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.

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First Person Video Game extract


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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

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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

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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)

Two Way Pointing

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

I am posting them one by one. This is experiment 2

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

TWO-WAY POINTING

Commentary by Richard Lang

Point with one index finger outwards at the world, and with your other index finger point inwards towards your no-face.

The finger pointing outwards points at a scene full of countless shapes and colours. It’s a complicated picture. The more time you spend looking at it, the more there is to see. And most of it is hidden – obscured by other things in one way or another.

The view in is different. Here the space is not hidden at all. You can see it all, all at once. In the photograph I can see only part of the room in the distance, but here I see all of the space. There is nothing more to view here, nothing concealed. Nor is this being that I am here – and that you are here (I suggest) - remote in any way. It is right here, it is what I am. It is the ‘part’ of me that I can never lose. What could be simpler than seeing this – and being this? It is uncomplicated, transparent, open to inspection, nearer than near, given in its entirety…

Is this Who you really are? Are you empty of everything, and at the same time capacity for this endlessly changing view out, room for this amazing world? To find out, just look. Seeing the space here is simpler than simple.

Application in life

Having seen that you are capacity for the world, the next time you are in a complicated or confusing situation, attend to that situation from this capacity, this clearness. Two-way attention: confusing situation there to clarity here. You are not a thing caught up in the situation but are capacity for everything going on. The clarity here is not affected by the confusion there. You can be awake to and rest in the clearness and simplicity that is your innermost being. As you attend to situations from this clarity, the right responses will flow. Gradually, through experience, you come to trust this depth that you are. Appearances are set against other appearances, and are so limited in their resources, but you – Who you really are – are not an appearance. You are not a thing up against other things but the space that takes all things in, the depth from which the world flows.

Begin to develop the habit of being awake to the space you are looking out of, the space you are in fact already living from. In challenging situations, notice you are room for those situations. Give your True Identity the opportunity to come up with a response.

Two-way attention is practical. The solution to challenging situations or problems comes from being consciously open to the One who, after all, invented those challenging situations!

Douglas Harding:

You have actually seen, by carrying out such exercises in basic attention, what it is to be 1st-person singular - the No-thing that is nevertheless keenly aware of Itself as the Container or Ground of the whole display. This seeing is believing. Altogether unmystical (in the popular sense), it is a precise, total, all-or-nothing experience admitting of no degrees - so long as it lasts. Now your task is to go on seeing your Absence/Presence in all situations, till the seeing becomes quite natural and continuous. This is neither to lose yourself in your Emptiness nor in what fills it, but simultaneously to view the thing you are looking at and the No-thing you are looking out of. There will be found no times when this two-way attention is out of place or can safely be dispensed with. The price of sanity is vigilance. The Science of the 1st Person, Douglas Harding

The experiments; pointing

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

I will post them one by one.

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

Experiment 1 POINTING

Who are you really? Not who are you in other people’s eyes, or in the mirror, or according to your beliefs and unexamined assumptions, but in your own direct experience.

Great spiritual teachers say you are not your appearance – deep down, secretly, nearer to you than your breathing, you are capacity for the world. They say that to discover this wonderful truth about yourself you must look simply and innocently, as a child looks. Where do you look? Right where you are, at the Looker. When? Now.

To see Who you really are, carry out the following experiment.

When you point anywhere in the world you point at appearances. You are distant from what you are looking at and you see things, you see objects. Observe this – direct your attention at things by pointing at them. (The following images are a guide only -- it's imperative to actually DO the experiment.)



For example, I can see the shapes and colours of this room…

of my foot...

...of my knee

of my chest...

In all these instances attention is directed outwards, at objects.

Now point where others see your face.




What do you see? You are now looking inwards – turning the direction of your attention round 180˚ from the objects out there to you the Subject, to the place you are looking out of. Do you see your face? Do you see anything at all there - any colour or shape, any movement?

Looking in to the place where others see my face, I find no colour or shape here. I find boundless capacity or awareness this side of my pointing finger. This capacity is empty, clear, transparent. It is self-evidently awake, aware.

At the same time this capacity is full of everything happening in it: my finger, my view of the scene beyond, sounds, feelings…

I am now seeing Who I really am – seeing the boundless One at the very heart of myself, the One in whom the world is happening.

What do you find? Are you also looking out of this wide-open, crystal clear, awareness?

Pointing Home Movie (1991 kb)

Douglas Harding by Richard Lang (Headless)

Douglas Harding

 

by Richard Lang

Douglas Harding was born in 1909 in Suffolk, England. He grew up in a strict fundamentalist Christian sect, the Exclusive Plymouth Brethren. The ‘Brethren’ believed they were the ‘saved’ ones, that they had the one true path to God and that everyone else was bound for Hell. When Harding was 21 he left. He could not accept their view of the world. What guarantee was there that they were right? What about all the other spiritual groups who also claimed that they alone had the Truth? Everyone couldn’t be right.

