How Can We Enter A New Awareness Without Knowing Where We've Been

December 21, 2012 Was The Turning-Point, the rebirth of awareness. In 1905 Albert Einstein turned the world of physics upside down -- for the first time the world saw the now famous equation, E=mc2. Einstein fundamentally altered our understanding of the physical universe by proving that all matter was essentially condensed energy. The nineteenth century view of the physical world was primarily mechanical; all matter was considered solid and fundamentally immutable. Although matter was considered to be made up of infinitesimally small objects, these were seen as solid objects nonetheless, and were believed to obey the same basic laws as did the sun and the planets. Time, too, was thought to be an unyielding constant throughout the universe, unaffected by changing conditions. In the nineteenth century the universe was seen as a very large machine, a clockwork of infinite size, functioning precisely and inexorably in its slow grandeur. Today we hold a very different view of the physical world. All matter is understood to be energy in a condensed form. Not only do we consider matter mutable, we know that the tiniest atom is capable of being transmuted into vast amounts of energy. Both the incredibly destructive force of nuclear weapons, and the prodigious energy of nuclear power, testify to the profound implications of the deceptively simple equation E=mc2. Our view of the larger universe has also undergone a revolution. We now know that objects in space do not move in straight lines -- because there are no straight lines. Space itself is curved and the universe is finite. No physical object can go faster than the speed of light. The speed of light is, in fact, the only constant in the universe -- all else is measurable only in relation to that constant. Even time is understood to be relative to light. The atom, previously conceived of as a constellation of tiny objects, like a miniature solar system with the nucleus taking the place of the sun (you probably made a model of one in sixth grade), has given way to a concept that cannot even be visualized. Physicists now conceive of the atom as a tiny area of space in which objects wink into and out of the quantum, sub-atomic world — a world where the very act of trying to observe the atom actually changes what is observed. Neils Bohr, the eminent early twentieth-century physicist and Nobel Prize winner, called the quantum world Potentia. Others have referred to it as quantum flux or quantum foam, an energetic maelstrom just below the threshold of measurable perception. String theory, the latest "theory of everything," goes even further. String theory posits that there are no actual physical structures at all, that even the unimaginably small sub-atomic structures that physicists try to study, such as quarks, are, in reality, made up of even smaller vibrating strings and rings of energy. Just a little more than a hundred years ago we understood our world to be made up of matter, interacted with by energy. Now we understand our world to be made up of energy, assuming the form of matter. Today we are on the brink of another major conceptual change -- this time, not in the field of physics, but in the field of history and the development of civilization. Just as Einstein overturned conventional thinking due to the anomalous, but undeniable fact that the speed of light is constant, history and archaeology are similarly confronted with undeniable anomalies that are beginning to overturn conventional thinking about the course of man's development. We might be excused for ignoring the significance of the Sphinx and the Pyramids, if they were the only anomalies that didn't fit into a linear view of history and man's development of civilization. But there are many more anomalies