I'm taking a break from this blog

Work is too new and overwhelming still. But there is much to read before this post. Enjoy!

Closed Eyed Experiment

 

Commentary by Richard Lang

Explore what it is to be First Person singular, present tense, with eyes closed. Practically speaking, probably the best way to do this would be to read a question, then close your eyes and investigate your experience. Then open your eyes, read another question, and so on…

With EYES CLOSED … consider the following:

Going by your own, present experience, not by memory, hearsay or imagination, how big are you?

What shape are you?

Could you be any size or shape?

Do you have boundaries?

Is there a place where you stop and the world begins? Or is there nothing dividing you from the world?

You can probably hear a range of sounds, from distant to near ones. Do you hear any sound right where you are? Don't sounds come and go in silence where you are?

You experience sensations such as warmth, discomfort, pleasure, breathing and so on. Do these make you into 'something' at centre, solid and limited – a thing separate from the world around you? Is there anything solid and unchanging at your centre? Or do these sensations come and go in aware no-thingness?

Isn’t this aware no-thingness like a TV screen in the sense that events happen on the screen but leave the screen itself unaffected and undefined? Don’t sounds and sensations come and go but leave awareness unmarked?

Whatever has happened in your past, are you not now empty and clear - capacity for whatever is happening now? The past does not solidify you at centre.

How big is a sensation? Does it define or limit you?

Attend to your right foot. Think of what it looks like. Isn’t the image a memory, since you cannot see your foot at the moment?

But what about the actual sensation of your foot, your experience of it in this present moment, putting aside memory? What colour is that sensation, what shape, what size?

How far away is it? (From where?)

Where exactly are its boundaries – does it have a clear edge?

Is this sensation where your being stops? Are you limited to it, somehow imprisoned inside it?

Isn’t that sensation happening in boundless awareness?

Are you not this awareness, this edgeless being, in which this rather-hard-to-describe, hard-to-pin-down changing sensation is happening?

Just as when you have your eyes open it is face there to space here, isn’t it now, with eyes closed, sensation there to space here? Your being has no boundaries. You are the edgeless space in which body sensations happen.

Pay attention to mental activity – to your thoughts and feelings.

Where are they?

Are they inside something? Or are they inside awareness?

Are they central to you, or are they peripheral?

Do they leave any trace when they have gone? Don’t they come and go on the screen of awareness, just as sounds and sensations come and go, leaving no trace?

We identify with our minds, believing we are our thoughts and feelings. Is your mind contained within anything? Are you contained within anything?

Think of the name of a city.

Did you know what that name was going to be before you thought it? Where did it come from? Where did it happen? Where did it go?

Think of a planet. A friend. A country. Are these thoughts happening inside any kind of container, or are they happening in the boundless space of awareness?

I find no origin, no container, no destination. For me they emerge out of nowhere – out of my undefinable being – without preview, without effort, and they dissolve back into this ‘nothingness’, leaving no mark on this ‘nothingness’.

Imagine the colour blue. Now the colour orange. Now the shape of a triangle. How do you do that?

I have no idea how I do it. These things appear as if by magic.

How creative this no-thingness is, this no-mind as some Zen Buddhists call it. Without effort thoughts and images emerge from nowhere, without preview, without my knowing how I do it.

Be aware of what you are feeling.

Remember how you were feeling earlier in the day. Or yesterday. The flow of feeling is changing all the time.

Are your feelings central to you? Do your feelings leave any marks on awareness? Do difficult experiences traumatise space?

Not in my experience. Where are my feelings? I find no container here. My mind is at large in the universe.

Quotations from Douglas Harding

The trouble with the mind is its supposed abstraction from the world, its supposed imprisonment, its supposed condensation into a nuclear thing here. The mind goes wrong by misapprehending where it is and to whom it belongs. (1977 Interview)

I am truly broad-minded to the degree that my mind, let go of, alights on and merges with and irradiates the whole scene. There it comes into its own. To be opinionated, narrow-minded, under pressure, depressed, repressed – all such diseases of the mind arise from its displacement and resulting compression. Given back to the world, returned to where it came from, it expands and recovers. At large again, it is infinitely large and generous. (Look For Yourself)

All the complexes and problems of the mind arise from its overcrowding and congestion. The cure isn't to reform it but just let it go where it wants to go. We are now letting it go where it belongs. A tremendous relief! It is not perfecting the mind, because the mind is imperfect in every way. Still one experiences sadness and confusion and anxiety, pain, as well as positive feelings. But they are seen as characterising the world and not as personal hang-ups. This relocation helps a lot, but is no recipe for continuous happiness or any kind of perfection where happiness and perfection don't belong. Only at Centre are you All Right! (1977 Interview)

Continue with another experiment

Quotations

God is the Hearer, and it is by attributing this faculty unto thyself that thou art deaf. Thou hast become blind through attributing sight unto thyself. When He is thy hearing and thy sight, then wilt thou hear only Him and see only Him. Ibn Ashir

To prove your mind is the Buddha mind, notice how all I say here goes into you without your missing a single thing, even though I don't try to push it into you. The Buddha mind is ten thousand times clearer than a mirror, and more inexpressibly marvelous. Bankei

This brightness is so great that the loving contemplative, in the ground wherein he rests, sees and feels nothing but an incomprehensible Light; and through that Simple Nudity which enfolds all things, he finds himself, and feels himself, to be that same Light by which he sees, and nothing else. Ruysbroeck

Of inconceivable power am I; without eyes I see; without ears I hear. Kaivalya Upanishad

How can there be perception when we are confronted by nothing at all? The nature of perception being eternal, we go on perceiving whether objects are present or not. Thereby we come to understand that, whereas objects naturally appear and disappear, the nature of seeing does neither of these things; and it is the same with your other senses. The nature of hearing being eternal, we continue to hear whether sounds are present or not. If that is so, who or what is the hearer? It is your own Nature which hears. Hui-hai

Perception that there is nothing to perceive - that is Nirvana, also known as deliverance. Surangama Sutra

You are like a mirage in the desert, which the thirsty man thinks is water; but when he comes up to it he finds it is nothing. And where he thought it was, there he finds God. Similarly, if you were to examine yourself, you would find it to be nothing, and instead you would find God. That is to say, you would find God instead of yourself, and there would be nothing left of you but a name without a form. Al-Alawi

