Soul Story: Evolution and The Purpose of Life

Tim Freke is on to something. He understands that traditional religions are no longer serving humanity (if they ever truly did), having been demoted from cultural prominence by "scientific objectivism." But Freke believes science, too, has its problems, as it seems not interested in supplying the slightest "meaning" and "purpose" to any of its grand discoveries. Freke also recognizes that the conservative mindset (still the primary consumer of religion) is primitive in its clonish, conformist, tribal fears and selfishness, even as a new and higher, more loving "soul story" is emerging amidst the human family. Freke puts forth a narrative that has us all in this mess together on a shared (very unequally it would seem) pathway to enlightenment... and the recognition that love is the ultimate key to a higher form of humanity: not just regular love, love of the All.The early chapters are filled with promise as he creatively reframes the history of the Universe, life and culture, and even time itself, as emergent "streams" that accumulate the past into the present, potential into reality. Cool. This part is a clever, not scientifically incongruent re-imagining which deserves a chance to breathe on its own. But Freke is greedy... he has bigger prey in mind: immortality. He has already warned us that his ultimate intent is to "prove" that the "soulstream" of each individual continues to exist beyond death. Well alright, So far he's concocted an interesting tale, let's see how his immortality component works out. Alas, it works out as the notion always does: with the requirement of blind faith. Or as Freke and many Eastern and New Agey would-be mystics term it, "deep knowing." Hmmm, every religion has claimed "deep knowing," and they all disagree with each other... so we can see what firm ground that is. Freke claims to be a philosopher, but no real philosopher relies on "deep knowing;" they rely on logic, and Freke throws that out like yesterday's cat food.Few will ultimately be happy with the new religion Freke then commences to concoct. It flies in the face of almost every existing religion, but also veers abruptly away from scientific fact. To "prove" his immortality claim, Freke makes a quick and subtle leap of pseudo-logic: Because the Universe has emerged and evolved, "transcended and included" (a shaky concept from Ken Wilber) all that came before, and life has emerged and evolved, and so has culture, then surely soul/spirit must emerge and evolve... right into immortality, even godhood. Uh, what? Yes, Freke has "deep knowing" about this.... so it must be! So there you go. If you are a spiritual searcher for a brand new, convoluted, completely uncorroborated, unevidenced, impossible new religion, Freke has just hatched one for you. According to Freke's "soulology" dogma, our "soulstream" does survive death, mills around in a heavenly "imagnos" for awhile (timeframe not remotely specified), with a consciousness that understands everything, including all past life times, but then at some point is dragged back by the force of "pastivity" (like gravity but lacking the mathematical foundation) into a new life form (presumably only human as animals and all other life forms don't have the emergent soul qualities; Freke doesn't elucidate on this important query) to inhabit a new "somastream" (physical shell) but with the same old "soulstream." As with Buddhism and Hinduism, each lifetime is an opportunity to grow spiritually, but unlike Eastern philosophy, this is not a "wheel of suffering" one longs to get off, but a wonderful opportunity to experience life over and over again. Freke's birth and rebirth scenario is unique (to my limited knowledge), focusing not on earthly suffering or hellish punishment, but on the beauty of the coming and going, knowing and forgetting, learning and growing all along, taking our in-between mystical bath in the all-loving "imagnos," experiencing the "love-light" of transcendent spirituality and joining countless other floating souls to literally "become God" (yes, Freke's God is not the original Source but one of the last things created in the Universe: a confluence of highly evolved souls). A glossary of invented terms, endemic to religion, populate Freke's imagined metasphere. As usual with religion, Freke offers scant details, and he doesn't seem to notice that the system he envisions seems like a cosmic "Groundhog Day," extending into eternity. In this sense, perhaps the Indians understand better than Freke how this knowing and forgetting, living and dying, repeat, can wear on a soul after a few millennia. Nor does he bother to wonder how, under such a system of soul cleansing and elevating, even becoming God in the "imagnos," the vast majority of humans clearly come back into the world as spiritually stunted as ever.Freke's system may be somewhat unique, but it's as worthless (and potentially counter-productive) as those hoary old religions that were born in times when there was zero scientific data to correlate. Freke has no such excuse. His "deep knowing" is therefore even more egregious, willfully invalid even amidst a comparative wealth of information. With a wave of his hand, his pseudo-logical leap of faith extends the emergence and evolution of matter, life and culture... all of which are based upon form combined with energy... into a realm without form or energy, just a state of "pure consciousness." Totally unexplained (by Freke or any other system of "afterlife") is how consciousness , or the "soul," can possibly survive without form or energy. Plain and simply, each and every concept of an "afterlife" of any kind violates the laws of nature. Consciousness, soul, spirit, whatever you want to call it, did not create form; form creates consciousness. Certainly matter, life, culture, consciousness have evolved and complexified, but not beyond the realm of form. Astounding claims to the contrary require more than "jump the shark" confirmation.But really, what are Freke's motives here? Or, for that matter, anyone's who craves to believe in such an immortal soul? Why are humans so desperate to live forever? We don't seem to really care for life that much. Well, our own, sure... but not those of others. We destroy life willy-nilly, often just for the fun of it. It's even a "sport." And not just other life forms. We put humans to death, through war or neglect or as punishment, and think nothing of it... even when there is clear evidence that we were wrong to do so. Is life so cheap because we have this pervasive narrative of a heaven or hell or reincarnation awaiting? Shoot 'em first and let God sort 'em out? We easily accept that if we kill a deer, or chop down a tree, that's the end of that thing, its "soul" isn't being judged by God. But for ourselves (and close loved ones) we are desperate to "live again" somewhere, somehow. We are frightened little children. Greedy little buggers. One life is not enough eh? We want, we demand, more, more, more... the most precious of gifts... even as most of us are ignorant, selfish, mean asses while we are alive, and certainly a collective plague upon the planet. If there is one species that should NOT be reincarnated, it's humans!Every aspect of science tells us that consciousness (or soul or spirit) is an emergent property of life. Without a body, without energy, there is no life, no consciousness, no soul, no spirit. When you die, you go back to where you came from - Nirvana, when originally meant... No Thingness! Horror of horrors? No, far from it. It's the most elegant way the Universe could work. It allows for the most things to live. You are the beneficiary of this marvelous, egalitarian system that the Universe has blindly concocted. But just because it was a blind process doesn't mean it is not beautiful and sublime. This Universe is infused with meaning and purpose. That it somehow created a species out of a handful of subatomic particles that can contemplate all of this is the most stunningly meaningful concept anyone could imagine! Individually, for each thing, the meaning and purpose is simply TO BE. As Freke suggests at the very end of the book, the meaning for humans is to BE YOUR BEST SELF. OK, no real argument there. Why could he not have stuck to such reasonable, scientifically tenable claims all along? There is a "soul story" to be told. Freke flirts with it but then sails off the rails. So the integration of scientific knowledge into a potent modern spiritual awareness of Oneness and Love for the ALL awaits a better philosopher, a better story-teller.

