The Mystery Experience: A revolutionary approach to spiritual awakening (PAPERBACK)

I bought "The Mystery of Existence" because, like TIm Freke, I have a longstanding love affair with an unfathomable, exotic, alluring, mysterious mistress: existence. Not the existence of this or that, particular things, but existence pure and simple. Is'ness. The raw fact that any "this or that" exists.For about the first hundred pages of Freke's book, I felt like he and I were on almost exactly the same mystery-loving wavelength. "Yes!" I kept saying to myself, as I read passages like this:"The mystery of life is so enormous it takes my breath away and leaves me speechless. It's not some riddle I will one day unravel, but real magic to be marvelled at. It's not a darkness my intellect can illuminate, but a dazzling radiance so splendid that my most brilliant ideas seem dull.I may go about my daily life as if I know what's going on, but the truth is I really don't know what life is. Nobody does."Absolutely. Again, what we're talking about here isn't the particulars of life, such as how the brain and body are fashioned, or how evolution has brought about us humans.Rather, Freke is pointing to the unarguable fact that nobody knows why existence exists -- or even if "why?" makes any sense when the question pertains not to the existence of some particular thing, but to the famous query "Why is there something rather than nothing?"There is nothing more mind-blowing than to ponder the astonishing mystery of "is." Personally, I suspect that the fascination we humans have with the philosophical, religious, and mystical questions surrounding why existence exists is a byproduct of our all-too-human cognitive abilities and brain processes.A more advanced alien intelligence might look upon the question of "Why is there something rather than nothing?" with a resounding Huh? This is a meaningless question. The answer is obvious. Which, however, we wouldn't be able to understand.As shown by the quote above, at first Freke seems to agree that because nobody can know anything about the basic "is" of existence (in part, or in full, because any answer presumes a pre-existing "is," such as God), everything within existence, including life, is fully submerged in the all-pervading atmosphere of mystery.Freke correctly says that we need to have our stories, but these don't penetrate the mystery. There are religious stories, scientific stories, philosophical stories, poetic stories. Each of us picks and chooses from these stories, elaborating and adding upon them in our own ways. Then we over-confidently say, "This is what life is all about."Given how Freke started off his book, I figured that he would maintain a core position: the mystery of life and existence can be intuited by us humans, but never really known, understood, penetrated, or grasped. After all, Freke said: "I may go about my daily life as if I know what's going on, but the truth is I really don't know what life is. Nobody does."Well, this isn't the stance in the latter part of the book. Nor in the Mystery Experience retreats that Freke puts on and talks about frequently, sometimes in a rather annoyingly infomercial sort of fashion.Because we're told that actually Tim Freke DOES know what life is all about."As a person I am a form in the flow of time. But the deep self is outside of time. It is timeless being... I think most of us have this sense that our deep self is the same now as when we were much younger. I know I do... What I am is timeless awareness witnessing TIm's journey through time.When I live lucidly I see that I am both mortal and immortal. The person I appear to be in time had a beginning and will come to an end. But the deep self isn't in time, just like a dreamer isn't in a dream.As a person, I'm a body that is born to die. But the deep self can't die because it was never born. My essential being is immortal, because being by it's very nature must always be."Freke believes that God, or timeless awareness, becomes conscious of itself through the consciousness of beings in time, like us humans. A Koranic hadith has Allah speaking somewhat similarly: "I am a hidden treasure who wanted to be known." This notion also is akin to HIndu teachings of atman and brahman, soul and God, part and whole.To which I say, fine. But it was disappointing to find such a large dose of mystery-dissolving spiritual dogmatism in the last two-thirds or so of the book. Mystery takes a back seat to various exercises taught at Freke's workshops where people are shown how to get in touch with their "deep self." Finally, he says:Our pilgrimage has led us to deep love, which is the sacred ground towards which we have been heading all along. When we're conscious of ourselves as an individual expression of the primal oneness, it's an experience of all-encompassing love, This is the heart of the mystery experience.I can't agree. The heart of the mystery experience is to experience the mystery of life/existence (they're linked, because only conscious living beings can be aware of cosmic mystery). In his workshops, and in his book, Freke claims to know what this mystery consists of. Spoiler alert! He writes:"My deep love affair is with God as the ground of being and Goddess as the appearances of being. The natural world is an objective expression of the unconscious oneness from which we have arisen. It is the unconscious foundation from which conscious bodies have evolved. When I see the numinous in nature, I see the mystery in the manifest."OK. That's Freke's story. And it's an appealing story. I can understand why other people would resonate with it. To some extent, I do myself.I just wish that Freke had stuck with his initial "nobody knows" theme, and emphasized that how he looks upon the mystery of life and existence is his personal way of relating to unfathomable mystery. Religions attract converts by claiming they -- and only they -- understand the ultimate nature of the cosmos. But no religion has any demonstrable evidence to back up its claim.And given the seeming impossibility of anyone knowing how, why, or what existence is all about, no sage, prophet, guru, or other person ever could penetrate the mystery. Freke can't either, notwithstanding the author's claim to be able to lead people to a "spiritual awakening."All that said, and I've said a lot in this review, I still liked "The Mystery Experience" and can recommend it to lovers of existential mystery. Just be aware that the mystery will remain shrouded in darkness after you finish the book, even though Freke claims to have illuminated it.If you want to read a book that truly honors the mystery of life and existence, I more highly recommend Jack Hass' wonderful "The Way of Wonder." Hass views any attempt to de-mystify the ultimate mystery of being to be disrespectful -- even sacrilegious in a sense, though religiosity shouldn't be associated with the mystery of existence. Read Hass and you'll understand what Freke needs to understand about cosmic mystery: leave it mysterious.[Note: this review is of the print edition, not the Kindle edition. Both new and used print copies can be bought via Amazon, even though the print listing says the book hasn't been released yet.]

