The Deep Mystery

Taken from the book The Mystery Experience by Tim Freke

I’ve spent my whole life wondering what life is. After five decades of passionate exploration, which has included some serious study and in-depth spiritual practice, an honest attempt at radical soul-searching and monumental amount of philosophical chat, I’ve come to a fascinating conclusion. What is life? I don’t know!

I’m a pretty smart guy. I can read philosophical books and discuss quantum physics. But it seems to me that all my clever opinions float like flotsam on a vast sea of uncertainty. The edifice of information I’ve erected totters on the foundation of the ultimate enigma of existence… that anything exists at all.

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.

What! Nobody?

Nobody knows.

Not even the guys in white coats?

Nope.

What about the pope?

Are kidding?

Or my enlightened guru?

You obviously haven’t spent enough time with him.

Or some really smart philosopher like Socrates?

He was famous precisely for knowing he didn’t know!

There’s got to be some special person somewhere who’s got the whole thing sorted out?

Look. I’m not saying nobody knows just because I don’t know and I can’t imagine anyone smarter than Tim. I’m saying it because I’ve come to realise that it’s impossible to know what life is.

What do you mean?

Could we ever really explain the mystery of life with words? Would it take a sentence? Or a paragraph? Or a book? Or a whole library of books? Could any amount of words explain away the mystery?

I guess not.

Human beings have crated a mountain of words to explain the nature of reality, but under all the words the mystery of life remains as magnificent as ever.

So we can never say what life is with words.

Exactly. And that’s why, as the great mythologist Joseph Campbell once said, “The person who thinks he has found the ultimate truth is wrong.’

So it isn’t just me. Nobody knows what’[s really going on.

In the ancient Hindu Rig Veda it says, ‘Who knows the truth? Only the God who sees in the highest heaven. He only knows. Or perhaps not even he knows?”

Deep Knowing

The paradoxid of our predicament is that we both know and don’t know what life is. On the surface of life we have a working knowledge of things. Yet life remains a deep mystery. And when we become conscious of the deep mystery, the mystery experience spontaneously arises.

This is how it is for me. When I wonder about the depths of life I find myself becoming inarticulate. It’s as if I’m trying to formulate a primal question that is so enormous it’s impossible to express. A question which is deeper than thought…something felt…something of the heart.

I could try to say it is like this… what’s going on?… what is life?…. what is this moment right now? Then I want to add… Who am I?…. What is it to be alive?.,… And what should I do about it? Or perhaps I would be better to just stammer… what…how…why?!

Science offers many great insights into the nature of life that fascinate my mind, but it doesn’t answer the inarticulate question of the heart. The books I read are full of valuable information, but words can’t answer my wordless question. It seems to me that all my ideas about life form a net of concepts which I cast into the ocean of mystery to catch the water.

Yet as I wonder deeply about life, I find myself immersed in the deep mystery. Then something astonishing happens. The inarticulate question of the heart dissolves into the ocean of mystery. And I feel I’ve found the answer I’m looking for.

But this answer, like the question, is more of a feeling than a thought. I can’t really express the inarticulate question, because it’s too deep for words. I can’t really express the inarticulate answer, because it’s too deep for words.

It is one of the great paradoxities of life that not-knowing leads to the ‘deep knowing’ that the ancients called ‘gnosis’. As the poet Robert Frost writes so beautifully:

We dance around in a ring, and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

In my experience, when I know that I don’t know, there’s a wordless knowing of what-is before words. A silent knowing that arises in the mind as intuitive wisdom. A passionate knowing that arises in the heart as mindless love.

I started my spiritual journey because life was a mystery that I wanted to solve. But I’ve discovered that the question is the answer. Life is a mystery. That’s what life is. And when I know the mystery, I know what life is, so intimately, that words are unnecessary.