"The Book of Life: Ascension and the Divine World Order"
ISBN 0-9735379-0-6
Avatar Publications
by Dr. Michael Sharp

Welcome to the world of "I AM" and the intriguing world of Ascension theory, spiritual awakening and enlightenment which Dr. Michael Sharp calls "The LIghtning Path". These are the first two books in a series on Ascension as a pathway to personal freedom, spiritual truth, reconnection with the Divine and personal empowerment according to Dr. Sharp. He has created a interesting Theory of the Universe that is somewhat like Wyndham Lewis and Noam Chomsky meet the Theory of Everything.

Dr. Sharp was an atheist and a scientist up until he had a WTF moment on 911 Day. He looked at the world from an empiricists stand point: if it couldn't be weighed, measured, counted, sorted, infinitely repeated the exact same way or quantified, then it didn't exist. Since 2001, he has created a significant body of work, including the Halo/Sharp Tarot Deck and accompanying book, with the intent of helping us all to find our own awakening and release ourselves from the bondage of The Veil. The Veil is created when our Yin and Yang energies are unbalanced, high Yang energy starves our higher chakras and creates a veil between our ego and our immortal self We lose sight of ourself as the Divine Spark that we once were.

"Every great period of civilization is dominated by a certain peculiar idea that man fashions of man. Our behaviour depends as much on this image as on our very nature - an image which appears with striking brilliance in the minds of some particularly representative thinkers, and which, more or less unconscious in the human Mass, is none the less strong enough to mold after its own pattern the social and political formations that are characteristic of a given cultural epoch" Jacques Maritain, The Range of Reason, "Christian Humanism"

His concept of the Creator is highly reminiscent of the Gnostic Demiurge; Sophia's indiscretion stashed on a cloud who created the world out of boredom and petulance. He thought he was all that existed becase he saw nothing of his Mother or the Higher levels of the Divine which she had created him outside of. He creates a world which is an unconscious imitation of the superior world which he doesn't know. He does this with power he has stolen from his Mother. This power is trapped inside of us and our physical bodies trap us in the material world; we cannot reconnect to the Divine until we awaken this spark. Dr. Sharp describes God as creating the world in a dream, as he becomes bored with his creation he decides to create 12 monads, 12 for no particular reason, to ease his boredom and expand his view and perspective (the second level). When God becomes bored with this level, he creates the next level at 12 to the third power - or 12 x 12 x 12. Each time God has another bout of boredom, he cubes the previous total and creates a new level. Each one of these levels is a dimension; the third level is detail, the fourth is chance, the fifth is time, the sixth is space and the seventh is denoted by ???? - and I don't know if that is meant to represent unknown or unknowable. There seems to be no acoustics, resonance or auditory imagination for this God though - maybe that comes at another level but he is only creating from boredom.

"What I call the 'Auditory imagination' is the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word; sinking to the most primitive and forgotten, returning to the origin and bringing something back, seeking the beginning and the end. It works through meanings, certainly, or not without meanings in the ordinary sense, and fuses the old and obliterated, and the trite, the current and the new and the surprising, the most ancient and the most civilized mentality." T.S. Eliot, "The Critic" Volume 33, No. 1, Oct-Dec 1974

We are all familiar with the symbol for Yin and Yang and recognize that it represents the energy of creation in balance - as soon as we tap into this energy, we split it into its positive and negative aspects and experience the polarities of creation or duality. The energy of creation, whether ascending or descending, must pass through ascension boundary points, where energy requirements are higher, which he likens to quantum stages which provide resistance to creation energy. The problem is how do we gather enough energy from the universal consciousness to overcome the physical limits of this plan and move the whole world into ascension - that far, far better place where we all wish to be. His theories remind me of something that Einstein once said, and I paraphrase, if we ever fully used the power of our minds, we would vibrate at such a high level we would become pure energy, no longer bound by a physical body.

Dr. Sharp does some very nice work with the Kabbalistic Tree of Life relating it to the whole process of The Unfolding and to Awakening. He writes about The Nature of God, The Nature of Creation, the Perspective of Consiousness and the Dimensions of Creation in his "Book of Light". In "The Book of Life" he elaborates on The Energy of the Ascension; Time, the Universe and Everything (fascinating ideas on time); Our World; Emissaries of Light and the Ascension Process. Dr. Sharp writes about the two previous attempts in which we have attempted Ascension, Lemuria and Atlantis, both of which failed but with different outcomes and for different reasons. These are complex, complicated and thought provoking ideas and I would have to write pages more to truly explore the full scope of his ideas and theories. He explains difficult ideas with great clarity which makes his books accessible to those who might not have explored the topic of Ascension or The Ascended Masters.

The whole idea of the Ascension is really based on humanity rising to the occasion. Considering the state of our world, steeped in wars and negativity with most people looking out for themselves only, Dr. Sharp expresses hope for mankind and a very strong belief that people are inherently good enough to generate the energy required to make Acension happen and fix the problems of our troubled planet. I don't know if I am that optimistic but then again, the great untold story of the past twenty years is the number of people who are exploring their spirituality, self-constucting a belief system and engaging in spiritual practice. There is yet hope.....Check out his website at http://www.michaelsharp.org for information on ordering all of his books and to view images from the Halo/Sharp Tarot (a beautiful Major Arcana Deck and Canadian too!).

"A book of this description is not written for an audience that is already there, prepared to receive it, and whose minds it will fit like a glove. There must be a good deal of stretching of the receptacle it is to be expected. It must of necessity make its own audience." Wyndham Lewis, The Art of Being Ruled (Time and the Western Man, New York, 1928)