While I was reading The Mystery Experience by Tim Freke I kept thinking about how many weight-loss books are published every year. Here in the U.S. we have an obesity epidemic despite the fact that whole forests have been cleared by the weight-loss book industry in past decades and millions of people have read them.Yet millions are still fat. It this bizarre, or is it something "paralogical," as Freke might call it?I mean, everyone already know how to lose weight, right? You eat less and exercise more. That's it. And yet, weight-loss books, some of them hundreds of pages long, keep spewing forth from publishing houses. The armies of the obese keep buying them - looking for that key, that fix, that cure, that "secret" method to stop being fat and flabby!Why?Why not just eat less and exercise more? Ask any weight-challenged person and he or she will quickly tell you: "It's isn't just that easy!"Well, I never said it was easy - sure, a few will have hormone or biological component exacerbating their obesity-- but the fact remains that the best way for most to lose weight is no secret at all -- to eat less and exercise more.So wherever you find an agonizing problem with a simple solution that people cannot accept, you will find an almost unlimited opportunity to sell thousands of books that talk about anything but the most simple solution to the problem - and the more elaborate the solution the better.That's sort of what this book, The Mystery Experience, is. It's an extremely elaborate solution to a universal problem - except that the solution is about a billion times more elusive than the "secret" to weight loss - making it all the better for the book seller and seminar promoter.The problem here is what Buddha called the "Dukkha" - the dull, small miseries of daily life that we all feel, which sometimes inflames into true suffering, only to recede again, but never completely. I like the way the great American writer Henry David Thoreau put it: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."Tim Freke experiences this too. His solution is to not deny the Dukkha, or meditate it out of existence -- just the opposite - he opts to acknowledge it, embrace it forever, and use it - as a "paralogical" lever to induce a communion with that ultimate source of cosmic bliss, the Universal Loving Energy or Consciousness of All That Is, God, or whatever you want to call "IT."His solution is a positive addiction to what he calls the "WOW!" experience.Resorting to an addiction is a common and desperate attempt to fight the Dukkha. Some people drink, some take drugs, smoke a lot of pot, others watch TV and play video games. Some practice meditation or give themselves over to the teaching of a guru. Some people eat, become obsessed with accumulating money, and some flit off to an Amazon rainforest to imbibe in hallucinogens with a jungle shaman. Some buy into a mainstream system of religion, others try to have all the sex they can have before they die.Certainly, some addictions are positive addictions, while others are negative and destructive. But in the end, an addiction is an addiction. Like Deepak Chopra said: "A positive mind is still an agitated mind."Tim Freke has opted for a positive addiction - to that ineffable experience of cosmic bliss of Ultimate Love. He was fortunate to have this "WOW" thing drop spontaneously upon him like a bomb when he was 12, which led him to commit the rest of his life to pursuing more of the same, and to figuring out just what all that WOW is and what it means.But wait a minute - is Tim Freke's addiction to something that is real, or is it an elaborate self-delusion? Well, yes and no.Clearly, the Cosmic Love he speaks of is well-documented throughout history and throughout all cultures- and while IT could never be nailed down in a laboratory setting - I am satisfied that there truly is an ultimate field of energy that is pure love and that we are all connected to it, whether we know it or not. In a deeper sense, however, it's still a delusion when we experience it - but so what? The fact that it's a delusion doesn't make it bad - something that is not real cannot be good or bad.So is there anything wrong, then, with a guy like Time Freke being addicted his quasi-delusional Universal Field of Love and basking in its all-embracing warmth and joy?There's nothing wrong with it.It makes him feel good, and if he can teach it to others, a lot of other people will feel very good, too. Indeed, Tim Freke makes his living writing and selling books about Cosmic Love - and also conducting seminars throughout the world, which anyone with something like $45 to $90 can attend, not including travel and hotel expenses. No harm done, I say.My only purpose here is to point out what is manifest: Like weight loss books, thousands of people will read Tim Freke's books, thousands will attend his seminars, and he'll write even more books, and people will buy them too. And then they'll continue to buy dozens of other such books by other writers. Hundreds of books offering salvation from the Dukkha will endlessly grind out of the publishing mills or be produced by self-publishers - and millions will keep buying them.Does it sound familiar? It sounds like the weight-loss book industry wherein millions are sold and the problem always remains. The "secret" is ever elusive. It reminds me of what Jesus said: "The poor will always be with us."And as long as there are the poor - spiritually and materially - there will always be a Jesus figure. And as long as the Dukkha remains manifest in the experience of human consciousness, there will always be a Tim Freke with a book and a seminar at the ready - and lots of others, too.