As rivers lose name and shape in the sea, wise men lose name and shape in God, glittering beyond all distance. Mundaka Upanishad

The notion that a man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged; this I shall do by… melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid. Blake

The outward and the inward man are as different as earth and heaven. Eckhart

Jesus said: What I now seem to be, that am I not… And so speak I, separating off the manhood. Acts of John

Not to know is profound; to know is shallow. Not to know is internal; to know is external. Chuang-tzu

Rejoicing in nothing and knowing nothing are the true rejoicing and the true knowledge. Lao-tzu

Only have no mind of any kind, and this is known as undefiled knowledge. Huang-po

If he had any discriminating mind, do you think he could discriminate anything? Shen-hui

The understanding, the memory and the will are in a fearful void, in nothingness. Love this immense void. Love this nothingness since the infinitude of God is in it. De Caussade

That thou mayest have pleasure in everything, seek pleasure in nothing. That thou mayest know everything, seek to know nothing. That thou mayest possess all things, seek to possess nothing. St. John of the Cross

Those who know Him most perfectly perceive most clearly that He is perfectly incomprehensible. St. John of the Cross

Nothing can be more simple than God, either in reality or in our way of understanding. St. Thomas Aquinas

When the Self is seen, heard, thought of, known, everything is known. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

All-knowledge is what constitutes the essence of Buddhahood. It does not mean that the Buddha knows every individual thing, but that he has grasped the fundamental principle of existence and that he has penetrated deep down into the centre of his own bring. D.T. Suzuki

If I knew myself as intimately as I ought, I should have perfect knowledge of all creatures. Eckhart

If you pass beyond form, O friends, it is Paradise and rose-gardens within rose-gardens.
When thou hast broken and destroyed thine own form, thou hast learned to break the form of everything. Rumi

in spite of not posting

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The No-Head Cirle

To experience first hand who/what we really are; transparent capacity, we need to DO the experiments that were designed by Douglas Harding and are taught by Richard Lang now. These experiments are very simple and work for many people. This is Experiment 10.

I am posting them one by one.

They come straight from the Headless website: www.headless.org

Commentary by Richard Lang

You are the One that includes the Many.

Let’s test this claim. See if the following description is true for you.

Stand in a circle with some friends - between say 3 and 10 of you.

Put your arms round each other so that you are close, and look down.

You are looking down into a circle of bodies. Obviously the people there are distinct from one another, each occupying their own space. They do not merge into ‘one’. Each person has their own background and history, name, age, nationality and so on. There we are separate and different from one another. There we are many.

Look at your own body - it disappears above your chest. You are headless. Your body emerges from being, from spacious awareness. There are two sides to you – your individual humanity down there, and this spacious awareness at the top of the circle.

Notice that the other bodies also fade out above their waists or chests - into the same spacious awareness that your body fades into.

Here at the top of the circle there are not many spaces - just one. Here in this edgeless awareness are no dividing lines.

This one awareness belongs to you. It is you – the innermost You. As this consciousness, you include everyone present. All these bodies disappear into and emerge out of your innermost being. They are within you. There we are many, here we are one.

Each of us has our own special point of view, our own thoughts and feelings. Most of this is hidden from others. I don't know what you are thinking, nor what your past is. I might not even know your name. Nor do you know what I’m thinking, and so on. We are distinct and different. To a large extent we are mysteries to one another.

But at the top of the circle you are not different from me, are not hidden from me. Here I see not only Who I really am but Who you really are too, for here nothing divides us, here nothing is held back or concealed. Here I see that you are, like me, open, clear, still, boundless…

Here at the top of the circle, in the silence of being, in this clear vastness, this simplicity, all our differences dissolve, all separation is overcome - without denying or destroying those precious differences revealed down there. The One at the top has room for every point of view, room for every being.

Being The One, The Alone

Looking at the Looker I come home to the One, to the Alone, to Who I really am. Down there in the circle I am one amongst many - others stand either side of me, apart from me, with me, perhaps even against me. But here, above the line of our chests, there are no others. Here all divisions are healed, all separation overcome, all otherness dissolved.

Here, including us all, is the One within all beings. You are that One.

Implications

When I assume I am only what I look like, overlooking my spacious inner being, then I consider all others to be outside me, distant, not me, other – and potentially threatening. I confront them with my own face, appearance, body, nationality, age… Confrontation so often leads to conflict. It is a “me and you” situation, an “us and them” scenario.

What difference does it make when I awaken to my spacious being? I am still aware of being a separate individual – I see my body is separate from yours, I know my experiences are different from yours. But I am also aware of being no one and everyone, of being the One that includes all beings. Now I realize you are not simply “other”, you are also myself. Your body is in my being, just as my body is in my being – I am capacity for us both. Now I don’t confront you face to face but include you, space to face. I am you.

To the extent I take this fact seriously, this awareness will change the way I relate to “others” – for now I see that “others” are also myself. Once you have awoken to this deep truth, once you have seen this deep truth, then keep seeing it, keep returning to it, keep being it consciously, keep living from it and exploring what it means. See how it affects the way you respond to others. Enjoy the wonderful, incredible discovery that others are also yourself!

In a crowded railway station, in a café, at a party, at the office, at home, in the supermarket – wherever I am I can choose to be aware that I include and contain everyone and everything. How intimate. How deep. How beautiful. How life changing. How true.

Awaken to and enjoy your inner oneness with all beings!

Continue with another experiment

Quotations

Comments on this experiment

Quotations

We are all more or less ill till we find by Self-enquiry our Oneness with everyone else. D.E. Harding

One is the Alone not by way of exclusion but by way of inclusion. D.E. Harding

Here we sink out differences – or rather, we sink and leave our differences floating. D.E. Harding

When he awakens and sees nobody in the house but himself, then he says, ‘I am, and there is nobody other than I.’ Rumi

Turn thy face towards thine own Face: thou hast no kinsman but thyself. Rumi

I am alone. I am the supreme Brahman. I am the Lord of the Universe. Such is the settled conviction of the Mukta. All other experience leads to bondage. Devikalottara

Fear comes when there is a second. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

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Touching

1. Touching My "Head"

To experience first hand who/what we really are; transparent capacity, we need to DO the experiments that were designed by Douglas Harding and are taught by Richard Lang now. These experiments are very simple and work for many people. This is Experiment 9.

