Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: It's Tim Freak, right?
[00:00:02] Speaker B: He really is pronounced freak. Yes, Freak.
[00:00:04] Speaker A: Okay. I didn't know if it was like, frag.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I've always Freak.
[00:00:07] Speaker A: A.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: It's an old west country English name.
It's pronounced Freak.
[00:00:13] Speaker A: All right, well, Tim Freak, thank you for joining me today.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: It's a delight.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: So, yeah, getting this thing started, would you be able to give us a little bit about who you are and what you do? Exactly.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: I am an English philosopher. I'm essentially a very curious human being. I've been exploring spiritual experience since I was very young.
And when you have spiritual experience, it makes a big impact on you. So I've been trying to work out what it is and what it means, and that led me to do study an awful lot of different spiritual traditions and write a lot of books. And so I've been writing books for a long time now.
And my. My latest work has been to focus on what's the future of spirituality and how can we conceive of it in a brand new way.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: Awesome.
So what was this original spiritual experience all about? Would you be able to get into that?
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. I mean, it. The, the. The. The first one that made the big impression on me was I was about 12, almost 13, and I grew up in the countryside in a fairly nondescript town, I think you'd say.
And I used to sit in this and this hill overlooking the town with my dog. And I've always been very curious. I've always felt like this is a profound mystery that we're in.
I can't remember a time when I didn't think that.
And one day, dwelling on that, something happened and I felt catapulted into a new way of being, which I hadn't experienced before. And the most, the thing which I.
Well, I wrote about it afterwards, so I've got some record of it as well. But my recall also is. Is like being immensely held in love. And because the only context I had for it was I used to go to church when I was much younger.
You know, I'd heard that God is love. So I felt like, oh, this is God. And that made a big impression on me. So I went then looking. I mean, I went down the hill. It passed and. And I carried on being a teenager, you know, but something had been started which would then play itself out through the rest of my life. Which was. What was that? How can I go there again? How can I go deeper? How can I share it with others? Like I said, I wrote about it straight away. It's just my nature. So that catapulted me into the journey. And here I am now 66 and I think beginning to understand what happened to me when I was 12.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: Wow, that's powerful. So you were contemplating the mystery of it all and then somehow some way it just hits you.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:54] Speaker A: That God is love.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: Well, the experience was just like, whoa. Everything, there's this, the, the characteristics which I would say come along with what I think of now as a deep awake state where you, you shift is that the senses come alive. So the, the sky was very blue, the grass was very green, a sense of connection and this love. Now honestly, Gary, and I try and be as radically honest as I possibly can, it's hard for me. It's a long time ago. I'm now, you know, much older. So how much of that I filled in later, I can't be sure. But what I'm absolutely sure of was the experience of overwhelming love. And because that I wrote about and that has stayed with me.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: So that's been the guiding principle.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: It has up until recently. And I think it's shifted recently where it now feels like, ah, actually it's about wisdom.
And the wisdom is what allows me to find the state of coming into the love. And the wisdom is what allows me to work out how the hell to live with it in this bittersweet world. So in retrospect now I think I was no surprise I became a philosopher. Sophia is the Greek. It means a lover of wisdom.
And I think that's probably a good description.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: That's cool. I didn't know that.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it is cool, isn't it? It's Pythagoras. Well, it's allegedly Pythagoras who first coined the phrase that he was a philosopher. A philosopher.
[00:04:31] Speaker A: So I mean, this was going to be my question, but you already kind of described it. How that has changed for you over the last 50 or 60 years. You know, this guiding principle of love. But you said it's more so now evolved into wisdom, not how would you begin?
[00:04:47] Speaker B: Sorry, sorry, Gary, I don't want to mislead you. Not that the love, you know, if you said to me what really matters, I'd probably say love. But the, the, what I've realized is that I've realized especially working with people experientially. So a lot of my work, as well as writing books has been traveling the world, taking people through experiences. People still come to Glastonbury. We go through experiences so that other people can experience, can experience this for Themselves.
So that's really important to me. And what I've learned from that is it's not as hard. It's that it's, it's surprisingly easy actually, in the right conditions to come into that state. The hard thing is how you live with it.
That's the wisdom. So the love is, is absolutely central. But, but knowing how to love and how to return to that state, that takes a lot of time to learn.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: Lifetime, some may say.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I mean, I've never seen any end to it.
And I feel like a constant beginner. I mean, that hasn't changed. I felt like a beginner then, I feel like a beginner now.
Stayed the same.
[00:06:03] Speaker A: I feel you on that.
That's the good news. This is. It's an ever renewed sense of love that we learn to live with.
Ever novel, you know.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: Ever novel. Yeah, that's the. And that's an interesting thing about the state which really intrigues me actually Gary, is that whenever I come into it intensely and I couldn't live in it like that, you know, for me, I was just like, you know, I'm not overwhelming. You can't, you know, I can't do practical things very well. And it's overwhelming. But it's good to touch it regularly. And it always feels new. It always feels like the first time.
It's always a shock of, oh, yeah, it's like this. I remember now. It's. It's this, this real.
Which is a funny thing to say, but I think I understand what it means now. But that, that, I don't know what if it's like this for you and your experience? But there's a sense of, oh, this is more real. And I've never. When I was younger, I said, what does that mean?
How can it feel more real?
But I think it's because it's the leading edge of the whole evolutionary process now. So this is process which we're in, which in our universe seems to be going on for about 14 billion years.
