| Part 1 | In the Beginning | 1 |
| 1 | Once Upon a Time | 3 |
| Cosmology, Cosmogony, and the Cosmos | 4 |
| Mesopotamia, or Where It All Began | 5 |
| So You Want to Be a Hero! | 5 |
| Family Feud | 6 |
| The Magnificent Seven | 7 |
| Genesis | 7 |
| Ancient Hebrew Cosmology | 8 |
| The Chicken or the Egg | 9 |
| Compass Headings and Complementary Opposites | 10 |
| The Four Directions | 11 |
| Heaven and Earth | 12 |
| 2 | The Music of the Spheres | 15 |
| The Essence of All Things | 16 |
| Numbers with Feelings | 17 |
| Harmonies of Heaven and Earth | 18 |
| Back to Babylon | 20 |
| The Seven Sacred Planets | 20 |
| Music Therapy | 21 |
| The Rhythm of the Universe | 22 |
| The World Soul | 24 |
| The First Cause | 24 |
| You Gotta Have Soul | 25 |
| 3 | A Brief History of Esoteric Philosophy | 27 |
| What Is Esoteric Philosophy? | 27 |
| Hermes and the Hermits | 29 |
| The Emerald Tablet | 30 |
| The Perennial Philosophy | 32 |
| Fruits of Knowledge | 33 |
| Rosicrucianism | 33 |
| Freemasonry | 34 |
| The Cabalah | 36 |
| Why All of This Is So Important | 37 |
| 4 | Transitions in Thinking | 39 |
| Simple Minds, Simple Pleasures | 40 |
| Life in the Fast Lane | 42 |
| The Birth of the Renaissance Ideal | 43 |
| The Good Life | 44 |
| Perfection Is the Key | 44 |
| The Hermetic Revival | 45 |
| Marsilio Ficino | 46 |
| Pico della Mirandola | 46 |
| Giordano Bruno | 47 |
| Part 2 | Science Comes of Age, but Isn't 21 Yet | 49 |
| 5 | You Mean We're Not at the Center of the Universe? | 51 |
| What You See Is What You Get | 52 |
| Walk Like an Egyptian | 53 |
| The Copernican Revolution | 55 |
| The Problem with Easter | 56 |
| Displaced Humanity | 58 |
| Galileo Scopes It Out | 58 |
| Kepler's Contributions | 60 |
| 6 | The Scientific Revolution | 63 |
| What You See Isn't Necessarily What You Get | 64 |
| Systems of Science | 65 |
| Three Different Styles | 66 |
| It's All in the Mind | 67 |
| Pass the Bacon, Francis | 69 |
| Descartes's Dualism | 69 |
| "I Think, Therefore I Am" | 70 |
| The Mind/Body Problem | 71 |
| Lost Along the Way | 73 |
| 7 | Cosmology in the Age of Enlightenment | 75 |
| What Is Enlightenment? | 75 |
| Whose Science Is Whose? | 77 |
| Science Is King | 79 |
| The Word of God | 80 |
| Half and Half | 81 |
| The Science of Alchemy | 83 |
| Lead into Gold | 83 |
| It All Boils Down to Boyle | 84 |
| Newton's Alchemical Apple | 85 |
| 8 | Physics 101 | 89 |
| Honey, I Shrunk the Universe! | 90 |
| Can't Forget About Math | 92 |
| You're Getting Warmer | 94 |
| The Dynamics of Electromagnetism | 96 |
| Light, Lenses, and Optics | 98 |
| Just a Little Bit of Chemistry | 99 |
| The Attraction of Gravity | 100 |
| Part 3 | And in This Corner... | 103 |
| 9 | Evolution vs. Creationism | 105 |
| Is Truth in the Eye of the Beholder? | 106 |
| It's a Matter of Opinion | 107 |
| Degrees of Truth | 108 |
| How Did We Get Here? | 109 |
| You Have Been Selected | 110 |
| The Ladder of Creation | 111 |
| And God Said | 113 |
| To Believe or Not To Believe, That Is the Question | 114 |
| 10 | The Dual Nature of Light | 117 |
| Waves of Light | 118 |
| You Can't See It, but It Has to Be There | 119 |
| Faraday's Fields | 120 |
| Maxwell's Mathematics | 121 |
| The Experiment That Failed | 122 |
| Waves Come in All Shapes and Sizes | 124 |
| A Little Bit of Quanta Goes a Long Way | 125 |
| Our Journey So Far | 127 |
| 11 | Cracks in a Newtonian World | 129 |
| The Clock Breaks! | 130 |
| Hot Things Glow | 131 |
| Faster Than a Speeding Light Wave | 132 |
| Unchanging Time and Space | 133 |
| Passing Your Exams! | 134 |
| It All Depends on Your Position | 135 |
| Sometimes Relativity Is Absolute | 137 |
| 12 | The Relative Nature of Space and Time | 141 |
| It's About Time | 142 |
| Atomic Time | 143 |
| Geological Time | 144 |
| Biological Time | 145 |
| Astronomical Time | 146 |
| How Can You Be in Two Places at Once? | 147 |
| Keeping Track of Time | 149 |
| The Faster You Go, the Shorter You Get | 150 |
| Part 4 | From Here to Infinity | 153 |
| 13 | Famous Equations and Pools of Jell-O | 155 |
| The Conversion of Energy | 155 |
| E = mc[superscript 2] | 156 |
| Infinite Mass | 156 |
| Recapping Relativity | 159 |
| Thank God, the Ground Broke My Fall! | 161 |
| Einstein's Happiest Thought | 162 |