I am posting them one by one.

They come straight from the Headless website: www.headless.org

text by Richard Lang

A common objection to headlessness is:

“I can’t see my head, it’s true, but I can touch it, so I do have a head here!”

Let’s explore this not through debate but through direct experience.

When I touch my 'head' I see my fingers disappearing, followed by the experience of touch sensations.

Touch your 'head' now. What do you experience?

Are those sensations happening on the surface of your head – heads are solid, coloured, shaped things – or in spacious awareness?

For me they’re happening in spacious awareness.

Here’s Douglas Harding on this subject:

“And if it occurs to me that all this is very visual, and that I can actually feel this solid thing here, filling up the seeming void at the centre of my world, why then I start stroking and pinching and pummelling this thing. Only to find it still isn’t any thing at all, let alone a pink and white and hairy and opaque and all-together-in-one-piece thing. Instead, I find a succession of touch sensations that are no more substantial than the sounds and smells and tastes and so on, which also come and go in the same space.” (from On Having No Head)

Of course I’ve learned that a particular sensation manifests to others (or to myself when I look in the mirror) as the appearance of my mouth, say, or my ear, and so on. And of course it’s vital to know this. It means I understand there’s a direct correlation between what I feel here and my appearance over there. Without this understanding I couldn’t function in society. But this understanding, as much as it is vital for living in the world, doesn't make me into a thing here at centre, separate from every other thing.

Quotation

If sense-data are literally inside the brain we are committed to the conclusion that they are always smaller than the things to which they belong, (or else) that our own head is very much larger than it appears to be from touch. H.H. Price

2. Touching Things

Steve Munroe

Not only do we 'take on' the appearance of what we see and hear but we also take on the texture of whatever we touch - as we can now see by doing this quick experiment:

Extend your index finger and touch any object or surface that's close at hand. It can be anything - the chair, the carpet, your clothes, anything.

What is it that can be sensed here?

Is it a case of feeling the tip of your finger and the object being touched? Or rather, is there only one sensation present, that of the object at hand? The texture of the cloth, the smoothness of the wood. In fact isn't it true to say that the tip of your finger has magically transformed itself into the object you are touching? Your finger tip is that object! Your finger tip has to be empty of itself so that it can take on the texture of the object. In fact the same is true of all your skin over all your body, and of course, of all your senses.

Here is another way of showing ourselves our real and true nature, that is, emptiness for the world to happen in.

Continue with another experiment

Quotations

Comments on this experiment

Quotations

To know a thing is to become it. Erigena

The whole great Earth is nothing but you. Hsueh-feng

All knowledge is, in the strict sense, assimilation. St. Bonaventure

The proper consideration for one of highest spiritual capacity is the absolute unity of knower, knowing, and known. Gampopa

A sudden perception that Subject and object are one will lead you to a deeply mysterious wordless understanding - you will waken to the truth of Zen. Huang-po

Bodhisattvas are able to expand their bodies to the ends of the universe. Gandavyuha Sutra

For a Self-realised being the body does not exist. Anandamayi Ma

Unform thyself. Tauler

Spinning the world

To experience first hand who/what we really are; transparent capacity, we need to DO the experiments that were designed by Douglas Harding and are taught by Richard Lang now. These experiments are very simple and work for many people. This is Experiment 8.

I am posting them one by one.

They come straight from the Headless website: www.headless.org

Commentary by Richard Lang

See a video presentation of this experiment

If you point at your face and turn round on the spot, other people will see you moving whilst the world around you stays still.

Is your own experience the same, or different? Could it be that the world is moving whilst you remain still?

If so, this would indicate that your deepest identity is divine rather than human.

Let’s test this. Stand up, point back at your no-face – where others see your face - and for a few moments slowly and carefully turn round. (Stop if you feel dizzy!)

You can see the room moving beyond your finger. Do you see any movement your side of your finger?









I don’t. Over there I see the room moving by, but here I find stillness. I am at the still centre of the turning world – I AM the still centre.




You can choose to be aware of your inner stillness – your inner divinity – anywhere: walking down the street (the houses are moving), cycling, driving…

At the heart of all the movement in your life is stillness, and being aware of this stillness is relaxing. This still, awake capacity is free of stress. There is nothing here that can become tense – even in the midst of the most difficult situations. (How could capacity be stressed by anything?) You can rest here – it’s more stable than the Earth here.

Consciously include this stillness in your life. Enjoy this inner peace wherever you are.

View video

First Person Video Game extract


Continue with another experiment


Quotations
Douglas Harding:
When you get in your car, just look and see what is moving. Be truthful. See that what you are in fact driving is not the car but the world. You are driving the universe. Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, defined God as the unmoved mover of the world. Well, by grace, this is what you are. Gosh! The awesome truth of this. This is meditation. Meditation for me is meditation for life, for the marketplace. Highly practical. You say, is it practical? Yes it is. If you do a lot of driving I recommend this to you. If you want to drive well and without tension and with pleasure, and without tiring yourself very much or at all, drive England, drive France. Much better than driving your Clio. This is so practical, you see. I do recommend it. It's childlike, it's obvious, it's fun too. You see this thing is so amusing, entertaining. If you want to be entertained, if you want to discover that God Almighty has a terrific sense of humour, then come home and enjoy the humour. Do it! Test it! Don't believe a word I put out. Don't believe any of it. Just is it true? Am I mad, am I talking rubbish, or is it true? And if it's true, try it, give it a whirl. As Eckhart said, what have you got to lose by giving it a whirl? I think you will find that it is intensely, 100% practical.
From an interview with Douglas Harding.

Other Quotations

The outward man is the swinging door; the inner man is the still hinge. Eckhart

Whoever says that the Tathagata goes or comes, sits or lies down, he does not understand the meaning of my teaching. Diamond Sutra

The Qutb (Pole) is he who turns round himself; round him is the revolution of the heavenly spheres. Rumi

When I cross the bridge, it is the bridge that flows, not the water. Zen Saying

For a long time I used to walk round the Kaaba. When I attained God, I saw the Kaaba walking round me. Abu Yazid Al-Bistami, circa 870 A.D.