And it's leading, I think, to this edge, which is when we touch this very expanded state. So when we do, we can. It feels like, oh yeah, this is, it's a more emergent reality level of reality we're experiencing. And then you can lose it and life becomes a little bit more black and white or a little bit more mundane or, or, or even dark. You know, you can move between these states and then you touch that again and it's, oh, how did I forget this, this is, this is this level of beauty.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: So would you say we're evolving to that point of never losing it?
[00:07:50] Speaker B: Who knows? I hope so. That'd be nice.
But we're certainly evolving, and it's certainly increasing. And I think we can see, you know, as an old man now, I can see that in my own life without any shadow of a doubt, you know, although I feel like a beginner, I can't believe how far I've come. I mean, I just. When I look back now, which I do regularly on my life, it's like, wow, that's incredible. You know, the.
What I see of myself in the past is my foolishness, really. It's like, oh, right, okay, okay. You know, I, I, you know, the perspective of age, you know. But make no mistake about it, if I live another 10 or 20 years, maybe I'll look back on this and be the same.
So it's a constant evolution, and then it's like it's happening collectively. I love history. Spend a lot of time studying and writing about.
And there's, there's, you know, there's a lot of good things in history, but also it's a brutal place. You know, it's not somewhere you'd want to live, I don't think, because things, things are pretty tough in history and, and you get a sense of how far human beings have evolved, generally. For all the faults that you could lay on humanity today, we've come the most amazing distance.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
It is truly a mystery where we're all going. But it seems like we're working towards something, right? It's like there's something going on here internally and collectively. Like we're building towards something. Like some. As Terence McKenna says, it's the transcendental object at the end of time, or novelty theory. Like, there's just something that's being built up and who knows? And who knows if it really has, like, an endpoint, like a destination per se. Maybe it's just like destination upon destination upon destination. But point of my story is there's something going on. And as you describe, it's evolution. We're evolving towards some kind of.
We're building upon our mistakes of the past, it seems, you know.
[00:09:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know.
[00:09:45] Speaker A: Do you have any destination that you could describe other than love? Like, where is this going?
[00:09:50] Speaker B: I think, I don't, I don't think the, the universe has a preset destination.
My sense very much for my. From my own being with it, contemplating it. Study is. It's genuinely creative.
It's going somewhere. The whole evolutionary process Is having said that, I think now there's somewhere I want it to go. And I think where it is, we are being pulled. And the reason I say that is that when I said earlier, I think I've understood what happened to me when I was 12 now finally to a greater degree, is because the understanding I had then was the best I had, was what I'd grown up with in, in the church.
And that's the idea that there's some sort of benign creator and you experience it and you found God. And then my whole mission, I got very involved in the Hindu version as well, which was, you know, you find God, you devote yourself to God.
But now, for reasons we can go into, if you want to. I don't think that's right.
My sense now is that God is not.
My first thing I want to say is, look, I think I'm convinced personally there is what you could call a super intelligence, a totally benign, loving super intelligence. I think that's a reality and I think we can experience it and when we do, it feels like that enormous love.
But I don't think it's the source of all of this.
I think it's the leading edge of the evolutionary process.
And that's what we touch when we come into these states.
We're not touching where it's come from, we're touching where it's going to. We're touching the actually most emergent level of reality. And that's a huge shift. It's kind of like a, as a gentleman in Japan described it, well, I thought as a copacarnian shift. Like when we went, oh, hang on, the Earth isn't the sun doesn't go around the Earth, the Earth goes around the sun. Now it all makes sense. I think the same thing with the vision of God is that people throughout history, like I did when I was 12, have had that experience and gone, oh, this must be the source of everything.
But I think we've been mistaken there. I think actually now we understand we're in an evolutionary universe, we can see that everything is evolving. And I, I, my philosophical hypothesis now is that includes everything, that what reality is is a process of evolutionary emergence. That's what it is.
And it goes from the simplest thing you can imagine, which is really the most basic piece of information. This is very Taoist, the bit yin and yang. That's where it starts. The one is two, nothing, just simplest information you can imagine. Not God, not a super intelligence, not love, not wisdom, nothing. Just one is two. And from that it's Going to come everything. And then right at that leading edge, there's the arising of this super intelligence which we get to move towards.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: That's three.
Three one, there's one and two. And then we're building toward three.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I mean, what? Well, the, the Daddy Ching. Do you know the Daddy Ching? Like Sue's book? Oh, yeah, it's. Yeah, it's. So you get there. The idea that the dao is begets the 1 as 2 and that begets the 10 3, which is the 10,000 things. And so that's. I mean, what I'm saying is a bit different to that because it's influenced by modern physics, but it's the same central idea. It's like there's something at the beginning.
The nature of reality is the realization of possibilities. That's what it is. And it realizes the very simplest possibilities first.
Not a big mind that just exists somehow.
And there's so many problems with God at the beginning that disappear.
So one of the problems we've had is, I think since the Enlightenment is that there's people going, well, there is a super intelligence, there is a God.
And so it must be at the beginning. And people are going, there's too many problems with that. We don't need it anymore. We can understand the universe without it. It doesn't answer anything. It explains the universe with an even bigger mystery. If this God's at the beginning, it's hard to see it as wise and loving given the shit show that the universe is. Given there's been five complete extinctions. Given the ugliness that can be in the most basic fabric of.
Makes much more sense to see it as a naturalistic process of evolution which really works.
So get rid of God. What I want to come in and go is actually that's right, but don't get rid of God.
That that experience of a super intelligence is real. It is significant. And to answer the pro. The question you asked that started this whole conversation, it's where it's going now. It wasn't where it was going. It was just trying to get to basic matter for a long time.
But for some time now this has started to arrive and we are integral to its evolution.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: Yeah, that's very powerful. Yeah, it's like we're moving into something that has never ever happened before.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: Yes, yes.
