The Axial Age was a period in human history that stretched between 800 and 200 BCE, and pivoted around 500 BCE, that witnessed a leap in human consciousness in a number of distinct geographical areas, primarily Ancient Israel, Greece, India and China. This leap took place especially in cognition, ethics and spirituality and involved both a standing back and a looking within and beyond. It included the great sages Confucius, Lao Tzu, Socrates and Buddha and laid down the spiritual foundations of humanity. Since the Axial Age the contemplative or mystical core of the axial religions have deepened and consolidated its fundamental insights, and a number of contemporary integrative philosophies and metatheories have drawn on these insights to bring them into the 21st century. A new axial vision attempts to integrate them all.
For a more detailed account see axial 1.0.