From Religion to Spirituality

Dr. Miceal Ledwith achieved distinction as a catholic theologian who received international recognition for academic and professional accomplishment: An esteemed professor of Systemic Theology, president of the University at Maynooth, Ireland, and fulfilling a seventeen year appointment as advisor to the Pope on the Holy See’s International Theological Commission. Yet at the height of his career, he walked away to pursue a completely different kind of spiritual life – one of humble, internal initiation and transformation.

Since retiring from the priesthood, he has gone on to appear in the groundbreaking film, What the Bleep Do We Know?, as well as its sequel, and has been interviewed and featured on many documentaries. He has also produced three volumes so far in his own series of DVDs that deal with fundamental matters in relation to spiritual evolution, and three more of which are scheduled for release in 2010/2011. In 2008 Ledwith published The Orb Project, a book detailing his intensive five-year study of orbs, which was co-authored with German physicist Klaus Heinemann. He is currently working on a new series of books titled Forbidden Truth, a three-volume work that focuses on human destiny and the mechanics of spiritual evolution.

SuperConsciousness Magazine was given the rare opportunity to speak at length with Dr. Ledwith about his life, his choices, and his passion to know God as himself, and we are honored to share with our readers his compelling story.

SC: What was the source of your initial passion for pursing a religious path?

ML: It is something that I have always wanted to do or be. I don’t think my attraction was to any of the rituals, ceremonies or the things that often impress people. It was more to understand what we are doing here. Even as a child, some of the things that were being put out there didn’t seem to make a great deal of sense to me.

I remember questioning one of my teachers on the logic and existence of purgatory. I was told to not be ridiculous and to shut up. Many years later, when I became a student of theology, I began to see there was really no scholarly foundation at all for, as an example, the belief in limbo. It just appeared out of the blue several centuries after the time of Jesus Christ, at which time it became the standard for the whole church. Anyone who obviously thinks at all about what the religions propose, is bound to come to issues and problems that don’t really make sense.

SC: Was your religious focus primarily the study and intellectual pursuit of knowledge?

ML: Yes. I have been fortunate that every year since my entry into University that in some way, shape or form, I have been a student studying obviously theology, but later on other disciplines. It has been an on-going process.

SC: How did you and the other seminary students negotiate the logical and rational inconsistencies within church doctrine?

ML: There was a conflict obviously. This wasn’t just a head affair for me: It was not something abstract and intellectual, because as students we were trying to live this every day. The people who were going through the seven-year course would be going out to teach or administer to numbers of people with this set of beliefs. I was going through the seminary just after the Second Vatican Council, a time of enormous upheaval in the church, and some people in the church regarded the changes the Council made as the work of the devil. It caused so much confusion. I am far from saying that I was the only person that felt this way and I imagine most people who were my classmates did as well. There were many things in the religious state that didn’t square with us.

I think most of my contemporaries were doing the same thing that I was and pondering the same thoughts, maybe not as intensely, but they were certainly as aware of those theories as I was. There were many people in positions of authority in the church that were contemplating the inconsistencies, and a lot of them ran afoul of religious authority. This is of course something that had always occurred throughout the history of Christianity.

I spoke with someone the other day that insisted on the importance of holding on to some permanently valid religious truth. I asked “And where might we hope to find that – in the gospels of the New Testament, for example? Let me suggest something.”

“Go to the Vatican Library today and look at the oldest manuscript that we have of the New Testament, which is known as the ‘Codex Vaticanus’, and was probably one of the bibles commissioned by Constantine. Another one to look at is in the British Library called ‘Codex Sinaiticus’ which was discovered in Mount Sinai at St. Catherine’s Monastery. Look at those two texts, both from the 4th century, and try to find the famous story of Jesus rescuing the lady who is being stoned for adultery in John’s Gospel Chapter 8. It is a very powerful story, but it is not contained in either of those manuscripts, which means that story was inserted into the text of the New Testament for the first time at least as late as the 4th century if not later. I can give you a hundred other examples.”

Noting awkward facts like this of course is not going to please people who seem to believe that the inspired books of both Old and New Testaments were somehow sent down by fax or email from God directly.

SC: When you moved from your theological study into formal academic teaching, were you compelled to look deeper into these inconsistencies and bring about a more enlightened perspective?

ML: Absolutely. If we are interested in getting to the truth of things like that and focus on the actual true sources, then how can we ignore what the sources tell us?

SC: And that went okay with the status quo?

ML: Well, not really. I was not a solitary lone figure because there were many people trying to do the same thing. But it was sort of a hit and run affair between the religious authorities and the people who were getting to the truth of things. It is sort of accepted in the church that the academics are generally considered the heretics at best.

SC: Were you able to broaden the approach of specific theological questions into the curriculum while Maynooth University President, or were your duties more practical?

ML: With hundreds of academic staff and thousands of students, obviously only a very small percentage of those were students of theology, and fewer still of those theological students were students for the priesthood. In Europe, unlike the USA, the University Presidents are the academic heads of each of the Departments, of Arts, Science, etc., so one could never avoid the academic issues. But there were many other involvements of a non-academic nature that had to do with the everyday running of the university.

In my ten-year term, the student number increased in our college by 300% and that obviously generated an enormous scramble to keep up. First of all, to find highly qualified staff to teach the increased numbers of students, secondly, construct buildings to accommodate them. I call it a scramble because there was never a moment to spare. You had to not just look at the course of studies themselves as the most paramount thing, but also how to get that system up and going.

SC: What avenues were open to you to explore those questions while President?