And the model I have of it which really works for me, Gary, is when I think about my, my biological body.
So in this incredible process of evolution, we've gone from single cells still most of life is Single cells. But single cells have come into communion, let's call it, with each other, to create whatever it is, 17 trillion of them, which is a human body. That's incredible.
The hypothesis I'm playing with when I'm trying to understand what this superintelligence is, is the same thing is happening on the level of soul or psyche.
The psyche soul. Same means the same thing is coming into communion and forming a super psyche or a super soul. So what's the make? What's the great. You know, since very early times. Well, not that early, but certainly since, you know, the hermetic has got it, and some. You could say some Hindu philosophies got it, is the idea that there's a. A big mind, as the Zen masters call it. It's a big mind.
What if the big mind is a big mind because it's made of little minds? Or the big soul is a big soul because it's made of little souls? Like your body is a big organic system because it's made of tiny organic systems. And that. Therefore, what we're doing when we come into communion in that deep awake, magical experience is we are coming into and at the same time creating God.
We get to contribute to that movement by being part of it.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like a new version of God.
[00:16:52] Speaker B: Yeah, it really is. And what it's done for me is it's allowed me to reclaim that experience I had when I was 12. Because once you've. Once you what? For me, once I'd matured enough to really think it through, it was like. Yeah, the very idea of the Creator, it seems gone. It feels like it's redundant. It's part of our mythic past.
And it has all those problems. The problem of evil, the problem of absurdity, all of that. And it doesn't answer anything. And so it feels like it belongs to the past. And yet. And yet there's this experience.
So what is that experience?
Do I have to give that up? I can't give that up. That's too central. And then by flipping it around, suddenly it's, oh, no. That's what this is. And that's why it's so important, because it's the place we're coming into.
Much more like Terence's idea or Pierre Terre de Chardin, the had that as the. You know, we're heading towards. He saw it as the Christ, this. This greater union.
And I think they're. I think, you know, I'm not the first to have been onto it, you know, that people have been like trying to find it and see this other way of understanding the divine.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the thing, is we all feel it in one way, the other, whether you're aware of it or not, whether you're conscious of it or not. I think we all have that pull into this evolution.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: I hope so. You know, it's like. It amazes me how people can get by without it.
But the great thing about what this does, this, this copa kernighan shift, what it does is it goes.
It gives you a spirituality which is intensely positive and optimistic.
And I think a lot of people miss how negative traditional spirituality can be. Because the fundamental narrative, if you go into the mystical traditions, which I've. All books I've written have been about, is that there's already God or there's already something. There's a big mind, it's consciousness, different things in different traditions, and you have fallen away from it. So this is not an evolution, it's a devolution. You have fallen into matter and you're trapped in a body and you've. You've got. You've got confused.
You think you're something you're not, and you need to stop believing you're something you're not. You're not Gary. Stop believing that and set yourself free. And. And Gary's thinking is a problem. Gary's attachments are a problem. Basically, Gary's the problem. And you just set yourself free from Gary. You can be God again. Now, I'm. I'm play. I'm playing and I'm pushing it, but that's not far off, what you'll hear.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: Whereas this says the opposite. It goes, no, Gary's not the problem.
Gary's it.
The whole universe has arisen as this unique psychobiological thing, a Gary.
And Gary can realize these higher states and Gary can contribute Gary to God. And Gary's not in the way. He's the foundation from. For which this next level of evolution happens.
So it's a very humanistic and positive twist from the. We've fallen and need to re. Remember. You know, we already know, but we've forgotten or we're already perfect. He goes, no, you're not. Well, the bad news is you're not perfect. It's not. There's a real you that's perfect. No, there's no real Tim that's just already. No, Tim is an evolving soul. He's evolving and he's not perfect, but he's evolving and he's evolving into something that can come into communion and be Part of God. And that feels really. It's beautiful, I think.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: Oh, it's beauty beyond words. Yeah, yeah.
Now, do you think the integration of that insight.
How do I put this? Let me think about this for a second.
Because Gary can be bad. Right.
Gary can sin, but it's like honoring. So it's. I. I feel as though it's like a simultaneousness to it. It's like honoring the uniqueness that your incarnation holds, that Gary holds, that Tim holds. Whoever the listener is to this tapestry of God, you could say through your individuality, but also honoring the whole at the same time, honoring the collective. You know what I mean? Like, you get too locked into your uniqueness, you could become selfish.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:21:22] Speaker A: So it's kind of like a dance, right, that one has to play in the integration of their spiritual insight.
[00:21:29] Speaker B: Absolutely. Very well put. I think. So I've got this. I've coined this phrase. I make up words when I can't find words that do the job. So I coined this phrase of the univigil to mean an individual conscious of unity. Just what you've described. And my.
My hypothesis, my guess. I don't know. My hope is that what's happening is that we're evolving into uni vigils because it's. If you don't know history, it's easy to think. We've always been like we are now, and we're. We haven't.
We have not been individuals like we are now. We. We have been collective, much more tribal, much more collective. You've been with people who all basically think like you has been the norm. And then with the arising of the ability to reflect more deeply, you've had people questioning and. And come from that's come creativity. So what science, the arts, the economy, everything's taken off because of individual creativity. And we've individualized, and we are so, so individual now compared to what we. We were. We still need to go further. I think we need to reflect more, become more individual. But what you said is also true. We can easily become isolated, narcissistic ego in that negative sense of egotistical.
And then I think, what. So what's emerging is also this level of awakening to the oneness, of going, oh, but I'm absolutely embedded in the universe. And when that happens is when I think we can come into communion with God or that's.
