Full transcript: Tim Freke on London Real
0:00 Hey guys, it’s Brian from London Real. This week we have stand-up philosopher Tim Freke on the show. He’s an author of over 30 books translated into 15 languages. His latest book, Mystery Experience, is a revolutionary take on spirituality. Check it out. This is London Real. My name is Brian Rose.
0:31 Joining me, as usual, is Mr. Nick Gabriel, fresh back from a highly successful sex change operation. Nick, you’re gorgeous. Thank you. It’s actually, I’m Sonia Dubel, who’s joining us, who’s a former guest on London Real.
0:42 She is a singer, actress, yogi specialist. She has a channel on YouTube and a business called The Secret Bliss. There isn’t much you can’t do. Welcome back. Thank you very much.
0:54 Thanks for coming here. Thank you for having me. And not to be upstaged by Sonia is Mr. Tim Freke, who is a standup philosopher and also the author of The Mystery Experience and The Jesus Mysteries. And he’s also a blogger for The Huffington Post.
1:06 Tim, welcome. Thank you. You know, what is a standup philosopher? And I must ask, what is the mystery experience? I’m just going to show a quick copy of your book here, which I’ve started but not finished.
1:18 Well, the idea of stand-up philosophy just really came for two reasons. One was that, for me, philosophy has got a very dull reputation as something academic and kind of just cerebral. But actually, philosophy feels like it’s fun. I wanted to make philosophy sexy. I wanted to make it something which was enjoyable.
1:35 And philosophy, for me, is a sort of magic. I mean, if you go and see a good philosopher, And you listen, and they’ve got something to say. They can change the way you experience reality, so that when you walk out of that hall, you’re in a different reality to the one you walked in. And that’s magic. So I wanted a way of presenting this, which was fun, which involved humor, but which was really deep.
1:53 So that was part of it. The other reason is, because I write about the philosophy I’m interested in, is the philosophy of awakening. So spirituality, as it’s called. Problem with the word spiritual, it comes with so much baggage. One of the things where the baggage really hits is the idea that if you teach spirituality, you’re a spiritual teacher. And unlike being a maths teacher or a teacher of anything else, it comes with all of these huge assumptions about what that means, what you’re saying about yourself, that there’s a kind of inflation involved. I didn’t want to be a spiritual teacher. I just wanted to be Tim sharing his experience of this amazing adventure of life. So I looked for something I could call myself and many years ago now, stand up philosopher. I like it. You know it is kind of every man, it does identify with people a bit more than like you said spirituality does turn a bunch of people off a little bit, right? And why is that?
2:47 You know I’m interested in, it does turn people off because a lot of people have had very strong aversions to perhaps a religion as sort of an indoctrination and spirituality you know more than we would maybe deem it a philosophy sort of falls into that religious and people reject that and there’s a strong rejection towards it then there’s also the other side where religion spirituality is meant to sort of be left-wing and religion is meant to be the mainstream so then different mindsets I mean we’ve taken on different beliefs about the word spirituality it’s definitely weighted and And that’s why we have to have our own understanding of life. It’s a spirituality, whatever you want to call it. You have to embody your understanding of life as an experience, your own personal experience.
3:46 But I’d love to know, were you inspired by a philosopher in particular? Oh, lots of them. I mean, right from when I was a kid. And a lot of philosophers from the East as well as from the West, I mean, Socrates is a great hero of mine because he knew he knew nothing, which is a great starting point. I think it’s the place we should all start. But also Indian philosophers like Srinivas Gedhata Maharaj whose name really just means Mr.
4:12 Natural, which I prefer. Yeah, pretty much. And kind of mythical philosophers who may or may have actually lived like Laxu in China and Chongzhu and these figures. So a whole load of different guys and what I love is that there’s a commonality. I’ve had the privilege to study and write books, well I’ve done 30 something books on all of the spiritual traditions of the world, really going into them and in answer to your what is the mystery experience, my feeling is that there’s a commonality underneath all of this. There’s huge differences too but just like you could go to any culture and you can find food because human beings eat.
4:54 It’s all different food, but it’s all food. You can go to any culture and any time in history and you’ll find people awakening because it’s natural. It just happens to people and there’s a very profound experience to be had there and they describe it in different ways. So what’s fascinated me is finding that and going, okay, well, how can I describe it now without the baggage of the past? How can I invent a new language to explore this perennial human experience which makes it directly accessible to people and which makes sense, which doesn’t set up a whole other superstitious ideas or beliefs just actually roots you in your own genuine experience and you can own it yourself where it’s yours because it’s your natural birthright. So the mystery experience is my name for that awakening one of the names I have many and what the book is is as the subtitles a revolutionary approach to spiritual awakening and why it’s revolutionary is that I’ve attempted to to ground in our actual experience and to talk about it in a language that anyone can get and which allows people to actually experience this yeah yeah that’s great that’s really great you had a line in there that I was reading it last night and you said something that if we don’t feel curious we simply aren’t very conscious and I mean that’s really a lot of London Real laws about is what kind of questioning why we do certain behaviors and what we’re curious about life I was just wondering if you could
6:09 Talk a bit more about why you said that well I mean the way that I come in the in the doorway for me is the mystery so this deep awake state which people experience and which is available to all of us. The most obvious way into it is just to look at this moment right now. What is being awake? You talk about that in your book but what is being awake? It’s like being awake but deeper. I want to be deeply awake.
6:39 Yeah. I think everyone’s experienced times when they feel numb and they’ve experience times where they feel ultra alive and that deep awake is what is one of the names for being that ultra alive state where you’re seeing well what you see is just how incredible it is to be alive so from a state where you don’t even notice then you can look at this moment and go and be in wonder just to see that you are having an experience right now and you don’t know what it is fundamentally you know on the surface you do well we all know we’re in this room having this conversation and we’ve got microphones and it’s all been set up and we’re paying attention to that. But look into the depths and what is this? What is this flow of colors and shapes and sounds? What is this?
