Selected Correspondence: Mr. Douglas Harding

Richard’s Selected Correspondence

On Mr. Douglas Harding

RESPONDENT: I presume you know about Douglas Harding. How would you classify him [his state]?

RICHARD: It took me about 3 minutes to locate the following passages:

• ‘He wanted to find out who he really was before he died. In a sense, any other question became secondary to this one: Who am I really? Harding finally discovered what and who was at centre not by thinking but simply by looking. This moment is described in his book ‘On Having No Head’ (Arkana). Basically, he realised he could see his legs, arms, trunk, but not his head. From where he was looking, he was headless. Instead of his head there was nothing – clear space, emptiness. And in this space was the world. He had ‘lost a head and gained a world’. This experience corresponds to what in other traditions might be called Liberation, Enlightenment, seeing God, seeing the Void, being centred’. (www.headless.org/English/main.html).

And in his own words:

• ‘Over the past thirty 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’.(www.headless.org/English/thw.htm)

• ‘Unself-conscious: The principle of this meditation is: never lose sight of your Self in any circumstances, and your problems are taken care of – including, strange to say, the problem of self-consciousness. For finding the Self is losing the self’. (‘The Results of Seeing Who You Really Are’; an article by Douglas Harding from ‘The Toolkit for Testing the Incredible Hypothesis’; www.headless.org/English/reallyr.htm).

RESPONDENT: Here I have to make some digression. [snip digression]. I think though, my present ongoing experience is that of ‘Excellent experience’ or generally as you suggested above virtual freedom.

RICHARD: No, I never suggested (further above) that your present ongoing experience is, generally or otherwise, that of virtual freedom ... on the contrary, I clearly stated that, even though all it takes is about three (3) minutes to locate the passages regarding what Mr. Douglas Harding has to say, which passages are blatantly self-explanatory to one who is virtually free of the human condition, you still had to ask me how I would classify him/his state.

And neither would I suggest your normal state is an on-going excellence experience (the penultimate virtual freedom experience) either ... just to refresh your memory:

• [Mr. Douglas Harding]: ‘Over the past thirty 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’. [emphasis added]. (www.headless.org/English/thw.htm).
• [Mr. Douglas Harding]: ‘The principle of this meditation [‘Unself-conscious Meditation’] is: never lose sight of your Self in any circumstances, and your problems are taken care of – including, strange to say, the problem of self-consciousness. For *finding the Self is losing the self*’. [emphasis added]. (‘The Results of Seeing Who You Really Are’; an article by Douglas Harding from ‘The Toolkit for Testing the Incredible Hypothesis’; www.headless.org/English/reallyr.htm).

And while I am at it:

• [Ms. Bernadette Roberts]: ‘It is quite possible that at some time or other everyone has made contact with the self-as-subject [as distinct from self-as-object]. All that is required for such an encounter is the cessation of the reflexive movement of the mind bending back on itself. Without this reflexive (or pre-reflexive) movement, we are no longer aware of our own awareness, our own feelings and thoughts, and thus we have encountered self-as-subject. But since this subjective self is as nothing to the mind, we cannot stay in this condition for long and soon fall back into self-consciousness or self-as-object. To remain in this un-reflexive condition for any length of time would mean encountering an emptiness, a void, a nothingness that is the subjective self – *which I have called no-self*’. [emphasis added]. (‘Pure Subjectivity’, from the book ‘The Experience of No-Self’, by Bernadette Roberts; 1982; http://norea.net/roberts/pure%20subjectivity.htm).

And:

• [Mr. Uppaluri Krishnamurti]: ‘This individual [referring to himself] is always in a state of meditation. (...) When there is no movement of thought, you don’t know whether it [the outer world] is inside or outside. (...) This absence of the movement of thought which recognises and names things is the state of samadhi, *sahaja (natural) samadhi*. You imagine that samadhi is something he [referring to himself] goes into and comes out of. Not at all; he’s always there’. [emphasis added]. (from Part Four, ‘The Mystique Of Enlightenment’; Second Edition; Published by: Akshaya Publications, Bangalore, INDIA. 1992: www.well.com/user/jct/moetitle.htm).