[00:23:06] Speaker A: I think that's what a pragmatic approach to union with God looks like is. Hey, we're all in it together. It's like, honor yourself. But also Honor the tribe.
[00:23:17] Speaker B: Absolutely. We're, you know, there's been a huge jump quite recently into a sense of oneness. I mean, a lot of people have a sense of that we're part of one human family. You know, it's like that we're. We're human. We're all human beings. That's new.
You know, most of history you've hated your neighbors and done terrible things to them. Everyone has been like that. Everyone, yeah. No goodies, no baddies. Everyone has been like that. And that's changed. And then from we even more. There's a profound sense, I think, with a lot of people of, oh, we're embedded in nature.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:54] Speaker B: That we're part of a bioecology. We're not. We don't exist separately from it. And then it. In the last.
Well, since I've been exploring this experientially, so maybe 25 years, people.
Bit more.
More and more people are having this experience of awakening. There's no doubt in my mind it's still not big, but it's. It's bigger.
And you know, when I would Talk about oneness 25 years ago, people would go, I don't know, that is a bit abstract, isn't it? You know, it's like oneness. How's that going to help me?
[00:24:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: Whereas now people go, oh, yeah, yeah. I either have experienced it, I want to experience it. I know what you're getting at. So that mystical oneness is opening up.
So, yeah, I think there's reasons to be optimistic that we're moving that human being. And it's not just tech that's evolving. We are evolving.
And, well, all the tech and everything that's evolving has come from us. You know, it's our psyche, our soul, our imagination that's evolving.
[00:24:55] Speaker A: Yeah, that's how I see tech too. It's like a crude reflection of really what's going on in the Internet of our mind, of the technology of our mind. Right. So at the same time that we're realizing it's all one, we're building this outward reflection of the one mind through the Internet and through AI.
[00:25:15] Speaker B: I couldn't agree with you more, my friend. I think it's exactly what we're doing. I think we're doing it. And I think what we're seeing is, is that in.
Especially with AI actually, what we're doing is we're seeing into the nature of the universe. Not because the universe is a big computer, because I don't think it is, but computers work because they're a bit like the universe.
And AI in particular works because it's a bit like the universe. And so I think what we've got now is the perfect model for understanding that you don't need a creator because this is the evolution of creativity and you don't need a intelligence to design it, because this is the evolution of intelligence. And now we've got models where you can see a intelligence evolving. It works it out. So you've got a model of the universe that's working out how to be the elements, working out how to be life, working out then how to be conscious, working out how to. All the things that the universe has worked out how to be. And that's still happening now. It's working out how to be God. It's like. It's like there's more and more possibilities that it can.
That it can realize because this is the realization of ever more possibilities. You know, it's like that novelty thing, which. Which Terence took from Whitehead.
[00:26:35] Speaker A: Oh, I didn't know that.
[00:26:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:36] Speaker A: From.
[00:26:37] Speaker B: From the philosopher Whitehead, who was a big influence on Terrence.
[00:26:41] Speaker A: I don't even know who he is.
[00:26:42] Speaker B: Yeah, he's a. He's dead now. He's. He's. But he was a.
He was influential in terms of putting out a evolutionary vision of spirituality much, much earlier on.
Yeah.
[00:26:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
So I think more of the story is we're evolving toward a more beautiful experience overall, I think.
[00:27:05] Speaker B: So.
[00:27:05] Speaker A: It's like. Right. It's just like. Yeah, beauty for beauty's sake, too. That's the thing. It's like we're seeing that. It's really just for the actual experience. It's for the. Almost like you're building a better video game. Like you're building a. It's a next generation video game. It's a. It's a better movie that was played before. I think that's really all it's for is where we're seeing it in a way that we never saw, and we're seeing it in a way that is just simply miraculous.
[00:27:33] Speaker B: I love that phrase you just used, Gary. We're seeing in a way that you've never seen it before.
And I think it's exactly what's happening. And so every time, everything we're experiencing, we're discerning in some way, otherwise we wouldn't know what it was.
And we discern it with categories, and that's what ideas are. So we're doing it on a neurological basis, how we're discerning the colors and the shapes. And then we're discerning it on an ideational basis. And the more sophisticated our ideas become, the more we can discern, and then we can put it into narratives, which is how we understand, and that governs what we experience.
And that's wisdom. That's the evolution of wisdom. That's why I say wisdom is everything. Everything. Everything we're experiencing is the relationship between, in my case, myself and the world.
And myself is happening on a biological level, but it's also happening hugely on the level of the psyche, your soul, where I'm. I'm understanding, categorizing, looking at. And every. Every new piece of every new insight which is true. And true essentially means trustworthy. That's the etymology of it, which I think is really good. So you get that when you say something's true, it means it's trustworthy. You can. It's like, yeah, that works. Like you said, pragmatic.
And so you get an insight which is true, and suddenly you see something which has never been seen before.
[00:29:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:02] Speaker B: And everything, Every single thing that's been seen has been seen for the first time by somebody.
I find it fascinating to think that there was a time when there was one person in the world who understood Einstein's theory of relativity, and that was Albert.
And he was the only person, and he'd seen this, and it turned out to be trustworthy. Change the world.
[00:29:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:26] Speaker B: And on and on and on that goes.
So for me, and this is obviously just for me, the moment where God flipped was one of those moments. And then, from then on, I saw something I'd never seen before, and my experience was transformed by. It was better.
[00:29:45] Speaker A: To me. There's also something about relating with others that see it right. If Einstein was the only one that saw it, he'd think he was crazy. If everyone was like, dude, this E equals MC squared. Come on, Albert.
