Between 1917 and 1928 Rudhyar made an in-depth study of occult and various Oriental philosophies (he always stresses that Hindu philosophy in particular is not monolithic, the Indian subcontinent having produced many types of philosophy, some almost entirely materialistic, others focusing almost entirely on transcendent realities). His studies confirmed his early intuition about the importance and universality of cycles. The Secret Doctrine of H. P. Blavatsky especially laid the foundations for much of his later philosophical development.
      But Rudhyar did not study theosophy and Oriental philosophies to accumulate a mass of scholarly data or interesting "information." Through his studies he consciously tried to develop a new type of mind able to deal with universal, spiritual, and metaphysical principles and cyclic processes. He came definitely to feel that his dharma (destiny or truth-of-being) would be to reformulate ancient and traditional metaphysical and occult concepts in terms that would, both, nourish the development of and be understandable by this kind of mind, which he calls "the mind of wholeness," through a process which he calls "clairthinking" — the direct experience of ideas.
      While he has studied a vast number of books and met an impressive list of notable personalities, Rudhyar has remained isolated from the mainstream of official and academic thought.
      Between 1933 and 1968, his work in reformulating astrology along humanistic and transpersonal lines has been his main contact, not so much with his own generation as with succeeding ones. Yet his astrological work cannot be understood fully unless it is seen within the context of the basic philosophy and metaphysics he formulated in his books The Planetarization of Consciousness (1970) and Rhythm of Wholeness (1982), and more partially yet specifically in other works starting with Art as Release of Power (1929), and ending with Occult Preparations for a New Age (1974), Culture, Crisis and Creativity (1976), and Beyond Individualism (1977), none of which refer to astrology.