What I would suggest, however, is that your initial LSD trip was an altered state of consciousness (ASC) ... and here is another reason why (from the snipped digression):

• [Respondent]: ‘I saw (...) also beauty of the world around ...’.

Quite simply: beauty is an affective experience – the subjective ‘self’s pathetic imitation of the pristine purity of the actual – and, as you currently have a feeling of weightlessness (aka a lightness of being), I would also suggest your present on-going experience is an after-effect of feeling the same a couple of months ago whilst ingesting psilocybin on a daily basis over a two-week period ... a technique, by the way, almost guaranteed to reduce the effect.

As I have remarked before, by and large, most substance-induced peak experiences are ASC’s, and not PCE’s (else an actual freedom from the human condition would surely have been discovered aeons ago), which is the main reason why I never advise or encourage anyone to use psychotropic substances. Here is another way I have put it (from my first e-mail to you):

• [Richard]: ‘(...) I never advise or encourage anyone to use psychotropic substances (for obvious reasons). If, however, someone already has done so, and intends to do so again of their own accord and volition anyway, then I would counsel their very careful and considered use *as it is all-too-easy for an altered state of consciousness (ASC) to emerge rather than a pure consciousness experience (PCE)* ... there are many accounts available on the internet and 4 or 5 years ago I browsed through several web pages and never found any description that resembled a PCE. (...)’. [emphasis added]. (Thursday, 29 January 2004 AEDST).

I do not see how I could have put any more plainly than that.

RESPONDENT: Douglass Harding, Byron Katie, Maximillian Sandor, bunches of folks in the ex-scientology camp (put ‘freezone’ into your search engine) are all, in their various ways, about using INSIGHT to deconstruct to iron grip of ego-self without getting caught up in the big SELF spiritualist experience of Ramana Maharshi, Bernadette Roberts, et al.

RICHARD: The following quote may very well throw some light upon the matter:

• [Mr. Douglas Harding]: ‘Unself-conscious: The principle of this meditation is: never lose sight of your Self in any circumstances, and your problems are taken care of – including, strange to say, the problem of self-consciousness. For finding the Self is losing the self’. (‘The Results of Seeing Who You Really Are’; an article by Douglas Harding from ‘The Toolkit for Testing the Incredible Hypothesis’; www.headless.org/English/reallyr.htm).

RICHARD: The following quote may very well throw some light upon the matter:

• [Ms. Sunny Massad]: ‘And how was your relationship with your husband’s body?
• [Ms. Byron Katie]: ‘Uhhhh. [Sighs.] First time we made love it was just amaaazing. It was radical! Cuz it was God with God. And it was the receiving of it and the giving ah, it was just amazing! (‘An Interview with Byron Katie’; reprinted from ‘The Noumenon Journal: Nondual Perspectives on Transformation’; www.realization.org/page/doc1/doc107b.htm).

RICHARD: The following quotes may very well throw some light upon the matter:

• [Mr. Maximilian Sandor]: ‘He [Gotamo Siddharto] summarised his message in ‘Four Special Truths’: (...) 2. The truth about how a Being alienates itself and becomes trapped in a Universe’. (‘A Summary of Gotamo’s Principle in Today’s Language’; ©1998 by Maximilian J. Sandor, Ph.D.; http://orunla.org/pnohteftu/ch16.html).
• [Mr. Maximilian Sandor]: ‘Before a Being can withdraw from this Universe, every connection to it must be dissolved (which is tantamount to a complete integration of the Being)’. (The Buddha Paradox; ©1998 by Maximilian J. Sandor, Ph.D.; http://orunla.org/pnohteftu/ch441.html).

RICHARD: The following quote may very well throw some light upon the matter:

• [The Editors]: ‘The Beingness-by-itself, the free, un-detached beingness is a factor outside the ‘playground’ of our world – in a broader sense outside of ‘the physically measurable’. Beingness-by-itself is the creator of consciousness, and consciousness is the creator of the world. An Individual evolves out of the Beingness-by-itself and brings itself into a ‘form’ with the help of consciousness. It is then subjected to the laws of freedom and compulsion’. (‘Central Statement’, ‘The Free Zone’; www.scientologie.org/se_nsumm.htm).

