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Buddha at the Gas Pump

068. Richard Sylvester

Buddha at the Gas Pump

Rick Archer

Religion & Spirituality, Philosophy, Spirituality, Society & Culture

4.7695 Ratings

🗓️ 10 May 2011

⏱️ 89 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Due to technical problems, this video only contains still shots of Richard, while Rick’s video is normal. Richard Sylvester is a humanistic psychologist, therapist and lecturer. For thirty years he engaged with a variety of spiritual practices while also training in psychotherapeutic techniques and teaching counselling. In 2002 Richard met Tony Parsons and as he writes in his first book "That was the end of what I thought had been my life." Richard writes “The most common misconception about liberation is that it is something an individual can gain. But actually it is a loss - the loss of the sense that there ever was a separate person who could choose to do something to bring about liberation. In liberation it is seen that thoughts, feelings and perceptions simply arise in Oneness - there is no one to whom they belong. “The sense of separation makes us take the everyday for granted and clamour for something more exciting to happen. But when separation is seen through, the ordinary becomes transformed into this wonderful play of consciousness, and it is seen that this is already it and this is already sufficient. “This is a recurring message. It overthrows all authority. It can’t be killed off. It requires nothing. It requires no churches, no philosophical tracts, no scriptures, no history. If everything that had ever been said or written about non-duality were to disappear in a moment, it would simply re-emerge. It would re-emerge because nothing has to be learnt, nothing has to be studied, nothing has to be done, no spiritual purification and no pleasing of God has to take place, for the seeing of liberation to occur. It arises spontaneously. One moment there’s somebody there, the next moment there isn’t. One moment there’s somebody crossing a field, the next moment there’s just crossing a field.” Richard has written three books about non-duality, 'I Hope You Die Soon', 'The Book Of No One' and 'Drink Tea, Eat Cake'.  He gives talks on non-duality in England and abroad. If you would like to know more, please visit www.richardsylvester.com or www.richardsylvester.co.uk. Interview recorded 5/8/2011. YouTube Video Chapters: 00:00:00 - Introduction to Richard Sylvester 00:02:42 - Seeing through the Illusion of Individuality 00:05:16 - The Challenge of Non-Dual Language 00:07:16 - The Ineffability of Non-Duality 00:09:09 - The Joy of Communication 00:11:39 - The Significance of Spiritual Practice and Awakening 00:14:03 - Challenging the Mind and Natural Justice 00:16:38 - The Incidence of Spiritual Realization 00:19:38 - The Loss of Knowledge and the Collapse of the Sense of Self 00:22:37 - Seeing through the Past and Future 00:24:52 - The Illusion of Time 00:27:50 - Transparency and Spiritual Practices 00:30:38 - The Extraordinary in the Ordinary 00:33:40 - The Difficulty of Seeing Through Conditioning 00:36:49 - The Absurdity of Spiritual Practices 00:39:37 - The Power of Stories 00:43:00 - Non-duality and the Madness of the Mind 00:46:08 - Different Perspectives and Levels of Consciousness 00:51:59 - Awakening Without Personhood 00:55:27 - The Sense of Separation 00:59:36 - Rejecting Talk of Paths and Enlightenment 01:05:23 - The intention to be helpful 01:09:34 - Living life as it is now lived 01:12:36 - The Loss of Meaning and Purpose in Life 01:15:17 - The End of a Life 01:17:35 - The Effect of Clarity on Others 01:19:24 - The Power of Resonance and Silent Communication 01:21:33 - Conducting Meetings and Writing Books 01:23:31 - Emphasizing the Miracle 01:25:54 - Open to Possibilities 01:28:00 - Interviews and Discussions

Transcript

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0:00.0

The

0:07.0

The Welcome to Buddha at the gas pump. My name is Rick Archer, and my guest this week is Richard Sylvester, who lives in the UK, second guest in a row from the UK. And Richard, I would suppose, would define

0:42.1

himself as a teacher or speaker on non-duality. We'll let him define himself directly in more

0:49.8

detail. He was a student of Tony Parsons and many other spiritual influences over the years,

0:57.0

but I don't want to speak for Richard because he has his own distinct way of expressing

1:01.0

things and I've listened to him for about four or five hours over the last week and I'm

1:06.0

really been looking forward to this conversation. So thanks Richard for this opportunity. Thank you.

1:11.6

Yeah.

1:12.6

So, you know, I gathered from listening to you that you're not real crazy about going

1:18.6

into my details about your own personal story and, you know, all the various spiritual

1:25.6

trips that you went on over the years, because you don't seem to feel

1:30.7

that those have a tremendously close causal relationship with your current state.

1:38.8

But perhaps you could indulge us a little bit by going into some of that, but we don't

1:42.6

have to start with that if you don't want to.

1:44.2

If you'd rather we could start with just sort of a statement or expression of how you like to,

1:50.4

you know, if you had ten minutes with somebody on a train, what would you like to say to them

1:55.2

if they asked you some kind of probing question about, you know, your take on life?

2:02.6

I usually try to avoid talking about non-duality

2:07.6

to passing strangers on trains.

2:10.6

They really seem passionately interested.

2:13.6

Let me start maybe with trying to express in a very, very brief way what I feel the seeing of non-duality means.

2:26.3

The seeing of non-duality to me, it's very simple. It's simply the seeing through the dream of separation.

...

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