My heartfelt thanks to everyone who attended this year's Conference on Precession and Ancient Knowledge.
It was an honor and a pleasure to meet everyone and I am very grateful for the many conversations with new friends (and some old friends), and for all the kind and positive feedback and overall good energy I encountered everywhere I turned.
Special thanks to Walter Cruttenden and his extended family for organizing such an exceptional conference and to everyone who worked hard all weekend to support the event and make all the myriad conference details line up at the proper moments! I especially enjoyed meeting and working with Craig, Shawn, Filiberto, Debbie, Sandy, Mary and Ryan.
I had the opportunity to speak last on Sunday afternoon, and so I was able to listen to every word of all the other speakers' presentations, and it is no exaggeration to say that every single one of them was eye-opening in some way, and I would recommend everyone take the opportunity to follow the links associated with each of the speakers listed here to learn more about the research and workshops they are presently conducting.
There were some extremely surprising and in fact mind-blowing trains of evidence offered in several of the presentations, which I believe constitute essential contributions to the multi-disciplinary quest to glimpse the framework that can account for and better explain the mysterious evidence that demands attention but which is either ignored or "explained away" by supporters of the conventional paradigm of human history (because the conventional paradigm completely fails to account for the "anomalous" evidence).
It was also interesting to learn that much of the genesis of this particular conference comes from the impact of the teachings and writings of Sri Yukteswar Giri upon several of the founders and longtime attendees of the Conference on Precession and Ancient Knowledge. Sri Yukteswar's book The Holy Science (1949) contains extensive discussions of the importance of precession and the Cycle of the Ages, as well as of the fundamental relationship and unity of the various streams of ancient knowledge preserved among the different scriptures, sacred stories, and disciplines of humanity.
I would venture to say that this aspect of the origins of the conference, and the presence of so many longtime attendees to the conference who are practitioners of Kriya Yoga as expounded by Sri Yukteswar, has a lot to do with the extremely positive and open vibe that characterized everything about the weekend, as well as with the supportive and respectful tone that characterized the interactions that I personally observed throughout the conference.
I would wholeheartedly recommend making plans to check out and attend future conferences whenever they are next scheduled!
I was also very pleased by the fantastic turnout for the Desert Star Gazing event, which was held on Friday evening at the Visitor's Center to the Coachella Valley / Thousand Palms Oasis Preserve. Walking through the oasis and seeing the sturdy "Palm House" which was constructed back in the 1930s should be on your list of things to do if you find yourself in that part of the Southern California desert in the future.
I received very positive feedback from many people afterwards, and hope to lead other "star gazing" tours of the night sky in the near future, as I figure out the details that would be required to make that concept work.
Special thanks to Jalal for helping with the megaphone, and also to Wally Motloch, who sent a photo of my green laser-pointer illuminating the star Polaris, at the end of the handle of the Little Dipper (Ursa Minor), in which all the stars of the constellation are clearly visible. Wally also sent another version of the photo in which he outlined the constellation, for greater clarity:
Polaris is located just below the apparent "terminus" point of the green laser. The three black parallel lines are telephone lines going over the parking lot, on their way towards the visitor center in the "Palm House."
Here are the outlines Wally added to the Little Dipper -- after looking at the image below, can you go back to the image above and see the Little Dipper without using the outlines?
I truly hope that the Conference on Precession and Ancient Knowledge was a blessing to those who attended, as it certainly was for me. If you weren't able to attend this year, I hope that you will be able to do so in the future, if at all possible. Also, I hope to perhaps see you at a different event (perhaps even a star-gazing event!) Be sure to check out some of the upcoming conferences and tours being offered by Dr. Robert Schoch, Carmen Boulter, and John Anthony West (details available at their websites).
As I was driving back home through the desert, the gorgeous sliver of the brand-new moon was following the sun down towards the western horizon. To the left you can see Venus, currently the Evening Star (discussions of some of the details involved in the phases of the moon can be found here, here, and here, and discussions of the cycle of Venus can be found here).
That was a very special sight for me as I turned over all the new ideas I had heard and reflected on all the new friends I had met over the course of this year's Conference on Precession and Ancient Knowledge.
