Timothy Freke 2007 on 'The Gospel of the Second Coming' Transcript

On a very cold 9th November 2007 morning, I went up to London to chat with Timothy Freke about his and Peter Gandy's very humerous book, "The Gospel of the Second Coming" on the mystery's and myths of Jesus Christ and Christianity. I very much enjoyed meeting Tim and hearing his very different, and I have to say, valid viewpoint. His enthusiasm shines through and certainly made me want to know more of his way of thinking.

Below is a transcript of the audio interview.

VW Timothy Freke welcome to the Bookfiend's Kingdom, this is the 4th book of yours I have read and it's called ‘The Gospel of the Second Coming' which I think is fabulous!

TF Oh well thank you, I'm delighted about that.

VW You have a terrific sense of humour and have distilled all that has gone before into this book and made it so much more fun for people to take in.

TF That was exactly what I had tried to do, so I am delighted to hear that, because our other books the Jesus Mysteries, Jesus and the Goddess, and The Laughing Jesus these are all popular books, but they are scholarly books, but with big wodges of footnotes at the back, so it's a serious read. What I wanted to do was try to take all that information and the ideas of what spirituality is about and what Christianity is really all about and condense it right down and put it in the form that is a form of fun, and satire, and like any satire it is both funny and serious. That's what makes satire and that's what makes it such good fun!

VW So what is a Second Coming?

TF The Second coming is for us a chance to bring Jesus back and let him explain the real history of Christianity, and the real meaning of Christianity and by coincidence Jesus' Theories on this seem to be very similar to my own.

VW Which is very helpful?

TF Yes it is, there are the major ideas, serious ideas which are the hope within the original Jesus Story, the one that was created 2000 years ago. Is not about history it's about mythology, it's an analogy. If you think of the Jesus story, it's full of parables, and these parables all contain teaching stories. They have a very important message for us, a very profound message not to be taken literally, not a Good Samaritan, and it's the same with the whole of the Jesus Story, it's not to be taken literally, No one was born of a virgin that just does not happen. No one literally came back from the dead that literally does not happen. But it is a spiritual analogy that contains teachings which will enable us, which can lead the person who understands it to the state that original Christians called ‘Gnosis' which means knowledge, deep, profound self knowledge.

VW Is this similar to the way the Greeks, no not the Greeks, the pagans have their initiation rights or rather a spiritual thing that they go thorough many levels of knowledge until they reach some kind of ecstasy or at one with the universe or what we would call God or you call the author, and when they came out the other end, they go off and do good works?

TF That's exactly what it is, and it's precisely that. Christianity in its beginning was not about believing that it happened to; was about Jesus, the man figure who represents each one of us on our spiritual journey. As you say it's the same as paganism. The really shocking thing is that everything that makes up the Jesus myth down from the Virgin birth until death and the resurrection, to body and blood, wine and bread and all that, walking on water, changing water into wine at a wedding, twelve disciples, the lot is pagan mythology. All that had been in existence for hundreds and hundreds of years. Its just simply been re-worked by some very creative minds who have created the same perennial story, who have called hero Joshua or Greek Jesus. And the purpose of this is to create the notice, but the problem is this, that the story goes dead, and so we say lets create a post modern Jesus! What would he be like? The Jesus, can come in, but first of all he's back and he's funny, lets make him liked, let's make him playful. Let's make this message accessible, but let's make it profound also. So his message in our Gospel is very post modern and it's still the same old age message. He comes in this Gospel to say, "but I don't really exist, I'm a character in a story" and he says "but also are you". You think you exist, but you do, but only as a character in the story! Really everything in the story is only answering the mind of the author of the story; and his real point is doing all of that, is partly to say something about history, to say the historical Jesus didn't exist but also to convey to the reader through the Gospel of the Second Coming is you don't really exist as you think you do as a separate person, you are a character in the story of life, we all are but there is one author of the story of life. There's is one primeval imagination that the moment right now is arising and if we discover our spirit or our essence then we will find we are all one. Do that by stepping out of the story.

You said the word ecstasy a minute ago, now ecstasy means to step out. So when we step out of our story, that being, that thing we each call Gnosis and we find there is one of, it's exactly the same as the Hindi's called the Atman the Buddhist's call the Buddha-nature and the original Christians call it the Christ. So when we wake up, resurrect, or come back to life, we discover we are the Christ. Alleluiah and it's all one!

