A Teaching Interview with Richard Harvey

Q: What concerns you most in the world today?

RH: The deep authentic ways and means to the truth are atrophying. The shallowness of the culture today on a worldwide scale has degraded to such a degree that we are in danger of losing our way entirely.

Q: Losing our way?

RH: Our way to the Source of existence, to the Mysteries, to what we have thought of as God

Q: God? What is God?

RH: God is the ancient term – one of many – for the truth, for reality, for the mystery of existence.

Q: Not a man in the sky, a creator, a father-figure or magician?

RH: No, that was a fabrication of society to keep people in ignorance.

Q: Why?

RH: People are easier to manage when they don’t think for themselves, when they act more or less the same, when the wildness and the call to ecstasy is taken out of them.

Q: What “call to ecstasy”?

RH: This is one of the aspects of human life I am talking about. The way of ecstasy is all but erased in so-called western culture.

Q: But some people would say that we have more today and that art and music, young people at raves and festivals, sports events like the Olympics, increased leisure time and communications is welding us together into a cohesive world family.

RH: Well, there’s no ecstasy. The proof is in the fact that the means and the ways have to be repeated. How often do you have a young person who says, “I’ve done the festivals, the raves, the social media or whatever and it has left me with a lasting sense of happiness, so I don’t need to do it anymore.” This is the function of real spiritual practice: to bring you to a point of authentic experience which is constantly happy and always ecstatic. You won’t find it in the world or through these worldly pursuits.

Q: Why not?

RH: Because they are material; they are gross; they are immersed in the philosophy of lack and desire. You go to some place or someone or something to get a result and make something happen. So the orientation is flawed from the beginning.

Q: So you’re saying it’s no good trying to get something you want from someone or somewhere or something else?

RH: That’s right and you know it’s true. The best you will get is a temporary appeasement, a brief relief from your torment. Human beings are tremendous and our capacity for happiness and our appetite for ecstasy are unlimited – unlimited!

BLOG entry #64