Why do you think that you are active? Take the example of your arrival here. You left home in a cart, took a train, alighted at the railway station here, got into a cart there and found yourself in this Ashram. When asked, you say you travelled all the way here from your town. Is it true? Is it not a fact that you remained as you were and there was movement… all along the way? Just as those motions are confounded with your own, so also are all other activities. They are not your own. Ramana Maharshi

As we rush, as we rush in the Train,
The trees and the houses go wheeling back,
But the starry heavens above the plain
Come flying on our track. James Thomson

At the centre, where no-one abides, there this light is quenched… for this Ground is the indivisible stillness, motionless in itself, and by this Immobility all things are moved. Eckhart

And every Space that a man views around his dwelling-place
Standing on his own roof or in his garden on a mount
Of twenty-five cubits in height, such space is his Universe:
And on its verge the Sun rises and sets, the Clouds bow
To meet the flat Earth and the Sea in such an order'd Space:
The Starry heavens reach no further, but here bend and set
On all sides, and the two Poles turn on their valves of gold;
And if he move his dwelling-place; his heavens also move
Where'er he goes, and all his neighbourhood bewail his loss.
Such are the Spaces called Earth and such its dimension.
William Blake

If they ask you, 'What is the sign of your Father in you?', say to them, 'It is a movement and a rest'. The Gospel of Thomas.

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Comments Several years ago Douglas Harding was giving a workshop in Ireland. A friend was talking with him during a break.

“Douglas, you are in your eighties now, and you travel the world so much of the time, yet you don’t seem to get tired!”

Douglas replied: “That’s because I don’t go anywhere!”
R.L. UK

In the workshop there was a man on my right who several times said how important being still whilst the scenery moves was to him. I was very touched by him… I got the participants to do the spinning experiment - and let them do it for ten or fifteen minutes. It was a strong experience for many of them. How simple and accessible, how shareable, this headlessness is. One of the participants went home after the Friday evening and showed his wife. R.L. UK.

I was one of those participants that did the "spinning experiment - for ten or fifteen minutes. It was a strong experience for many of them, including myself. I was struck my the fact that after spinning in a circle for such a long time I had no experience of dizziness whatsoever! The body/mind lost its domination over where I look out of. This happened several times, during several experiments which brought me back home. G. USA

I’m living in Amsterdam. I came across the headless way about 3 years ago when I attended a two-day seminar Douglas gave near Nice, in the South of France. The finger-pointing exercise literally blew my head away, and the closed-eye one finished me off. I hadn’t expected anything from the seminar. The name Douglas Harding was familiar: I had read something about him in a book by Colin Wilson called Beyond the Occult. Wilson quotes the famous passage from the beginning of On Having No Head and then goes on to say that that’s all very well but its probably the kind of emptiness and simplicity experienced by cows in a field! Well, I thought perhaps I was in for an entertaining lecture on Zen Buddhism. I was in no way expecting to be literally decapitated. It was difficult not to burst out in peels of laughter during the rest of the seminar. That night, and every night for about the next 3 weeks, I found the in-seeing - awareness of oneself - to be so interesting and absorbing, so perfect and complete, that going to sleep seemed an absurdity. I lay awake for hours - just staying with the seeing and the realisation of what this all means.

Since then, seeing has become less intense but has remained constant. It took a little while to ‘get’ the assertion that it is the world and not I that moves. Now its a tremendous thing to cycle around this beautiful city and see, beyond all doubt, that it’s Amsterdam that flies by while ‘I’ am this awake unmoving stillness. The way close objects like the road beneath ones feet flash by and more distant things like buildings and trees float past gracefully is a spectacle I never tire of. This has certainly become my favourite exercise. J.R. Holland

We did the test in which you point at yourself, and spin around your own axis. This reminded me of an experience I have with aikido (a martial art). Two or three times a week, I practice aikido. At some moments, I had two difficulties during my practice: one was that, when I trained with some people, I felt a kind of fear when somebody ‘attacked’ me, so that my body became tense and stiff, which hindered carrying out the technique. Another problem was that I sometimes became dizzy, because there is a lot of tumbling around in aikido. These problems vanished into thin air, when I reminded myself of the Void I am. When somebody attacked me, I felt relaxed, because who was there to attack? When I had to tumble around, I did not feel dizzy anymore, because there was no one here to feel dizzy, and besides, there was only a stillness in which the world turned around, not me. M. Belgium

On the way home, driving the van in and around the town’s streets, aware of the traffic and the road lights, concentrating. Then, down the slip road and onto the quiet of the motorway. No street lights and at this time of the evening not much traffic, just gently cruising along, watching the white lane markers come and go, in and out of the area lit up by the headlights.

Nothing’s coming the opposite way. Or, maybe there is - I’m just concentrating on a patch of darkened road just ahead of the beam of my lights. My mind’s in an ‘automatic pilot’ mode. The gentle green glow of the dash lights soothes my eyes and highlights my hands on the steering wheel leaving the remainder of the van as a backdrop of dark velvet.

Driving along a relatively straight section of the motorway requires little movement and leaves me feeling relaxed, which after a while leaves me with only an awareness of my hands, giving the feeling of being disembodied or disassociated from them. Maybe they’re someone else’s!

This stillness of my self within me contrasts with the mesmerising hurry of the road, coming rushing into the pool of light from the front and blurring, flowing, around the van and past me. I have no awareness of my body, just my hands. There is just ‘me’. Looking out. Like viewing the world through some 3-dimensional window, protected from the environment outside. A third party. Stillness is me, with my awareness looking out.

There you go... that’s an attempt to describe a particular experience I associate with ‘headlessness’. I.K. UK

Swings

Swings are fun,
swings are free,
swings go high,
swings go low,
swings go high,
and never I.

Rosemary, aged 7.

Whilst jogging this morning, I decided to walk a while backwards to watch that beautiful sunrise over the Alpines. And suddenly, surprise, surprise (ok - maybe not for you "long-time seers" but for me!) I realised how the road floated out from here, how the space here gave birth to the hills over there, to the mountains, the sun ....... how creative this space is, how, how...... AMAZING! S.C. Germany.