7:30 What is it to be alive? I have no idea. I don’t think anyone does. Something is happening. We exist in this phenomenal universe which completely baffles us at every turn. It’s bigger and more amazing and smaller and beyond concepts and it’s happening. We don’t know what it is and we’re heading to death and And we don’t know what that is.
7:50 And we don’t know where we came from. We don’t want to do with it. And we’re just living in this big question. And when you home in on that mystery, when you come out of the story that you’re telling about life, where you think you know who you are, you know what’s going on, and you also become conscious of the depths of this moment where you don’t know, your state changes. And that’s the doorway into this awakening.
8:13 You just suddenly, there it is. What intrigues me about it is it’s actually the most obvious thing. could be more obvious than we don’t know what this is and yet most of us most of the time don’t even notice that. What is awakening in your I mean you know awakening for me is I know what I feel it is but it also to many people has a really big weight on it. How would you explain what awakening is? For me it’s a estate in which you are conscious of the things which you normally miss. So by coming into the mystery you’ve still got your story you haven’t forgotten where you are and you still got all that but you’ve suddenly noticed hang on I didn’t notice that as well I had no idea what this is and as I come into that there’s a wonder and you said about the line about being curious and why I’d say that was because it feels like if you’re not in front of this moment going breathless with wonder. You haven’t noticed that you’re alive. One of the things that I did when I was younger is work with a lot of people who are dying. And what I saw is that when people face death, suddenly they wake up to, oh my god, I’m alive and I don’t know what it is and I don’t know what’s going on and it’s amazing and just to drink this water is incredible, to breathe, to see you, to meet another conscious being, look in your eyes and know that I’m connecting with consciousness.
9:42 Yeah. So that’s being deep awake. Whoa, yeah. And as you go into it, there is this, what I outline in the book is you start having these experiences which are very familiar and accessible of a profound sense of oneness that you come into a place where there’s a, that on the surface of life, like waves on a sea, we’re all separate and everything’s individual. But as you go down into the depths of life, as it were, there’s a fundamental oneness.
10:08 So you feel this both separate and not separate, you feel connected and from that comes this what I call deep love, this incredible sense of embracing all being and being in love with being and in love with all beings. And that’s the real hallmark for me. What I mean by awakening is that love. Absolutely. It actually feels that that is what you just said is the primary because you first need to be in be in love with being yeah and that is the primary you know it’s you can’t go out and be in love with all beings until you can first really be in love with the fact that you are alive you are having this you know living human experience yeah and an awakening to me what does it mean to you Brian? Well when he was talking about being deep awake I just thought about a lot about meditating and and just when I wake up from meditation I just everything I see is like beautiful and I just cherish everything a bit more so just being very present very wake very in the now but I mean that’s the other thing I read a bits of your book and I found there are a lot of abstract things that you talked about and I was just wanting what are like some of the practical things you do to get people to be deep awake I know you have these retreats you do but what are some of the practical things you can actually get people to do to get these what you call a wow moments. Well what’s blown me away I mean I’ll be honest with you but I mean it really has surprised me you know because I started
11:36 When I was very young when I was my first awakening happened when I was 12 and just happened and then I’ve been following it for now four decades trying to find it deepen it understand it and share it. Since I’ve been doing these mystery experience retreats what has astonished me is that something’s happening there’s And I’m able to convey in such a way that nearly everyone, man, woman, young, old, people who’ve been to countless retreats, people who’ve just come to the first one and be brought along by their wife and doesn’t know why they’re there and never heard of me and doesn’t know anything about anything about this area, it doesn’t matter who they are. That over the course of a weekend, nearly everyone can have that experience so strongly that the love is vibrating in every cell in their body.
12:21 And it’s not an intellectual understanding, although the intellect can help you. It’s a total experience. It’s a physical, emotional, mental, it’s a total experience. So you can’t miss it. And that is possible.
12:35 The things we do to lead that I get people to do, it’s very hard to describe without doing it. It can be misleading, although there are in the book, is really to do what you’re already doing. look, to listen, to touch, but to do it in a different way, and to do it being conscious of what you’re doing. And specifically, I get people to do it with each other. So like right now, I’m aware, I’m looking at your beautiful faces.
13:00 Wow. Thank you. Really, you know, it’s like, here’s all this unique individuality. And then what I’m connecting with, I look at your eyes, there’s your eyes. And then what I’m connecting with, I can’t see.
13:13 What I’m connecting with is conscious being. And I can’t see it, but I know it’s there. And I know that I’m conscious of being, but I can’t see myself, I see my body, but I can’t see conscious being. I can’t see what’s looking. And one of the great teachings of all the spiritual mystical traditions is to find that which is looking but can’t be seen.
13:33 And if you look at each other, conscious that you are something that can’t be seen, connecting with something that cannot be seen through looking, it changes that experience. And you start to become aware of this other polarity to the paradox of our nature. I mean, maybe I need to talk more about that because that’s the key idea that I work with is in there, is in the idea of paradox. This is the the paragogical thinking. Paragogical thinking.
13:59 Yeah, I started reading about that, but I wanted to ask you if you could try to define what is paragogical thinking? I think this is a new word. It is a new word. And it’s a word I’ve coined. I mean, I’ve been playing with these ideas for quite some time, but I realized I needed a term because then you can hold it.
14:13 You said you had your first awakening when you were 12. How does a 12-year-old know they’ve just had an awakening? Oh, he didn’t. I had no idea. What I knew is I was sitting on a hill in the southwest of England and it puzzled me deeply that I was alive and that all the grown-ups seemed to pretend that they knew what was going on and clearly they didn’t and why were they doing that?
