Customer Reviews

This is Unimaginable and Unavoidable

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Written in an outburst of almost impudent ecstasy in the period six months after awakening (it says here on the back cover), Guy Smith communicates the message of pure non-duality with joyous passion, intelligence and humour.

Rather than merely being just another book about non-duality, this work actually manages to evoke the `taste' of non-duality through it's varied use of literary devices, prose, poetry and `notices' (shots or shocks of expression designed to provoke immediate, present examination).

A unique and refreshing articulation of the sense of being itself - which manages to push way beyond the text.

Top marks to Non-Duality Press for having the bottle to publish this work in its raw and exuberant state.

Out of all of the non-dualistic literature there is nothing as much as this book that challenges and delights me so much. This book challenges every assumption and concept that I have ever had and delights me in the sheer, radiant and carefree expression. This book does not play into the hands of convention or popular concepts about enlightenment as the whole experience of awakening and non-duality is expressed so finely. The writing is as light as a feather and falls into no traps of didactism - all is breathtakingly open - often leaving the reader in a flat spin with nowhere to go, nowhere to hide but with a beautiful wry smile stretching from ear to ear.

A book to dip into and to dip into and to dip into - long after many `other' books will doubtless have shrunk in attraction. The narrator or `voice' is nowhere to pin down and is expansive and unpredictable as the weather. Beautifully fresh, exhilarating and timelessly alive.

That's the sound of how the "this is unimaginable..." squiggles impacted the
tidy, oblivious, sense of "me." This isn't some rehash of what has come down from some lineage. This stuff is FRESH and obviously is expressed from direct experience. Don't get me wrong, I love the classics and nisargadatta and all, but this young kid has taken it to a whole new 21st century level. His writing is more "vertical" like poetry (not flowery, though) than traditional, flat prose, and reading it is like falling down a waterfall. Read it. You won't be bored.

This book written by a 24 year old who understands that awareness is all that is, cuts through the morass of spiritual disciplines in a radically deconstructionist way reducing what is to "this". In my view, this book can be quite helpful in demonstrating conclusively that an awareness of being, or presence, is all that is--indivisible, immutable, and beyond time and space. The awareness of being is bliss.

Get it...
read it...
it's hilariously obvious!!!!!

This book is utterly brilliant. No exaggerated expressions of admiration do it justice. This may sound hyperbolic to you but even from a level head I feel I am understating.

Guy Smith has written a no-nonsense book that articulately addresses the often overlooked and paradoxical implications of the so-called nondual "approach." It's an utterly passionate and uncompromising presentation of truth that encourages the reader to enthusiastically embrace all of the infinite expressions of consciousness, itself...warts and all. Using a variety of literary techniques, the author reminds the reader, again and again, that consciousness is really all that there is. If you liked Papaji, UG Krishnamurti and Ken Wilber, you're going to love hanging out with Guy Smith. Highly recommended.

Chuck Hillig, Author of Enlightenment for Beginners, The Way IT Is, Seeds for the Soul, Looking for God: Seeing the Whole in One and The Magic King.

Guy Smith is a 26 year old man living in Bristol, U.K. This book was written during the six months following enlightenment. The book's purpose is to display Guy Smith's exuberance at being newly enlightened and the nondual wisdom he easily utters. Guy says, "This book is just here." Yes, it's just here and it's just about nonduality. That's good enough for me. I like this book a lot. The style of writing and expression is lively, fun, intelligent, joyous, radical, strong, vulnerable, outrageous, ordinary. It's about nonduality, sex, politics, movies, meditation, sex, pop music, science, art, enlightenment, sex, and pre-enlightenment experience, and more. Mostly it's a compilation of intelligent and sparkling writings on nonduality.

The writings are unstructured. Each chapter is brief, one to four pages. The author could have included the writings on sex, pre-enlighenment, and nondual perspectives, for example, in separate chapters or sections, but instead he scattered them throughout the book. The author explains: "This text is best treated like a treasure-chest filled with diamonds, as opposed to, say, a treasure map." It's an effective way to present the material since it corresponds to what is: "this is." Neither reality nor the book is a bunch of "this is-es" linked together in order to teach something or to capture someone in an entrancing flow of ideas.