Seeing your nose

To experience first hand who/what we really are; transparent capacity, we need to DO the experiments that were designed by Douglas Harding and are taught by Richard Lang now. These experiments are very simple and work for many people. This is Experiment 7.

I am posting them one by one.

They come straight from the Headless website: www.headless.org

WHAT IS YOUR NOSE ATTACHED TO?

Commentary by Richard Lang

Sometimes, when people realize that from their own point of view they are faceless – and therefore capacity for the world - they then get worried about being able to see their noses. “I can see my nose – doesn’t this mean that I have a face here after all, that I’m not space for the world?”

Let’s look into this.

Clearly for others your nose is in the middle of your face. This is the objective view of you.

Where is it from your point of view, subjectively? What is it attached to, if anything?

When you look at your nose, instead of a single thing placed in the middle of a face, don't you see a blur, sometimes opaque, sometimes transparent, sometimes on one side of the world, sometimes on the other?

Are any of these attached to a face? Don't they come out of nowhere – suspended there with no support, emerging from the Void!

Notice how big your nose is! Close one eye – doesn’t your nose start somewhere near the ceiling and stretch right down to the floor?

Attend to the region your side of your nose. Here is a place only you can see. Is there anything there?

I find nothing at all, here on the near side of my nose blur. But this is a nothingness that isn’t a mere nothing – it’s an awake nothing filled with my world, including that nose.

My nose is nothing like other people’s noses. Theirs are small and on their faces. That’s the human nose for you. But mine is immense, multiple, and emerges from nowhere! This is not a human nose (just as my single Eye is not a human eye). It is God’s nose! I’ve discovered that God, although faceless, has a nose! (Well, many noses!)









Here is a self-portrait by Ernst Mach, complete with First Person nose (and moustache!). This drawing inspired Douglas Harding to notice his own headlessness in 1942.











So which is true? Are you what you look like to others, nose in the middle of your face? Or are you what you are in your own experience, “noses” emerging from spacious awareness?

I find this is not an “either/or” situation but "both/and". For others I have an appearance - I am a thing amongst things; for myself I am capacity for things – including my nose! I'm aware of both sides of myself.

A Remedy For Stress

So much unnecessary stress has its origin in identifying exclusively with the way others see us. Overlooking and invalidating my own point of view, I make a mistake about my deepest identity and find myself up against the world, separate from others, limited in my resources, vulnerable to all kinds of danger, and in the end, destined to die. It was vital to become self-conscious, to grow out of infancy into adulthood, but this need not be the end of the journey. Each of us can now go on to see Who we really are. This doesn't mean that we regress to infancy - we can be aware of both our True Identity and our human identity. However, becoming aware of our True Identity means we discover a stress-free space at the heart of our sometimes stressed lives. It is up to each of us how much we pay attention to this Resource. If we don't drink from this Well, we will probably find ourselves complaining of thirst, or even dying of thirst. And all the while the Water is so close, and free! Take a drink. Now. What have you got to lose? Your self! What have you got to gain? Everything, including your self!

Asking what your nose is attached to may sound ridiculous or trivial, but it isn’t, when you find that it leads to the Centre and Origin of the world, to the Peace that passes all understanding, to the Well at the World's End.

Douglas Harding:

If I fail to see what I am (and especially what I am not) it’s because I’m too busily imaginative, too “spiritual”, too adult and knowing, too credulous, too intimidated by society and language, too frightened of the obvious to accept the situation exactly as I find it at this moment. Only I am in a position to report on what’s here. A kind of alert naivety is what I need. It takes an innocent eye and an empty head (not to mention a stout heart) to admit their own perfect emptiness. On Having No Head, Douglas Harding

Forgetting what I'm told and imagine, what society with its common sense and the science of the object tell me to believe, and at last daring to look for myself and to take seriously what I find - well, what do I find? I find surprise upon surprise, beyond my wildest dreams. I see that what I had believed to be true of me and of the world is a pack of lies! The Science of the 1st Person, Douglas Harding.

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Quotation

Comment on this experiment

Quotation

A monk asked Nan-ch’uan: “Where are one’s nostrils before one is born?” The Master replied, “Where are one’s nostrils after one has been born?”

Comment

We had a mini workshop last night and did a couple of experiments with some success. As usual, I think I got more out of it than those who had come to find out what I was on about. One woman, in her early seventies, has excellent recall of her early childhood and remembers the time she thought she only had a nose on the occasions when it became necessary to wipe it. Her nose somehow manifested to meet the approaching handkerchief. A.M. Australia

The Mirror

To experience first hand who/what we really are; transparent capacity, we need to DO the experiments that were designed by Douglas Harding and are taught by Richard Lang now. These experiments are very simple and work for many people. This is Experiment 6.

I am posting them one by one.

They come straight from the Headless website: www.headless.org

Commentary by Richard Lang

See a video presentation of this experiment

“But I can see my face in the mirror…”

The mirror shows you what you look like – your appearance.

Which of your appearances it contains depends on where you place the mirror.

At arm’s length it contains your face. This is more or less what others make of you at this range. (For others your features are, as in a photograph, left to right compared with what you see in the mirror.)














Bring the mirror closer and you get a slightly different picture. This is again similar to what others see at this closer range.







Bring the mirror right up to you and you get a blur – this is the inward limit of the mirror. Someone else looking at you at this range would also see a blur.

The mirror is a great device for helping you become aware of what you look like at different distances. It confirms that your appearance changes with range.




Place a large mirror further away and you will see your whole body. At this distance others would also see all of you, from head to toe. Only at this range does the whole of your body manifest.

















Notice how your body in the mirror over there has a head and is the normal way up, but your real body – the one you see when you look down – is headless and the opposite way up (and your left is that mirror person’s right…).








If you imagine a large mirror moving away from you in the sky, you would see your human appearance shrinking to a dot and being replaced by the local environment - houses, roads, fields… followed by your country and continent. This is more or less what observers would also see looking at you from a plane or rocket. At close range you see your individual face in the mirror, at greater ranges your urban and then your national face. Each is a valid view of you, an important layer of your identity. Sometimes we identify deeply with our neighbourhood, city, country…







Now imagine a mirror on the moon: what would it contain? The beautiful Earth. Hold a mirror at arms length and you see your human face; imagine a mirror on the moon and you would see your planetary face. You need both faces, both bodies. How could you breathe without either your lungs or your atmosphere? Your life depends on both layers.


