When the average person looks out into the world, it is most natural that they see everything as being a linear sequence, if by most natural you mean that which is the accepted rational view of the times.

But, there have been other ways to look at the world, other ways to perceive and to navigate within the depths of it.

It is so difficult to look back and understand other perspectives, other views, that it is now all too easy to assume that the only sane perceptive view possible is the modern (supposedly) rational view.

But there have been other ways to see the world, and indeed, it is the case that every general age, which can be separated even by a few decades, certainly centuries, sees the world in a slightly different way. What I mean by this is that, there is a different consistency to the world, a different feeling, depending on which point in space-time you consider the present. What I am trying to say is that each point in history has a different feeling, a different way of looking at it from those that are there experiencing that time, and that feeling varies greatly from time to time, from place to place. And the power of this difference, and the power of personal feelings, should never be underestimated because feelings can make us see some things very clearly, while at the same time also completely blind us to other things!

The intensity of time changes us, our point in space-time changes how we feel and therefore how we perceive things, and that change is referred to as a new cognitive position. A new cognitive position means a wholly different world!

Due to our current technological direction, the last few decades seem to be quite uniform. And the reason for this standardization has a lot to do with the pervasive and increasing influence of technology in our collective human world. The constant and ever increasing voice of the media, a world full of screens wherever you look, and from those screens repeated over and over again, an increasingly narrow view of reality.

But I think people would be greatly surprised, at how different the general perception of time was even four or five decades ago. In the 80s, and definitely in the 70s, life was different, it felt different, time and the general flow of things was different, far more different than some might suspect. Time and the conception of time, the feeling of how time flowed, had a slightly different quality that is very difficult to explain in nuance.

The reason for this difficulty in description, has to do with our inability to explain subjective realities very well using just words. And this is why we may sometimes say, you needed to have been there to know what I mean, to know what I am talking about. And even for those that lived through those decades, the great gravity of this earth, as I have mentioned in other videos, makes us forget far more than we realize. We easily forget. Especially those nuanced details of what it is at a deep feeling level to be in one point in space-time, and then to be in another. Even people that have lived through those times, now forget what it was really and fundamentally like to be there back then, we forget that slight alteration in cognitive position. It is sort of like trying to remember what a dream felt like, what that dream location was truly, fully like after we wake up.

We may remember for a while, the actual feeling of it, of being there, but soon we forget. And once we forget that feeling, it seems like we begin to forget so much more, like things seem to be fading somehow.

For the average person, as I have said, the world, time in general, and the movement of time and therefore our movement through space, tends to have a linear quality. Most people would even classify any inability to not see this most obvious linear quality to existence, of time, to be a kind of insanity. The assumption being, if you don’t see that time is obviously linear, with a past and a future, then you are insane!

From that point of view then, you could say that inner alchemists are insane, because for them time is not a linear event at all. For them, time does not stretch out into some unknown future, and past times are not left behind sort of like you are on some train moving forward, leaving a station behind to be forgotten to a great degree by the mind. Instead, for them time is a feeling, and from that point of view one could say that they have nurtured within themselves the ability to change their feelings about time, and in that way move across the length and breadth of it.

This gives the inner alchemist a far greater flexibility than the average person. A master alchemist can, not just remember a pastime, but live it, feel it completely, feel another time again and in that way go back in time, be fully at that time. And in doing so, in using their ability to not just remember but to move back to another feeling place, they can see, that the world is far different than what some might suppose. When you are truly able to go back and truly feel what it is to be there, then you realize that there has been a great deal of change even in the last few decades. The perception of things was different in the 70s. At that time there was a more expansive quality to time, there was a greater uncertainty to what reality was, and one place, one geographical location, was more isolated from other places.

All of this was a feeling, a feeling that is almost impossible to describe, in the same way that it is almost impossible to describe a half forgotten dream. But in fully realizing that feeling you might say, an inner alchemist can go back to something that is supposedly no more!

From this present time, the past, even that recent past, seems somehow unclear, vague, inferior. Since time for the average person is linear, the past is a memory soon forgotten, while the future hides within the shadows of probability, and as such, the past is to the back, inferior, while the future is new, exciting, better, shiny.

So, the mass of the world believes that we are moving forward only, and in that forward motion we are evolving, getting better, moving higher. But from the inner alchemist’s perspective this evolutionary movement forward, while it is happening to some degree in a sense, is an illusion.

What I mean by this is that even though humanity is becoming more complex in some ways, and therefore evolving in those particular certain ways, this growth is not happening at the speed that some people might think it is. It is easy for the average person to look back at medieval history for example, and feel that they have evolved so much from that time. And yet, if they could go back to that time and feel what it was like to be there, actually feel being there, they would see that even though time and space, the reason of the times, the phenomenology of the times, has changed dramatically in some ways from that time to this time, the idea that modern humanity is more evolved now is generally an illusion.

