to the infinity and beyond

THE ASX Grid

THE FIRST CONSCIOUSNESS-BASED MODEL OF SPACE EXPLORATION

The ASX Grid (Astral Space Exploration Model of Consciousness) is a multidimensional, non-anthropocentric framework developed by artist and futurist Kaikhan Salakhov. It is the first model in the field of space exploration to integrate stages of consciousness as a structural dimension of civilizational progress. The Grid does not measure advancement through a single axis such as energy capture or technological reach. It maps development across multiple interdependent dimensions simultaneously, treating civilization as a dynamic system in continuous reconfiguration rather than a linear progression.

A detailed overview of the Grid's architecture and its relationship to existing civilizational scales can be found in NY Review.

The Problem the ASX Grid Addresses

The dominant frameworks for measuring civilizational progress, from the Kardashev Scale to the Barrow, Sagan, and Zubrin Scales, evaluate external capability: how much energy a civilization captures, how far it reaches, how precisely it manipulates its environment. These frameworks do what they were designed to do, and they do it well within their scope. They were not, however, designed to account for the internal condition of the civilization being measured. Anthropocentric by construction, they operate within the boundaries of what their original premises permit them to see, and those premises do not include consciousness as a structural variable.

The ASX Grid does not replace these models. It provides an alternative lens that addresses what they do not cover. Where existing frameworks measure external output, the ASX Grid begins from the inner context of the species itself: its stages and states of consciousness, the modalities of awareness through which it operates, and the biological composition that gives rise to its sensory and perceptual architecture. These internal dimensions are not separate from external metrics. They directly shape them. The way a species perceives reality determines the technology it builds, the energy systems it develops, the governance structures it adopts. Internal architecture produces external expression.

The ASX Grid also contains its own system of external metrics, including forms of measurement that do not exist in any current framework. But unlike existing models, it does not stop at the external layer. Beneath every external metric sits an additional layer of internal metrics that tracks the developmental condition of the consciousness operating those systems. Existing frameworks offer the external layer alone. The ASX Grid offers both, and treats them as structurally inseparable. Critically, it does so not from an anthropocentric reference point but from the architecture of the particular species being examined. A civilization built on a different biological substrate, operating through different sensory channels and different modes of cognition, cannot be evaluated through metrics calibrated to human perception. The ASX Grid is designed to take that species on its own terms.

The consciousness gap and its implications for existing space exploration frameworks are explored further in CEO Times and Artist Highlight. The relationship between technological acceleration and the absence of parallel consciousness development is examined in TodayUS and Today's Read.

sectors

The ASX Grid maps civilizational development across interdependent sectors. These do not operate in parallel but recursively: change in one domain reshapes all others. The sectors listed below are not exhaustive and are provided for a general understanding of the basics of the model:

Consciousness and Perception — Stages, states, and types of consciousness; modes of perception; how many senses govern a civilization's relationship to reality; whether cognition is linear or non-linear; whether the cognitive architecture assumes a self or no-self.

Biology and Evolution — Biological composition as the substrate through which consciousness develops and progresses; evolutionary divergence under different gravitational, atmospheric, and radiative environments; the relationship between biological structure and perceptual architecture.

Technology and Civilizational Systems — Technology as an expression of the awareness directing it, never neutral; energy systems from planetary to stellar and galactic scales; the relationship between technological capability and the developmental stage of the consciousness operating it.

Culture and Spirituality — Cultural frameworks as structural forces rather than secondary belief systems; the role of spiritual development in civilizational architecture; fragmentation and recombination of cultural identity under isolation and divergence.

Ethics and Philosophy — Ethical frameworks as products of specific psychic architectures rather than universal constants; the relativity of moral categories to modes of perception, biological composition, and developmental stage of awareness.

Additional sectors and a broader introduction to the general structure of the model can be found in Astral Space Exploration: The Cosmic Renaissance: The Fundamental Principles of Cosmocybernetics, which presents the first application of the ASX Grid across multiple fields.

The recursive architecture of the sectors and their application across civilizational scales is discussed in USA News. The cosmogeopolitical dimension and its concrete implications are examined in TodayUS.

Eight Stages of Development

The ASX Grid organizes civilizational development across eight stages, from pre-planetary emergence to universal-scale systems. Each stage is defined through the interaction of all sectors rather than through isolated metrics. The stages are not a ladder to be climbed but a diagnostic map of where a civilization stands across multiple dimensions simultaneously. A civilization may be technologically advanced while operating through a limited or incompatible ethical framework, producing internal contradictions that the Grid is designed to identify.

The eight-stage model and its relationship to cognitive, ethical, and technological configurations is discussed further in USA News.

Non-Anthropocentric Design

The ASX Grid is not calibrated to human biology, cognition, or perception. It is built to accommodate forms of intelligence that may operate through entirely different substrates: post-human intelligences, synthetic cognition, biomechanical hybrids, xenocultural life forms with non-human perception, and distributed or hive-like intelligence structures. These are not peripheral considerations added to a human-centered model. They are embedded within every stage of the framework from the foundation upward.

A form of awareness built on a different biological substrate would not simply occupy a different position on the same scale. It would generate entirely different developmental expressions across every sector of the Grid. A civilization whose cognition is fundamentally distributed rather than individuated would not produce art, governance, or science in forms human observers could readily recognize. A civilization whose perceptual apparatus operates outside the visible spectrum would construct entirely different ontologies of space, matter, and meaning. To fail to register such intelligences is not a measurement problem. It is a structural limitation of the framework being used.