In London in the early 1930s Harding was studying and then practising architecture. In his spare time, however, he devoted his energies to philosophy - to trying to understand the nature of the world, and the nature of himself. Into philosophy at this time were filtering the ideas of Relativity. Influenced by these ideas, Harding realized that his identity depended on the range of the observer – from several metres he was human, but at closer ranges he was cells, molecules, atoms, particles… and from further away he was absorbed into the rest of society, life, the planet, the star, the galaxy… Like an onion he had many layers. Clearly he needed every one of these layers to exist.

But what was at the centre of all these layers? Who was he really?

In the mid-1930s Harding moved to India with his family to work there as an architect. When the Second World War broke out, Harding’s quest to uncover his identity at centre - his True Identity - took on a degree of urgency. Aware of the obvious dangers of war, he wanted to find out who he really was before he died.

One day Harding stumbled upon a drawing by the Austrian philosopher and physicist Ernst Mach. It was a self-portrait – but a self-portrait with a difference. Most self-portraits are what the artist looks like from several feet – she looks in a mirror and draws what she sees there. But Mach had drawn himself without using a mirror – he had drawn what he looked like from his own point of view, from zero distance.

When Harding saw this self-portrait the penny dropped. Until this moment he had been investigating his identity from various distances. He was trying to get to his centre by peeling away the layers. Here however was a self-portrait from the point of view of the centre itself. The obvious thing about this portrait is that you don’t see the artist’s head. For most people this fact is interesting or amusing, but nothing more. For Harding this was the key that opened the door to seeing his innermost identity, for he noticed he was in a similar condition – his own head was missing too. At the centre of his world was no head, no appearance - nothing at all. And this ‘nothing’ was a very special ‘nothing’ for it was both awake to itself and full of the whole world. Many years later Harding wrote about the first time he saw his headlessness:

“I don’t think there was a ‘first time’. Or, if there was, it was simply a becoming more aware of what one had all along been dimly aware of. How could there be a ‘first-time’ seeing into the Timeless, anyway? One occasion I do remember most distinctly – of very clear in-seeing. It had 3 parts. (1) I discovered in Karl Pearson’s Grammar of Science, a copy of Ernst Mach’s drawing of himself as a headless figure lying on his bed. (2) I noted that he – and I – were looking out at that body and the world, from the Core of the onion of our appearances. (3) It was clear that the Hierarchy, which I was then in the early stages of, had to begin with headlessness, and that this had to be the thread on which the whole of it had to be hung.”

However, Harding did describe his discovery more dramatically in On Having No Head. To read the relevant passage, click here.

Following this discovery, Harding spent eight more years working on The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth. Prefaced by CS Lewis who called it “a work of the highest genius”, The Hierarchy was published by Faber and Faber in 1952. (The Shollond Trust published copies of the much larger original manuscript in 1998. Visit the bookshop.) In this book Harding explores, tests and makes sense of his discovery in the broadest and deepest terms. It is not a book for a popular audience, but it is a book that will surely, in time, be recognized as a truly great work of philosophy.

In 1961 the Buddhist Society published On Having No Head – written for a popular audience. (Also available in the bookshop.)

In the late 1960s and 1970s Harding developed the experiments – awareness exercises designed to make it easy to see one’s headlessness and to explore its meaning and implications in everyday life.

Harding wrote other books - also available via the bookshop. He died in January 2007, shortly before his 98th birthday.

See also the obituary of Douglas Harding from the Independent.

I AM YOU

Who Are You: Other people's answer. Your answer. How do you look into your Centre?

 

Other people are like the scientist because they cannot see what you are at Centre either, only what you are peripherally. Reflecting back to you what they make of you, their feedback is about you as a person.

 

You are not distant from yourself, not outside yourself. You – and you alone - are therefore perfectly placed to see what you are at Centre. All you have to do is look.

The Experiments direct your attention inwards to your centre. They reveal the One you really are, the One at the heart of your life. Take some time now to explore them.
When you have carried out the experiments, explore the rest of the website. You will find articles, short films, quotations, comments, interviews and more… You can subscribe to the e-Course in Seeing and, if you like, let us know your response to seeing Who you really are.

www.headless.org

I AM YOU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFYRHrceIsE&feature=youtu.be

A little film showing the Big Eye of all of us, the void with many arms and legs. We are one in this picture. So I AM YOU is true.

The film was put together by Richard Lang after an evening of fun in many languages on No-Facebook.

