The Mystery Experience: A Revolutionary New Approach to Spiritual Awakening [Paperback]

Tim Freke's 'The Mystery Experience' is a book to dazzle and delight anyone with an interest in spirituality and 'practical' philosophy. And that's just what Tim gives us: penetrating insight into the heart of mysticism, leavened by humour and a touchingly human approachability that is quite exceptional in authors within this genre.

The book is practical because it's not simply an inspired dissection of ancient and contemporary spirituality; it's also a 'how to' manual that gives many simple, direct exercises from Tim's own experience to help us discover for ourselves the 'Big Love' of which he writes. Big Love is, of course, none other than the sense of all-embracing connectedness and Oneness that spirituality has identified for thousands of years. 'The Mystery Experience', however, is a new kind of spiritual road map that takes us in an entirely unexpected direction. Tim Freke is one of the very first (at least in this reviewer's opinion), to make a convincing and 'livable' link between experiencing the vastness of impersonal Oneness whilst simultaneously expressing ourselves as flesh and blood, individual human beings in the mundane world.

'The Mystery Experience' is an eminently readable book of great insight. Intellectually deft, practical and funny. But don't just read it: do as the title suggests, and simply experience it.

The book is so beautiful. It will expand and enchance your experience of really 'being alive'.
I am a fan of Tim Freke, he is generous and genuine with his writing. The mystery experience takes the reader on a journey to experience - deep love and unity with yourself and others.

Now that is a good thing! Try it.

Googling "The Paralogical Alternative" produces one, and only one, result: `The Mystery Experience' - but it won't be the sole response for long. This expression will be followed by many similar efforts to expound the ground-breaking, the incredible originality of the connections explored by Tim Freke in this, his most recent journey of the intellect. He has coined this expression as a new, indeed revolutionary, way of looking at a paradox that is at once as old as history itself and as new as particle physics - `the objective world and the subjective self co-exist and create each other'. The nature of reality.

After his introduction, the journey (as it always must be) passes through four stages starting with the wider world view and gradually, gently, taking the reader into themselves and their everyday lives. The entire process is most beautifully set out, simply but profoundly expressed. Tim includes a significant extent of hypothetical Socratic style exchanges between various figures and the wonderfully but pejoratively named `Clever' Dick. It's a device that works very well particularly where the subject is both scientific and spiritual - the exchanges between Dick and Uncle Albert (Einstein) being particularly memorable.

Tim also addresses in the most understandable way the two (dual?) aspects of duality: the physical attributes of wave/particle duality and the meta-physical attributes of oneness and separateness - C G Jung's "no reality without polarity". This greater duality illustrates to perfection the Neo-Platonic view about the inter-connectivity of all things - the `Catena Aurea' or Golden Chain.

`The over-all number of minds is just one' said Erwin Schroedinger who went on to `call it indestructible since mind is always now. There is no before and after, only a now that includes memories and expectations'. He continued `I also grant that I am now talking religion, not science - a religion, however, not opposed to science, but supported by what disinterested scientific research has brought to the fore'.

What is so fascinating about `The Mystery Experience' is not so much that it includes anything new or revolutionary but that it considers `connections' in a refreshingly different yet comprehensive and, perhaps more importantly, readily comprehendible form. This book is essential reading for those people - `People Like Us' - who comprise the vast, and often silent, majority and who are really not satisfied that either religion or science can ever have all the answers. A warning though - there is nothing here for fundamentalists, whether religious or secular. Vehement fundamentalism is a product of an ossified mind, both closed and unthinking. But how many minds out there are truly closed? Very, very few - fewer than might appear from their verbal posturings that usually merely conceal a need to control: `The Will to Power'. Avoid them and read this book!