14:35 It’s really profound for a 12-year-old. Yeah, I mean, I guess I was a weird kid. I believe you were a weird kid, yes. do something in the surname perhaps. Yes, if you’re born with the name freak and you’re in school and you’ve got to. That is the coolest surname, by the way. I’m glad you don’t try to pronounce it Freke. No, no, freak. Own it. Sorry, you were saying. Well, for me it was, now I think what happened was that I just entered the mystery. I didn’t know what this is so profoundly that consciousness changed. And it was, as we’ve described, it was like stepping into a secret garden. It was like, oh, I’ve just moved sideways and now I’m in a place where the green is really green and the birdsong is really beautiful and most importantly for me is the biggest thing I remember is, oh my god, the universe is pulsating with love and just being very overcome and a sense of being home. Oh my god, I’ve come home. I felt alienated and like, what am I doing on this strange planet full of strange people? And suddenly there’s, oh my God, I’m home. And there’s love everywhere. And am I Tim being loved by the universe or am I the universe loving Tim? It was all, it was a love experience.
15:47 And it hadn’t happened with a guru, it hadn’t happened in a church, it hadn’t happened when I was meditating, it hadn’t happened just sitting as a kid on a hill. So from that point, I just knew that it was natural that anyone could experience it, if I could experience it, anyone could. And I didn’t know what it was, but that’s what, that was the seed which set me then on this journey of trying to find out what it was, which has led me down a lot of labyrinths, and where I got lost.
16:09 Because I mean, presumably you didn’t go from 12 and then sort of just carry on the journey you became and just lived a life as a normal child. Absolutely. When was it when you, that actually you had this pulling towards this line of thinking and philosophy? That was pretty much straight away. I mean, the first thing I did when I came down from the hill was write a play about it.
16:35 Or about love, which was pretty outrageous at the time. We put it on in a look, because we had a theater group. And you mentioned the Jesus Mysteries, the person I wrote that with, decades later, was in that play, who I’d known Peter Gandy, who’s now my next door neighbor. And him and I have been exploring constantly with other people, too. I fell in very quickly with a lot of oddballs who were going, what the hell’s this?
17:00 And that was our interest. What is this? What can we do to find out? What drugs can we take to find out? What meditations can we do, who can we go and see to find out, where can we travel to to find out?
17:10 There’s something deeper and we want to know. For me, still, you wake up in the morning and here it is again. What the hell is it? And where have I just been actually while I was lucid dreaming to my lucid living, which is actually something I’m really curious about, which is the lucid living. You wrote a book called Lucid Living, is that right?
17:29 I did. A small little book. Tell us more because I’m very into it. And this will help with the parological thinking. I mean, the parological thinking is, I’ll go to the Lucid Living and use it straight away.
17:42 But the essence of parological thinking is just going, look, logical thinking is great. Actually, I’m a big fan of it. I really wish people, especially in spirituality, would be more logical. One of the problems we’ve got, why it’s got a bad name, is it’s so woo woo. However, the nature of reality, as I’ve come to understand it, is that it’s fundamentally paradoxical.
17:59 So, which means when you come down to the depths of reality, you need to embrace paradox And the example I use in the book is many, but one is from quantum physics. Very famously, now people know that in experiments with light, what is a light? The particle wave. Yeah. You do a theory of light, right?
18:16 Yeah, that you get. Is it a wave? Is it a particle? Well, you know, Niels Bohr came along with others and went, look, it’s both. Now that doesn’t make any logical sense.
18:25 It’s either a wave or a particle. But they’re going, no, it’s something which can’t be described, which you must see from two paradoxical viewpoints. So parological thinking is embracing paradoxically opposite viewpoints at the same time. Why it’s important to awakening is because if you can do that, I think it becomes very easy to see this deep self, which the great spiritual teachers have been talking about for so long, because it’s the parological opposite of the separate self.
18:57 A great analogy to use is dreaming. When you dream at night, you can see that your identity is paradoxical if you dream lucidly. If you’re lost in the dream, if you’re asleep in the dream, you think you are the person in the dream, you think it really is there in the way you think it’s there, you are one amongst many in the dream. Everything kind of makes sense. Yeah, all the emotions.
19:19 Yeah, yeah, and the six-foot pink rabbit is just, you know, what do we expect? Everything makes sense, even the nutty things. When you dream consciously, lucidly, when you dream lucidly, you say, oh, hang on, I’m dreaming. And at that moment, you see that your nature is a paradox, because on the one hand, you’re the person in the dream, but on the other hand, you’re what? You’re the awareness within which the dream is arising.
19:41 You’re the dreamer. Yeah. So in one way, you’re this individual in the dream, and in another way, you’re the whole dream. It’s all you. It’s all one.
19:50 And everything is arising within you. So you’re in it, and it’s in you. Which is true? They’re both true, depending on how you look at it. That’s a parological perspective.
20:01 To get this deep awake, it’s the same or similar now. It’s to look at this moment and go, OK, so we’re here now. We’re normally so unconscious, we don’t even notice the most obvious thing, which is it’s really weird and strange and mysterious, and we don’t know what it is. We just take it for granted. We think it’s there, although science is showing that it’s not.
20:23 What’s the parological opposite of our identity? Here I’m an object. Here I’m Tim. I’m this separate self. Here’s you.
20:30 I love the separate self. I love the beautiful body. It’s fantastic. Everyone should have one. And then there’s the deep self.
20:36 It’s like what is it that’s witnessing this? What is the awareness within which this is arising? And what I see when I look at that is it’s a comparable to lucid dreaming. That’s why I call it lucid living, which is that on the one hand, I’m a thing here. I’m a object.
20:51 And then I’m a subject, which is not a thing, but it’s like a presence within which this flow of colors and shapes and sounds and thoughts is arising. And so I’m both a thing and a no thing, as it were. And Tim is in the world, but here there’s a deeper, spacious identity and the world exists in me. The whole thing is arising right now, just like a dream. And just like a dream, I’m in it and it’s in me.
21:18 And like a dream, here, Tim is a unique perspective I’m meeting you and what’s so glorious about you is you’re not me. You’re separate from me. You’re a different perspective on this. But when I come back into that deepest presence, there’s no difference. Is that a collective conscious?
