The Headless Way
Direct access to our essential nature
is freely available to everyone here and now
is freely available to everyone here and now
Facebook Facebook
Newsletter
eCourse
Harding Essays
Discovering Who You Are
D. E. Harding
[Text from a handout designed by Douglas Harding in the mid-1970s and distributed in workshops organized by Werner Erhart.]
1. Cut a head-sized hole in a card and hold it out in front of you.
2. See how empty that hole is - and how full of the scene. Now slowly put it on until your face fits in the hole. Or is it still empty? What's happened to its boundaries?
3. Try putting it on again to make sure that, right where you are now, there is this boundless emptiness you can fill with anything you like. This is WHAT and WHO you are!
But (you may say) I can feel my face.
Right! Try fingering your face and head all over and see whether you can fill your space with a coloured, opaque, complicated, limited thing for living in. Is it dark, sticky, small in there? Aren't you as faceless, transparent, open and vast as ever - with a lot of touch sensations in the nearer regions of your vastness?
But (you may go on) I can't rely on vision only. How could you show this to a blind man?
Shut your eyes, drop memory and imagination, and notice whether you have any limits now, are in any kind of box. Aren't you more like room - silence for these sounds to happen in, space for these passing sensations of warmth, pressure, etc., this flow of feelings and thoughts? Just room or capacity - but aware of itself now as that!
Peeling The Onion
But (you may say) everyone else can see there's a human being here.
It all depends on how far off they are. Seen from a distance of 1,000,000 light years you appear as a galaxy (the Milky Way), from a distance of 1 light year as a star (the Solar System), of 100,000 miles as a planet (the Earth), of 10 feet as a human, of 1/1000 inch as a cell. Nearer still you read as molecules, atoms, particles... Only you can complete their outside story and view yourself from 0 inches, as No-thing - and Here is the central Reality, of which all those regional views are your appearances.
But (you may go on) I feel like a human being.
Sometimes. But aren't you capable of so identifying with your family, your organisation, country, species, or planet (in case of threat from outer space) that you'd die (as man or woman) for them? And in your best moments don't you embrace the universe? Other times, don't you narrow down to (say) an aching tooth? You take responsibility for - you become - as much of the world as you choose - because already you are it all. So your feelings about yourself are as elastic and changeable as your appearances. What they are appearances of never changes.
All the same (you insist) I belong, physically, to the human layer of the onion.
As a mere human body you don't exist. What is that body without its substructure of cells, molecules, atoms, particles? You could spare a kidney, a lung and all four limbs, but what if your Earth and Sun were cut off? The whole of your body is the Whole. As for your mind, don't your thoughts and feelings cover all layers of the onion - from its empty core?
But what happens to personal relationships, to love, to all communication, if I disappear?
Look at a friend's face. Dropping memory and imagination, is there anything where you are to shut out that face with? Or are you empty for him or her? Aren't you built open, built for welcoming, for loving?
Growing Up - Or Down?
There are four stages of your growing up:
1. As an INFANT you were for yourself No-thing.
Like any animal, you were faceless, immense and at large, unseparate from your world - without being aware of all of this.
2. As a CHILD you were for yourself No-thing and something.
You learned to look at yourself from a few feet away "through others' eyes" and see yourself as a human being - a special one at that. You came to identify with that face in your mirror, and answer to its name. Yet you remained, for yourself, at large, space for your world to happen in. You may occasionally have become fully aware of your space, of yourself-as-you-see-yourself (a child is apt to ask why others have heads and she hasn't, to protest that she isn't a girl - she's not like that at all! - or declare that she is nothing, not present, invisible). Both views of yourself - from outside as a small thing and from inside as this vast No-thing - were true and needful.
3. As a GROWN-DOWN (so-called adult) you are now for yourself that small thing.
Your learned view of yourself from outside has come to overshadow and practically blot out your original view of yourself from inside. You have grown down, not up. Instead of containing your world, it contains you - what's left of you. Shrunk from being the whole into being this tiny part, you grow greedy, resentful, frightened, unsuccessful, tired, stiff, out of touch with your Source, plain crazy:
Greedy - as you try to regain as much as possible of your lost empire,
Resentful or aggressive - as you seek revenge on a system that has cruelly cut you down to size,
Frightened and lonely - as you see yourself a mere thing, at the mercy of and up against all other things,
Unsuccessful - because working for, and taking responsibility for, yourself as a mere individual human is making sure of failure: the end of all your personal enterprises is death,
Tired - because it takes so much energy building and rebuilding this imaginary box for living in, right where you are,
Stiff, unnatural, phoney - because you act to impress, not express,
Uncreative - because you have cut yourself off from your Source and Centre and see yourself as a mere regional effect,
Crazy - because you "see" something that isn't there and imagine (contrary to all the evidence) that you are at 0 feet what you look like at 6 feet - a solid, opaque, coloured, outlined lump of stuff. How can your world remain sane if its very Centre has gone insane?
