By Michael Sharp | michaelsharp.org

I wanted to talk a little bit today about building a bridge between the world of science and spirit and I wanted to talk about myself as an example of such a bridge. In order to do that, you’ll need to know a little bit about me.

By training, I am a sociologist. I studied at the University of Alberta in Canada, received my PhD, and went on to do standard sociological type things. I edit a journal, publish sporadically, and try to fulfill my professional duties and family responsibilities as best as I can.

Nothing remarkable, I agree. But this traditional academic side is not the only side of me. You see, a couple of years ago I found out that in addition to being a sociologist, I am also a mystic. After doing a bit of personal “experimentation” with what could be called “spiritual technologies”, I began to have an expansion of consciousness that, if I were to rigidly adhere to the dominant scientific cannon (i.e., materialism), I would be hard pressed to explain. A lot happened to me. I began thinking in millennial terms (i.e., we are currently moving through a significant and prophesied transition in the life systems on this planet), I became sensitive to “energies” and “fields”, and, perhaps most interestingly, I began to write spiritual books.

Now writing spiritual books isn’t in and of itself remarkable. A lot of people do it. What was strange for me was that I was writing with no external reference point. That is, I wasn’t researching what I was writing. I simply sat down at the computer, “opened up” my consciousness, and the ideas began to flow. What was fascinating to me was that they were ideas that my physical body and mind were not familiar with. That is, I had no external reference point. The fact was a lot of what was coming out of me I had not known before I wrote about it. It was new and the only source was inside of me. Like Alice down the rabbit hole, “curiouser and curiouser”.

Back when I started this in 2002 I couldn’t talk about this to my colleagues. The problem was, I had no scientific frame of reference. The only reference I had was the New Age movement or New Age spiritualities and while I personally had to admit that something was going on that couldn’t be explained within the standard materialist cannon, there was no way I could use the lingo of the New Age movement in respectable scientific circles. Not without becoming a laughing stock anyway.

And so there I was existing in two worlds all at once. I had a traditional academic career and a blossoming career as a mystic and I couldn’t figure out how to bridge the two. Not that I didn’t want to bridge the two. I did. Nobody likes leading a double life. But the problem of bridging was made difficult especially considering the kinds of things I was writing. I wrote, for example, a new creation story (The Song of Creation), a book on “Ascension”, a book on meditative practices and activating chakras and kundalini, and even a book on the spiritual technology of the Tarot. All of these topics had precedent within spiritual circles but not one of them made any sense in scientific circles.

How to bridge?

For a long time I struggled with a need to bring my two careers together but then the pieces started to fall into place. The first piece of the bridge came when I wrote my last book, entitled The Book of Light: The Nature of God, the Structure of Consciousness, and the Universe Within You. This book is deeply mystical. In it I talk about the nature of consciousness and its relation to the physical universe and I present a theory of the fabric and unfolding of consciousness that is, in my mind at least, remarkably logical and consistent. It is also a bit revolutionary when judged against standard church or scientific dogma. For example, in the book I say consciousness is the root and everything around us (including us and even the dimensions of time and space) is just a part of that fabric of consciousness. I also say “we are all god” and make a distinction between God with a big “G” and God with a little “g”. God with a big “G” is all of us “in God” and God with a little “g” is what we normally think of as God. That is, God as omnipotent overseer of creation.

The theory of creation that I came up with all made sense to me and I liked the theology that came out (it was non-hierarchical, inclusive, empowering, and unifying), but it wasn’t enough. Even though the book made sense to both my mystical side and my scientific side, in my mind it wasn’t the bridge.

Something was missing.

But what?

Now, I’d like say “and then, it hit me”, but it didn’t really. The remaining components of the bridge, i.e., the realization that a connection between the two areas could be made, crept up on me slowly and came in the form of a hundred little enlightenments. For example, I came across some of the writings of some ancient mystics and realized that I had managed, in my mystical isolation, to come up with identical theories of consciousness. Then I read up on the Sociology of Religion (a sub field of my beloved sociology) and realized that academics do research spiritual topics. Third, I began to become more aware of consciousness research. And fourth, I read the description of an experiment with with chicks at Quantum Biological Communication (http://www.quantumbiocommunication.com/project/). In this remarkable experiment chicks are apparently able to control a moving robot simply by their unconscious intent!
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And then, it hit me.

I understood why that experiment worked the way it did. I had the theory and I had written about it in The Book of Light and The Dossier of the Ascension. I even had a phrase to describe the impact of consciousness of physical matter. “As above in consciousness, so below in Matter”. Well, “I” didn’t have the theory. We did! The mystics had it. We, sitting in our mystical trances, had been talking about the nature of consciousness and reality, and how the two interconnect, for so long that the result of that experiment would be totally unsurprising to us. In fact, if you told a mystic about that experiment you’d probably get an inscrutable Buddha Smile. The words “I told you so” would be behind that grin.

But what was really amazing to me was that I had found an actual physical experiment that fit the theory of consciousness I had developed in The Book of Light. For a scientist trained in a materialist paradigm and understanding the profound resistance to non-materialist research, the smack was profound. And so was the impact on my budget. I now had a name and a research area. I could now find the authors and the books and so I plunked myself down and started buying from Amazon.

I’m still new in the process. I’m only marginally familiar with the area of consciousness research but I already feel like I have found a home. I understand what’s going on and I “resonate” (New Age term describing the realization of affinity) with the research.

Now I just have to fill in the gaps.

But I know, it won’t be that hard.

The bridge is already there.

Science and spirituality, science and mysticism, have converged. It’s a done deal and its there in our mutual interest in consciousness.

That’s the bridge!

It is our mutual interest in consciousness that is the root from which a new scientific paradigm is growing. I can already see the contours of the new paradigm and although the outlines are hazy still, I know its going to be different. The new paradigm is going to be as different from our current science as science was from religion when it took over after Galileo.

It is very exciting. Perhaps most exciting is the potential for unification. Speaking both as a scientist and mystic, I believe that this new paradigm will be a unified paradigm. The new science/spirituality will provide our little community on earth with the Holy Grail of research inquiry enlightenment inquiry . a grand unified theory of everything.

It is already here. The seed has been planted and if I may be so bold, let me suggest a mantra for the new unified theory of everything that will as scientist and mystics continue to merge in the middle of the bridge. It is a simple mantra that bridges science and mysticism with a simple, mutually understood concept. Any mystic would understand it and it opens the Book of Light for the rest of us.

The mantra is simple.

"Consciousness is the root of all things."

It is the collective realization of this simple axiomatic principle and the gradual unfolding of our understanding of it that will unify science, bridge it with mysticism, and usher in an entirely new paradigm of scholarly inquiry.

Count on it!

Michael Sharp, PhD.

Books by Michael Sharp

The Book of Life: Ascension and the Divine World Order [ISBN 0973537906]

Dossier of the Ascension: A Practical Guide to Chakra Activation and Kundalini Awakening [ISBN 0973537930]

The Book of Light: The Nature of God, the Structure of Consciousness, and the Universe Within You [ISBN 0973855525]

Article from: http://www.michaelsharp.org/?op=art1