There's the experience they call Agape, this huge love, because when you find your one with all, you find yourself, in love with all, even your enemies! So there is a love which can embrace even your enemies' and that's this love which comes from this One, so when you do that you can not help yourself but act from love. And your nature will express itself in you own neat and complete way from that love. And you know what I do to express this love as best as I can, what other people do, I have heard a little about what you are doing with your organisation, and the Autism, because there again it expresses that love. If we could all do that we would have a much better experience of life.

VW Isn't it extraordinary though, when you go into all the other religions, we find that actually they are all very, very similar and when people rise above doctrine, then they are all the same.

TF Well that's exactly right, most religions I think, the trajectory is that they are started by gnostics, mystics or what ever you want to call them who have this experience of waking up and finding, and feeling the big life and go "hey Guys" lets wake up, because if we did, we could turn this into a big party, instead of the nightmare of separateness. But over time, they get taken literally and their ideas become the words and they become more important than what they are pointing to.

VW Why is it that people start taking the stories of old and believe them literally. I find that absolutely fascinating, because the story is told over and over again, in many different ways in many different religions right across the world.

TF Well these stories do go right back. The Jesus Stories go back to ancient Egypt or Osirus. Very, very old, so it's kind of in us why we take it literally. I just think it's; we are in the process of waking up and these ideas are placed in us when we are very young. But the key thing is that when we get older it's for us to question them. We need to question everything and what religion doesn't want you to doubt, but it is only doubt that makes you conscious. Even if you doubt something and come back to it; no I do not think that. If you're bought up a catholic, and you doubt it and then you come back to it, you are a genuine catholic. If you are brought up a catholic, and you stay in it you are an unconscious Catholic, or Muslim, or Protestant, of Hindu - what ever you happen to be. Only doubt can make it conscious, and that is the one thing, that the religion doesn't want you to do, but it is the key thing, to the gnostic awakening!

VW So Thomas is very relevant?

TF Thomas, doubting Thomas, God bless him, the patron saint of Gnosticism, yeah and he pops into the Gospel a few times, yeah, you've gotta keep doubting.

VW (Laughter)

TF And yeah, the Gnostic gospel of Thomas; more people know now, though it astonishes me that we have more of these Gnostic Gospels and more people don't know them. I think its one of the best Gospels, because it's just a collection of wisdom sayings, and it doesn't attempt to be anything about history, its just wisdom sayings and some of them are just very, very, profound.

VW Elaine Pagels has written about the great Gnostic people, and teachers of old. Wasn't she a big player in bringing peoples attentions to the Gnostics, we owe her an immense debt of gratitude. I would like to push things a little further than she does, I think there is a tendency to get stuck, with the idea that there must have been a Jesus, and because there's no evidence, because there is a big black hole , basically everyone just projects there own feelings into it. So there's any evidence that, that's true. You talk to muslins and he's(Jesus) the great prophet. Not as Mohammad, but kind of a warm up act. (laughter).

You speak to the traditional Christians and he's the Son God, whatever that might mean. You speak to Gambraham and he is a kind of family man, whose kids grew up in the south of France. You talk to Erik Von Danikan and he's a space man and his halo is really a space helmet! There's a myth for a million Jesus' and it's because there is no Jesus that we project our fantasy on to it, and the problem is we don't, and kind of approach choosing our Jesus as if we are choosing a chocolate from a box. It's got all "which Jesus do you fancy?" on no Jesus Son of God - I can't swallow that, Jesus the Spaceman, and I'll have a nutty one (laughter) and we can't answer these questions like that. We have to look at evidence, we're looking at history and that is a compellingly different mysticism, if we're looking at history - looking at the evidence - I think it is just overwhelming; The Jesus story sounds like a myth because it is a myth and funnily enough that makes it better. It doesn't dismiss it as untrue; it actually says "Its true but in a spiritual sense". It's true that it conveys the profound teachings, which if you really understand then can make you up to the fact that you are never alone' and that is temptingly important to me.

VW I think it's quite extraordinary that we can only believe various things by how we are bought up. Even if we have been bought up to question everything under the sun we will arrive there, sooner rather than later. If we have been taught with the crack of a whip that you never question anything, then you have no idea.

TF Yes that is so true, but I meet a lot of people who have had a very sudden and dramatic awakening conditioning. We're all conditioned even the language we're speaking in is not our language, of course it isn't. It's a public thing we are all conditioned with public thoughts. So becoming conscious is a tricky old business, and some people get a contracted religious upbringing and they will explode out of it. I get a lot of people who have email and are fundamentalists who come across our work, and it's woken them up and suddenly they are reading more than one book! Because all of these people only read the one book, the Bible, that's it, they don't read anything else. Suddenly there reading all these other books and the're having a much richer life, but usually the sadness is when you talk to them, it's a sad thing because when you get close to them, it's a closed thing and it's rejected. Which is a sad thing because Christianity is about here and inclusion and it's not about rejection, it's not about fear of hell, its not about any of that. All of that is a massive distortion, and with which there is a great chance that Jesus gets to point this out in His Second Coming, and to tickle their ribs and say loosen up a bit about the guys, let's get the real message here!

