Douglas E. Harding

'Reason and imagination and all mental chatter died down... I forgot my name, my humanness, my thingness, all that could be called me or mine. Past and future dropped away... Lighter than air, clearer than glass, altogether released from myself, I was nowhere around.' Thus Douglas Harding describes his first experience of headlessness, or no self. First published in 1961, this is a classic work which conveys the experience that mystics of all times have tried to put words to.

'Reason and imagination and all mental chatter died down... I forgot my name, my humanness, my thingness, all that could be called me or mine. Past and future dropped away... Lighter than air, clearer than glass, altogether released from myself, I was nowhere around.' Thus Douglas Harding describes his first experience of headlessness, or no self. First published in 1961, this is a classic work which conveys the experience that mystics of all times have tried to put words to.

This book begins with the question ‘Who am I?’ and immediately sets off in an astonishingly original direction. Why didn’t anyone before Harding think of responding to this question like this? It’s so obvious, once you see it.Harding presents a new vision of our place in the universe that uses the scientific method of looking to see what is true. It turns out that the truth about ourselves is not only true but also very good, and breathtakingly beautiful. We live in a sacred, many-layered, living universe – or rather it lives in us.Though it was completed in 1952, this book is still ahead of its time. One day it will surely be widely recognised for its greatness: its all-encompassing vision, its originality and freshness, its depth of insight, its wide-ranging knowledge, the clarity and poetry of its language, its humanity. It is a world-view not dependent on local culture or religion, but on universally verifiable facts. It is also a world-view that respects our manifest differences whilst celebrating our underlying unity – the unity not just of oneself with other individuals but with all of life, indeed with the whole universe.Harding died in 2007 aged 97, leaving behind him an impressive body of work. He was a highly creative person who was passionate about – he was in love with – this living universe and the immortal treasure that abides at its centre – at our centre.“A work of the highest genius.” C. S. Lewis.

This book is an outstanding collection of essays by Douglas Harding, author of the contemporary spiritual classic "On Having No Head."In "Look for Yourself," the esteemed mystic/philosopher helps us to discover what is so obvious about our true nature, yet so easily overlooked. The book is, in effect, a heartfelt challenge to the reader to awaken to the true identity that is (as Harding makes evident) more wonderful than any of us can imagine, and easier to perceive than anything in the world.These writings convey exactly how and where to look in order to find this treasure of sanity and well-being. What's more, they verify the immense personal and universal implications of awakening to our infinite nature.

An infallible guide to eliminating stress by Douglas Harding, author of On Having No Head. When we come up against stressful situations in our everyday life our automatic reaction is to turn away and escape. If, on the other hand, we can accept stress, allow it to become part of us, the conflict disappears. The secret lies in seeing that either we are the No-thing that overcomes stress by excluding it or the Every-thing that overcomes stress by including it. This method of coping with stress applies to its many manifestations in our lives. It can turn boredom into joy and despondency into deep contentment. Learning to head off stress takes no time at all and is impossible to forget. All it requires is tht we dare to take a fresh look at ourselves. Revolutionary in its ease and directness, its simplicity and penetration, this approach is guaranteed to turn our preconceptions upside down.

Face to No-Face is the latest published work of Douglas Harding, and offers an approach to realizing the limitless "No-Face" that is completely unique and highly practical. This is his first book based on dialogues and conversations, and it truly captures the spirit of this remarkable man in a manner both humorous and personal. Harding's writings have been acclaimed by Huston Smith, C. S. Lewis, and Ram Dass for their great originality and simplicity of approach.In this distinctive series of dialogues, Harding discusses the fundamental issue of life: how to awaken to the natural freedom that is our true self. Through a series of "exercises," he guides us to where we can clearly perceive our original nature. From this vantage point, we see that who we really are is not limited to our face and the self behind the face, but is instead the limitless "No-Face," the infinite and eternal essence that is both absolutely free and at the same time identified with all existence.The rediscovery of "oneself" by oneself is the principal theme, and Harding articulates "the way home" in a manner that is always refreshingly authentic.

This book is about the heart of religious experience, namely Enlightenment (which is finding the truth concerning oneself), and about science (which is finding the truth concerning other things), and about the relationship between them. It claims that Enlightenment is more truly scientific than science itself; and that, without Enlightenment, science is only half the story and therefore full of contradictions, of insoluble problems both theoretical and practical. It shows how, when at last one turns one's attention round and ceases to overlook the Looker--the 1st Person at the near end of one's microscope or telescope or spectacles--these contradictions are resolved. Some 37 examples are given, taken from such diverse fields as physics, mathematics, semantics, epistemology, and psychotherapy, to show how nothing less than Enlightenment makes sense and works out. The Reader will find that Enlightenment is not, after all, an unattainable mystery, but perfectly natural and instantly accessible to anyone who carries out the simple test--the basic experiment of the Science of the 1st Person-- which this book describes. Of Harding's numerous works, the most comprehensive is The Hierarchy of Heaven and A New Diagram of Man in the Universe , the best-known is On Having No The Rediscovery of the Obvious , and the most thorough and rigorous is The Science of the 1st Its Principles, Practice and Potential.