At greater ranges what would a mirror reveal? Your solar body, then your galactic body. You cannot exist without these bodies either.

Archetypal images of these layers sometimes emerge into consciousness in our dreams. Deep down we know we are far wider and deeper than just our human self.





Thus the mirror confirms what science reports – your human identity is only one layer in an onion-like system made of many layers.

Who, then, is at the centre of all these layers? Who or what are all these appearances appearances of?

The mirror cannot tell you for you cannot physically bring it all the way home to your centre. The nearest image you can see of yourself, using a mirror, is a blur. And though scientists may get closer, revealing the blur to be cells, molecules, atoms, particles… however close they approach they always remain distant from you, outside you.

Your appearances are on show to others and to yourself in the mirror. How can you uncover what are you at the heart of all these appearances, at no distance?

Look for yourself. It’s as simple as that.

Looking For Yourself

When you look in a mirror, you see your face there.

Do you see a second face on your side of the mirror, or do you see space?

I find no face here confronting the face in the mirror. I am space here for my appearance there. I am capacity for my face in the mirror.

Over there behind the glass is my human appearance; here this side of the glass is my divine reality. I am both. I have that face and I am this reality. My face there is an appearance of the One I really am - here. (One of my many appearances.)



Is this also true for you? Where is your face? Here, or there?






Try this: point back at yourself whilst looking in a mirror.

The person in the mirror is pointing back at their face.

What is your finger - this side of the mirror - pointing at?

A face or space?

What Difference Might This Make In Your Life?

Relief

When you see into your True Nature you see that your appearance belongs out there in the mirror and in others. You take seriously the fact it isn’t given here at centre. Your humanity is peripheral. What a relief. There is nothing to maintain at centre, nothing to worry about, nothing to adjust, change, heal, get rid of, get depressed about, criticize, boast about... You can relax back into this free and healthy space – if you choose to. Here at centre you are supremely well – you’ve never been better!

Your Human Self

You are divine at centre, human in appearance – at a certain range. Seeing Who you really are doesn’t mean you are no longer aware of your appearance, no longer self-conscious – that’s impossible as well as undesirable. So you still respond to your name, still recognize yourself in the mirror, still take responsibility for your actions. Of course. But you are now aware that your humanity is like a disguise, an incarnation you have taken on to be here in this world. Inwardly you are God, outwardly you are a person – a unique person with a special contribution to make. Instead of thinking you are just that person, that appearance, you are awake to the Power behind you, the Safety within you, the Source of inspiration and guidance at the heart of your human life. This enables you to be yourself even more so.

Unconditional Love

This Power at your back, this Safety residing in the very heart of you, is unconditional love in the sense that this head-free space, being no-thing, has no means of rejecting anyone or anything. You are built open - for your own life and for the lives of others.

The discovery of Who you really are is a profound challenge to the way we normally see ourselves and others. As we go on living from the Truth, the way we relate to both ourselves and others changes at the deepest level. Attend to the Truth, and find out how the discovery of unconditional love affects you personally.

Douglas Harding:

One of the greatest instruments of the truth that God is nearer to me than Douglas is the mirror, which takes that Douglas obstruction out of God’s way. My mirror is a marvellous, marvellous teacher, more valuable than all the scriptures of the world. Face to No-Face, Douglas Harding.

My mirror confirms this wide-openness right here where I am. The very thing which long ago put a face on me now relieves me of it. Now I look in the glass to see what I’m not like! Douglas Harding

The whole of my life and what I have to share with people is, Come back from identifying with the guy in the mirror, who is very important but is there. Come back from him there to here, to his Origin, which is exactly where you are. Video Interview with Douglas Harding

See also My Special Friend by Douglas Harding

View video

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Quotations

Comments on this experiment

Quotations

His form has passed away, he has become a mirror: naught is there but the image of another's face. Rumi

But we all, with unveiled face, reflecting as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed. St. Paul

Alone, without form or face,
Foothold or prop, one goes on
To love That, beyond all creatures,
Which may be won by happy chance. St. John of the Cross

As a beauty I am not a star -
There are others more handsome by far -
But my face, I don't mind it,
For I am behind it:
It's those in front get the jar. Attributed to Woodrow Wilson

A sleepy-eyed grandmother
Encounters herself in an old mirror.
Clearly she sees a face,
But it doesn't resemble hers at all. Tozan Ryokai

Everyone likes a mirror, while not knowing the true nature of his face. After all, how long does a reflection remain in view? Make a practice of contemplating the origin of the reflection… This cheek and mole go back to the Source thereof. Rumi

And we, spectators always, everywhere,
looking at, never out of anything!…
Who's turned us round like this? Rilke

I'm looking for the face I had
Before the world was made. Yeats

Loosing and dropping off body and mind, your Original Face is clear before you. Zazen-gi

Not one of the 1700 koans of Zen has any other purpose than to make us see our Original Face. Daito Kokushi

When thought is put down, the Original Face appears. Daito Kokushi

He that beholds his own Face - his light is greater than the light of the creatures. Though he die, his sight is everlasting, because his sight is the sight of the Creator. Rumi

A Brahmin went for help to the Buddha, carrying a gift of flowers in each hand.
"Let go," commanded the Buddha, and the Brahmin dropped the flowers in his right hand.
"Let go," repeated the Buddha, and the Brahmin dropped the flowers in his left hand.
"Let go," said the Buddha again, and the Brahmin stood nonplussed.
"Let go of what is in neither hand, but the middle."
At these words the Brahmin went away satisfied.

When thou seest in the pathway a severed head… of it thou wilt learn our hidden mystery. Rumi

I am free from head. Rumi

You have never beheld the head of Man: you are a tail. Rumi

Behead yourself! Rumi

You must choose one of two things - either have your head cut off or go into exile… He who loves Me, but loves his head better, is no true lover. Attar

He played away his head, laughing and rejoicing. Rumi

A monk said he had the precious sword. Ten-t'ou stretched out his neck, saying: "Well, then, cut off my head." The monk said: "Your head is off!" at which Yen-t'ou laughed loudly. But the monk did not perceive the meaning of that laughter. Blue Cliff Record

The precious Vajra sword is right here and its purpose is to cut off the head. Tai-hui

If He sever one head from the body, He at once raises up thousands of heads for the beheaded one. Rumi

The Single Eye

To experience first hand who/what we really are; transparent capacity, we need to DO the experiments that were designed by Douglas Harding and are taught by Richard Lang now. These experiments are very simple and work for many people. This is Experiment 5.