VW What I think is really good , is you've got Mary who gets everything, and Peter, poor soul who gets nothing, (laughter) and you have a wonderful twist at the end of your book which I love, and I'm not going to tell anybody! They have got to read the book, definitely read the book. But why did you make Peter the poor soul, the lovely lad that he is?

TF Well there is two reasons for that. One is that it is the Gnostic tradition, if you go back to the Gnostic Gospel of Pisitis Sophia, that you will find there is a strong tradition that Mary Magdalene is Jesus' Consort, and she is in constant friction with Peter, who is stupid, and Mary Magdalene is the apostle to the apostles. She still gets called that by the Catholic Church, because she explains after Jesus' death and resurrection, she explains the secret teachings to all those stupid men (laughter), well the thing about the Gnostics, they were renowned for having women bishops, women teachers, and a huge number of their gospels are created by women. They were like the Pythagoreans, the pagan Pythagoreans, they had no division between the sexes in that way, so they were very modern in that way, but underlying that is the allegory. What that is all about is, Jesus wrestled with the spirit, which is in essence ‘The Christ'

VW What does ‘The Christ' mean?

TF The Christ means, a translation , is the Anointed One and it's the name for King really. A Spiritual King, and Jesus/Joshua means Saviour King, as soon as you say the Saviour King you can hear it sounds like it could be a mythical figure, it could be a Umbi Archetype, and it is, it's an everyman figure, he represents you and he represents you and is also the one who saves you through your understanding of him.

VW But the Greeks were into sound healing, their houses were built to enhance sound. So therefore tell me if I wrong, it sounds as if the word Jesus Christ was chosen because of the resonance in the body.

TF Its perfectly possible that the words were used, there are certainly in the Gnostic Gospels where the words are used and are incomprehensible because the words are just vowels, chanting as ee ah eeh oo and you say, "what was that" there is long passages and we have a joke about it, so there is chanting, and numerology going on.

VW And other people don't understand that, that in the Old Testament you've got a lot of numerology and you've got a lot about the crystals too.

TF Well certainly in the name of Jesus, and a lot of the ancient names mean in Greek are also numbers in Hebrew. But in the Greek there's a lot of numerological references going on. Layers within layers - but hay the allegory is on the surface is the most interesting because you can get so lost in these labyrinths, because of the cleverness of it all and miss the real message. Going back to your bit about Peter and Mary which is what we play about with in the books. Peter is the Body, the Soul is Mary and Jesus is the Spirit. These are the three aspects which are interwoven. Those are the three aspects which inter-relates, so the war which is going on between Mary who eventually gets it and she is led to it and Peter who never gets it, which is between the body and the soul (laughter) we do reveal at the end of the book we do redeem the body and there's no rejection group and we do redeem them all! And the reason all the guys are seen as in a kind of state, that it seems as though they are kind of lost, is because they are the 12 signs of the zodiac that is why there are twelve of them. Jesus is the centre and that is why we call it the wheel of suffering. Because that is why Pythagoras called it the wheel of grief; It is the idea that we are stuck in the dream of separateness in the different states it represents and that is what we need to wake up from. They represent the different states we need to wake up from, and Jesus is what we're waking up to and mercy represents the soul , which is how we wake up.

VW Its interesting because if you read Ken Wilbur he also talks about the further you get away from the centre, the more you become I, and as you come towards the centre, you become as one, as you are talking about in the mythology.

TF Yes the image that the ancient Gnostics used, which I think is very powerful, is Pythagoras is a circle so the circle is the body, and the centre is the eye of deep sense not the personal eye, the universal being the spirit and the radius the soul. The soul is what makes me true, the separate thing that speaks to you here the front end and then if I sink back into my being, there's the whole mysterious thing called the soul or the psyche going on , the mind, the imaginative and oh my God! Most of the action here is taking place there and not in the physical world and then right the way back there's the presence witnessing the whole thing. The Spirit and the journey is to sink back into yourself until you find the Christ within you. Which is this all embracing presence and that's the place where we are all one.

