48.

8. Ibid., 48.

9. Paramhansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi, 318.

10. Ibid., 319.

CHAPTER 15. QP2: THE UNIVERSAL PARADIGM

1. Revelations 12:1.

2. P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 217.

3. Ibid.

4. Paramhansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi, 315.

5. Ibid.

6. W. Evans-Wentz, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, 158-59.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid., 95-96.

10. Rodney Collin, The Theory of Eternal Life, 37.

CHAPTER 16. THE SHAPESHIFTERS

1. Adrian Recinos, Popul Vuh, The Sacred Book of the Ancient Quiche
Maya, 168-69.

256

2. Ibid., 169.

3. Ibid.

4. Graham Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods, 337.

5. Ibid., 333.

6. Mark Lehner, Secrets of the Lost Empires, 93.

CHAPTER 17. “AL-CHEM”—THE EGYPTIAN WAY

1. Anon., Material for Thought, no. 7, 1.

2. John Romer, Romer’s Egypt, 28.

3. Ibid., 65.

4. R. O. Faulkner (trans.), Ancient Pyramid Texts, 227.

5. David Furlong, Keys to the Temple, 79.

6. CorpusHermeticum, Asclepius III 246 (see under Copenhaver in
bibliography).

7. Ecclesiastes 1:9-10.

257

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Bauval, R., and A. Gilbert. The Orion Mystery. London: Heinemann, 1994.
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Bierhorst, John. The Mythology of Mexico and Central America. New York:
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Copenhaver, Brian P. Corpus Hermeticum. Cambridge: Cambridge
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De Santillana, Giorgio, and Hertha von Dechend. Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay
Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and Its Transmission
through Myth. Boston: David R. Godine Publisher, 1992.

Dunn, Christopher P. The Giza Power Plant: Technologies of Ancient Egypt.
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Flem-Ath, Rand, and Colin Wilson. The Atiantis Blueprint London: Little
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260

About the Author

Michael Hayes is an administrator at the University of Central England
and is the author of The Infinite Harmony and The Hermetic Code in DNA.
He first recognized a common link between all major religions and
esoteric doctrines--and later that this symmetry exists among the
fundamental sciences--while working in post-revolutionary Iran, where
he was able to observe all the major religions practiced side by side. He
lives with his wife and family in Birmingham, England.

261

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262

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Originally published in the United Kingdom in 2004 by Black Spring Press under the title High
Priests, Quantum Genes

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hayes, Michael, 1949-

The hermetic code in DNA : the sacred principles in the ordering of the universe / Michael
Hayes.

p. cm.

“Originally published in the United Kingdom in 2004 by Black Spring Press under the title
High Priests, Quantum Genes.”

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Summary: “An examination of the precise code that connects ancient spirituality with modem
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ISBN: 978-1-59477-218-4

1. DNA. 2. Spirituality. I. Hayes, Michael, 1949- High priests, quantum genes. II. Title.
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263

Table of Contents

Title Page 2

Acknowledgments 3

Contents 4

Foreword 6

A Note on Measurements 13

Introduction 14

1. The Sacred Constant 33

2. A Different Way of Seeing 52

3. Music over Matter 62

4. The Electron and the Holy Ghost 78

5. Further Light 92

6. Live Music 108

7. Extraterrestrial DNA 132

8. Interstellar Genes and the Galactic Double Helix 146

9. The Hermetic Universe of Ancient Times 159

10. The Hierarchy of Dimensions 171

11. The Fate of the Universe 180

12. Inner Octaves 188

13. The Holographic Principle 195

14. Quantum Psychology 201

15. QP2: The Universal Paradigm 211

16. The Shapeshifters 226

17. “Al-Chem”—the Egyptian Way 239

Notes 253

Bibliography 258

About the Author 261

About Inner Traditions 262

264