Incredible author and guide. Funny, insightful and different, yet based in a sound understanding of reality and the human condition.

don't do what I did and buy this book before looking if it's compatibly with Kobo, cause it's not, and there's nowhere I can find to ask for a refund. $8 down the drain!

After being stimulated by his Jesus Mysteries and Jesus and The Goddess I expected more.The Mystery Experience doesn't feel well written and it doesn't feel honest. There are plenty of references to the events he hosts which guides people to mystical experience and the wonderful things people say about the benefits it has brought them. So that's a hint writ large...I also felt I was venturing in to Paul McKenna territory with his "I can help you feel WOW" attitude, though I hasten to add that Timothy doesn't claim at any stage to getting into our heads. But it is the same shtick. Like McKenna he has read, experienced and distilled enough to make it easy for you in one slim volume.And the "Wow" thing. A lesser man than TF might have called his book "The Power of Wow." Thus aping, and riding the coat tails of, the highly over rated Eckhart Tolle. Its the same difference. An ordinary word made to seem extraordinary by application to something you can't actually describe.I don't feel this book was necessary, but we are always told these books are, and their time is Wow, sorry "now", but there are better books that achieve the same goal as The Mystery Experience without, what our American friends call, "WuWu", or what I call unnecessary crap.The two books on Buddhism by Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain and Simple and Buddhism Is Not What You Think, spring to mind. The latter in particular. Yes, there is a Buddhist leaning but it, as Alan Watts might have said, it doesn't stink of Buddhism. It succinctly points out that when you approach the world without preconceived ideas or concepts its all really fascinating. Maybe even spiritual.

I've lost count of the number of spiritual books that I have read, must be hundreds. Tim Freke's The Mystery Experience is definitely in my top ten list of the best books to read. The reason for this is that the book resonates with my own conclusions about the spiritual journey - that there is a great mystery at the heart of our being. Instead of experiencing the angst that comes from trying to solve the mystery, embrace it, live with the uncertainty. There lies freedom.The other aspect of this book that I love is the idea of paralogic, where two apparently contradictory ideas are seen to be equally true. For a while I was interested in the teachings of non duality, which appears to point to there being no self. If you accept this then there can be a denial of the personal self. Things just arise, just happen, there is no doer, no one who chooses. Whilst everyday experience seems to contradict this, some non dualists cling to the no self approach. In non duality circles, there is the duality of those who say there is no self and those who say there is a a self. Tim Freke ponts to another way, the paralogic way where there is both the self and the non self. Quantum physics has shown that light can be a wave and particles which logically is impossible. Yet experiments show that it is true. This is another example of paralogic.I believe the Mystery Experience is a must read for all spiritual seekers. It blows away a lot of the half truths and misdirections found in the works of many spiritual teachers. It is also an entertaining and often funny read.

This book is the third one I'm reading by Tim Freke after The Laughing Jesus and The Jesus Mysteries, read in reverse order. Originally prompted by an interest in the roots of Christianity, this soon went to the background in favour of exploring this particular version of age old non-dualism or gnosticism if you prefer.Why I am enjoying it so much, is, because it's so very accessible without being dumbed down and truly refreshing and inspirational. I'm even considering attending one of his mystery experience weekends, because when you see many of your own long held ideas and concepts reflected in someone elses writings, let alone a glimmer of a path you have long looked for and feel is beckoning on a deep level, it's maybe a sign it's worth delving into a bit deeper.I thank Tim Freke for awakening i.e. renewing this desire in me to unlock a new kind of knowledge and awareness in me that in fact is not new at all but simply dormant.