VW And, that's what the Buddhists encourage them to do in the Tibetan book of Living and Dying.

TF It's exactly the same, you'll find the Tibetans, the Sufies, the Shamanic teaching, there is one message and the key with that is within. It's not even spiritual, it certainly is not something that's religions. Can be but it's not necessarily religious it is just natural it's about what life is, and who we are in this moment. To discover it we just have to pay attention and I run seminars here in Europe and America and all over the place in which I try and share what I've learnt about how we can really contact this. It doesn't matter how we talk about this as Gnosticism enlightenment and one's news and that can seem like that is for allsorts of other people. But in my experience it's not, and it's much easier to taste it than most if us expect, and when you do its kind of like, knowing I've knonw about this all along; and there's this big Ahh! And you find yourself relaxing into the big empty space and there's this love and connection. I love it because I get together with people over a day or a weekend and we start as strangers and the next thing we know, were not and it's because we haven't got to know each other personally, you can't in a day or a week but we recognise that behind the person, which is lovely and interesting there's this thing we know intimately, it's a beautiful, beautiful awakening. I love it and that's why I do what I do, I'm a love junkie really, it's just so beautiful to take that and share it with others!!

VW You'd have done well in the 70's!!

TF Guess I grew up through the 70's. (laughter) I was a teenager then and I've never recovered! I just think it's the one thing I really know. I've written all these books, I'm a philosopher, historian but for me really the thing that's been the same all the way through is love. The thing I most wake up to, is this love. That is what compels me to do everything I do.

VW That's interesting, both you and Peter are classically trained, you went to university did all the hard work and then you decided to look at Christianity. You wanted to find the historical Christ that was the beginning of it.

TF Well you know yes, but it's kind of a bit of a quirk really, I never intended to. I first headed east to India to understand the Eastern philosophy and because they spoke to me more. It was Pete's fault, he went looking and he started studying the west. Peter and I have known each other since we were kids, and we've been trying to work out what this funny business we call life is since we were in our teens and we've had this one conversation now covering up to forty years. (laughter) so we are still doing the same thing, we talk regularly on the phone and basically, you made any sense of it yet? No not really! And what do you reckon? and we have a lot of fun and this new book; but what I love about the new book is that it captures something of what Peter and I are really like. Which is deadly serious, but having a good laugh at the same time. Being prepared to be on a boat and pushed out.

VW Yes I've laughed out loud many a time with the book!

TF Isn't that lovely. In delighted to hear that, because if I can make people laugh then I'm pleased, I'm very happy about that.

VW You've also got references to various programmes as well. You say we're not going to become the Borg! (ref to Star Trek Voyager's 7 of 9 character)

TF Yes, This wonder, there comes so much in the media, it's the way you can misunderstand it.. It sounds like everything is just going to become this big soup or become similar to the Borg, and the irony is the more I touch this, the more I Tim comes to life. I can let him off the leash a bit. He can be more eccentric and allow himself to live his life. When I speak to people generally, they kind of wake up and become interested, quirky and they and I like them more and the most tell tale sign is they have a great sense of humour for the things they hold most dear!

VW That's very true, I have to say. Now Plato plays a huge, huge part in early Christianity, and you, and all the things that have been written, about the early Church Fathers that constantly refer back to Plato, all the time.

TF Well Plato, is a hugely important figure, he is the person who articulated the philosophy, he's into the interpretation of Socrates'; Socrates is one of the proto-types for Jesus. There is a lot of things in the story of Socrates that came into the story of Jesus' and Christianity is basically platonic. Plato himself and Socrates are basically Pythagoreans' and Pythagoreans' whether they existed as a God figure or not is the Buddha of the west. He is a hugely important figure. So there is one western tradition which is fragmenting as all traditions do into flavours - I think of the Platonists the myths of Neo Plato and Palatino's who is a wonderful philosopher who clearly starts this waking up. They saw the Gnostisism in the Christians as a retro step, going backwards, because they spent a long time trying to clear out the mythology and get it into a philosophical form, and then along come the Gnostic Christians who were adding back all the mythology (laughter) back in, and in one way I have sympathy with them for them, is because I am the Philosopher. The thing about mythology is its got colour, it's a bit like - what did most people enjoy, sitting down with a book of philosophy or going to and see the Matrix! and yet the message is probably very similar it's just done in a story form, the great thing about the story, and why the Jesus story is so engaging and why I hope our new gospel is so engaging is because it moves you. It makes you laugh, it makes you cry, it touches you, and just philosophical concepts just don't seem to do that I love Ken Wilber but he doesn't make me laugh and cry.