I am posting them one by one.

They come straight from the Headless website: www.headless.org

Commentary by Richard Lang

How many eyes are you looking out of? Of course other people see two eyes when they look at you, and you see two in the mirror. But how many do you see from your own point of view? Take a fresh look at yourself. Perhaps you have been overlooking something both obvious and wonderful.

I am looking out of one eye. In fact, it’s not even an eye – it’s an edgeless, undivided space, a frameless, wide-open window. From this clear window I can at this moment see my desk and computer, and beyond these things my garden.

This single Eye is not a human eye. It is God’s Eye, the Eye of the One Self, the Eye of the Buddha…

Are you also looking out of a frameless window, a single Eye – God’s Eye?



To bring your attention home to your single Eye, hold your hands out in front of you as if they were a pair of glasses you are going to put on. If you wear glasses you can take them off and hold them out instead.

You see two holes. There is a different view in each hole.











Now slowly bring them towards you and put them on.



































When you put the ‘glasses’ on, what happens to the dividing line between the two holes? Doesn’t it disappear, leaving one undivided, edgeless space that you are looking out of? One undivided, edgeless space that you are.






Observe the ‘edge’ of your field of vision. Notice that you cannot look directly at it. (Anything you look at moves into the centre of the field of vision.)

Is there really an ‘edge’ to your field of vision, a distinct boundary? Or does it gradually fade off? Into what? Into no-thing? Into your single, edgeless Eye?






Move your hand to this edge. See how it vanishes here. This is the place where things disappear.












How wide is this Eye of yours? Wider than the world?




Every line or boundary in the world has things on either side of it –every object has an environment, is surrounded by other objects. Check this out by looking at the things around you.

But there is one boundary beyond which there are no things - the boundary around your view of the world.

When I pay attention to this ‘boundary’ I find nothing beyond it. It’s a unique ‘boundary’.

Here is the ‘edge of the world’ What is beyond it? An abyss without end? You are this abyss – the abyss in which the world floats. All things are within you.

Relaxation

You can notice your single Eye anywhere, anytime. Discover how relaxing it is to be edgeless. There is no tension at all in this spacious clarity. What a resource in times of stress!

The Many And The One

The view out from this single Eye is unique to each person, and always changing. Looking out I see my living room now - you will see something different. But what about the view in? How could my view in – into this single Eye – be different from yours? There is nothing here to see differently. Here we are One.

From the Video Interview: Douglas Harding, His Life and Philosophy

What about observing what's going on—this transformation of two little windows into one Window which is as wide as the world. In India they talk about the opening of the Third Eye. You have to go to India or Mexico or Japan or somewhere for the opening of the Third Eye. But it's available here and now, wherever you are, isn't it? Did you ever look out of anything but this Window?

You know, six hundred years before Christ they were saying in India that there is one Seer in all beings. One Seer. The Sufis said it, the Buddhists said it. Hui Hai, a great Buddhist Zen master, said, 'Do we see with our eyes? No we see with our Buddha Nature.' We see with a Single Eye say the Sufi masters, later. One Seer. This is the Eye you're looking out of. I find this absolutely extraordinary. See what you're looking out of! And this is a strange thing—this agrees with modern science. Eyes do not see. Eyes condition, are part of the conditioning apparatus of what we see. They help to determine what we see, but the seeing doesn't go on at the eye level. It really has to go back, via the optic nerves and so on, to a region of the brain where the story is taken up. It starts off there with the sun, the light comes down, is filtered through the atmosphere of the Earth, strikes the object and hits your eye, and is then conveyed to a region of the visual cortex in the brain, where the story is taken up by atoms, particles and so on. It's not until that terminus is reached that you say, 'Hi! I see you.' The thing that starts with the galaxy, with the light of the sun out there, ends with the agitation or whatever of particles here. And it's only where the All is reduced to No-thing here that seeing takes place.

That is the scientific story, and it is my story. This is where seeing takes place. In the No-thing that I am here, is the Seer, the great Seer, the one Eye of the One. I find this extraordinary really. Extraordinary. You never looked out of anything but this—what they call in the East the Third Eye. It seems to me that the Almighty in his mercy, undeserved, by pure Grace, is just pouring upon us the invitation to enjoy union with Him. You know, St. Thomas Aquinas—the great intellect of the mediaeval Catholic Church—St Thomas Aquinas wrote great books of theology, of the Catholic faith, and he still is regarded as a great authority. At the end of his not very long life he said, 'It's all straw. All straw. What matters is the Beatific Vision of union with God. That's what matters. That's the meaning of our lives.'

So I say, Go for it. Go for it!

From another interview with Douglas Harding

The words are incidental. All teachers would agree, we learn by doing. What we learn by, what I learn by, what I have to share is a doing thing, active. This is an active thing. Put on your glasses and see the two holes become one — you are looking out of one Eye that is as wide as the world and is not a human eye. Your human eye you see in the mirror. This Eye which is as wide as the world, is not a human eye. It is the Eye of the One Seer in all beings that the Upanishads spoke of. It is the doing thing that is important.

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Quotations

Comments on this experiment

Quotations

Just tell me what your eyes are. Genro

It is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire. Jesus

Jesus said to them: When you make the two one… then you will go into the Kingdom. Gospel of Thomas

He became one-eyed. Attar

The Tathagata became the Eye of the universe. Parinirvana Sutra

Thou art not that body: thou art this spiritual Eye. Rumi

I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing: I see all. Emerson

Real vision is eyeless. Anandamayi Ma

Become seeing, seeing, seeing! Rumi

Become vision itself. Plotinus

When Chang Ching, after twenty years of meditation, happened to lift the curtain and see the outside world, he lost all his previous understanding of Zen, and cried: "How mistaken I was! How mistaken I was! Raise the screen and see the world."

