I had been meditating for a few years before hearing about Douglas. I never understood what egolessness was until the first time I did the pointing experiment. Then suddenly, BAM, there it was. I was always like this, but I just never looked at it.
@noonenobody4206it’s very simple.. but it might be terrifying if u are not really ready to drop everything as illusion.. there is nothing mystical abt it either.. it’s actually literal but if u r truly not ready, dont try.. it can put u into existential crisis.. being completely alone and your parents and everything and everyone u know of is imagined and not real.. these things r not for faint hearted
I did Vipassana meditation for 15 years, but Headlessness showed me instantly what I had been overlooking. I read the Sam Harris book "Waking Up" which mentions Douglas Harding and Headlessness. When reading about it, I got a brief flash of it, which scared me a little. Then I heard Richard Lang being interviewed by Harris on his podcast. Richard took the listener through the steps of "Seeing," and I got a better understanding of it. Richard's marvelous book, "Seeing Who You Really Are," has taught me so much. I am very grateful to him for writing it.
Having now viewed this fully, I come away thinking this is the one video anyone ever needs to see/know/understand who they “really-really are”. Lovely ❤️
So charismatic and so compelling - after reading two of his books without ever hearing/watching him (/being the space and silence for him), this was awesome to watch. Thank you Douglas, and thank you Richard.
Thank you Richard. Been watching and enjoying the excerpt of this for years and always wondered about from the talk it came from. Just love Douglas and The Headless Way. He was truly brilliant @ cutting away the mystery of it all.
I have watched the 12-minute extract from this talk (which begins at 0:19:20 here) at least two dozen times. Thank you for posting this full version, Richard.
As a traveller who got no physical guide around even though that's seems no problem mostly sometimes when it's gets overwhelming i carve for someone who understand it and can guide me it's seems it's a biggest blessing to atleast listen and see them on screen otherwise there's literally no one around me who seems even intersted in this, these peoples really encourage love you all.
Thank you so much for this. I think, from where I am, my sense is that we are much closer to WHAT IS than WHAT IS is close to us. We are, perhaps, a tiny fragment of the Divine Mystery, but the DW is much more than us and much more than we could experience/know/comprehend. The whole of my being (or even of human being) might be within the DM but the DM might also be well beyond me and/or our being. Thanks again. 🙏
Douglas Harding quote highlights from this video: “You are the sole and final authority on what you are in your own experience as first-person, singular, present tense-where you're coming from, what you're looking out of, what is sitting in your seat at this time, who you are in your own direct, unmediated experience of what it is like having happened into the world.” “Nobody has been where you are except you … Only you are in a position to say what it's like being you at this time.” “Nearly all of us live and die convinced that the as-if world-the world of convention mediated to us by parents, teachers, and language-is the real world.” “The first motive for looking at this is curiosity. I’ll be damned if I'll live and die without ever looking to see who is doing that.” “What is the message of all the great religions? Nearer to you than your hands, nearer than your feet, nearer than your breathing is the origin of the world. Who you really, really, really are is not a product of the world-it is the origin of the world … They say that nearer to you than all else is the eternal awakeness, awareness, reality from which all flows.” “The great delusion, the great nonsense, of the as-if world is that I am here what I look like there (in the mirror).” “It's as simple as that to come home to the place we never left.” “It's a matter of life and death to get this right.” “It's been advertised to be the most inaccessible, mysterious, difficult thing to see who we really, really, really, really are-you know, all this enlightened stuff. But, if you read the real masters, they will say it's the most obvious thing in the whole damn world who you really, really are.” “We're built busted wide open for each other.” “Have you ever in your life been face-to-face with anyone? Hasn't it been face-to-space?” “The great con, the great sellout, is to say, ‘I'm not going to dare to look at what I am. I'm going to take everybody's word for it.’” “We've occurred, and we're not going to die without having a look for ourselves at what has occurred.” “The great traditions say that this incredibly blessed thing is true: who you really, really, really are is the eternal reality, the imperishable being, from whom all come and to whom all return-and that this is visibly available and absolutely obvious when we dare to look.” “We will be better members of the human club when we withdraw, secretly, our subscription.” “As the great ones down the ages have said, if we live from what is given in all obviousness, we shall find blessing heaped on blessing and we shall see that we are built open for one another.” “Any road home is a good road. Any ticket home is a valid ticket.” “What is the essence of loving but to disappear in favor of the loved one.”