Here we come to the very heart of Mahayana Buddhism and of Zen-the doctrine of prajna, particularly as it appears in Hui-Neng and his followers. The Void which is the topic of this book, this Emptiness or Nothing which stands so magnificently alone, is certainly no mere Void, no common Emptiness, no negligible for it is conscious of itself as Void and Empty and Nothing. (This very statement is sufficient evidence of the fact!) It is not only the Self-producing source and destroyer of all the world's richness, a fountain gushing infinite energies, and moreover the knower of Itself in these capacities; It is also the knower of Itself as at once absolutely knowable and unknowable, and neither of these-as absolutely free of all such complications.

This is a revised and extended version of the original book, first published in 1966. Douglas Harding revised it in the 1980s. With his direct insight into the Heart of the world's major religions Harding shares his deep understanding of the unique contribution of each religion within the family of religions. Harding also shows how science supports the central insight of religion.

Book by Harding, D.E.

In the form of a trial for blasphemy, Harding's alter ego faces and combats a prosecutor and a series of more or less hostile witnesses. The result is a book that presents the author's core philosophy and practice of "headlessness", expanding it into areas of religiousness and mysticism.

Open to the Source is a comprehensive collection of the writings that best convey Douglas Harding's message and method. Presented against a series of unique photographs, this wide-ranging compilation provides the reader with clear access to the state of being that Harding equates with the Self of Vedanta and the no-self of Buddhism. The implication of this simple and wonderful truth is that, when seen from the correct perspective, we are not what we ordinarily appear to be. Clearly, our appearance is limited. But is our reality? We have the freedom to realize our unlimited nature right now; it is up to us to look.

The Face Game is the game of pretending to be a person. When we see Who we really are we stop playing the Face Game and begin living a game-free life, the fruits of which are love, joy and peace. This game-free life is also known as Liberation, Enlightenment, Salvation. Douglas Harding wrote The Face Game in 1968 when he was 59. Up to this moment he had spent much of his adult life thinking deeply about his identity. Before he saw his faceless True Self in India in 1943, he had spent a dozen years thinking and reading and enquiring into the nature of what it is to be human. If anything, this enquiry intensified after he saw Who he really was, so by the time he wrote The Face Game he had spent more than 35 years deeply involved in self-enquiry. The Face Game, therefore, is the expression of a mature spirit, of someone who had for many years been profoundly committed to living consciously from the Truth. Reading this book, that maturity and depth shines out from every page. So does his skill as a writer. (from the Preface)

This book has three essential components. 1. A lot of words, plus the points they make. 2. Pictures and diagrams of mine to help make sense of those points. 3. Half a dozen experiments or tests or exercises designed to reveal what you can see you are, in sharp distinction from what you think you are and are told you are. These experiments are the backbone of the whole. I can't stress too strongly that they are for doing, and just reading about them is worse than useless. Yes, much worse! (Douglas Harding)

This book was completed by Douglas Harding in 1941, so it shows his thinking about a year before he saw he was headless. Challenging the conventional view of who you are, Harding demonstrates how everything is within you, that you do not stop at the boundary of your skin but encompass the whole universe. An inspiring book, clearly written, with many illustrations.

Here are Douglas Harding’s poems: engaging, passionate, quirky and original. They are selected from those he wrote in his last months, a late flowering of his remarkable creativity.All his life Douglas had imbibed poetry, from the King James Bible to Hopkins, Yeats and Frost. Lines committed to memory were quoted enthusiastically and incisively in conversation.Poems touched him deeply and he owned them. Finally, in those last months, he fell upon a form - free, unpunctuated, pithy - into which he could pour his essential heartfelt concerns in a fresh and playful way. He loved the process: mulling over an idea (“marinating” was his word) and finding the exact expression. And then, with a captivating intensity, he would share his work with visiting friends. Happily, now that this selection is available, the circle of those appreciating Douglas’ poetry will widen.Colin Oliver