Anything, however small, adhering to the soul, prevents your seeing me. We cannot see the visible except with the invisible. Meister Eckhart

Thou seest those eyes looking, but they are like pictures in a bath-house: they do not see. The form appears, O worshipper of form, as though its two dead eyes were looking. Rumi

If there were no eye, what? If there were no ear, what? If there were no mouth, what? If there were no mind, what? If one has to face such circumstances and knows how to act then one is in the company of the ancient Patriarchs and Buddhas. Anyone in that company is satisfied. Blue Cliff Record

I look and listen without using eyes and ears. Lieh-tzu

By what means do this body or mind perceive? Can they perceive with the eyes, ears…?
No. Your own Nature, being essentially pure and utterly still, is capable of perception. Hui-hai

There is no seer but Him, no one to hear but him, no one thinking, no one aware but Him. He is the Self, the Ruler within, the One Immortal. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
It is the Unborn which sees and hears, eats and sleeps. Bankei

Only God has seeing, hearing. Al-Arabi

The Bottom Line

To experience first hand who/what we really are; transparent capacity, we need to DO the experiments that were designed by Douglas Harding and are taught by Richard Lang now. These experiments are very simple and work for many people. This is Experiment 3.

I am posting them one by one.

They come straight from the Headless website: www.headless.org

THE BOTTOM LINE

 

Commentary by Richard Lang

Obviously for others you are not headless! You also stand the normal way up like everybody else - your head at the top, then your torso, followed by your legs and feet at the bottom.







But consider your own point of view – are you different?

I am.

From my point of view my body is headless. It is also upside down, with my feet towards the top of my field of vision, above the rest of my body! Below my feet I see my legs, and then below them my tummy and then my chest - which then fades out. Here at the bottom of my field of vision is my bottom line.

Below this line, what do I find? My chest fades out into nothing! A vast abyss - boundless and empty.


And yet, it’s not simply empty - it’s also full. Of what?

It is full of everything that’s above the bottom line.

Have a look for yourself. Is your body also headless?

Are your feet towards the top of your field of vision and your chest at the bottom – if so, your body is upside down!

Bring your attention down to the region where your body fades out – at the bottom of your field of vision. What is below this bottom line? Anything at all?

And what is above it?



In this map Douglas Harding illustrates that above the bottom line is the whole world. Emerging from the bottom line, in the nearest region, is one’s own headless body. Above and beyond your headless body is the region of other people, including your image in the mirror, and then, above and beyond this layer, is the rest of life and the rest of the planet, then other planets, other stars, other galaxies… The whole universe is above your bottom line.


Being Awake means not overlooking the mystery below your bottom line – this no-thingness. It is seeing and being What you really are - the abyss from which the world uprushes into being like a geyser bursting from the ground. Though the ground of your being is not a thing, it comes up with all things.







From this point of view - the First Person point of view - I am creating this world: without knowing how I do it, without making any effort, without knowing quite what is going to burst forth next from below the bottom line. Look! This moment is exploding into being from within you.








Living The First Person Life
To be aware of what is below your bottom line as well as what is above it, is to live a profoundly different life from the “merely human” life. It is, amazingly, to live God’s life. This is of course an inner life, a secret life - no one else sees your bottom line, no one else sees you conjuring the world out of nothing! You know full well that for others you are not God! You don’t confuse your individual identity, your appearance, with your deepest identity, your innermost reality.

But which of these two lives is your direct experience, and which is hearsay and second-hand? Which is appearance, which is reality? Which is the life you are actually living?

What difference does it make in your life when you are aware of What is below your bottom line? Find out! Discover how you deal with situations when you realize they are emerging from your own being. Your being is not a product of the world but its Origin. In other words, you are not, in your heart of hearts, an appearance, a right-way-up headed person – a product of the world, a thing amongst things, closed and limited, a victim of circumstance… You are the Origin, the Alone, the Source from which all things flow. Awareness of this makes all the difference.

Take self-esteem for example: What greater remedy for low self-esteem than discovering this unlimited power and glory within you? A discovery that is naturally accompanied by humility and self-acceptance, for though your inner power and glory are astonishing, they are not something you as a person can take credit for. They do not increase your human status one iota. You can neither show your divinity to others, nor demonstrate your power outwardly. I remember Douglas Harding relating how he was giving a workshop to a group of young kids. He quoted Meister Eckhart who said, simply, "God's in, I'm out." One young boy, hearing this, commented: "And it doesn't make you proud!"

Douglas Harding:

I end downwards, at the bottom of the scene, in a Blank that’s unoccupied and imageless and unimaginable, in absolutely nothing whatever. Here, completing my submission to the evidence, I come to the most overlooked and underrated spot in the world, the place that’s replaced with No-place, the Terminus of termini, unique, baffling, the Mystery that’s more than worthy of my humblest obeisance. All other places and objects I come across are set on all sides against a background. Somewhere or other they stop and something else begins: however big, they are encompassed within a perimeter – sharp or blurred – where they end and their environment begins. All except this magic shirt I’m wearing. It’s as if some transcendental moth had been at it all along the neckline. Indeed this is the gnawing of no creature but the gnawing mystery of creation itself, of WHERE caught redhanded popping up out of NO-WHERE, of WHAT popping up – a divine Jack-in-the-box – out of NO-WHAT. All things above this Ultimate Bottom Line – those toy shoes up there, those truncated trunks, that pelmet-shirt itself on three of its four sides – all are normal inasmuch as they rest on something. Those are things that I can handle, that I have taped, that lie well within my capacity. But This defeats me. Here I’ve come to something that rests on no support, on a gap. Now this is irregular, abnormal, absurd – terms altogether too weak to do justice to such an Oddity. Here is the Line which underwrites and underscores all things, and is itself underwritten and underscored by a total White-out, by What’s conspicuous by its absence. Above it, the world; below it not so much as a dust-grain – nor (and this is the point here) room for one. (Head Off Stress)

No longer so damned cocksure I know what it's like being me, I dare to start all over again and bow before the evidence - actually as well as metaphorically. I bend and bow so deeply that I come to the very edge of me and my world, to the Bottom Line it all arises from. A frontier that doesn't prevent me from gazing past it and in to the Infinite Source of All, brilliantly on display yet awesomely mysterious. (The Trial of the Man who said he was God)