21:35 It feels like there’s one of us dreaming itself to be everything and everyone and then meeting itself in all of these different guises. And then to return to your question about what I do at the Mystery Experience Retreats, is if I can take people deeply enough to experience that for themselves, when they look in someone’s eyes they can both see the separate individual and beyond that they can see the one is looking at itself by appearing to be two and that’s very deep and very beautiful and and that’s the deep love that’s the connection where you go oh my god we’re separate and not separate and that’s love yeah we’re actually we really are just mirrors for each other as well this whole you know everything you’re saying was a lovely way to understand oneness, you know, to bring that, because you speak a lot about oneness, and it’s sometimes, you know, difficult for people to grasp, and yes, we’re all one, okay, just hang on, let me get my head around that again, because, you know, my ego is just full-on and I’m alone, so that’s a lovely way to describe it for people to understand, is the whole oneness thing that you always talking about, because that’s, it’s quite a popular theme for you. It is, and you You know, the key, I think, is what you just said, which is, and this is why the parological thinking is so important, a lot of people miss it or it becomes a problem, as it did for me.
22:56 I mean, I’m only writing things which I’ve struggled with for decades. Yeah, you’ve worked through them, climbed the summit. When you think either or, not both and, when you think in logical terms, not parological terms, it’s either one or it’s separate. So I’m either Tim or I’m the oneness of everything. Yes.
23:13 Well, Tim won’t go anywhere. I’m not seeing it. There’s a problem here. Once you get no-no, it’s always a paradox. It’s both one and many. It’s both one and separate at the same time. It’s a wave and lots of little particles, depending on how you look at it. Then I’m not expecting Tim to go anywhere. I can just be Tim. I’m Tim. I’m this guy from Somerset, born of hairdressers, who happened to turn out a philosopher and he’s got these qualities and these foibles.
23:39 I’m Tim, and like every human being, I’m a vulnerable guy who’s doing his best. And then there’s this other element, which is completely beyond words, which is so deep it’s just whoo. And it’s completely safe, and it’s just holding the moment just as it is within it. And that’s there, not instead of Tim, but as well as Tim. And then it’s much easier to see, because I haven’t got to get rid of anything.
24:07 Yes, and whether you see it or not, it exists, it’s pulsating, it is here all the time. Is that collective consciousness or something else? It’s a, yeah, I mean, these are, I think the idea of the collective unconscious from which consciousness arises works best for me. One way that I describe it in the book, this is quite deep in the book, but is that it’s It’s like there’s a field, to use a scientific term, of unconscious being, which is arising as the centers of conscious being.
24:41 So here we are, three centers of conscious being within the unconscious field. And here’s the floor, it’s part of the unconscious field, and the planet, and that’s just, it’s being but it’s being unconsciously, the chairs we’re sitting on. And then through these incredible bodies, the field has become conscious of itself. And there’s a little bubble of consciousness. One of the analogies I love is to think about the field of sound.
25:10 So right now, we are sitting in a field of music. We can’t hear any of it, but it’s full of radio waves. There’s Radio 1 over here going, radio 3. We can’t hear any of it. But it’s all, this is pulsating with music.
25:26 It’s just it’s silent. Yeah. And yet take a radio, tune it in, power it up, and bingo, there’s music. Yeah, it’s incredible. And you could take the radio and then go, hell, where’s that music?
25:37 And take it to bits and go, I’m looking for the music. I’m looking for the music. And at the end of it, you’d have a lot of bits and no music. And you can do the same with the body. You can take the body to bits, go looking for consciousness or, you know, experience.
25:47 And you won’t find it. You just find a whole load of fleshy things and porridge in your head. Because the thing you’re looking for isn’t in the body, like the music’s not in the radio. The thing is everywhere. Awareness is everywhere.
25:58 It’s the field. But it’s become conscious of itself through the forms that it generates. And then through this form, there’s this little bubble, and then I’ll go off to Birmingham and I’ll take my bubble with me, and I’ll be like, bye guys, see your bubble later, and you’ll take your bubble wherever your bubble goes. And here we are, we’re kind of meeting. And these were the centers of consciousness within this unconscious field.
26:20 So we’re both separate and not separate at the same time, and then the awakening becomes here on the surface we’re separate, can you be conscious of the depths where we’re not? What happens when you die? Someone said to me at a seminar a while back, he said, Tim, Tim, he said, if life is like a dream, what happens when you die? And I said, I don’t know, have you ever died in a dream? And he said, I have actually.
26:46 I said, really? What happened? He said, I woke up. They said maybe I’ve answered my question Yeah, and that’s my I think there’s something deep in that I mean it’s flippant But I think it’s something deep is that you know if you die in a dream you wake up and my sense is that? The nature I’m not this isn’t like this isn’t a dream. I’m not saying it’s I’m saying that it’s comparable in certain ways So my sense is that what we’re experiencing now is one level of what we are and that That in some way we need to do this in the same way that we need to dream We don’t really quite understand why we need to dream, although people are putting forward ideas, obviously, but we do.
27:25 You know, if you’ve been crazy like me and stayed up for five, six, seven days without sleep, usually with lots of chemical assistance, you will eventually… Can I just talk about that? You will eventually just go, won’t you? You’ll go. If you’ve done that, you know, you will know, you just go.
27:41 You have to sleep. Yeah. And you have to dream. And if you don’t dream, the dreams happen around you while you’re awake. You know, it’s so important you do this, and so what we know is that to inhabit this level of consciousness, we have to dream, and we have to have deep sleep regularly, and my sense is that there are other forms of consciousness we can inhabit, but to do that, we need to experience this.
28:04 We need to go through this dance of being separate and not separate, and negotiate what it is to be separate and not separate. Yeah, I think that’s a very big thing. I think we’re negotiating what it is to be this. So, and that’s, you know, a lot of the mystery. You know, we’ve, and you only start that negotiation when you, I want to say wake up, but when you become aware, it’s an awareness, I think, of hang on, just, I’m living very unawarely, as most people do.
