Can Talk Replace Touch?

Towards the end of his career, Meares wrote:- 

“Touch says what words cannot say... As we let our minds go still together, the process is greatly intensified by some degree of physical contact”.  ABL. 

Yet, it has been incorrectly claimed that Dr Meares' had a second teaching method involving only talking.  The "talking only method" is said to be in one of Meares' books. Books use the written word. Without words, there can be no “textbooks” as in instructional and self help books. Meares wrote instructions (they are in Dr Ainslie Meares on Stillness Meditation so readers unable to travel or without resources could learn Stillness Meditation. Those instructions were translated into a dozen languages and helped millions of people. 

      Reading Dr Meares' instructions and reviewing them is helpful in learning relaxing meditative experience. However, reading a book will help understand what to experience but reading won't still the mind. The mind is sensing and processing words and so cannot be still. Of course, one can be calm and relaxed when reading but reading and stillness of mind are incompatible. Theory can be learnt in reading but there is no living of the experience as occurs in actual relaxing meditative experience.  Only practice will allow the experience Stillness. Correct tuition leads to correct practice. The teacher's calm becomes the client's calm and the process is greatly enhanced by nonverbal communication. Nonverbal means without words.