Eleanora Gilbert - Conversations on Non-Duality: Twenty-Six Awakenings

I NTRODUCTIONS BY:

I NTERVIEWS:

Richard Sylvester
I Hope You Die Soon

Jeff Foster
Life Without A Centre

Roger Linden
The Elusive Obvious

Rupert Spira
The Transparency of Things, Parts 1 &

Halina Pytlasinska
Non-Duality

Catherine Noyce
The Experience of Non-Duality

Tony Parsons
The Open Secret

Richard Lang
Seeing Who You Really Are

David Bingham
Non-Dual Pointing, Parts 1 &

Genpo Roshi
Path of the Human Being

Mandi Solk
The Joy of No Self

Pamela Wilson
Loving Mystery

Florian Schlosser
Meeting Truth

Mooji
Before I Am

Daniel Brown
The Great Way

Francis Lucille
The Art of Not Expecting

Gangaji
The End of the Story

Bernie Prior
Spiritual Human Evolution

Steve Ford
An Invitation To Being

Peter Fenner
Awakening Unconditioned Awareness

Wayne Liquorman
Never Mind

Katie Davis
Awake Joy: The Essence of Enlightenment

Jac OKeeffe
Born To Be Free

Suzanne Foxton
No Body In Particular

James Swartz
How To Attain Enlightenment

I am sure that virtually everyone drawn to this book can remember the first time they realised that life was not quite what it seemed: that reality didnt actually appear to be the way it was presented by everyone else. For some of us this will have been a gradual process; for others a significant event or an experience, or a realisation that challenged what we had been taught to believe. This can be exciting, but it can also be frightening, even quite terrifying. Structures fall away, beliefs are no longer credible and life is experienced in a radically different way.

This book is made up of a series of interviews on Non-Duality made for Conscious.TV over a two year period between 2007 and 2009. They are presented in the order in which they were conducted. Either I or my wife Renate did all the interviews, and it was a quite fascinating process for both for us. We started with Jeff Foster and Richard Sylvester one Wednesday afternoon, and were not necessarily planning any more on this subject. But then we begun to receive some very positive feedback: there was obviously a hunger for more of the same and as we were also very interested in Non-Duality , we gradually added to the category. During the course of these interviews we have met some fascinating people and have learnt and experienced a lot. The idea of a book came up subsequently, and our friend and fellow Conscious.TV volunteer Eleonora has developed the idea to this, its final realisation. Many thanks to her for her sterling work, this book would never have happened without her.

Renate and I were always interested in making the most of the interviews. We wanted to get to know the interviewees as people, as much as possible, as well as finding out about the state they were living in. We werent really interested in theories and always tried to steer away from that wherever possible. We were primarily interested in how they experienced their life, what it was like to be them, and then in conveying that as accessibly as possible for others to hear. Everyone has a story which, though part of the picture, isnt fundamentally who they are, and we didnt want to ignore either perspective. Conscious.TV is an ongoing adventure for Renate, Eleonora and myself. Maybe there will be another volume of transcripts in the future; we will have to see the response to this one first. Meanwhile, may you enjoy the book! We got so much out of doing these interviews, and we hope you will too in reading them.

Iain McNay

Oxfordshire, UK 2011

Renate and Iain

In Stephen Levines book Embracing the Beloved he writes: The only service you can do for anyone is remind them of their true heart. The interviews set out in this book are very much about this service. Reminding us all of what our true heart is, of what we truly are and helping us to know intimately that That, which is reading these words, is what we have been searching for.

The process of putting this book together, reading the manuscript many times over and absorbing the gems present in each chapter, has demystified the many ideas I have collected along my spiritual path about what enlightenment is. It has taken me deeper into the understanding of the nature of all things and has left me in awe of this constant, unstoppable, dynamic and creative force manifesting through everything. Enlightenment is not the end point, and the realisation of this enables me to live not in hope for a better me, one-day-when-I-will-be-enlightened, but to fully embrace what arises right here, right now, moment by moment and most of all just to own my humanity.

The production of this book is a true labour of love. It has taken the skills, love and personal interest of many people. I particularly want to thank the transcribers Craig Hindmarsh, Frances Phillips, Kate Crosby and Lisa Morgan-Davies . Many thanks to Rose Youd for her proofreading and expert advice which went beyond the call of duty and also to Errol Fuller and Nick Owen for all the help freely offered throughout this project.

Eleonora Gilbert

Buckinghamshire, UK 2011

It was approaching midnight on the 31st December 2006. My wife Renate and I were celebrating New Years Eve on the island of La Gomera, in the Canary Islands. As usual, she was drinking champagne and I was sipping my glass of mineral water. I had recently reached my 60th birthday and we were having a lively discussion about the things that we hadnt yet done in our lives that we would still like to do.

It would be great to have a TV station, I pronounced. I could combine all my interests: consciousness, football, music, hiking, make some new programmes and broadcast some existing ones. We can get literally hundreds of channels on our TV at home and they are nearly all rubbish. I am sure I can do much better than that, I declared.

It was of course true that I had no experience in television at all but on the other hand I had built a successful record label and music publishing company and I had never known anything about music. I couldnt play any musical instruments and certainly couldnt read music. But I knew what I liked and trusted my instincts. I had hired good people to work for me. I had learnt that if I couldnt do something then I had to find someone good who could complement me. It cant be that hard to make decent, interesting television programmes I added. I thought about it some more. I could easily come up with plenty of programmes. I could start a satellite channel in the UK, I am sure people would watch it. The mineral water was beginning to talk enthusiastically.

The next day we hiked into the hills behind the hotel where we were staying. Something was definitely brewing in me. The more I thought about the idea, the more I liked it. Soon after we arrived back in England I made some enquires and discovered that to start a proper Satellite channel was going to cost getting on for 500,000 a year and that was just to rent the satellite space and the programme listing space. It didnt include the cost of making any programme, or the overhead costs. That was definitely a step too far. I also talked over the idea with various friends; they thought combining all my different interests wasnt going to work. The channel would be too diverse, you would confuse people, most of them commented. Why dont you focus on the consciousness side? No one else is doing that and there is plenty of football and music on TV already. Life went on, but the idea lingered and often surfaced in my mind. I lowered my sights a little. Maybe I could piggy back on someone elses channel and just show a few hours of programmes a week. That seemed much more realistic. I found out that this was called a micro channel and other people were doing it. I had a few meetings but I still felt it was working out too expensive. I was happy to spend money, but I wanted to spend it effectively.