VW No definitely not.

TF But he does make you think and something that does all of this - Hey (laughter)

VW Now it's Christianity , taking the bread and the wine, the Eucharist is the major part, the central point, and when you go to Communion in the service that is what you do, you sing the hymns and do the liturgy and then you take the bread and the wine. But what does it actually mean in terms of mythology and what we are talking about?

TF Well it's very old, it certainly goes back as far as Dionisis in Greece and probably back much further, to Egypt, and there's pictures on engravings, on pots which we have of Dinarius as a figure mounted on a cross. So they'd build a cross and put robes on a cross, the purple robes, which of course Jesus is regaled in when he's crucified and on his head they put a crown of olives not thorns, but it was changed to thorns for Jesus' and Dinarius is the wine and that incidentally is why Jesus is described as the true vine. Because he is the real Dinarius!

VW Ah!

TF That's what they're saying and there would have been bread and wine at the foot of the cross and people would take this. In the Theresa Mysteries, they take bread and wine, to allow them to commune with the God. That may well go back to cannibalistic rituals in the pre-history it's hard to say. But I think it's perfectly possible that these things exist in the world of today. The idea, literally communion with somebody by the time that it's been practised in the mysteries, it's symbolic, and I think it's to do with the idea again of body and soul. That you have got a body which is bread, the physicality of things which is one of the things we are experiencing right now.

Then there's the other thing which is the soul and the thing about wine is worth noticing, is that wine in the ancient world, seemed to be very intoxicating and I expect it may even have been psychotic! It was an ecstatic experience, so that's why Jesus turned water into wine, so this is taking the soul and really bringing it to life, and that's of course what wine does now. What it's about, communion with the essence of life can bring you to life. And that's what you're doing when you're performing this very simple thing, it's eating and drinking, it's the most fundamental thing that we do. We eat and we drink, and that's what we do to commune with life itself.

VW How extraordinary, I never thought of it that way, but I have to say, since reading your books I have found that reading the Bible, you see it in a different way and a much more profound way. In other words you are reading between the lines and then you are reading between the lines of the lines.

TF I'm delighted, because that's what we hoped for. That's what we're doing in the
Gospel of the Second Coming and in our other books. Just to try and get to the place Peter and I, which is when Christianity came to life for me when I discovered it was an allegory. Before then it just seemed to be a bit crazy to be honest. It just believed and why should I believe it? Unless you've been indoctrinated that the book must be right. As soon as you've gone, the Koran or the Baghava Gita then you've had that thought, and you look at that threat and then you see those other books are much more profound; the Bible really so, lets forget that. But to come back to my own tradition and go, oh it's profound, it is beautiful, moving and profound and it's got a lot of stuff that you want to leave behind. (laughter) I can do without an awful lot of the Old Testament but then the New Testament is there to precisely replace the Old Testament. That's why it the New on and that's what it should do. But the New Testament has got the most magic moments and well it is the Greatest Story ever told certainly the oldest story ever told and it still compels us to this day.

VW So what came before the Egyptians in terms of mythology?

TF So well that's what we don't know. Because that is the beginning of writing, and writing is the beginning of recorded history. So before that we can only guess. But probably these myths go right back into Neolithic times who knows? We look and we can guess from what remains but the great things about from when we hit these great cultures, is the we have more left for us and certainly there is more writing and there's the great pictures. Then we can interperate them better .

VW And now that you have done the Life of Brian? More or less where to now?

Both (laughter)

TF Well that's right Peter and I always felt like Monty Python's got the good deal we had to do the serious work. So now we've got our own back by writing our satirical gospel. I think to steel a gag from the great writer of Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, "The Gospel of the Second Coming" is the fourth of the trilogy for us, and I think we're done! I think we said what we can say. To be honest I thought we had done when we had written the three of them that's why I say it's the 4th and the beautiful funny idea to say heh! lets not write about the Gnostics, let's do what they did, they created a gospel 2000 years ago, let create our own. It was too sweet not to do it, we did it, it's out there, we got Jesus back and its funny, and plastered over the underground and I'm proud of that, and just to have that is playful for me! I'm not sure there is much more to say on that. What my real passion is, is philosophy, what I'm really paying attention to, is how is the waking up, in a way which we can just get it now. Then share it in these sermons. I do this thing called stand up philosophy, talking philosophy, making philosophy, sexy, fun and entertaining. But also giving people the experiences of who we really are!

VW Tim many thanks for your time, I greatly appreciate it.

TF That's fine, its been a lovely conversation - Thank you.