Have We Progressed Spiritually Since the Time of the Buddha? We’ve Gone Backwards — And Forwards — in Ways Most People Don’t Realize

This is one of the biggest questions in spirituality, and most answers to it are vague. People either romanticize the past (“ancient wisdom was superior”) or dismiss it (“we know so much more now”). Both responses miss what actually happened.

From my own research into consciousness and higher vibrations, I’ve found that the answer requires a framework most people don’t have: the distinction between two types of awareness that have moved in opposite directions over the last 2,500 years.

Have we progressed spiritually since ancient times?

The Two Types of Awareness: Horizontal and Vertical

Horizontal awareness is how much you know about the physical world through your five senses and through science. It includes your understanding of geography, physics, biology, technology, relationships, culture, and how the material world works. This is the awareness most people develop through education and life experience.

Vertical awareness (spiritual awareness) is how connected you are to dimensions beyond the physical — your relationship with your soul, with higher vibrations, with Earth’s energy, and with the non-material aspects of reality. Think of it as a 12-story building representing different levels of consciousness in this universe. Your vertical awareness is which floor you’re on — not how much furniture you can name on the floor you’re standing on. We are now as humanity “visiting” the 3^rd floor (3^rd chakra, or dimension of vibration - 3D)

These two types of awareness are supposed to develop together. A truly evolved person should have both. But over the last millennia, they’ve moved rather in opposite directions — and that divergence explains most of the confusion about spiritual progress.

What the Ancients Had (And What They Didn’t)

In the time of Krishna, Buddha, Lao Tze, and Jesus, horizontal awareness was extremely limited. An average farmer probably never traveled more than a few dozen miles from their village in their entire life. Even most nobles very rarely ventured far beyond their hometown and capital. Another continent might as well have been another planet. People thought the Earth was flat and sat at the center of the universe. Precise timekeeping didn’t exist — clocks as we know them appeared only a few centuries ago. There was no middle class, no science as we understand it, and all authoritative information came from sacred religious texts.

But their vertical awareness was often far higher than ours. People felt a deep, direct connection to nature, to the unseen world, and to forces beyond the physical senses. This wasn’t superstition (although some of it was) — it reflected a genuine energetic connection to Earth’s lifeforce and to higher dimensions that modern people have largely lost. This connection is why religions and spiritual practices like yoga, Taoism, and various mystery schools arose and thrived. The ancients didn’t know much about the physical world, but they knew something about the non-physical world that we’ve forgotten.

How Modern Civilization Reversed the Balance

If someone from 2,500 years ago saw our world today, they’d think they’d landed in a realm of gods. Our technology would seem like the miracles described in the Vedas, Bible, and Quran. In horizontal awareness, we’ve advanced beyond anything the ancients could have imagined!

But something happened along the way that damaged our vertical awareness. Starting about 300-400 years ago, the focus shifted from God and the soul to human emotions and rational thought. As Nietzsche put it, “God is dead” — meaning the center of attention moved from the divine to the human self. This shift separated the average person from their connection with their soul, with the spiritual world, and with Earth’s energies. Atheism — unthinkable in ancient times — became common. Science became the new religion, and anything not scientifically proven was dismissed as nonsense.

The result is a civilization with extraordinary horizontal awareness and diminished vertical awareness. We can map the genome and send probes to Mars, but most people have no functioning connection to their own soul’s guidance. This disconnection has made spiritual processes like kundalini awakening and kundalini rising harder now than in ancient times, because the energetic infrastructure — the connection to Earth, the openness to non-physical reality — has atrophied in most modern bodies.

Consider: the average modern person spends over 90% of their time indoors, insulated from Earth’s energy by concrete, plastics, other artificial stuff, shoes, and screens. They eat food that has been processed beyond any energetic value. They live in electromagnetic environments that ancient bodies never encountered. Their subconscious is loaded with limiting beliefs absorbed from mass media, advertising, and social comparison — sources that didn’t exist +200 years ago. All of this suppresses the body’s natural vertical receptivity. An energy healing session targeting these accumulated blocks is often the fastest way to begin restoring what modern life has disconnected.

Meditation in modern times

Why High IQ Doesn’t Mean High Awareness

One of the more uncomfortable observations from my work is that education and intelligence don’t correlate with spiritual awareness. Global access to higher education, entirely based on science and horizontal knowledge, has produced highly capable people who are remarkably limited in their understanding of anything beyond the physical. A high IQ doesn’t guarantee higher awareness — it often produces a more rigid attachment to the idea that nothing exists beyond what can be measured. Some of the most horizontally intelligent people I’ve encountered are the most vertically closed, seeing everything in black and white: if science hasn’t proven it, it doesn’t exist.

This is exactly the audience, paradoxically, that has the most to gain from genuine spiritual development. Analytical minds are actually well-suited for real spiritual work, because genuine spiritual growth produces measurable, observable changes — in vibration levels, in chakra openness, in the number of limiting beliefs released. A psychic reading online can provide these measurements: your current soul vibration, your body vibration, your chakra openness percentages. These are concrete data points, not vague feelings. That’s the kind of evidence an analytical mind can work with.

The Modern Advantage Nobody Talks About

Here’s the flip side that makes this era extraordinary: the same global information access that spread atheism also means that anyone, anywhere, can now explore spiritual knowledge and practices without leaving their career or daily life. In ancient times, serious spiritual development required joining a monastery, finding a master who would accept you, and dedicating your life full-time to practice. The average person had no access to the teachings that spiritual masters held.

Today, a professional in New York or London can access spiritual teachings, receive an energy healing online session, work with a spiritual guide remotely, and develop genuine vertical awareness while maintaining their career and family. This wasn’t possible at any previous point in history. The gap between “spiritual seekers” and “non-seekers” is widening precisely because the opportunity is more accessible than ever for those who choose to take it.

The Real Answer: Balance Both

So have we progressed spiritually since the Buddha? In horizontal awareness, massively. In vertical awareness, we’ve regressed for the majority. But the opportunity to develop both simultaneously — to balance the material and spiritual worlds — is greater now than at any point in human history. The ancients couldn’t Google quantum physics. We can meditate after a boardroom meeting. The question is whether you’re developing both dimensions or just the one your culture rewards.

If you want to know where your vertical awareness actually stands — not where you think it is, but where it measurably is — a free spiritual reading or vibration reading provides that assessment. If you’re ready to develop vertical awareness alongside your horizontal capabilities, our spiritual development course was designed for analytical professionals who want measurable spiritual progress without abandoning their professional lives — with experienced spiritual coaching at every stage.

The Buddha didn’t have your horizontal awareness. You most probably don’t have his vertical awareness. The goal is to develop both.