28:36 You know, get on a, wake up in the morning, get onto a train, go to work, do your work, come home each dinner, go to bed. It’s a treadmill of whatever your treadmill looks like and people very rarely stop to say, hang on, there is a lot of stuff going on here and I’m unaware of it but it’s living me. It’s like I am being thought into this world unconsciously. And I often feel that that waking up is that sudden moment when you become aware there’s a witness able to witness the person that is being lived by these unconscious thoughts. I think that is a very big step to awakening and it’s not it’s not a magic bullet it doesn’t you know that when you actually get that and you start to recognize okay what am I actually thinking because it’s our beliefs and you start becoming the archaeologist of your own thoughts and and you’re like, okay, that’s interesting.
29:37 I just suddenly went into that area of, you know, five years ago. Why am I thinking that? And you start analyzing why you think things. You start analyzing why you do things, why your patterns are being lived out. And this awakening is like this awareness.
29:53 The light goes on and you’re like, aha, okay, I get it. I see, there are two, there’s this ability to live very unconsciously, ability, I don’t know if that’s a good word, but and then there’s this ability to witness that and I don’t have to be a victim to this treadmill of thoughts that seems to be living me like a robot and you can step away from it because most of those thoughts are just useless. They are treadmills of just stuff just being thought and yet those useless treadmills of stuff are very often what cause a lot of ache in people’s lives. It’s the it’s what causes unhappiness happiness, which if I was going to sell waking up in any way, I would say if you want to move from a space of, you know, being just feeling sort of lost in your own life to feeling like you are actually living this amazing life, it would be that would be it.
30:51 Become aware of what you’re thinking. Try to step into the space of awareness, awareness for everything. And it’s again, it’s what you say, awareness of this table and it may, you know, it’s not here but it’s here in our experience of life. So it’s this awareness which to me is such a great mystery, you know, it’s that switch when you suddenly click and it’s your journey’s begun. Because just that moment and that’s when people say you can’t go back because once you realize you really can’t go back.
31:25 That moment you wake up and you think, hang on a second, wow, and you become aware, you become aware of life around you, you become aware that you are not just this person on a mission to win in this life with a set of indoctrinated social cultural beliefs. You now are awake. And the awakening doesn’t mean that you’re suddenly, you know, guru, Buddha, teacher, go. it just means that for your own journey, it’s begun. What do you think of that?
31:57 I like it. Yeah, I do too. Yeah. Do you find that, I was just curious, I was thinking about some of your retreats and I was thinking of a lady who brings her husband, dragging him along. And do you get people that are just sitting there on the first day and just giving you the stink eye and you try to get them to stare into other people’s eyes and they’re just like, I’m not feeling this.
32:16 So what do you do with that? What do you do with that person? I get a love that. The, you know, I just play, I mean, I’m deadly serious, which is why I play so much. This is the most important thing I can imagine, which is why we have to treat it lightly.
32:28 You know, it has to have the opposites. And yeah, I mean, I had an email from someone that said, if I had known what I was gonna be doing, I never would have come. But if I’d known how it was gonna feel, I’d have walked through fire to be there. And that’s, I think, what people experience, is that they have a preconception about what they can experience. A lot of people think that this is for other people.
32:55 A lot of people think, oh, I’ve been around this for years and I never get it, or I’m not good enough to get it, or I need to be more than I am. As that relaxes out and they start putting their feet in the water, it’s such a natural place. It’s such a place where we belong. I guess as Sonia was talking about, you’re on that treadmill so often that it’s hard for you to conceive of the fact that you could be aware and be present because you’re so worried about all of that.
33:17 And it sounds like another thing you’ve got to do. It feels like, oh, God, I’ve got so much to do and now I need to meditate as well. Oh, hell, you know. Yeah, you mentioned meditation in your book and I find that when I say the word meditation, so many people turn off. Yeah.
33:29 Because you mentioned in your book, they’re like, I don’t want to talk about meditation as this thing, because so many people think, oh, I can’t do that, I don’t want to do that, I don’t know how to do that. Yeah. But when you’re talking about being deep awake, it’s not really meditation per se, it’s more of just, I don’t know where it is. Well, I mean, you can call it meditation, You know, it’s a good word, but it comes with a lot of baggage like so many of these words So I mean for instance one of the key meditations I practice meditations is just being aware of your breath And that was something because if you come into that your consciousness will change for me the revelation of the first year that I spent just meditating second one actually was Not you know, I I expected oh, you know, stop your thoughts meditates hard thing, you know I’ve got a spiritual challenge, and I’m up for it because I’m a spiritual warrior, and off I go.
34:17 And I kind of very match our attitude to waking up. What I discovered was that just to breathe is the most, oh, it’s so pleasurable. It’s like, mm, breathing, you know, mm, that’s good. I’m just going to do a bit more breathing. Is that OK?
34:32 Just another five minutes, mm. And it’s kind of like, well, get into the pleasure of it. It’s so pleasurable to awaken. It makes you sensually alive. So make it pleasurable, don’t make it a chore.
34:45 Make it the thing you do to remind yourself that you’re alive and that it’s good. There’s some back information that people need because before you sit, again, religion, spirituality, all of these meditation, they often come with, like you say, a lot of baggage. And people have this idea that meditation, you know, you must go sit in a cave and you need to be very still, and while the world is rushed off its feet and you’ve got a billion things to do, now you must just go and sit on a mat and just chill out.
35:19 When you really look at what are you going to, why will you meditate? We need to understand the backstory. Why do you want to meditate, first of all? What is the inspiration for me to sit down on a daily basis and just be still, connect to my inner self? why do I need to do this?
35:40 And when you can inspire people as to the fact that, again, the mind never ever has a break. It’s thinking, it’s dreaming, it’s planning, it’s wondering, it’s criticizing, it’s resenting. It’s got this billions of things that are going on. So when that moment, when you become aware, because for most people, awareness would actually, you would start to look into meditation. When you become away, you wanna sit down and you wanna give your mind a break.
