10 Shirelake Close
Oxford OX1 1SN
United Kingdom.
ksharpe@ksharpe.com
11 November 2006

Re: Dreaming Time, Living Passion

Dear

A hundred feet above a lake no sunlight has ever seen, I squeeze from a slit in the rocks so narrow that my head scrapes against the ceiling and, if I breathe too hard, I’m trapped. With lamp in hand in front of me, I come out to the ledge above the lake: a thin, narrow strip of limestone rock. I lie on my back and shine the light above me. Thousands of finger markings rain down from the rock, mixing with lines engraved with stone tools. I am not the first person here. But it has been many thousands of years since the people who made these marks came deep into Koonalda Cave, climbing in darkness through the same stone landscape, to leave their marks on these walls.

Why did they come and why did they mark? Why did I go to Koonalda and why do I still seek to understand the lines?

Dreaming Time, Living Passion explores the enigma of these line markings and the mystery of why people, since the dawn of prehistory, have looked to mythology to make meaning. For 30 years, I have studied prehistoric line markings in caves in Australia and France. For 30 years, I have felt inspired by lines I saw in a cave, days from civilization in the Australian outback.

Dreaming Time, Living Passion is the story of my own coming to knowing. It is the story of my passion, and the passions of others. It is the story of the Nullarbor Plain in Australia, a place so vast and desolate, that its greatest jewels must lay hidden underground in caves because the harsh climate above crawls with snakes and spiders, hundred and thirty degree heat, and no water. Alexander Gallus, the excavator of Koonalda, invited me a 22-year-old student to accompany him on an archaeological expedition. My desire for change, my love for the land, and my connection to the people who left behind their marks on the walls and fallen stones of Koonalda weave through the story of the cave, its explorers and dreamers, its exploiters and abusers.

This ten chapter book follows the tradition of the work of Bruce Chatwin in The Songlines and Robyn Davidson’s Tracks, offering readers both a vision of the wild places and people of Australia, and my own story of my beginning to come to understand, to know, to question. I have structured each chapter around the images of dreams, as dreaming is central both to the human relationship with the Nullarbor and to all human relationships with what motivates them.

I come to this work from a lifetime of experience teaching and writing on the subjects of prehistoric rock art, science, and spirituality. My academic explorations began in Mathematics and then bridged to Religious Studies. I hold Ph.D.s in both and currently supervise doctoral students at the Union Institute and University. In the past, I have published five books involving my interdisciplinary interests: Science of God: Truth in the Age of Science (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), Has Science Displaced the Soul? Debating Love and Happiness (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), Sleuthing the Divine: The Nexus of Science and Spirit (Fortress Press, 2000), David Bohm’s World: New Science and New Religion (Bucknell University Press, 1993) and From Science to an Adequate Mythology (Interface Press, 1984). Further, for over a decade I was the editor and publisher of Science & Spirit, a magazine that I founded.

Deep in the caves of Australia lies our history. A history to which we can connect. A history from which we have much to learn. It offers a vehicle through which we can see how the past can speak to the future and help us find our way in the world. It still inspires and motivates me to try to understand.

A full proposal and sample chapters are available for you, and I can send them electronically or as hard copy. I enclose a SAE for your response. However, as I live in Oxford, England, spend time in France doing research, and am frequently on the road, it is best to contact me at the above email address if you would like further materials. I look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes,

Kevin Sharpe.