The Hidden Gospel presents an exciting new interpretation of the teachings of Jesus. In this workshop manual Douglas Harding invites you to do his breakthrough experiments and experience, directly, the Reality that Jesus was talking about.Harding had a deep feeling for Jesus. Born in 1909, Harding was brought up in a fundamentalist Christian sect, the Exclusive Plymouth Brethren, whose members put Jesus at the centre of their lives. Though he left the Brethren when he was 21, rejecting their narrow dogmatism and intolerance, Harding knew the Gospels like the back of his hand, and retained a profound love and respect for Jesus. He admired him for so courageously living and speaking the truth, even in the face of the truth that we are both human and divine.In the early 1940s, after years of enquiry, Harding suddenly saw who he really was in a modern scientific way – he saw that, though he appeared human at six feet, at zero distance he was nothing at all. Nothing full of everything. Then in the late ‘60s Harding invented his experiments – awareness exercises which physically point at what we are at zero distance, the boundless, timeless Reality behind all our appearances. They make the experience of our central Reality – the Ground of Being - available to anyone willing to look. They are a scientific response to the spiritual question, ‘Who am I?’It was natural that at some point Harding would combine the ancient teachings of Jesus, so influential in his life and in Western civilization, with his experiments – with modern science - for science had led him to the Reality that Jesus lived and died for. In ‘The Hidden Gospel’ Harding showed how the teachings of Jesus made sense in scientific terms – including some teachings that sound plainly untrue, or at best metaphorical. When Jesus spoke about having a single eye and of his body being full of light, what did he mean? Anyone looking at him would have seen he had two eyes and his body was not made of light. But carry out Harding’s ‘single eye’ experiment and within a few moments all is clarified, not through debate but by seeing – seeing that your eye is single, that your body is made of light. Now the words of Jesus make sense.Although ‘The Hidden Gospel’ introduces a modern interpretation of Jesus, giving him a new voice in today’s world, hopefully it will reach people beyond the Christian world – and therefore play a part in resolving some of the religious conflict in our world. As well as demonstrating where the findings of science and the goal of Christianity meet – in our central Reality, in the indivisible Ground of Being – in principle it demonstrates where science and all religions meet. The experiments make it possible for anyone to see and consciously be in the Centre, in the place from which we can view our religious differences – or any other differences - but not be caught up in them. Given the conflict flowing from the clashes between religions, a growing awareness of the unity that exists beneath our differences is an urgent priority.The Hidden Gospel, completed in 1974 but published now for the first time, is for anyone, from whatever tradition, who wishes to find out what Jesus really meant, not by debating his teachings but by experiencing for themselves the boundless core of their own being, and then seeing how clearly and beautifully Jesus described this experience, this Reality. This book does not appeal to Jesus as a religious authority who tells you what to believe but as a fellow traveller who found ‘the pearl of great price’ and, with great courage, did his best to share it with others.Richard Lang

After Faber & Faber published his great book, The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth, in 1952, Douglas Harding returned to practising architecture. However, though Harding was now designing buildings again, he didn't give up writing - he didn't stop trying to share with the world his message about who we really are. In 1955 he finished Visible Gods, a deeply inspiring book that contains many ideas from The Hierarchy, but in an easier-to-read form. Harding did not succeed in publishing Visible Gods, so it is with delight that we do so now.Visible Gods takes the form of an imaginary dialogue between Socrates and four fictitious modern-day characters. Socrates' world-view is of a living cosmos with man only half-way up the tree of life; above him reign supra human beings of great majesty and power - the visible gods. The moderns with whom Socrates converses disdain his ancient Greek cosmos as primitive and false. Yet as Socrates questions them in typically ironic fashion about the discoveries of science, it's not at all clear that the scientists' view of "a dead universe populated here and there with rare accidents of life" is right. Indeed, the more the moderns argue their case, the more Socrates shows they are arguing his...

This book demands the whole of the reader’s courage and sincerity. It insists that he shall start all over again, dropping all ideas about what he's supposed to be, and taking a fresh look at himself to see what he actually is. If he will only dare to do this he is promised an astounding discovery and an immense reward. The discovery isn't merely that he's not what he thought he was, but its opposite in all respects. And the reward isn't merely happiness, but indestructible joy.