36:11 You wanna just be able to say, okay, every thought I think creates a physical tension within my body, good or bad. It’s creating a physical response in my physical, not just my body and my surroundings, thoughts. So what you want to do is you want to give this physicality a break. You wanna just ask yourself, you know what, just for a while. I wanna think of nothing, I wanna plan nothing, I wanna be nothing, I wanna do nothing.
36:40 I just wanna get my mind to a place where I’m able and in the beginning it will be one minute, two minutes and you’ll drift and then you’ll come back and you’ll drift and you’ll come back and eventually you’ll have this ability to stay in that presence with yourself. You’ll notice quicker and quicker how your mind drifts off, you’ll bring it back sooner and over time you’ll be able to get this beautiful stillness that is so nourishing and healing for our souls, we need to have that break from the treadmill of thoughts and that practice will actually end up giving us the ability to become more aware, more aware and more aware so that when you speak about, you know, you have this consciousness and then you have the bigger consciousness and even though you’re going through your life, you always have this, you’re always in this bigger consciousness, even though you’re operating in the normal world But it gives you that awareness, that ability to stand back from the everyday things and not take everything so personally, so big.
37:43 You’re able to step back and almost look at everything as a kind of oneness, if you like, but still operating as an individual person who’s having this individual human experience as well. And that’s the inspiration that I get to sit every morning. For me, that’s what does it. I need to understand first and I think a lot of people need to go because that’s an inspiring thing like, wow, okay, I really want to, I want to experience that for me. It feels to me like you just said, we’re going into deep sleep, but consciously, I mean deep sleep is the ground of our being.
38:17 We have to dissolve back into it every night, everything’s one, we don’t know it’s one. It’s just one great sea of being, that’s the field, the consciousness arises from it and then lasts as long as it can and then when the energy is exhausted, it falls back into it we enter the dream state and then the deep sleep state we come out of it if you catch it you know when you wake up those lovely mornings when you when the alarm doesn’t go off and you wake up naturally and there’s that kind of mmm that was so nice and there’s that deep sleep that kind of blissful oh god that was good yeah for me meditation is about that it’s going into the deep sleep state but consciously yeah but consciously so you know you need something to keep you conscious like breath or something and but then you can bring your attention back into that blissful boo-hoo.
39:03 Yeah, and I think it’s exactly what Sonia said. He gives you a really nice perspective on the world, because you can’t take everything too seriously, because you know there’s just kind of a bit more of a perspective you have on everything. It doesn’t matter that someone yelled at you because of this, or that this wasn’t done, because in the grander scheme, it’s not that important. If you’re in touch with your deep being, which is really not as odd as it sounds, but if you are, if you love being, then what happens to you is always okay.
39:32 Even when you hate it, even when it surrenders. There’s a place where you still love being. So that, and being just loves being. It already does. Your being already loves being.
39:41 As soon as you contact it, you know I love being. And therefore what happens in your experience which is the waves up and down, oh it’s great, oh it’s shit, oh it’s great, oh it’s shit again. You know all of that just comes and goes as ever. And you, in it, like you are, on the surface. But this is deep place where it’s just like, wow.
39:58 Interesting you embody it don’t you it’s like you it’s the divine teacher in the good and the bad and you just kind of Embody that and you don’t yeah, I do is sorry But you do feel as though you just let life rather than try and control it And when you do have that attitude of just allowing life to to go you accept everything, you know, it’s okay Well that didn’t go my way, but I guess it wasn’t supposed to and it doesn’t mean that you stopped You know going for what you want or striving. I mean, I think it’s very important that we or we live our dreams and our purpose and we go for it, but there is this kind of non-attachment that you have with everything and it really just lets life flow like the most beautiful river. It’s an amazing space to be.
40:43 This is, again, for me the importance of the parological thinking because I know exactly what you’re saying and I agree with you completely, but it isn’t, as you’re saying, you don’t go with a flow like a dead fish. Yeah, no. You go with a flow because you’re conscious of it. I mean, the problem that you described, for most people, what you described as the treadmill, the problem is they’re just going with the flow. But they’re going with the flow unconsciously.
41:03 But they’re just going with the flow. And the first step is stop going with the flow. Totally. The first thing is step out of it, become conscious of it, and choose a different direction. As you become conscious, then the flow starts to happen and you can intervene when necessary.
41:18 And you’re in this paradoxical place where it’s both happening and you like it you hate it and you love it and you so you there’s the opposites coexist so you’re attached of course you are you’ve got relationships with people you know you’re attached I’m attached to my kids for God’s sake you know I’m attached to my wife I’m attached to my projects and because I have a passion for them and I’m also completely not attached as well because my deep being isn’t it could never be you’re creating your dream but you’re still letting your dream exactly the two start happening together and then there’s this deep peace and this intense passion I thought that when I first started meditating that I would turn into some kind of a docile monk. I even asked my meditation instructor, I’m like, am I going to turn into a pussy? And I was like working in the city. I had to yell at people during the day and I was a little worried, but I found actually, I just, I was very different and I actually, I found myself even actually confronting people on something that I had let go for years and years and years because I was like, oh, the treadmill. And then some things I wouldn’t take as seriously. Of course, then I quit the city five months later.
42:20 I know you wrote a book and it’s a long time ago, but it was called the Jesus mysteries and I wanted to just describe what had happened, what the controversy was and just talk more about it. I haven’t read it, but it was pretty famous, right? It was. It was an international bestseller. It was genuinely that.
42:42 Didn’t quite get into the top 10 in the UK, got number 11, it was knocked out by Monica Lewinsky. Monica. So, you know, what can you do? God bless her. So, while it was controversial, well, it’s, I mean, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a popular bit of scholarly book in which Peter Gandy, my co-author, and I argue that the history of Christianity has been completely misunderstood, that this figure, this miraculous story of a man who’s the son of God, who’s born of a virgin, who has 12 disciples, walks on water, comes back from the dead, that’s a myth, like it appears to be, actually, if you stand back from it, it has all the qualities of a myth.