| Gravity Is Relative, Too | 163 |
| Curved Space | 165 |
| 14 | That Old Quantum Theory | 169 |
| Founding Fathers | 170 |
| Quantum Leaps | 171 |
| Planck's Constant | 172 |
| Photoelectric Effect Explained, the Quantum Strikes Again | 174 |
| Bohr's Atomic Theory | 177 |
| 15 | Chunks of Uncertainty | 181 |
| Waves of Matter | 181 |
| A French Prince Discovers Matter Waves | 182 |
| Just a Little Math Won't Hurt | 184 |
| More Wave Mechanics | 186 |
| Born of Probability | 187 |
| Probability Leads to Uncertainty | 189 |
| They're Complementary After All | 190 |
| Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen | 191 |
| 16 | Forces, Particles, and Some Cosmological Glue | 195 |
| An Atomic Review | 196 |
| The Nucleus and the Proton | 197 |
| Size in the Microcosm | 197 |
| The Fundamental Forces of Nature | 198 |
| The Neutron Decay | 199 |
| Neutrinos and the Weak Force | 200 |
| The Forces You Already Know | 202 |
| Cosmic Rays, Greek Particles, and Accelerators | 203 |
| Mu and Pi | 205 |
| From Natural to Man-Made | 206 |
| The Particle Zoo | 206 |
| The Last Train to Quarkville | 208 |
| 17 | Scientific Origins of the Universe | 211 |
| The Cosmological Pendulum | 212 |
| Bang That Drum | 215 |
| Einstein's Closed Universe | 216 |
| The Primeval Atom | 217 |
| Another Bang | 218 |
| A Big Bang Alternative | 219 |
| Microwaves to the Rescue | 220 |
| Part 5 | Supersymmetry, Superstrings, and Holograms | 223 |
| 18 | The Accelerating Universe | 225 |
| It's Bigger Than We Thought | 226 |
| Plasma Cosmology | 227 |
| The Standard Model | 230 |
| The Alpha and the Omega | 231 |
| The Need for Dark Matter | 233 |
| Living in the Flatlands | 234 |
| It's Out of Control | 235 |
| 19 | Supersymmetry, Superpartners, and Superman | 237 |
| The First Three Minutes | 238 |
| Attempts at Unification | 239 |
| Quantum Mechanics vs. General Relativity | 241 |
| The Gravity of the Situation | 242 |
| The Planck Scale | 243 |
| Symmetry Breaking | 245 |
| The Spin Doctors | 246 |
| Introducing SUSY | 246 |
| Interdimensional Travel | 247 |
| No, I'm Sparticles! | 248 |
| 20 | It's All Held Together with Strings | 251 |
| A Brief History of String Theory | 252 |
| The Cosmic Onion | 254 |
| Musical Strings | 254 |
| The Important Part | 255 |
| The Second Requirement, Extra Dimensions | 257 |
| The Kaluza-Klein Dimension | 258 |
| Unification in Higher Dimensions | 260 |
| How Many Dimensions Are There? | 261 |
| The Short Version of the Second Superstring Revolution | 262 |
| 21 | The Universe As a Hologram | 265 |
| What's a Hologram? | 266 |
| Action at a Distance | 267 |
| A Remarkable Event | 269 |
| Nonlocality | 270 |
| Quantum Potential | 271 |
| The Importance of Wholeness | 272 |
| Ordered Reality | 274 |
| The Holographic Universe | 275 |
| Part 6 | Old Endings and New Beginnings | 279 |
| 22 | Psychology, Cosmology, and Consciousness | 281 |
| The Study of the Soul | 281 |
| "With Our Thoughts We Make the World" | 285 |
| Holographic Brains | 285 |
| These Are Holograms, Too? | 286 |
| Space and Time, in the Mind | 287 |
| Categories of Space and Time | 288 |
| The Implicate Mind | 289 |
| Past, Present, and Future | 291 |
| 23 | Eastern Cosmology and the Cyclic Universe | 293 |
| What Goes Around, Comes Around | 294 |
| Linear vs. Cyclic | 295 |
| Right Brain or Left Brain? | 296 |
| Unity in Diversity | 298 |
| The Eternal Return | 299 |
| A Day and Night of Brahma | 300 |
| The Dance of Shiva | 302 |
| It's All Energy | 303 |
| 24 | Symbolic Systems and the Self-Aware Universe | 305 |
| Multidimensional Symbols | 305 |
| Change Is the Only Constant | 306 |
| Energy Comes in Many Forms | 307 |
| The Sages of China | 309 |
| Cosmological Principles | 310 |
| The Tree of Life | 313 |
| Be Your Own Psychic and Save Some Money | 314 |
| The Cabalah and Superstrings | 316 |
| 25 | The Future of Humanity | 319 |
| What Was It All For? | 320 |
| It's All About Us | 320 |
| Ethical Eschatology | 321 |
| The Underworld | 322 |
| Mummies, Mummies, and More Mummies | 322 |
| Thus Spoke Zarathushtra | 324 |
| The Sage and the Prophet | 324 |
| A Prophecy Primer | 326 |
| The Christian Outlook | 328 |
| Appendixes | |
| A | Cosmological Kernels | 331 |
| B | Suggested Reading List | 339 |
| Index | 343 |
