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