43:18 And it’s not only a myth. It’s actually a pagan myth It’s a myth which goes right back to ancient Egypt and you find forms of the same myth in Greece This figure of the dying and resurrecting God-man. You see him as Osiris. You see him as Dionysus You see him as Serapis or Domus Attis many many different forms and including Joshua or Jesus in the Greek and that What we’ve got is a ubiquitous Mediterranean Myth in the whole of the ancient world which has taken a particular form amongst Jewish exiles probably living in Egypt Because all of the the gospel stories are written in Greek Who are Gnostics?
43:57 So what this does it kind of turns the history around the normal history is yeah there was this amazing guy Jesus who is the Son of God or something is you know, he existed and then Christianity followed from that and then there were these Gnostics later on who kind of got it all wrong and went paid who were chucked out of the church and persecuted. What we’re suggesting is completely, though, around that Gnostics created this myth, and it’s an allegory. It’s a myth of initiation, so looking for the real Jesus is comparable to looking for the real Good Samaritan. You know, everyone knows the story of the Good Samaritan, but if I came on air and went, there was no Good Samaritan, everyone goes, of course there was no Good Samaritan, it’s a story. The point is, what’s the story about? It’s a teaching story, it’s parable. What we’re suggesting is that the whole thing is a parable. It’s designed to be a parable. It’s the story which leads you to this awakening for death and resurrection. The word resurrection in the Greek also means awakening, interestingly. So when they talk about the resurrection, they are saying the awakening. And that’s what this gnosis, this deep knowing was about.
45:01 That’s what Christianity was about. Okay. How did that book, how was it received? Well, overwhelmingly very well. No death threats?
45:09 We didn’t get any death threats. We did get a lot of after death threats. Yeah, exactly. What is that? You’re going to hell.
45:15 Yeah. There’s a little corner of hell set aside for Pete and me where we’re going to be tortured forever by a God of love. Yeah. Okay. I’m loving God.
45:27 Yeah. You didn’t take those too seriously. No. It was generally, it was, you know, we, we did have, you know, a lot of texts on the internet and things like that, but the critical reviews were fantastic because I mean, it’s a, I mean, this is not Jesus as a spaceman. And this is well documented, I mean the footnotes are huge, because we needed to ground everything we were saying.
45:48 And I personally still, ten years later, I still think the evidence is overwhelming. Well, there is no evidence for an historical man at all that doesn’t exist. And all the evidence we have, as it accumulates, just points to the fact that this is a myth. And the great thing for me is that once you realize it’s a myth, it becomes more powerful. trying to actually do so once okay let’s just say you do think oh yeah it was a myth so are you trying to sort of debase the religion what what is your I mean what’s the mission the mission oh it really truth I mean it really you know we have no agenda it came from research we were researching the ancient pagan mysteries and we were researching Gnostic Christianity and at a certain point thinking we do separate books, both of them, and at a certain point we realize they’re the same thing. It’s amazing to me how powerful that whole Jesus Christ myth or reality story, I mean I was just in Barcelona and I saw the Sagrada Familia, which is this church that’s gonna be, when it’s finished they’ll be building for like a hundred years or more, and he’s got these huge scenes of the nativity scene, the passion of the Christ where he’s getting jacked and then of the glory of him going and raising a god and these powerful images and you get down there and you just realize that this was a big deal, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, you go into a church and it’s like, oh my god, this must be true
47:13 Because look at all this beautiful stuff. I think you forget in the 21st century or wherever we are how powerful notion is. This idea of history is a relatively new idea. And I think for the ancients, they didn’t distinguish between myth and history in the same way that we do. They didn’t have the tools to do that.
47:35 So we have this idea. Well, I’m not saying there’s been some sort of deception. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is saying, look, there’s been an evolution of this idea, which at a certain point was literalized and was turned into, no, no, someone did live and they really lived this out. And if you go very interestingly, if you go to the early church, you see by the second century, there’s a whole debate going on. Nobody at that time, none of the church fathers deny that the story of Jesus is very similar to the story of these other Mithras and these other figures. They can’t because it’s obviously the same. So they have to deal with it in two ways. And the two ways they deal with it is they say, oh, well, Jesus came and lived out this myth for real, or the one that I love. The devil came in advance of Jesus coming and spread these myths so that when Jesus really did come, everyone would get confused, plagiarism by anticipation, diabolical mimicry, this idea. But what’s interesting is that none of them deny the similarities. They’re dealing with that. It’s just a natural process of evolution which has led to this.
48:40 I think we’re very lucky to be living in the time we’re living and having the ability to step back from, you know, a lot of myth and story and actually just see things for what they are. Now, there is, to me, whether Jesus was a historical figure or not and it doesn’t really matter. To me it’s like a history book. It doesn’t, you know, that’s great and you can see the evolution and we’ve come a long way and that’s great, let’s write a song about it. But, you know, still, I always come back to this moment.
49:16 It matters in the sense that psychotherapy matters. It’s like essentially what you want to do is come into this moment and move forward. In your life, whatever you’re doing. But all of this experience, sometimes there’s things which have happened or we’ve got stuck or there’s misunderstandings, which can really hold you back. And at a certain point, most people in their lives, in that process you describe so well of looking at your thoughts, go, where the hell’s that coming from?
49:39 And then there’s that period of analysis or whatever you want to call it. And you go back into the past to set yourself free to come into the present and move forward to the future. And for me and Peter, the value of history is to do that, is there’s a nexus, which is brought actually a split in the Western soul, which goes very deep between paganism and Christianity. We were this pagan culture, and then suddenly we weren’t, and that was all bad, and it was a Christian culture.
50:03 To come in and go, look, guys, these are the same thing. There is no difference between these two. It’s purely an idea that’s been created by the Roman Church, which is fundamentally a fascist empire, has come in and imposed an understanding of us, which is lies. Once you get that and you go, look, it’s like Hitler ruled for a thousand years and left as his version of history and we’ve just believed it. When you get that and you go, oh yeah, that’s kind of crazy, isn’t it?