Check it out, great stuff going on there!

www.headless.org
https://www.facebook.com/groups/richardlang/

Who are you, science's answer

What you are depends on the range of the observer. At several metres, more or less, you are human, but at closer ranges you are cells, molecules, atoms, particles… Viewed from further away your body becomes absorbed into the rest of society, life, the planet, the star, the galaxy… Science’s objective view of you – zooming towards and away from you - reveals a hierarchically organized system of layers that is alive, intelligent and beautiful. Thus you have many layers, like an onion. You need every one of these layers to exist. Your human identity, vital and important as it is, is just one of these layers. You are also sub-human and supra-human. (See The Hierarchy of Heaven & Earth.)
What are you at the Centre of your many layers? The scientist cannot say because she can only observe you from a distance. However close she gets to you, she remains outside you. What or Who you really are, the Ground of your Being, remains a mystery.

www.headless.org

Who Are You?

The world’s great mystics have a common message:
"There is a Reality which is Indivisible, One, Alone, the Source and Being of all; not a thing, nor even a mind, but pure Spirit or clear Consciousness; and we are That and nothing but That, for That is our true Nature; and the only way to find It is to look steadily within, where are to be found utmost peace, unfading joy, and eternal life itself." (From Religions of the World by Douglas Harding)

www.headless.org

The Headless Way

Over the past [sixty] years a truly contemporary and Western way of 'seeing into one's Nature' or 'Enlightenment' has been developing. Though in essence the same as Zen, Sufism, and other spiritual disciplines, this way proceeds in an unusually down-to-earth fashion. It claims that modern man is more likely to see Who he really is in a minute of active experimentation than in years of reading, lecture-attending, thinking, ritual observances, and passive meditation of the traditional sort. Instead of these, it uses a variety of simple, non-verbal, fact-finding tests, all of them asking: how do I look to myself? They direct my attention to my blind spot - to the space I occupy, to what's given right here at the Centre of my universe, to what it's like being 1st-person singular, present tense. (From The Headless Way, a leaflet by Douglas Harding.)

www.headless.org

We are all Charlie Hebdo

Nous sommes tous Charlie Hebdo

Drawing by Didier van de Steene

I am Charlie

I have a hundred thousand faces (and so do you)

One of my poems have just been published on the Headless website: www.headless.org

I have a hundred thousand faces (and so do you)

My face is everywhere
Except where it is supposed to be
That face I cannot see
My face is in the mirror
In the water is my face
In the hollow of a spoon: my face
On the dead screen of a TV: my face
In the portrait that I paint... my face
But where my face is supposed to be
there's a void
Where everything explodes
Into delicious (non)-reality
Of Here and Now
Of non-duality, of you and me.....
Undividedly.... Taking it slowly...
Making no plans

Suzanne Visser

www.headless.org

Letter to Richard Lang:

Hi Richard,

It is great to practice headlessness in solitude, deep in nature. I have just had 20 days of that. Sometimes I have a visitor. I did the experiments with whomever wanted to listen. Some get it straight away.

It is quite astonishing to me how I have studied Zen and Theravada Buddhism for such a long time, traveled far for it, while, 'next door' (I'm Dutch), in England the headless movement was flourishing. I can now see how much dogma, silly costumes, and unnecessary practices I went through. I find this quite hilarious. I am sometimes overwhelmed with the richness of the experience. When it fades I simply point at my no-face and it is back straight away. One has to be a bit careful not be be seen as a bit crazy. I was doing the pointing experiments with a friend in a restaurant yesterday for example.

I would like to tell you a bit more about my seeing experiences: When I was a child and later a teenager, I 'saw' all the time. I was terrified of it as I had no references to it. When I was 27 I had a very strong experience that lasted for months.
I went through extensive psychotherapy and the sense of 'non-self' and 'becoming the other' was described as a kind of illness by well meaning professionals.
It was then that I found Zen to try to understand it. I practiced ZaZen and mindfulness (through Japanese calligraphy) and later Theravada Buddhism for 30 years, stayed in monasteries, almost ordained as a nun (and did not because of the inequality between men and women in Buddhism).... I came across Douglas Harding's work only months ago and it has given me all the answers I was looking for. Simple as that. Most koans and mysterious remarks by teachers made sense. And those that did not made sense I could disregard as nonsense and know why they were nonsense. I have done a tremendous amount of sitting, reading, going through pain, bowing, strict eating habits, etc, etc.. I'm 57 now and suddenly look back to it quite amused. I had to drift away from Zen and Theravada to find the headless thing. What a long and winding road! I finally can make perfect sense of the experiences I was so terrified of a long time ago. This of course is a massive relief, but it is also very simple and plain and not a peak experience at all, really. As they say in Zen: Before seeing: cut wood, fetch water, after seeing: cut wood, fetch water.

What the experiments have done so far is: they make my 'mind' really small. It is there, amongst all other things. It has jumped out of my broken head and it has joined the enormous world. In the first weeks of pointing it literally felt as if my head was disappearing bit by bit. The last bit that went was the back of my head. This is most relaxing.

It is now a matter of keeping it up by mindfulness. To this I'm looking forward. Getting older suddenly does not seem a chore anymore, but a new adventure. Douglas Harding and you are the cause of this. Thank you!!!!!

Warm regards,

Suzanne