But when you come on here and you relate to others, there's something about building that trust with somebody else. It's like, oh, you see it too.
Like, that adds to the beauty.
[00:30:13] Speaker B: Absolutely right. Yeah. And. And we need that anyway. I mean, I think it's very good to be questioning. You probably picked that up already. And that is, you know, so there's a. Everything. You know, I. I've had to. I've had to come out and go, look, there's ideas in my. In huge number of my books that I think are wrong now because I had a traditional.
A traditional view which I flipped on its head. So everything's changed.
And one of the ways that we do, that is we test it out with each other.
Now, as it turned out, you know, Albert held it, held the line when a lot of people did say he was mad and he did get rejected. And more and more people went, no, actually, you're taking. You're making sense. So it can start small, but nevertheless, we share it. And that's really important because if I say, look, I think there's a loving intelligence, and you go, yeah, I do, too, then we can go, all right, what do you think it is? And then we can try and work it out. But if everyone else goes, I don't think there is, Tim, then maybe there isn't. Maybe I'm just delusional, which I have to consider. Maybe I was a kid or I had a delusional experience, and I've been set off on this path of delusion ever since. It's possible.
I don't think so, because I know so many other people who go, no, I know exactly what you mean.
[00:31:26] Speaker A: Yeah. That's the thing is we have this inner conviction of trust within ourselves first that leads the way.
[00:31:32] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:31:33] Speaker A: And then the others, they just add to that conviction. So there is something about being a pathfinder in the way of Albert Einstein, of your own insight, that you also have to weigh as well, where people are probably going to think you're crazy. I know that. I know people think I'm crazy for talking the way that I talk. And you probably feel the same way, too. So it's like, honor other people and relating. But also there is that inner conviction that you have to honor as well. That.
I don't know, it kind of goes beyond words. It's intuitive. There's this, like, inner knowing that just no matter what anyone can say, to think I'm crazy, it's still. It's like this fortitude. It leads the way throughout the. All the endeavors, you know.
[00:32:15] Speaker B: Fortitude. Very nice. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And ultimately, you know, I think, you know, I'm a.
I'm what I call a paralogical thinker, and I think you might be too, which is you can see both, and that you need to bring things together. You did it, for instance, with the oneness and the individual. It's like, it's not one or the other, it's both. And. And with this as well, it feels like, yeah, really important to share with others, really important to listen. But ultimately, you have to decide what you're going to do today. You have to decide what you're going to trust. No one else can do it. It has to be you. And you come back to that sense of what you could call intuition or that fortitude, that sense of. Yeah, despite everything, this.
And.
And then you find out whether it worked or not and whether you go, oh, no, it's completely wrong. And. And that's important because I've had profound intuitions which have turned out to be right, and I've had profound intuitions which have turned out to be wrong.
So I know that I'm fallible, but that's what I've got. What else have I got? I've. I've got the. The best I've got right now is my current understanding. So I can just stay open, try and evolve, try and learn, and learn from my mistakes.
[00:33:29] Speaker A: Yeah, that's powerful.
Fortitude, integrity. Yeah, integrity. Even if you're wrong.
Yeah. It's like there's even purpose in your mistakes too. Right. You can probably see, like, oh, I thought that way, but I thought that way at that point in time. And now I'm here. Like, you had to make the mistake to end up here at 66 years old.
[00:33:50] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:33:50] Speaker A: Through your mistakes.
[00:33:51] Speaker B: That's right. Yeah, that's right.
[00:33:53] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
[00:33:54] Speaker B: Yeah. There's a line from Mohandas Gandhi, which I read when I was a teenager, which has stayed with me, which was where he went.
My commitment is to truth, not to consistency.
[00:34:04] Speaker A: I like that.
[00:34:05] Speaker B: And. And yeah, it's good, isn't it? Because he's not talking about logical consistency there. He's not going. I just believe anything he's saying. When the situation when. When I was wrong and I need to see it in a different way.
I change. I don't. You know, the fact that I said it this yesterday, that's gone now. Now I think this. That's to evolve, one has to be able to do that.
[00:34:28] Speaker A: I mean, I think that's wisdom.
[00:34:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, there you go. I think that's right.
That what you've just said then really deep, because it's. To get that wisdom isn't a thing that exists that you need to find.
It's actually an evolutionary process because. Because the greatest wisdom is right at the leading edge. The greatest wisdom is the new insight that no one's had yet that you're just on the edge of. So it's creative. Wisdom is creative because the whole process is creative.
[00:35:05] Speaker A: Yeah, I got to take a deep breath on that one. This is good.
Yeah.
I don't even know where to go from here.
It's like all of this is just. I gotta Sit with some of this stuff. Somebody. New insights. I'm coming through with this conversation.
You're really cool, Tim. I like you.
[00:35:23] Speaker B: That's very kind of you. Thank you. I like you too.
[00:35:25] Speaker A: I can tell you're experienced in this and you've been doing this for a long time.
[00:35:29] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:35:30] Speaker A: Also, by the way, you're very sharp and you look good for 66.
[00:35:33] Speaker B: Just wanted to thank you. Thank you.
[00:35:35] Speaker A: I thought you were a lot younger.
I don't even know where to go from here, man. I mean, the last line we were on was wisdom. Is this creative expression. Like it is creativity in some way.
Like, to be purely creative is to be purely wise.
[00:35:56] Speaker B: I feel, I think it's to be on the. On the cut.
The vision I have of what this is, is that we're in the. The evolution is. Sorry. Yeah. The evil. The universe. The evolving universe is a creative process.