Almost half the book is poetry, which ordinarily would make me cringe, as the inclusion of poems by spiritual teachers or confessors is usually self-indulgent. But Smith's poetry is varied in style, easy to read, and not obtrusive. On the other hand, the poetry isn't literary either. Often it is nothing more than prose formatted to look like poetry. And more often than not it is pedestrian nonduality.

But for some reason I either don't mind or actually like the poetry in this book as it exists scattered among the other writings. It's part of the whole work which carries the author's exuberance at being freshly enlightened. And a couple of the poems are actually good.

Smith is quite taken with his new ability, since enlightenment, to write freely. "The [writing about nonduality] is basically effortless. It writes itself. This is actually the same with any literature... . ... There is a certain zing to this direct expressing of oneness that is incomparable."

While Guy Smith is a smart, enlightened guy, I wouldn't call his work literature, nor would I say all literature comes about in an effortless way. What carries this book isn't the uttered truths or the novel structure, and it's certainly not any literary quality; it's the personality, the youthful energy. Yes, it is the zing. Here he is coming from the streets; he's bringing it home:

"There is a song by The White Stripes called The Hardest Button To Button. This is one of the best metaphors for selfhood I have every come across. I am the hardest button to button because however much there is bragging and asserting, defending and justifying, however much effort is put in, there is still no one here, this is still purely the activity of impersonal, characterless consciousness. One tries over and over again to make that button appear through the buttonhole, to make self a real, stable, forceful reality, this effort to be a someone, a free will; but it just won't happen, because it is a lie. There is only consciousness, trying to believe it is a person, but deep down knowing there is no one."

There are lots of little enjoyable confessions and utterances that could be pointed out. Guy Smith sees what any nonduality talker sees right away: that there are two fundamental ways of looking at nonduality: "On the one hand one talks in terms of 'awakening' and 'seeing the true nature of things', which sounds unavoidably like an event, a happening; and on the other hand, when it happens, or rather, when it doesn't happen, it is known that nothing has ever happened, nothing will ever happen, and there is only ever 'perception', or 'oneness'."

One of the last writings in the book reveals Guy Smith's alignment with other nondualists: Sailor Bob Adamson, Leo Hartong, Nathan Gill, Tony Parsons. He calls their approach "pure nondualty." Guy Smith makes it clear that he and the others mentioned are not part of a "pure nonduality" movement. He calls it a non-movement. He calls it stillness, and because it is characterized by stillness there can be no such thing as movement. He writes, "In the appearance of life, within the last twenty years, something new has emerged and is emerging still. Because it is all about stillness, it should not be called a 'movement', so let it be called 'non-movement', or 'stillness'."

Haha. Okay. Listen carefully: It is a movement. If it's not a movement, why even mention it? It has a lineage, sometimes clear, sometimes vague. Because there is a core group of nonduality talkers at its center of gravity it will cause movement, clashes, organization, and disorganization. Anything but stillness. These talkers declare who is nondually correct and who is not correct; who is enlightened and who is not enlightened. They have followings. They have fans. It is nothing less than a movement. And it is organized. However, that's the spin-off of human beings accomplishing things. It doesn't take away from the value of the individual elements -- the people, books, talks -- which might be considered part of some movement.

Jerry Katz

Skip this book. No need to get into a very personal account of a man's personal awakening experience. I recommend books by authors such as Nathan Gill, Jeff Foster, John Wheeler, 'Sailor' Bob Adamson, Joan Tollifson. These books are clear and written to help you.

"Oneness contains all, all is oneness" so what? It is just like saying " Life is all, all is life." The author did have a momentary experience, but so did many others. Few boasted themselves to be enlightened. The state of oneness did not last in him, so he rushed into conclusions such as above. Ego is also oneness, he said. What a helpful advise!

So from this book, you will know " all is oneness" which includes all the crap. How helpful! Now let's continue to live in our suffering, and the craziness of the world untill one day the earth is totally screwed up!