ML: I was one of thirty members of the Pope’s Advisory Commission from 1980 until 1997, and with those esteemed theologians there is very high level of discussion. That was a great opportunity, especially over that long number of years to get to know them, be able to interact with them, and get their views, because they were all extremely open people. They were very forward looking, and they were all aware of the issues that were controversial.

SC: How were topics chosen, and can you share a specific example?

ML: We were given topics by the Pope himself, or others would suggest topics and they would go through a sifting and selection process. We would work on that for a while and then build a document. I personally wrote three of the documents over that time.

Say for instance, the whole question of how do you understand Jesus Christ? It is the same question that has been there from the beginning and that has been tearing people apart since the 4th century. If you say he was divine and at the same time human, how do you integrate those two things into a single individual? Certainly in the way those terms are couched traditionally and in everyday speech, it seems to be an impossibility.

SC: Didn’t Constantine’s Council of Nicea in 325 AD play a significant role in establishing whether Jesus was divine or human?

ML: The Council, in fact, stated that he was both, and therein lies the difficulty. There had always been a tendency to exalt him above the ordinary human level by using theological techniques such as the Virginal Conception of Jesus or the permanent Virginity of Mary. This wasn’t totally new at Nicea. The difficulty was (and still is) in being able to see how an individual could be both divine and human, especially in that time because those notions were irreconcilable in one person. There were certainly a great number of highly intelligent and welleducated people at Nicea, but they had backed themselves into a corner because there was no way they could account for both of those things and done so in any satisfactory way.

For instance, when I began my training at Ramtha’s School of Ancient Wisdom, I was given extensive knowledge of the Seven Levels that constitute reality all the way back up to what we now call the zero point. If the Council of Nicea members had had that knowledge, they would have been able to understand how Jesus could move in and out of the physical dimension of visibility, thus understand how the notions of divinity and humanity could be reconciled in one individual.

SC: While the Pope’s Theological Commission was examining the issue of Jesus Christ, did that discussion include the separation of man and divinity?

ML: No is the simple answer to that. Our job was basically to clarify the implications of the historical doctrine that had been formulated. In other words, here is the subject and produce the very best insight that you can. I say it with great respect because these men [the other theologians on the commission] have great integrity. Our job was basically, “What can I discover to shed light on the ancient doctrines.”

I think a lot of people were beginning to feel that it wasn’t possible to rehabilitate those ancient doctrines into modern times because the starting points are so different. Obviously, if your starting point is wrong, you are never going to get a right conclusion. At the same time, it is important to respect the dynamics of what you may have involved yourself in.

SC: When did you begin to explore ideas outside the Church, other spiritual ideas?

ML: I always did. Anyone in my position would. I wasn’t unique in this. I would have studied whatever I could get my hands on. There were insights in all of them. Every great movement has some very powerful insights and clarifications to help your understanding. By the time I found the Ramtha teaching, I had identified major gaps in all religious systems, East and West.

SC: For example?

ML: For instance, I used to teach in my own lectures that we were not here to just obey the commandments. If you look at the teachings of Jesus, he wasn’t concerned with that. I always taught that we were here on this Earth and in this life to accomplish some profound internal personal change. I wasn’t able to explain how that would happen, but that was something I had always taught.

SC: What was the basis for you having such a perspective?

ML: From looking with a very critical eye at the teachings of the New Testament, it was obvious to me that’s what it was all about. This became clear to me after I had studied quantum physics as a student. There is one great statement from the Gospel of St. John that struck me as extremely odd: Jesus said, “When you pray for something, believe it is already yours and it shall be so.”

Goodness me, this is not what we are doing in the church at all. What we were taught and told to practice was that when you want something, you pray first and begin by demeaning yourself as far as possible with “Oh God, forgive me, have mercy on me. I am a worthless sinner. I do not deserve this.” You win God over to your side to have pity on you. Then you ask God, or you beg or you implore, or you beseech, or pray. In other words you do everything except what Jesus said, which is “Believe it’s already yours.” It was obvious to me that the teachings of Jesus were tools for the manipulation of the quantum field.

SC: How did you come across Ramtha?

ML: I found The White Book and I read it all that night. I knew it was true. I had always taught that we are here to accomplish our own personal inner transmutation. Before I studied with Ramtha, I couldn’t explain how that would be done. Another of the things I saw in The White Book is how those gaps I saw everywhere else were filled.

This realization put me in a really awkward position, and what is a person in my situation going to do with it? I realized my fundamental career up to that point in time was over. The rest, as they say, is history.

SC: How did you transition from Maynooth President and Papal Council member to student of Ramtha?

ML: By law, my presidency term was limited to ten years, and I was coming near the end of my time anyway.

I was probably the last person in the entire universe that would have believed in a channel. There was so much garbage out there, so much tomfoolery everywhere out there. I had met so much of that, I couldn’t count for you how many blind alleys I have gone down in my life.

I was very skeptical, but I also knew that there are many things that you have to commit yourself to first in order to see the reality and validity of them. We can’t say “prove it to me” while staying disengaged. Wanting to see before you believe is in many ways like wanting to jump across a chasm in two phases. You don’t stop halfway to see what you’re doing; it just doesn’t work. I realized if I hadn’t had that mindset, I would never have come to the School.

SC: What has been the great distinction between your journey within traditional religion as opposed to your evolution as a spiritual adept?

ML: The basic realization prompted is that [in religions] there is no continuity between the spiritual and the physical: They identify the higher realms of frequency as spiritual, and the lower end of the realms as physical. When pursing spiritual knowledge, there is no such division. That may seem a very harmless statement at first sight, but it is catastrophic for the Church’s understanding of Jesus.

In spirituality, there is no dichotomy: The material and the spiritual are one and the same, just different, very different phases of the same basic reality.

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