How do we begin to read the map?

In the great wisdom traditions they say there are four ways to begin the journey. They are the four classic yogas. Karma yoga, which means selfless service or service to humanity and to your fellow beings without attachment to specific outcomes. It's service as worship, work that acknowledges our inner attitude. Whatever I'm doing comes from and belongs to the universal consciousness, or spirit of God. Every thought I have, every deed of mine does not belong to me. It comes through me, but it is not mine. That inner attitude takes all the anxiety away from your work, from what you do in life.

The second yoga is called Bhakti, which is the experience of love. Whether it's love for a child, love for a pet, or a romantic love, or even sexual experience; these are means to get in touch with the spirit. Romantic love is the easiest opportunity to explore that domain of awareness where we normally don't delve — where we feel like we are transforming. We are detached from the trivial and the mundane, we are spontaneous and vulnerable, where we experience a sense of carefree-ness, and where, for the first time, we are not sure of ourselves.

This is a way to explore the map. So I would say the easiest and most understandable way of exploring the map is to fall in love; to make love the number one priority of your life.

The third way is through Raja yoga. Raja yoga is all the disciplines of meditation. And there are hundreds and thousands of techniques that have come down through the ages: contemplation, meditation, prayer, solitude and specific meditation techniques that allow you to go into deeper realms of consciousness.

And the fourth way, which is called Gyana yoga, is the intellectual path, and it's the hardest, most difficult and sometimes the most attractive to those of us who like to play with the brain and the intellect. You are using the intellect to go beyond. It is basically my passion to understand the nature of transformation and its relationship to quantum psychics and biology.