Ken McHardie’s life bridges the logical and the mystical. After a decade as a computer programmer, he left the corporate world at 28 to travel overland across thirteen African countries. His expedition took him deep into the Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire) to stay with Mbuti rainforest communities and to the Rwandan border as the 1994 genocide unfolded – experiences that shattered his conventional view of reality. In his mid-thirties, Ken experienced a profound Kundalini awakening after eighteen months of intensive daily meditation using binaural beat technology. This transformative shift marked the beginning of his journey into consciousness studies.

In 2012, driven to map the depths of his own psyche, Ken traveled to the Amazon to work with Shipibo tribal shamans and Ayahuasca. This began a seven-year odyssey of experiential research. While the ceremonies were profound, the true insights often emerged in the morning integration circles. Over the years in these isolated retreats, Ken exchanged findings with hundreds of fellow explorers – spanning the spectrum from those healing deep trauma to neuroscientists, doctors, and psychologists – all investigating the same territory of pure Mind. He witnessed how these ancient technologies opened a doorway to a Mental Universe that felt not only more real than physical reality, but also… strangely familiar.

Neuroimaging studies have confirmed that Ayahuasca deactivates the Default Mode Network – the brain’s “ego center” – the sense of separate ‘self’ – allowing consciousness to operate without its normal constraints. This is not hallucination; it is the temporary dissolution of the neurological filters that construct our everyday sense of self and reality.

These experiences sparked fourteen years of rigorous research spanning occult history, developmental psychology, neuroscience, and quantum physics. Ken discovered a community of scientists who recognize consciousness as fundamental to reality. This led him to develop a systematic framework mapping Hermetic principles to peer-reviewed neuroscience and quantum physics research – bridging ancient wisdom with modern validation.

With twenty-five years’ experience as a technical writer, making complex computer systems easy to understand, Ken McHardie brings this skillset to the esoteric world. His approach integrates his own experiential spiritual knowledge with empirical research, making profound metaphysical principles accessible to evidence-oriented readers. The Kybalion Unlocked is designed for the modern reader.