50:31 Let’s go back and see what really happened. And what you find then is something very healing, something really beautiful. That’s interesting. So it doesn’t have to be true for it to be helpful for everyone. It’s just shining a light on the traits, really.
50:43 You know, we’ve had a few minutes left, but I wanted to ask you, I was reading a quote that’s attributed to L. Ron Hubbard, who created Scientology, who supposedly said in November 48, the way to make a million dollars is to start a religion. Yes. And I was wondering if this is what you’re trying to do. The bloody opposite, unfortunately. You know, I know exactly how to set up a cult. I’ve studied certainly so many religions and cults I know exactly what to do know how to run it you know it would know how to make a lot of money but it’s the one thing I really not interested in you know for me hence the standard philosopher hence the idea of come on let’s what I want I mean it looks very lonely actually being Elron Hubbard or any of those people you know what I want is for us to meet authentically which means to meet you know vulnerable humanity and in this deep self at the same time and that’s love and what I love about the The retreats I run is that you see people seeing each other.
51:37 It doesn’t become about me or about … Tim said that he might be coughing himself. Yeah, he did. A vigorous cough might onset, but he’s done so well. And there comes the vigorous cough.
51:51 It’s not about me. It’s not about any one individual being elevated. It’s finding the place where we’re all one and then appreciating the places where we’re all separate. That’s what I love. how you bring that into mainstream consciousness without religions and cults and that whole negative thing.
52:12 That’s an open question for me. That’s tricky, right? It is tricky. You know, there’s this video that you have on Vimeo that I watch and it’s truly a stunning video. Very well produced.
52:20 Thank you. Thanks to someone. It’s very well produced. You should watch it. I’ll put the link up on Facebook.
52:25 It’s really beautiful. I was just wondering who shot it for you and how you got to the idea and whose baby did you borrow? Well, it was made by a gentleman called Nick Ralph, so you can find out his website on my website, themysteryexperience.com. He’s a filmmaker in Bristol. And like most of the help I get, it’s people who come along, experience the mystery experience with me, are blown away and go, well, very much like you were saying, you know, I’ve got this job, I’m producing adverts for Tesco’s, I want to use this for something good.
52:59 How can I use this talent and this understanding to promote this?” And I don’t have any money, so I can’t finance any of this. It’s because people step in and they go, I want to do that, and then it’s like, great. And because they’ve experienced it, we can then find, okay, how can we do this? So with that project, I wrote a script, Nick, we all had a team of us who worked on it, and then Nick filmed it, and it was his baby, which was nice, because my babies are all big now, and I got a hold of a little baby, which is lovely, took me back.
53:28 It was really great to see you know, you mentioned that you started off with like-minded peers Well, you know where you’re from was it Glastonbury, right? That’s where you live. I live now in Glastonbury I lived about 20 miles away when I was born. What was like what was your journey to get to now? I mean, you know 12 you had the the awakening you wrote a play and I’m just you know Where else did you go? Oh everywhere. I mean anywhere that could play with consciousness I was obsessed by music because of its power to change consciousness at one stage We were doing consciousness waving raising rave shows I did music with people like Ram Dass and Terence McKenna, spiritual teachers to rave music and kind of injecting that.
54:04 So anything I could, you know, all the way through. And then also being… Psychedelics. Psychedelics would be definitely for especially early on. And then later with things like ayahuasca and peyote and…
54:15 You’ve drank ayahuasca? Salvia divinorum. Yeah. Okay. We all have.
54:21 Yeah. Yeah. It’s full on, isn’t it? It is pretty full on, yeah. So that was like the journey and then you started writing later?
54:27 Really I mean and at the same time I was reading and investigating various teachers and traditions and going very deeply into that side as well. So the writing issued at the end of that process when I suddenly realised this is what I’d spent my life doing and that there were people who would be interested in that. And then so the first phase was then was really introducing people to these ideas through Zen, through alchemy, through Buddhism, through Hinduism, or Sufism, or whatever it was, Taoism.
54:56 And then the last phase, then the Jesus mysteries hit, and that was an international surprise. I didn’t intend to write a book on Christianity, it just arrived. And then we did three or four books on Christianity, which were big and controversial. And then this last phase with Lucid Living, how long is now, and the mystery experience has been, look, I just want to say this now in my own words. what really my passion like yours as you said really it’s not the past it’s now and the future how can we bring this in now and that’s that’s what I love the most is to be with people experiencing this story and how can we inspire others how can we inspire because that’s the mission isn’t it you light your candle and you light others yeah yeah yeah yeah I was reading the line in your book and it said on page 20 the mystery experience it says because when we’re real with each other magic happens and I love that. That’s wonderful. That’s exactly it.
55:49 It’s good stuff. How do people get your book? How do they go on one of your retreats? How do they find you? I know they can’t find you on Twitter, not yet.
55:57 Not yet on Twitter. You can find me on Facebook but the best place to go is my website which is simply the mysteryexperience.com. You can google Tim Freke because it’s a weird name but you have to spell it right. Yes it’s F-R-E-K-E, it’s an old west country name, and on the website there’s lots of interesting stuff I hope, some great images, the film you mentioned, lots of other interviews and stuff, also all the dates of the retreats, and they’re all happening all over the world, I’m just off to Tokyo to do one next week, just come back from the States and Canada, isn’t that cool, never been there, my lucid living has just come out in Japanese, so I’m really interested to see how that translates yeah yeah that’s an intense town yeah you’re gonna you know it I’ve had a few times oh really yeah it looks Japanese culture just looks so other I just walk I wait to go yeah that’s food’s fantastic people are very gracious very lovely are they seen it yeah very much so well I wish look with that oh thank you it’s it’s our hour it flew by didn’t it yet really did Sony it was really nice having you here I mean you have some great perspectives lovely to be here lovely to meet you and you yeah Yeah, I’m really impressed by everything. So thanks for coming on real pleasure that we’re gonna be following you and yeah I think hopefully people will get the mystery experience and check it out And until then namaste, it’s about the journey. Thanks.
