Into the Stillness: Dialogues on Awakening Beyond Thought - Our New Book

As you may know, Rich Doyle and i have been doing a series of Dialogues on Awakening Beyond Thought on youTube, some of which have manifested in a new book, "Into the Stillness: Dialogues on Awakening Beyond Thought" published by Non-Duality Press in Salisbury, England/UK, near London.

How these dialogues and the book manifested are in the introduction (also a dialogue):

Rich:  So, you know, strangeness. A book has occurred.

Gary: Strangeness. A book has manifested out of thin air.

R: It’s totally unbelievable. Where did it come from?

G: Well the whole thing came out of no place as you know. It just arose in meditation that we should do some dialogues. So we started doing dialogues and they clicked.

R: And then somehow they manifest out of the stillness and it’s like a book just popped up out of the void, or out of the nothing, out of the stillness. What should people do with it?

G: Well, we’ve talked many times… the good thing about it is that it’s spontaneous. But we’ve found out that as we do this thing what emerges from each one of us moves into something that’s much larger; 1 + 1 = 3 ½ or something. So stuff that we didn’t know we knew is in this video and in the dialogues.

R: So that can happen to other people: they can pick up the book and engage in the dialogue and experience the dialogue.   And they don’t really need to begin or start anywhere in particular.

G: Any place, any page will work, any dialogue will work.  They’re equally useful… or not.

R: I even think you can start mid-dialogue, you know, just open it. It’s like the book is designed for bibliomancy…

G: Oh yes, exactly. Any place in the book will work.

R: Just dip into it, start riffing…

G: Well, we’ve talked about this idea of showing people how to do dialogue, which is something that people don’t do much anymore… given that we’re doing this (texting w/thumbs) all day long, we don’t spend much time trying to get into dialogue with somebody.

We’re just so afraid to have an open discussion without anybody feeling threatened and just let the whole thing unwind its way out.

R: Indeed, you know when I’m teaching and I talk about dialogue in the classroom, I’ve found that people think dialogue is what you do to avoid fighting. (Laughter)  Like where we get together and figure out how we can agree, and that’s not what it is! It’s an exploration.

G: Ahhhh, that’s great!

R: Isn’t that funny?

G: It is! But it is having that confidence, basically the trust in each other, and enough self-confidence and awareness to be able to just work your way through this stuff, piece by piece, and kind of feel your way into what the next thing is as it comes up.

R: And it’s practice in strengthening the “letting go” muscle because you can just let go into it, don’t try to anticipate what the other person is saying, just hear it and respond.

G: And see what comes up.

R: And when we do that it’s like a practice for filling our self with presence all the time. Just feel what the refrigerator door feels like when we open it. See what the light looks like inside. Taste what the onion tastes like when we’re cooking it. It’s the same thing isn’t it?

G: Yes, it’s a very tactile thing. It’s the feel of what it feels like to be in dialogue, to be the emptiness and just feeling something come up out of no place as the next thing to be manifested.

R: Sometimes I feel like what we’re going through is actually a re-awakening of feeling. Not feeling in the sense of an “emotion”—but that somehow we’ve been through this period where we’ve atrophied the sense of access to the flow of what comes from that no place. It’s still there, but you have to sort to look for it and use it and practice it. It’s an inner feeling? It’s the sensing of what it feels like inside.

G: Oh, totally. We’ve talked about how it’s very important in this work, since a lot of it is DIY, to get a good sense for when things feel like they aren’t working anymore; what they felt like before, and what they feel like now. Have things gotten flat? 

You can feel that in a tactile way, as you can do with this work. You can feel if you’re in honest, authentic dialogue or you can feel yourself being inauthentic. Can you feel yourself not coming out fully with what you want to say, or what is manifesting for you? Or do you hold back?

R: So by following along with our letting go, other people can learn to let go.

G: Let go of themselves… just trust the process and surrender to your Self.

R: So who wrote this book?

G: It came from no place. One of the mysteries is just how do these things write themselves? This book came out of no place. The initiative to do it just arose in meditation and we just said well, let’s do a dialogue and see what happens. You had set it up within a space of three or four days and we had found somebody to do it with and we had found a filming studio… it just manifested instantaneously.

Suzanne Winters

The book manifested through the diligent and expert transcription of Suzanne Winters, my webmaster, crisis solver, social media adviser, etc., who i've worked w/for 3 years.  It was edited by Suzanne, Rich and i and by Catherine Noyce @ Non-Duality Press.   

In the editing we tried to preserve the accuracy and feel of the original, included references, explained some "uncommon" words and did a little re-writing when the a line of exploration got
"tangential".

The publisher's comments are:

This is an important book.  Don’t be misled by the casually graceful repartee and lightness of touch. Without dogma, without heavy shoulds and should nots, Gary and Rich point towards something eternal, framed in our 21^st century understanding of neuroscience, spirituality and … something that arises from, and returns to, the Stillness and the Silence. They offer practical investigation and guidance towards “the sweetest, fullest, most loving, caring, and manifesting experience that anyone could ever wish for.”

These chapter headings include: “Using dialogue for awakening,” “Can you 'do nothing' and awaken?”, “Why do we fear emptiness, silence and stillness?”, “Functioning without thoughts: sex, psychedelics and non-duality.”

Rich Doyle

Into the Stillness is available through Non-Duality Press and from Amazon in both hardcopy and e-book (Kindle) versions.   Both sources give chapter listings.  As with all of my work, my share of any net profits goes to benefit handicapped kids in south India.