THE HEURISTIC APPROACH

The term heuristic comes from the same Greek root as eureka, which means “to find.” In essence, a heuristic approach to problem solving involves a way of directing our attention fruitfully toward a solution by simultaneously drawing upon many analogies, models, and sources of insight, which may or may not, at first glance, appear to be related.

Thus good heuristics depend critically upon an appropriate choice of the various systems and sources of knowledge that will be brought to bear upon the problem-solving process. As such, the heuristic approach is more of an art than a science, for it requires some degree of intuition as to which seemingly disparate systems of knowledge might have relevance to a given problem.

In our heuristic approach to rediscover the lost ancient science, we will draw upon two very different and apparently unrelated bodies of knowledge:

· The body of ancient spiritual knowledge as recorded in sacred literatures all around the world

· The body of modern physical knowledge as recorded in peer-reviewed scientfic journals around the world

In particular, we will draw upon the sacred literatures of the ancient Vedic, Egyptian, Hebrew, and Hermetic traditions, for which there are abundant surviving texts, and the theories of quantum mechanics and general relativity, which are our most accurate modern scientific theories.

Although the heuristic approach often results in little more than a general rule of thumb that merely points the way to an actual solution, it can reduce dramatically the time required to reach a solution by eliminating the need to consider unlikely possibilities or irrelevant models.