I've never heard a more beautiful and sensible explanation of existence that is both rational and empathetic.I first read the author's book the Jesus Mysteries after wanting to learn about the birth of Christianity from someone who embraces both rational thought and the truth, and that lead me to learning about philosophy and oneness, which resonates with far more depth to me than the confused, twisted mainstream doctrine I was raised with. This book brought clarity and logic to the existential puzzle floating around in my head, and the ideas inside of it bring me great peace and happiness. The marriage of the concept of evolution with spirituality feels beautiful, meaningful, and very rational. It feels like what my heart has been missing. The messages in here encourage you to open your heart with both love and wisdom, to be yourself as well as be a part of the universe we live in, to recognize that we are all on the same journey of self-discovery, and to interact with life and others in the most thoughtful, compassionate manner that one is capable of, to make the world a brighter place, in the way that only we, as unique individuals are capable of.I highly encourage anyone who feels lost, lonely, frustrated, insufficient, or just curious with the mystery of existence and reality to consider the ideas in this book, and see if they resonate with you as well.

Let me begin by saying that I wanted to like this book better than I did. I saw the author on a video and he seemed like an interesting person that you would like to have a conversation with. And, the topic of our spiritual evolution is one of my favorites (I even wrote a book about it because the concepts are to me so life inspiring!). Hence, I have a lot of books on my shelves about the topic....and so many of them are better intros to the topic than this one. But there are positives and negatives to the book, so let me list both here:PROSThe topic itself is one that I find so life affirming, one that can change your perspective on life for the better, that I applaud anyone who tries to bring it into awareness of more people. Yes, physical evolution has occurred....but there is also an inner evolution that is occuring in consciousness....and there appears to be a direction that evolution....so kudos for writing a book on the topic.I know that some of the reviewers did not like the format of the book....short chapters, small pages, no punctuation, lots of white space, chapter summaries, etc....but I thought this was the best thing about the book....it made it so much more accessible to the casual reader....kudos for the decision to format it this way!CONSThe biggest negative for me was the author presenting concepts that have been written about many times as if he was the one came up with the ideas. He writes, "I want to offer you a new philosophy called 'emergent spirituality' "...and so many places he offers similar language that presents these ideas as if he personally created them for the first time. I would have appreciated it more if he acknowledged those who presented these ideas previously and that he was creating his own synthesis of those who came before him. You can find many of the concepts presented here as "new" in the works of Sri Aurobindo from about 100 years ago...or look at the books "Evolution's Arrow" by John Stewart or "Evolutionaries" by Carter Phipps.I found his need to create a whole list of new terms for things a bit overused. Sometimes they were useful, other times they were distracting to his seeming desire to make the concepts accessible.Finally, one who has studied the concepts of spiritual evolution must be familiar with the related concept of involution (spirit imbedding itself into its creation at the beginning of the evolutionary process) but the author makes no mention of it. It is apparent that he does not consider it a valid concept and did not want to include it in his "soul story" but to omit any mention of it as something presented by so many mystics and philosophers as the story behind our story led me to questioning why it was not brought up. I was left thinking that if he did discuss it, then he would have to admit that many of the ideas presented here were not that original afterall.In conclusion, if you are new to the ideas of our spiritual evolutionary story, then this is an ok introduction....but there are better ones out there that are more inclusive and acknowledge the shoulders of the others that they stand on in their presentation of the concepts.

Thought provoking and a place to start from in my investigation of 'self'!

This book has been wonderfully articulated & created to challenge our underlying assumptions as well as social conditioning which colours our moment by moment perception of reality. The knowledge & wisdom opens a door from living on autopilot or unconsciously sleep walking through life with no sense of direction to realising the miracle of existence.Our highest nature as Tim so elegantly guides us towards is one of divine love & how we can align our life with this to being a guiding light of positivity & inspiration.

Soul Story takes us on an evolutionary journey of cosmological proportions. Simple in style, elegant, layered, gradually building to reveal a deeply nuanced and personal narrative, a story which speaks directly to the human heart, with a voice of playful yet earnest enchantment, an intellectually honest call to authentic spiritual awakening, to gnosis for the modern age, to individual freedom and meaningful life, rooted in the mantra …life is good….death is safe….and what really matters is love.

I'd thoroughly recommend this book to anyone interested in philosophy, spirituality, religion and esotericism. It is simultaneously a mystical text and a scientifically rational exploration of what it means to exist. If you're looking for a way to reconcile the desire to stay true to fact and reason with the need for spirituality, this is the book for you!

gives a full and clear account of the authors viewpoint