Tobias Ricardo spent 15 years as a Hindu monk and had pretty much every spiritual experience on the menu: kundalini fireworks, blissed-out “I am” states, retreats, the works. The real freedom turned out to be seeing that all of it was happening to and for a “me” who was never actually there. If you’ve had glimpses that never seem to stick, and you keep thinking you just need one more retreat, maybe check this conversation out 😉
Check out his YouTube channel, The Unknowable This!
Timecodes and topics:
0:00 Welcome and the frustration of seeking
2:02 A collapse into unknowing, not a journey
4:26 What the seeker thinks Tobias did right
8:46 The tornado and the iron filings
12:07 Impersonal seeing and the trouble with attainment
17:17 Why this is not nihilism
19:15 Unconditional love and radical perfection
22:21 Pain without a sufferer
24:56 Is therapy or inner work wrong
27:45 Did Tony Parsons and Jim Newman cause it
31:00 Chasing mystical experiences
34:26 Hearing my old interviews and the heaviness of the seeker
37:40 Co-celebrants and the body relaxing
41:03 The monk who never got angry
46:50 The descriptive versus prescriptive fallacy
48:10 Perfect in its hopelessness
51:24 Kundalini, the beach at 4 a.m., and the man made of salt
57:51 Why the story of awakening is only a story
1:02:12 What is the use of sitting with a speaker
1:06:31 Why nobody can give you what is already this
1:10:28 No such thing as real
1:13:52 Nothing is happening in a location
1:16:01 Death and the macrocosmic orgasm
1:20:09 5-MeO-DMT and the mimic
1:24:38 Goodbye and the Sunday Zoom