Douglas Harding is best known for his book On Having No Head, and for the development of his 'headless way experiments' – awareness exercises that enable anyone to see Who they really are–the boundless Single Eye that we are all looking out of and that includes everything... As well as writing many books, Harding also wrote many articles. The collection of articles in As I See It, arranged in chronological order, span the period of Harding’s life (1909–2007) from the early 1940s to the late 1990s. As I See It is not a collection of all of Harding’s articles but of those not in print elsewhere. As you’ll see from the articles in this collection, his focus changed over the years. In the ‘50s he was still drenched in the ideas he had presented in The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth, so in early articles he’s primarily focused on the many-levelled living universe, including the existence of ‘angels’—hopefully that piques your interest! Then in the ‘60s come articles where he is simplifying his approach and language, focusing more directly on the experience of Seeing—though awareness of the sacred, many-levelled living universe is never far from the surface. Harding was also now sharing Seeing with a growing number of people—a loose-knit circle of Seeing friends was emerging. (The article Spontaneous Awakening describes the first time Harding really shared Seeing.) After a ‘winter’ of more than twenty years alone with Who he really was, sharing Seeing with others and receiving such encouraging feedback came like a surge of exhilarating spring energy in Harding’s life. In the ‘70s, increasingly being asked to give workshops, Harding found himself developing his experiments—the ‘skilful means’ that make sharing Seeing so quick and easy. Harding also explored the implications of Seeing in a variety of in the field of psychology—as a remedy for alienation, depression, fear and anxiety; in the field of politics—as a remedy for the conflict between nations, power blocs, races... And Harding’s profound respect for and love of Christ—he was raised in the fundamentalist Plymouth Brethren—is obvious in Harding’s List.Read these articles in chronological order or jump about randomly... My hope is that each will guide you along a unique path to the Home you never left, the clear frameless Window you are looking out of now—this wider-than-wide single Eye; this boundless, infinitely charming, incomparable No-face; this so so still and peaceful Hub of the always-busy world... (From the Preface, written by the editor, Richard Lang.)

Douglas Harding (1909-2007) war ein britischer Philosoph und Mystiker. Er entdeckte einen modernen, experimentellen Weg zur Beantwortung der Frage „Wer bin ich?“. Sein „Kopfloser Weg“ nutzt die Beobachtungsmethode der Wissenschaft, um zur eigenen zentralen Identität zu finden.

This is a dramatic story, a wild dream, at times a nightmare, at times a hilarious and subversive satire. It involves a quest, a monster and a shape-shifting hero, strange characters and dangerous goings-on, and an end that is a beginning––the tightest corner of Hell opening out into the widest smile of Heaven, the darkest of nights turning into the early morning freshness of the world. Are you prepared to wrestle with the angel till dawn? Only those that go the whole way will find the Whole.

This book, by the author of the well-known spiritual classic On Having No Head, is a kind of Pilgrim's Progress for the Third Millennium. It is also a condensation, in the form of a romantic adventure story, of Harding's major work, The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth. Concerning which, C.S.Lewis wrote to the "Hang it all, you've made me drunk, roaring drunk... My sensation is that you have written a book of the highest genius. Thanks to the nth!"

take a step out of the 'box of normalcy' provided by the 'standardism of humanity and everyday life', and delve into this collection of creative, imaginitive poetry and prose written by high schooler, douglas harding. in this novel, the self- proclaimed balloonman dives deep into a variety of topics including high school, love, youth, self loathing, drug use, and even misanthropy. harding's unique, almost iconoclastic writing style is beautifully accompanied by the occasional artwork by, also high schooler, garrett dodson. balloonman will leave you asking yourself questions that you have never even thought of before.

Two friends, one a specialist in archaeology, the other an artist, were spending a day or two in the interesting old town of Bingly, the one in investigation of the old church, the other in sketching it. A telegram announcing the death of James Briggs, the artist’s brother, put an end to the holiday and sent Joshua Briggs post-haste to his sister-in-law’s house. But was it accidental death? Or suicide? Or was there not some foul play somewhere? Joshua sent for his friend. Ray started an investigation of a different kind from unearthing the secrets of old buildings. Patiently he collected information and evidence, collated and arranged it until he had made out a case and “proved” each possible suspect guilty. Yet when he finally revealed the criminal’s scheme he could not but admire its cleverness.

Uno de los libros más claros y brillantes sobre el tema de la iluminación. El clásico de Harding describe su experiencia de descabezamiento, una forma de despertar y tener mayor conciencia de uno mismo y del mundo. Con exquisita lucidez, Harding no se limita al contexto del Zen, sino que traza paralelos con otras tradiciones no budistas.

These two autobiographical essays by Douglas Harding were written thirty years apart. The first one Harding wrote in the 1960s when he was in his early fifties and had just written On Having No Head, the second when he was eighty. They are instructive, insightful and entertaining.

Il Processo All'Uomo Che Diceva Di Essere Dio

If these tales had been written by an unknown author, then they would simply be entertaining reflections on a childhood and youth lived in the early 20th century. But they gain in interest and significance because of who wrote them, for they provide an insight into the life and mind of a youngster who later became a very great philosopher and spiritual teacher. These stories open a window on Douglas Harding's early life - their autobiographical nature is only thinly disguised. After reading them, you will know and understand Douglas Harding in a new and more intimate way.