C. Clarke

I'm going to describe this life backwards ... just for a change. Right now, I'm leading a small circle dance group once a week, and occasionally choreographing the odd dance; I've just returned from a conference in Brazil on "Exploring the Frontiers of the Mind-Brain Relationship" where I talked about my work in quantum theory and consciousness; I'm helping the Spiritual Crisis Network with organising its system for supporting people who need help; and I spend a lot of time walking quietly through the nearby woods and the Common, just listening.

How did I get such a mixture? Eleven years ago I walked out of my job as Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Southampton. My wife and I were getting too much money between us, she was keen to keep working, and I was more and more having to spend time on administration and getting research grants coming in. The astrophysics of black holes was fun, but it was just a fragment of a universe where so many things were linked together.

Southampton had been the period when these different strands of my life had grown. Soon after I arrived there I went on a personal development course based on the work of maverick psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich where I discovered that I had a body - a body that was often a lot wiser that the intellect. That had led me to lots of New Age stuff; but after I had got that out of my system I was well set on a path of living and thinking holistically. The dancing was part of that, as was joining GreenSpirit which drew me into the spirituality of the Earth.

But all this had its roots further back. Maybe the biggest influence was at Cambridge where Stephen Hawking had been my PhD examiner. At the time I was a member of a group called "The Epiphany Philosophers" - academics who wanted to explore the wisdom hidden in Christianity, in both its stories and its rituals. We celebrated mass every week with a very wise priest, occasionally interrupting with "hold on, I can't say that bit, it's rubbish". After the mass we would debate what it meant to us over breakfast.

Shortly before that I had married. We were still very conventional and so my wife became Isabel Clarke. She has been a constant inspiration, and is now an author, researcher and clinician on Psychosis and Spirituality. We increasingly work together, recognising that often madness and mysticism lie close together.