So everything's evolving. Most things are evolving pretty damn slow, so you don't notice.
But not Gary.
Gary's evolving, Gary's evolved. And Tim, in the last half an.
[00:36:24] Speaker A: Hour, I feel it.
[00:36:27] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's, that's, that's the leading edge it can. That it's happening now because the psyche, the soul is, is where all the evolution is happening. And, and that is where we become wiser and open up new possibilities. And that's what. And. And it's why it's so exciting.
[00:36:46] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good point to riff off of. Is evolution, as we have classically known, has been at the whim of our environment.
Darwinian evolution has been almost like a cause and effect type thing. It's like you have to evolve just to survive. But now at this point, we're evolving in a ever more novel level. It's like we're doing the evolution. We take it into our own hands and evolve really how we want to evolve.
[00:37:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:14] Speaker A: And that's very different from how evolution looked in the past.
[00:37:18] Speaker B: Very different. I mean, I think the big, the big thing to get as a foundation is that after Darwin and Wallace and all that, the study which is still going on of, you know, how does biological evolution work? And there's a lot of questions around that, but that it happened one way or another seems pretty damn clear to, to me. But the big insight, I think, which came later, only 100 years ago, not long was the whole universe has evolved. And that is another, you know, another thing altogether. So the, the evolution of the universe, the physical universe, the, the elements, the universe, the stars, that didn't happen through DNA and Survival.
But there were principles that were the same that underlied it. And I think the principles, I would say, is what I call passivity, which is the past repeats or tends to it. Conditions that what can happen next is conditioned by everything that's happened before.
And another way of saying that is the universe is learning.
So the patterns set up, they're likely to repeat, but it's also creative, which means it will repeat, but not quite the same. It's probabilistic. And then I look at this moment and go, oh, yeah, that's what's happening here.
It's pretty much the same as the last moment, but not quite.
And the not quite is really clear with Tim and Gary. Not so clear with the computer and the lights and the room. That's pretty much the same. It's not actually. If I was to speed it up, you go, oh, it's changing actually. But I can't see that. It looks pretty much the same. It's repeating. Tim is repeating. He's staying pretty much like he is, but also he's animate and doing so. Life becomes a higher level of that creativity still. The passivity still, but now more creative. And then the psyche, it's like, ah, yeah, here it's still the passivity. I can't think.
I can only think with the ideas I've got.
But they can come into new arrangements. I can get ideas from you. They will. They will combine with my ideas and. And it's very creative. So the creativity is increasing all the time.
[00:39:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I like that. The whole universe is learning.
Yeah. Because that's what evolution is. You could say it's a giant learning process.
[00:39:43] Speaker B: Yeah. I think that what, what we're doing is that made conscious, we're able. Like this is what you just said. We can do this. The thing that's been happening all along, we can now do it consciously. What does that mean? It means we can. As you just exactly what you said, we can choose.
Which, you know, even the evolutionary process on the material level, there was no choice.
Took a very long time. It was just random cause and effect. And this came out of it.
Biology took that and increased the level of choice until we got to conscious choice. And then you got. And then. And then for us, the more we can reflect and actually see how we're ideating, the more choice we have.
So choice is relative, you know, because most of what we do is habitual. So the more we can choose, and you can see that in culture, you know, it, that there's still.
When I Talked about as individuating.
If you go to some collectors of human beings, you will find a lot of people who go, you know, well, I'm a Hindu, I'm a Muslim, I'm a Christian, whatever it is. Why?
Well, that's where I was born.
There's. There hasn't been chosen, it's just there.
They don't even know they've got it. It's just, that's the truth, right? That's what I was born into. And that's the condition of most of humanity throughout history. It's only now where people are going, yeah, no, I was born a Jehovah's Witness, but I'm not anymore. Or I was born a atheist, but I'm not anymore. It's like whatever the thing is, there's reflection and that reflection creates choice and then we're more creative and off we.
[00:41:19] Speaker A: Go, and then, and off we go.
[00:41:21] Speaker B: And off we go. Yeah, off we go.
[00:41:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I like that. Choosing the choice. Yeah.
And I think we're choosing, we all, we choose millions of things throughout our day, but I think it comes down to the choice of like from the vantage point of the unity that we spoke of or the separation. Right. And I think when we evolve, when we choose from unity, it's like your individuality chooses from that unity, which is essentially choosing love, really. That's the essence of it.
And that's something that is very foreign, that's for sure. Choosing love, despite what the reflection wants to tell you, that this person is separate, despite that they, you know, called you an asshole, they did something that you think should.
Should have you think that they're not a good person, whatever. It's like, still, despite that, you're choosing this evolutionary point in yourself that is acquainted with love, I believe. I don't want to sound too corny and cliche, but I think that is really how the it looks for us. How that evolution looks for us at a realistic level is in our dealings with each other is no matter what, you choose love. And that's how we all evolve again. I don't want to sound too corny.
[00:42:41] Speaker B: No, I know, Yeah, I get the same thing. I had to, I've had to use this, you know, sometimes I was like, oh yeah, that. It does feel corny, but it's deep. It's deep. You know, there's a moment in my last book, Soul Story, where, which is a, it's a pretty full on philosophy book, but in the middle I stop off and I go, look, I've got to Confess that the thing that's making me write this book of deep philosophy is really a very naive intuition that I can't shake off, that I'm absolutely convinced about. And if I say it, it sounds almost childish because what, what I think it's coming from is a conviction that life is good, death is safe, and what really matters is love.