Insofar as you don't suffer from these handicaps you remain "a child at heart," more or less unconsciously in touch with the truth of who you are.
4. As a GROWN-UP (truly adult) you are for yourself No-thing and all things.
Stuck at Stage 3 you are a case of arrested development. The experiments show how simple and natural it is to go on to the next stage and truly grow up. In fact, carrying out the experiments and taking their point you have already made it to Stage 4. Congratulations!
Stage 4 isn't, like the infant, losing yourself in your world. Nor, like some meditators, finding yourself within and letting the world go by. It is simultaneously looking in at your Space and out at what fills it - two-way attention. This means you have nothing left of your very own to shut the world out with - and so it's all yours!
And this means you go on to take responsibility for those "others" out there, for suffering mankind, the living Earth, all the way to the Whole - because you lie at the empty Source of it all. But you don't lie back. You find yourself loving and serving your neighbour (Who isn't your neighbour?) as yourself, because he or she is yourself.
And, sooner or later, you may discover that your overall aim is assisting him or her, and all mankind, and ultimately all beings, to come to this 4th Stage and really grow up. This is a big job - the toughest adventure of them all. (Paradoxically it's also the easiest, already in the bag, seeing that no being ever strayed from Home or left its Source, anyway.) Meantime your own entry into Stage 4 is natural and obvious. All you have to do is look at the spot you occupy right now, at what's 12 inches your side of these words, taking in these marks on the screen. And what presently will take in the people around you, houses, animals, stars, the lot - at your pleasure.
You are a Grown-up, no longer a Grown-down.
Again, congratulations!
In Practice
Okay, I've got it. But seeing What/Who I am comes in flashes. How to maintain and strengthen this seeing?
The answer comes in 3 parts:
1. Make full use of techniques which re-direct your attention to this neglected spot at the Centre of your Universe. Some simple reminders are given below. Eventually everything you experience takes you back to yourself, its Source, and life becomes one big "workshop exercise."
2. Spend as much time as possible with friends who share this seeing. The condition is infectious.
3. Above all, work with such friends - performing the humblest or grandest of tasks - at clear-cut goals whose ultimate aim is not "your own" achievement of Stage 4, but the world's. The marvellous thing is that what's best for the world is best for you - the best therapy, discipline, work, fun - because you are the world! And this includes all the world's resources of modern science, communication, organisational know-how. If you are serious about this great enterprise you will neglect no means to its success.
It may well be that the survival of the Species - let alone its progress - depends on its growing up to Stage 4 within a relatively short time, so that this stage is regarded as the norm, the standard against which maturity is reckoned. This doesn't mean that everyone, or even the great majority, will get there so quickly. (After all, though Stage 3 - the Grown-down - is now regarded as normal, huge numbers of people are still more or less at Stage 2, and not yet capable of clearly seeing themselves from out there, as things in the world.)
REMINDERS
Face-to-No-face - So much of your time is spent with people - either imagining you are confronting them face-to-face, or seeing it's never been like that at all. The most available of all pointers to what you are is also the best recipe for good "personal relationships."
Single Eye - How many eyes are you looking out of, in your own experience, right now? Check up by slowly putting on your glasses and seeing what happens to those two "windows." If you don't wear glasses, make up a pair with your thumbs and forefingers. Outline with your hands the extent of this huge window - frameless, spotless, with nobody looking out of it.
Pointing - Point at your feet, legs, torso... noting how you're pointing at something, and this something is distant from your finger. Now point at your "face". What are you pointing at now, dropping memory and imagination? How far is it - are you - from that finger?
Neck-line - Look up at our heavenly bodies, out at your earthly body, down at your human body. Outline with your finger the boundary of that body, on present evidence - the place where it meets your Space.
Travelling - Spinning, driving your car, walking, see whether you are moving in the world, or the world in you.
Other Senses - Observe what happens to the food that goes into holes in people's head, and what happens to the food that actually has taste. Listen to the Silence-you-are, into which sounds are now popping.
Thoughts and Feelings - Can you discover any thoughts and feelings which aren't fleeting and don't belong to the world of objects (ranging from your human to your cosmic body)? Is anything central and permanent except this Awareness, this sense of Being, or I AM? YOU ARE THAT!
Back to top
Facebook Facebook Online Course Newsletter