People think of themselves as moving higher and higher, evolving as the train of time carries them supposedly forward, but from the inner alchemist’s point of view people are not moving up and up, instead they are moving across. Instead of climbing some evolutionary ladder, demonstrated by the evolving technology of the times and the greater knowledge possible thanks to quote unquote the science, people are instead changing their configuration, their shape, and no real movement has happened at all. People are not moving up, that is an illusion to some extent. Instead, humanity is changing configuration, shape. This change makes it seem like things are changing, but in reality the only thing that really changes is how those people of one time or another time perceive the world, how they apprehend the world. Cognitive positions change, but the overall energetic configuration of people mostly stays the same.

Awareness changes, cognitive position changes, and those changes make for different feelings about existence, about reality, about what is possible. And those feelings are incredibly important, because it is feeling, that change in awareness, that is the only difference between that time and this one. Feeling therefore is awareness, or a better way to say this would be to say that a change in awareness changes the feeling of things, the way things are perceived, how they are apprehended to be. Feeling is so important that it not only changes how we perceive the world, but also what is possible for us in the world!

In the medieval period we had a certain feeling about the world, we had a certain awareness of the world, that was different than this modern one. At that time, that cognitive position made possible certain things, while it made other things impossible. Now, in this modern cognitive position certain new things are possible for us, while other things have become impossible. But that other supposed past kind of life was not, I repeat was not, less evolved or lesser than this modern life!  In this quote unquote modern time, our type of awareness, our cognitive position, has made it possible for us to access a range of possibilities that we might refer to as reason and rationality, and that very orderly reality has also allowed us to develop something we can call science and technology. To us this seems like a kind of evolution. But if we could go back to that time, really go back to it, which would mean a change in awareness, a change in cognitive position, then we would see (if we could maintain our sobriety) that that other medieval time was no better or no worse than this time.

A sober movement across time would reveal to us that there is balance in all things. While this present time might give us a cognitive configuration where longer physical lifespans and modern technologies are possible, that past cognitive position made available an intensity of existence and the social gregariousness that would make our modern lives pale and boring in comparison! There is equal exchange that must be adhered to being that humanity, as I have said, is not really becoming more, it is just changing configuration.

But what is the true nature of evolution then? What is the true nature of transmutation of the human species? Are we not evolving?

Yes, from the alchemical point of view humanity is evolving, in the sense that there is a movement towards a transmutation of essence, but that transmutation is a far slower process than some might suppose. There are also many obstacles that are not being effectively overcome by the majority of the population, having to do with a titanic force that I have referred to as the great Archon. This force has a vested interest in maintaining relative stasis on this earth, in order to guarantee that its greatest resource (humanity) is not able to successfully escape the prison that it has set up for us.

From the inner alchemist’s point of view, most of us are not evolving, at least were not evolving at the rate that we think we are, instead we are changing energetic shapes in accordance with slight alterations in our cognitive position. And these alterations in awareness are not brought about through a conscious human evolution, but through differing changes in the environment. In other words, we are not evolving consciously as a species, instead we are being moved by the world around us. And as long as we are not able to wake up to ourselves, and start consciously intending true evolutionary change, instead of just going along with the flow of the times, then our refinement will be slow, and the only things that will benefit will be those forces that are trapping us now within a very limited awareness bubble.

Perhaps after enough change, enough cognitive positional change that causes different shapes within us, we may eventually be able to break free of the cage as a species. But until we are able to understand the power of the cognitive position, and our ability to change shape, to change feeling, to change the way we see the world, to change our awareness in accordance to a slight energetic movement, we will always be stuck inside the cube created by the Archon.

While in this cube, we might imagine ourselves as evolving, but from the cognitive position of the person that can see, what we are really doing is just altering our cognitive position within a very limited range of possibilities. This limited range guarantees that we will continue a cycle of limited growth and expansion only to meet a great cataclysm, and then repeat that cycle over and over again. Such cycles from a certain perspective, from a certain cognitive position, will seem like we are going from a small population to a greater one over time, and as the population grows our abundance seems to grow, until a certain point is reached and the great cataclysm stops that seeming upward motion, and then the whole process is repeated once again. This planet has gone through many such cycles, and it will continue in such a circular fashion until humanity as a complete species wakes up to the true nature of its energetic reality.

We are now living through one particular cycle in what to us seems to be a forward motion into greater abundance and possibility. But this cycle will come to an end, and it is up to us to wake up to our true nature as individuals and as a species within the time frames that we are given!

If you would like to learn how to escape the cycle of creation and destruction, if you would like to know more about the Archon and how to escape it, and what true evolution really means, then I would recommend the books:

Overcoming the Archon Through Alchemy, and The Magnum Opus, A step-by-step Course.