And that does feel like a deepity. It feels like one of those things you read on the Internet that you just go, yeah, really? And yet I think it's something profoundly true about it, that those things, that. That life is essentially good, it is moving towards something good, and that death is okay. We've evolved to be able to survive death, I think, and.
And that love is what really matters. But let me try this on you, on you, Gary, because it's just a switch of language which has helped me a bit because. Because love is often associated with that warm kind of, you know, thing which I love. I love that kind of pink, fluffy love. I'm a big sucker for it. But actually the love we're talking about is quite strong and it's like. It's like, it's robust and, and it can hold suffering and it can.
So I've started also using the word benevolence, which means to wish well. And it feels like there's a universal benevolence. When I come into the great intelligence, there's a universe with everyone.
It's a big love, but it's a universal wishing well.
And what I like about that phrase for me is that that tends to stay with me in a way that the love feeling comes and goes because it's an emotion. So I don't always feel warm and soft inside. But that, that benevolence, even when somebody is not easy to have, that towards, it's there.
So that's the first thing. And then the guiding principle for me is universal benevolence plus evolutionary wisdom.
And what I mean by that is there can be something. And I see this in my younger self and in all around me, actually there can be something genuinely naive about all you need is love. And you know, where you. Where it doesn't have the wisdom to live in an evolutionary world because the world is dangerous and people do terrible things and cannot be trusted. And we live by predating on other things. And it's a. It's an evolutionary world and we have to somehow live with all of that. Bittersweet. We have to live with physics, we have to live with biology, and we have to live with all the Levels that are happening in our cultures where some people are still living in the Middle Ages, and we have to live with that and then we have to bring the universal benevolence to it. And that requires evolutionary wisdom. So you can discern.
Ah, okay.
You know, I, I, I can discern quite easily that I can just relax and trust you, but not necessarily somebody else I might need to be, be careful, you know, and, and you know, I have a daughter, she's grown up now, but, you know, I'm ready to protect her if she was threatened by somebody who wasn't, you know, even though I feel that benevolence because I have evolutionary wisdom, which would mean, no, I step in. Do you see what I'm trying to get at?
[00:46:43] Speaker A: Yeah, love. Definitely not the right word. It's very loaded, for sure. We need to come up with a new word. Why don't you make one, Tim?
[00:46:50] Speaker B: Probably. I'll have a go. I have a go. I mean, I love the word love. Let's not get rid of it. But I do think benevolence is a good, benevolent, is, is, is, is wishing well or choosing to wish well. And, and whatever word you use. The important thing is it's the fruition of the Christian tradition, really, that started 2,000 years ago. It's that love your enemies, love your neighbors, yourself, of course, that's universal. But that love your enemies, whoa, that's a big one.
It doesn't say don't have enemies, of course. You know, it says you can, you can actually engage with the struggle of being alive in an evolutionary world.
And we can do it without being naive, you know.
Well, again, the Christian tradition has got that, you know, be innocent as does, but wiser serpents. It's like, you know, we need both, we need that big love or that benevolence which goes everyone, everything actually.
But the nature of the universe is such that all these levels coexist. And I need the wisdom to be able to tell what I do where.
And at the moment, what I see is that on the one side there's cynicism which is like, ah, human beings, they're all rotten and use every man for himself. And on the other side, there's kind of naivety. No, just be nice. It'll all be great. And it's like neither of those are right.
Neither of those are right. We don't need cynicism and we don't need naivety. We need wisdom.
And part of that wisdom is you come into this, what you described, the unity you serve it.
You serve God because God's the leading edge of the evolving universe, and you serve God with everything you've got, and that's bringing that benevolence into the world. But you do it wisely, and that's the, that's hard.
[00:48:33] Speaker A: It's definitely hard.
[00:48:35] Speaker B: But, but, but that's the journey. I think that's the, that's the challenge every day.
[00:48:39] Speaker A: That's what I was gonna say. That's the hero's journey.
[00:48:41] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. Yeah, that's right. That's what, that's what Campbell was onto. Yeah, exactly that. Yeah, exactly that.
[00:48:49] Speaker A: That's what makes the journey worth it. That's what makes this an adventure.
[00:48:56] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it is an adventure, isn't it? I mean, you know, I, you know, I mean, I'm God, you know, when I think of what you've got ahead of you.
Yeah, I just want to go, good for you. You're in good shape, and you're off, you know, you're off on the hero's adventure. And, and I, I just, I'm sure it will be extraordinary. And, and each one of us, you know, takes it forward. And I, I look to the people before me, you know, people I hung out with, like Ram Dass and people like that and Terence.
And.
[00:49:30] Speaker A: But you hung out with Ram Dass?
[00:49:32] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and you were friends with Ramda. I, I, I, I knew him. I, I had, I, I saw him in, in Maui. He wrote a very nice introduction, comments about my first book for me.
[00:49:48] Speaker A: I didn't know that.
[00:49:49] Speaker B: A few times.
[00:49:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I love Rom Das. That's like my number one guy.
[00:49:52] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, he was good. He was big for me. And, and he, what he taught me, I think, was humor and. Yes. Lightness. Not taking myself too seriously.
[00:50:02] Speaker A: Tenderness.
[00:50:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Love either.
[00:50:04] Speaker A: Love.
[00:50:04] Speaker B: Chunky. And like me, I feel, I feel like that, too. And so, yeah, I got, I got to see him not that long before he died, I guess, in Maui and had dinner with him. And I used to be, I used to be a musician. We don't really get off on this, because it's another story, but before I was a writer, when I was much younger, I was a composer and ran recording studios and wanted to create music which could lift people up, and I did it. I did a piece of music with Ram Dass called Another Level of Fun, which was using his voice on this dance track.
