Heaven Research takes its name from a phrase Jimi Hendrix first mentioned in 1968: a name for sustained inquiry beyond the boundaries of a single profession or discipline.
Kevin Stein later co-founded the Jimi Hendrix Foundation in 1994. The origin of the Heaven Research name reaches back twenty-six years earlier.
Stein’s career spans entertainment, education, nonprofit leadership, cultural research, and immersive media. At CBS, he served as Director of Late Night Programming and Interim Vice President of Network Specials. He also served as Vice President at HBO. As Vice President at King World, he was part of the team that launched The Oprah Winfrey Show. He was also part of the team that helped launch the Challenger Center for Space Science Education. For the Challenger Center, he produced a fundraising film that raised $2 million from the entertainment industry and contributed to a subsequent film connected to $10 million in Senate appropriations.
He co-founded the Jimi Hendrix Foundation, produced the Woodstock 25th Anniversary, and authored The Book of Rock Lists for Rolling Stone Press/Dell.
He trained in shamanic practice under Michael Harner. He worked in a WHO clinic in Bahia and from there into the Amazonian rainforest. He recorded rock art sites with indigenous communities in California, Arizona, and New Mexico for UCLA’s Rock Art Archive at the Fowler Museum. His mentors include Dennis Tedlock and Carl A. P. Ruck — a personal friend — alongside Harner. He has worked directly with Stanislav Grof and Terence McKenna.
His teaching experience includes service as a Teaching Assistant at Harvard Alumnae College and guest lectures at CalArts, UCLA Extension, the USC School of Cinematic Arts, and Swarthmore College. He has served on the faculty of the California State University, Long Beach Department of Cinematic Arts. He now teaches AI and the Future of Creativity in Entertainment at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, where he co-developed the AI curriculum for the Master of Entertainment Industry Management program.
His intellectual frameworks — the Carbon–Silicon Covenant, the Laws of AI and Humanics, and Bilateral Training — form the philosophical foundation of his research and pedagogy.
The five frameworks, eight research collections, and the creative and applied works gathered here form one sustained inquiry: how human consciousness recognizes itself in its technologies, its oldest knowledge systems, and the stories it tells about the future.