I also get that brief glimpse of self-lessness when I do the exercises. But it fades almost instantly. I suspect true, permanent realization can only come from something like a near-death experience, where you are forced to abandon all of the hopes, desires, beliefs, opinions, fears, etc, of the illusory self.
"Built for loving?" I thought. "But perception can be just easily as colored by fear as love." And then, a bit later, "But who whose eye is open would choose to live from fear rather than love?"
wonderful talk. douglas is so earnest you can't help but believe him. least of all when you realize for yourself that what he says is true. and without a doubt, the pole routine is the most surefire, repeatable technique i've come across to dispel the illusion of the self, where you almost jump out of your own body and into spaceless awareness using nothing but attention itself
53:00 In all sympathy with many of Douglas Harding's views, I do not agree that "the third eye" and the siddhis involved with the opening of it can even remotely be reduced to the single eye of his experiments. I don't assume that he himself in his wry british humor even took himself seriously there, but the danger and deplorable fact about moments like these in his presentations is that many who dislike the work of developing higher consciousness jump on this and do in fact take that reduction dead serious _in order_ to feel justified in their spiritual laziness. I am not saying that realization _requires_ the specific siddhis involved with the Ājñā Cakra. In fact, Ramana Maharshi discouraged such ambitions distracting from the essential goal, a goal which would then result in spontaneous rather than selfishly intended siddhi. But that does not mean that RM would have considered these siddhi reducible in the way DH here humorously suggests. 1:07:29 This is probably one of the most impressive instances of the closed eye experiment you will find, particularly in how he connects it with the open-eyed experience at 1:19:34 - 1:19:53. 1:35:00 - 1:35:11 I realize he here just wants to humorously attract people to his more entertaining form of meditation by seeming to show solidarity with those who gave up on traditional forms of meditation because due to their lack of perseverance and talent they experienced _their attempts_ at meditation as dull or off-putting. At least I hope that DH realized while he was saying this what bloody nonsense it would be if intended as a literal truth claim. Just to cover that unlikely case, I will point out here that *meditation by definition **_cannot_** be dull* and is indeed the most sublime, exhilarating and brilliant enstatsis one can imagine, but for that to be understood through experience one naturally has to overcome the 5 hindrances at least for the duration of the meditation. The "dullness" that he or his listeners project onto meditation is precisely _not_ meditation but a bunch of _obstacles_ to it, really a mixture of those 5 hindrances, mostly a cocktail made from sloth and torpor and agitation. These consist of the effects of a mad way of life from before the exercise which now show up as themselves instead of being acted out. So if DH here had just said it this way: _"In these degenerate times that make you too neurotic to develop real meditation, try my approach to meditation, emphasizing _*_analysis and insight_*_ in all life situations and at first disregarding _*_placement meditation_*_ because it keeps your spiritually degenerate and neurotic mind interested with these gimmicks. After seeing the point of the exercises you will still have to stabilize and purify your mind, but having been infected by this way of seeing your interest wil then be sufficient motivation to keep going until you really develop samādhi and thereby enormeously speed up final liberation."_ ... I'd be all for it. But if _you_ took his words at that timestamp literally, rest assured that this would be one of the most idiotic, false and indeed diabolically distorted views you have ever heard. In my own case, it is not a question of either/or or sequentially, for me the headless way is an add on in ordinary life situations _(try it while swimming, it's awesome !)_ on top of my main spiritual practices. Whatever you do, you will not reach the end of suffering with sporadic moments of seeing. The neurotic functioning of a mind conditioned by false views has to be extinguished for this to happen, and samadhi, as powerful as it is, is a preview version "light" of such extinguishing that prepares you for "the real thing". If someone suggests you could get around going all the way with it and have that be sufficient for liberation, he doesn't know what he is talking about. Hearing these things, I am really not quite sure whether DH was maybe just half-baked or was simply desperate to sound inviting and to not scare people off. After all, he did constantly emphasize the need for total dedication to his form of meditation, a dedication that his fans who administer his legacy have, of course, dropped from the menue as fast as possible.