And, and I, and I think really, one of my obscure claims to fame, actually, is that I was also the very first person, I think in the world to make a dance. Well, it's kind of an ambient track, really, with Terrence using Terence's voice, which I know is just every. You know, when I go to. When I get to. When I get invited to speak at psychedelic festivals, I hear endless dance music with Terrence. And I think. I think I was the first person who did that.
[00:51:06] Speaker A: Is that online? Are both of those online?
[00:51:07] Speaker B: I think both of those might be online, actually.
[00:51:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:09] Speaker B: Most of my music's not, but I think those two might be.
[00:51:12] Speaker A: Oh, that's cool. What is it called?
Anyone to check it out?
[00:51:16] Speaker B: So the one with Terrence is called Hooray in a New Way, which somebody else did a.
Another Terrence track using a very similar title three or four years afterwards.
But this one is obviously, I'm Tim. It's Tim Freak. So you, you know, I've got such a weird name. You'll find me. And then the Ram Dass track was called Another Level of Fun, which was a line that he said. And Hooray in a New Way was a line that Terence said that the. The elves from Hyper Space on the DMT were saying to him.
[00:51:48] Speaker A: Both of those are the same idea, though, and it's the same, really premise of this whole conversation.
[00:51:53] Speaker B: Yes. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's probably why it's come up. I don't think I've talked about that in a podcast ever, probably.
[00:52:03] Speaker A: Well, I'm honored. Hooray in a new way.
[00:52:05] Speaker B: Hooray in a new way. Another level of fun.
[00:52:08] Speaker A: That's it, man. Yeah.
I feel like it's just getting started. And I think that is also the essence of this wavelength.
Inwardly is like every day is. It's just getting started. Every moment is. It's just getting started. Right. It's this ever renewed novelty, which I think is something I said in the beginning.
[00:52:28] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:52:28] Speaker A: Ever renewed novelty.
And that is really the miracle man, because I think materialism altogether, right, The Western mindset is very. Just thick. It's very stagnant. We get stuck in this, like, this is how life is. And very monotonous, which we all have to deal with this sort of sense of monotony in our life. You know, we're human. But I think with this inner seeing, this insight, it brings this renewed novelty amidst the monotony.
[00:52:57] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:52:57] Speaker A: You know.
[00:52:58] Speaker B: Yes. Beautifully put. And that's. And, and, and with the vision that I'm trying to explore of the evolving universe is going. Well, that's. Because that's what it is.
Literally, every moment has never happened before.
It's just literally true. And this conversation has never happened before, and this. This moment is never. And so that's that. That sense of novelty is inherent in what this is. And so when we miss that, then life becomes very much like this, doesn't it? And you. And then you. Oh, and the difference between living like this and when it is just so big, it's such a big difference.
And so part of what I think we need to do with each other, and I think that's what you're doing with this podcast suspect, is just keep reminding each other. Just go, yeah. Oh, don't forget, you can go.
And then when you do, you're in a different world.
Same world, but different world.
[00:53:57] Speaker A: Yes.
Everything changes, but also nothing changes.
[00:54:01] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. What. What changes is how. What. How you discern what's already there.
Suddenly there's this.
You know, it's just funny, isn't it? It's like it's. You know, it's. It's dark here.
And when I was walking in to speak to you, you just look up and there's the stars. And it's easy. You don't even notice them.
You know, some I can walk to and fro my office, bottom of the garden, and not even notice them. And other times you go, oh, wow, there's the stars above my head going on and on and on and on.
[00:54:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:54:37] Speaker B: Billions and billions and billions. It's like, what the hell is this that we're in?
[00:54:45] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:54:47] Speaker B: Yeah. And you get that profound sense of mystery we started with that kind of, oh, wow, this is.
There's more going on here than we can possibly imagine. And then we do our best to imagine it and keep fluid so you can learn and more and more and more and more and more.
[00:55:08] Speaker A: Amen.
Beautiful stuff, Tim.
I think that's a good note to wrap this up at, to be honest with you.
[00:55:13] Speaker B: I think so, too.
[00:55:15] Speaker A: I thank you for reminding me and reminding anybody that listens in the future of the majesty of the life that we are in.
But sometimes it is just as simple as looking up at the stars. Again, that might sound corny, but it is the truth.
Just looking up at the stars and realizing what a star is, too, that's billions and billions of light years away. That's light. And not only is it light, that's you extended in a greater sense, when you look up at all the stars, that's an extension of yourself.
That's the miracle man.
[00:55:47] Speaker B: Well put. Well put.
[00:55:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you for reminding me of all of this, Tim. Appreciate you Keep up the good work.
[00:55:53] Speaker B: Thank you. It's been lovely to meet you.
[00:55:57] Speaker A: You as well.
I don't have anything else to say. Do you have anything else that you want to say?
[00:56:02] Speaker B: Oh, yes. The things I always forget to say, let me say them because it's. I really want to offer people something, which is you. If you want more of this, if you want more of the.
The reminder, then I. My latest project is a. Is a combination of a podcast and a book called a pod book called why your life really matters. There's going to. There's going to be 37 chapters. There's already 31 or two, and you can have it for free.
You know, it's just. I'm just giving it away. It's on the Internet, it's on podcast providers, and I have a.
An online community. Again, you can just come and we have these conversations, we do practices to try and move us from here to here.
So if you're intrigued by anything I'm saying, you know, I'm doing my best to move us on and move me on and contribute. So if you want to be part of that, check it out.
[00:57:02] Speaker A: Awesome.
Thank you again, Tim.
I wish you all the best and peace and love to you.
Peace and love, everybody.