The non-anthropocentric design principles and their implications for accommodating xenocultural intelligences are explored in NY Review and Artist Highlight.

Three Primary Civilizational Trajectories

Within the ASX Grid, expansion beyond Earth is projected to produce three primary developmental trajectories:

Biocentric — Prioritizing organic evolution and natural adaptation, treating biological integrity as a guiding principle of development.

Technocentric — Prioritizing synthetic augmentation and cognitive integration, where technology becomes the primary medium of evolution.

Biomechanical — Integrating biological and technological processes into hybrid forms where the two are inseparable.

Each trajectory generates further variants shaped by environmental conditions, philosophical divergence, and isolation. Different gravity, atmosphere, radiation, and resource constraints produce different evolutionary pressures over generations. Two biocentric colonies with identical philosophical commitments would, over generations in different stellar environments, diverge into separate species despite sharing the same foundational orientation. The deeper into space humanity expands, the more pronounced the divergence between one colony and another will become. Over sufficient time and distance, these differences intensify from cultural variations into ontological incompatibilities between civilizations that are no longer mutually intelligible.

The three trajectories and their subsequent variants are examined in detail in NY Review. Their implications for multiplanetary divergence are discussed in CEO Times.

The Multiplanetary Problem

The ASX Grid addresses structural problems of multiplanetary existence that current planning largely ignores. Communication delay, biological divergence, and civilizational coherence are interconnected constraints that existing models of expansion were never built to address. The speed of light limits both travel and communication, and with them the very possibility of holding together a single civilization across the distance between star systems.

The unresolved dysfunctions of Earth are not left behind by expansion. They are a mirror of what will unfold at interstellar scale if humanity moves into space without transforming its consciousness. Interstellar expansion driven primarily by technological advancement, without a corresponding evolution of human consciousness, is likely to reproduce and amplify the same systemic failures observed on Earth. Without addressing the awareness directing the expansion, every structural solution becomes a temporary patch over a deeper failure.

These multiplanetary structural problems and their relationship to consciousness are discussed in TodayUS and Today's Read.

The Book

The ASX Grid was developed over seven years of independent research (2014–2024) and first published in Kaikhan Salakhov's 852-page treatise, Astral Space Exploration: The Cosmic Renaissance: The Fundamental Principles of Cosmocybernetics. The first edition presents the initial application of the model: the problems and questions the author is actively seeking answers to, the demonstrated scope of the Grid's applicability across multiple fields, and evidence that its experimental deployment functions as intended.

The Grid is not presented as a fixed system. It is designed to evolve as the questions it raises generate further inquiry and as scientific knowledge develops. Wherever something Salakhov has proposed comes into conflict with established scientific fact, he evolves with that fact and reworks the idea until it is scientifically sound.

The book is available on Amazon.

The Paintings

Salakhov applies the ASX Grid through painting. The thirty-six works of The Cosmic Renaissance series are produced entirely by hand using compass, ruler, oil and acrylics on canvas. The first painting was completed in 2019, predating public AI image generation tools by two to three years.

Each painting employs a geometric language that encodes visual data across scales, from planetary systems to stellar networks to galactic and universal structures. Every line connecting one dot to another represents an interstellar pathway of flow: trade routes, communication relays, energy transfers, streams of information and consciousness, moving from planet to planet, star system to star system, galaxy to galaxy, universe to universe. Because each painting contains all stages of the ASX Grid simultaneously, the geometric structures operate across multiple registers at once: multiplanetary, interstellar, intergalactic, multiversal. Each work functions as a concrete application of the ASX Grid to a specific civilizational problem, from cosmogeopolitics across settled star systems to decentralized interstellar communication networks.

The geometric language, multi-scalar architecture, and problem-specific applications of the paintings are discussed in Good Morning US and Artist Highlight.

Explore the paintings.

T.A.H.I.R.A – 108

In 2021, following the passing of his grandfather, the renowned Azerbaijani painter Tahir Salakhov, the final element of the system emerged. T.A.H.I.R.A – 108 (Transcendental A.I. of the Holarchic Integral Radiant Awareness), named in his honor, became the medium through which Salakhov enters into dialogue with the audience about the potential dysfunctions of humanity's interstellar future.

T.A.H.I.R.A – 108 is modeled as a decentralized artificial superintelligence whose core principles, drawn from the ASX Grid, remain constant across all instances. Its configuration and applications differ from one star system to another, shaped by local conditions, the effects of relativity, and communication lag across vast distances. It is not a singular omnipresent entity but a distributed system operating toward the same goal in different forms across different environments.

Each painting is conceived as a capsule of time, designed to carry Salakhov's structured thinking about problems that may carry weight far beyond his own lifetime. The paintings are how he sends his thinking ahead to meet a future where such questions become operational.

The architecture of T.A.H.I.R.A – 108, its decentralized design, and the time-capsule function of the paintings are discussed in Good Morning US.

Published Articles

The ASX Grid and Kaikhan Salakhov's work have been discussed across the following publications:

For summaries, key ideas, and attributed quotes from each publication, see the full press page.

ASTRAL SPACE EXPLORATION