RESPONDENT: P.S.: A friend of mine it’s very interested in your comments about Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. Have you something written about it, or could you send me some comments? Thank you.

RICHARD: I found the following quote on the internet:

• ‘Give up all questions except one: ‘Who am I?’ After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. The ‘I am’ is certain. The ‘I am this’ is not. Struggle to find out what you are in reality. To know what you are, you must first investigate and know what you are not. Discover all that you are not – body, feelings, thoughts, time, space, this or that – nothing, concrete or abstract, which you perceive can be you. The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive. The clearer you understand that on the level of mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker will you come to the end of your search and realize that you are the limitless being’. (www.nisargadatta.net/IamThat.html).

Amongst other things he is saying that he is not the body ... that he is the limitless being.

RESPONDENT: Do you Know Jim Leonard? He has promoted a method to enjoying all in life, he called it Vivation. It’s developed from the Rebirthing technique, but it’s completely opposite in essence. I insist you in exploring what Jim and Vivation proposes, because I think he is very near in his approach to yours. He emphasizes emotional dealing, as associated with spontaneous and mobile breathing. He promotes experiencing actually how ‘negative’ emotions can be ‘integrated’, in his terms, what means a transformation in ‘positive’ ones, for instance, anger integrates in determination, fear in alert, sorrow in gratefulness. I think you can study more carefully his writings, maybe in the web.

RICHARD: I found the following quote on the internet which speaks for itself:

• ‘Everyone needs spiritual renewal. Vivation enables you to experience your own divine spirit directly, without belief systems. Every Vivation session gives you clarity. This is because your feeling awareness is more connected to your spirit than your thinking mind is. Your spirit reliably knows what’s best for you. Vivation resolves your emotions and enables you to feel the will of your spirit’. (www.vivation.com/UsesforVivation.htm).

RESPONDENT: Another approach you could maybe explore, for its possible similitude with actualism in a practice called Katsugen-undo, that means in Japanese regenerative movement. It consists in letting the involuntary system of the body operate freely. In this practice, there is a main insistence in the primitive brain, that control involuntary reflects and movements. By the practice, all the conditioning about the more primitive responses of the body dissolves, and the body recovers innocent spontaneity, and sensitivity. In this process also breathing arises spontaneously, and emotions, that also normalises. Both Katsugen-undo and Vivation process, can and should also be applied in daily life. The main introductor of Katsugen was Ichio Tsuda.

RICHARD: I found the following quote on the internet which also speaks for itself:

• ‘There are many benefits of Katsugen, and they are not all physical. Because the body, mind and spirit are interlinked and cannot really be separated, what interacts with one influences the other. And so it is with Katsugen. Katsugen is not limited to being only a physical movement but is a philosophy of living that encompasses the totality of body, mind and soul. Therefore, the benefits will correspondingly be to the sum of the physical, mental and spiritual aspects of the human entity’. (www.katsugen.com/page4.html).

RESPONDENT: By the end, do you know about Douglas Harding? Explore also about him, he explains a path he calls the headless way. He, as you, states the inexistence of a perceptor, only the world is perceived in all its magnificence and extreme brightness. If you have the time to investigate on him, you will see by your own.

RICHARD: I found the following quote on the internet which clearly indicates, amongst other names, that it is the enlightened state he is talking about:

• ‘He wanted to find out who he really was before he died. In a sense, any other question became secondary to this one: Who am I really? Harding finally discovered what and who was at centre not by thinking but simply by looking. This moment is described in his book ‘On Having No Head’ (Arkana). Basically, he realised he could see his legs, arms, trunk, but not his head. From where he was looking, he was headless. Instead of his head there was nothing – clear space, emptiness. And in this space was the world. He had ‘lost a head and gained a world’. This experience corresponds to what in other traditions might be called Liberation, Enlightenment, seeing God, seeing the Void, being centred’. (www.headless.org/English/main.html).

RESPONDENT: It’s very possible that you have yet explored about these people, in this case, please say me what do you think about them, if it is convenient. Thanks.

RICHARD: They are all spiritual people.

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