The book had its beginnings in an out-of-body experience I underwent while making a determined but totally untutored attempt to meditate. What I encountered 'out there' cannot be adequately described in words and any attempt to do so merely debases the experience, but from what I have read since, I truly believe I underwent Samadhi.. Yoga adepts describe it as Union with the Ultimate Principle, Buddhists describe it as nirvana - "the dewdrop in the shining sea". It can happen at the first attempt, or never - even after a lifetime of application. I guess I was lucky, or perhaps truly blest.

The experience changed my life totally in that I found I had taken a step back from the world or - as the Sufis say - I had learned "to be in the world, but not of it". I was driven (directed..?) to relate the experience to my own life and the world around me; to put all the apparently conflicting ideas about existence together - like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle - to form a coherent pattern that made some kind of sense; a radical new synthesis that, paradoxically, was as old as Time itself.

Writing MISSION was my attempt to share this journey with others.

Although MISSION in its final form, was written in twelve months, it took more that twelve years to put together and, in a sense, it is the result of a lifetime of questioning. All kind of odd things happened to me along The Way. I would meet people who would tell me something that provided a clue, sometimes the key, to a problem I was trying to resolve. Others would thrust books upon me which seemed to fall open at the right page and I would find my eye drawn irresistibly to the line I needed to confirm some new (old) notion I'd had.

All this was nothing to what was to follow when, after a sequence of apparently unconnected events, I relocated to a new farmhouse in Wales. The woman who then owned it asked me what I was writing. I was reluctant to tell her but she insisted and I confessed with some embarrassment and a nervous laugh that I was working on 'the secret of the Universe'. But she didn't laugh and encouraged me to explain what I meant.

It was a late afternoon in October. We were sitting in an old farmhouse that had built in 1730, in a part of Snowdonia that has more than its fair share of Celtic magic. I got out my notes and tried to outline my ideas as the darkness gathered around us. My host listened intently for a while then stood up from the table saying: "I think I have some books that have been waiting for you." She went up into the attic and returned carrying a dust-covered cardboard box of books written by a guy called Rudolph Steiner.

Now while my general knowledge is fairly good there are great gaps in it, especially in the field of literature. I had never heard of this guy but, apparently, he had been very big on the esoteric religion scene between 1900 and 1920. His main claim to fame is for his enlightened and radical approach to child education which is still being applied in 'Steiner Schools' in Europe and the USA. The story was this: my host's mother had been an ardent fan and member of the Tbeosophical Society and had passed on copies of Steiner's books to her daughter. But knowing she wasn't all that interested, her mother had written her name on the flyleaf so she wouldn't give the books away. And so they had been lying unopened, gathering dust, for several decades.

Waiting...

Imagine my astonishment when I began (by candlefight) to read the first book from the pile and discovered that paragraphs from my notes matched paragraphs out of Steiner's book - some sentences were word for word! It was an amazing experience - like going on an intellectual binge. My brain went into overdrive and I devoured the entire collection, reading till dawn, several nights in a row.

Page after page revealed to me things that I already 'knew' through my out-of-body experience and when I went out each day to walk the surrounding hills I realised I was relating to the earth and sky in a totally new way. I was coming into harmony with the universe and, for the first time, I 'saw' the landscape - clearer and brighter than ever before - was able to 'feel' it, was able to become part of the 'One-ness'.

Finally, in another of Steiner's books, written around 1908, I came across a passage in which he stated that someone would come along later in the century and reinterpret these truths/secrets for a wider audience. I know it sounds presumptuous but, as I read those lines, I knew, with absolute certainty that that was what I had to do. That was my mission. Kind of corny in a way but that's just how it happened and, from what other readers have told me about their reaction to the book, it is clear it wasn't a waste of time and effort.

A lot of people think I must be an American (probably Jewish) and must know a great deal about religion. I'm neither and I don't. The amazing thing about putting all this stuff together is that most of it came down through the top of my head - intuited knowledge which only later, when I started to dig into various books, did I find that bits of it had been set down here and there by far greater minds than my own. What I did - almost by accident - was to draw the ideas together into a coherent proposition that might convince a non-believer in the second half of the 20th century.

Some Templars from Switzerland made contact with me because they were convinced I belonged to one of their Orders. Apparently I had revealed many things which they regarded as their deepest Inner Mysteries and were curious to know who had directed me to 'go public'.

It was an encounter which served to confirm my belief that all knowledge already exists and is within our reach. Learning is the act of discovering what we already 'know'.

Insight. We just have to tune in on the right wavelength.

The thing is - Jesus - The Christ Event/Mystery - transcends Christianity. What he represents concerns the whole world. And if the story is spiced with humour, it is because I believe religion is too important a subject to take seriously.

Think about that...

MISSION is not my first book and is not the last but there wont/can't be another like it. Not from me, anyway. But the ideas and the beliefs behind it colour all my writing. And none of it could have happened without the support and inspiration provided by my wife Janine - companion, friend and wise counsel. A terrific lady.

As to who or what I am...well, I'm just an ordinary guy who writes because it provides an enormous amount of creative satisfaction and because, like most people, I need to keep the bank off my back. I don't own a suit, drive a second-hand car and when I'm not writing, I pump water, repair fences, make things in wood and try to keep the dogs happy now that we've sold the last of our sheep. The usual country bumpkin stuff.

So far, so good.... May The Spirit be in you and with you.

Patrick Tilley