I rediscover Douglas Harding's "headless" rediscovery of the obvious

Douglas Harding's classic book, On Having No Head, has the subtitle of Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious.

Well, as I said in a 2018 post, "'On Having No Head' has a few simple truths," I'd bought the book quite a few years prior, given it away because I wasn't overly impressed with it back then, then bought a revised edition after I heard Sam Harris talk about it on his Waking Up app.

The past few days I've been re-re-reading the book that I re-bought and re-read six years ago. That's a lot of "re's" for a book that is about the rediscovery of the obvious. Guess I've got a problem with obviousness.

Which isn't entirely true, since I liked the book in 2018 and I'm liking it even more now, assuming I can tell the difference between those likings. 

If you're not familiar with Harding's headlessness, here's an excerpt from my 2018 post about his book:

Here's the short version of what Harding experienced on a walk in the Himalayas, after he realized that he wasn't seeing his head (excerpt for a part of his nose).

It took me no time at all to notice that this nothing, this hole where a head should have been was no ordinary vacancy, no mere nothing. On the contrary, it was very much occupied. It was a vast emptiness vastly filled, a nothing that found room for everything - room for grass, trees, shadowy distant hills, and far above them snowpeaks like a row of angular clouds riding the blue sky. I had lost a head and gained a world.

It was all, quite literally, breathtaking. I seemed to stop breathing altogether, absorbed in the Given. Here it as, this superb scene, brightly shining in the clear air, alone and unsupported, mysteriously suspended in the void, and (and this was the real miracle, the wonder and delight) utterly free of "me," unstained by any observer. It's total presence was my total absence, body and soul. Lighter than air, clearer than glass, altogether released from myself, I was nowhere around.

Yet in spite of the magical and uncanny quality of this vision, it was no dream, no esoteric revelation. Quite the reverse: it felt like a sudden waking from the sleep of ordinary life, an end to dreaming. It was self-luminous reality for once swept clean of all obscuring mind. It was the revelation, at long last, of the perfectly obvious.

My post of a few days ago was about looking without, not within, being the best spiritual advice. I mentioned Harding in that post, which spurred me to take another look at his book, since I really like the idea of having the world be my head as much as possible.

Of course, this is always the case, which is why Harding says his insight, and Zen, is so obvious. There's no world for us, or for anyone else, without consciousness. That's a given. It's how our consciousness and the world relate that is the interesting question.

Harding seems to have it right when he says that our adult consciousness looks outward at the world, but falls short when it looks inward in a falsely self-conscious manner, "aiming your arrows of attention at that insubstantial some-body, at that human appearance of yours which daily became more substantial for you, and soon was your identity card, our identity itself."

By contrast, as the seer with a more refined understanding, "you are again truly Self-conscious: but this time you penetrate that ring of appearances more deliberately and consistently, and begin to rest in What they are appearances of, in your Reality, which is your true Identity, your Presence-Absence, your Core and Source."

More and more often your arrows of attention, simultaneously aimed inwards and outwards, hit their mark. You are becoming adept at two-way looking -- at once looking in at No-thing and out at every-thing.

Of course, given how complex the human brain is, about a hundred billion neurons with trillions of connections, that "No-thing" is anything but, since our mind is the result of intense neurological activity, most of which is outside of our conscious awareness.

So it's more accurate to say that looking inwards, we find nothing substantial, unchanging, and independent. In the 2018 post I said that Harding's "insight also can be framed as a realization that there is no self residing within our psyche, and there is no free will belonging to that nonexistent self."

I like how Harding describes some of the changes in our everyday lives from his headless realization in a single lengthy sentence.

Typically, these will include an enlivening of the senses (raising the screen which muffles the plangency of sounds, dims the glow of colours, blurs forms, and filters out the loveliness shining in the "ugliest" places) and (to go with the sensory awakening) a complex of interrelated psychophysical changes -- including a sustained "whole-body" alertness in place of the "heady" intermittent source (as if one were poised through-and-through to run the race of one's life), a reduction of stress, particularly in the regions of the eyes and mouth and neck (as if one were at last letting them go), a progressive lowering of one's center of gravity (as if losing one's head were finding one's heart, and guts, and feet, which are now rooted in the Earth), a striking downward shift of one's breathing (as if it were a belly-function), and in fact a general come-down (as if all the good things one had vainly strained after in the heights were awaiting one in the depths).

Comments

[Ron E.]

Harding: - “Typically, these will include an enlivening of the senses (raising the screen which muffles the plangency of sounds, dims the glow of colours, blurs forms, and filters out the loveliness shining in the "ugliest" places) and (to go with the sensory awakening)”

I do seem to be favouring the sensory aspect of ‘living in the now’. I do believe/think we have fallen into a habit of living in our heads whether through the habit of extraneous thinking along with the contents streamed at us through the various forms of media. All effectively obscuring what is occurring in the present moment or what is – to use common cliches.

I appreciate this common Zen story pointing to the now or present moment: - A pupil asked “How do I enter Zen?’ “Do you hear the sound of that mountain steam?’ replied the master. ‘Yes”, said the pupil. “Then enter Zen from there.” The pupil said “What if I couldn’t hear the mountain stream? What would you have said then?’ “Enter Zen from there,” replied the master.

[Tej]

The Guillotine Meditation / Headless to heart meditation.
ONE of the most beautiful tantra meditations: walk and think that the head is no more there, just the body.
Sit and think that the head is no more there, just the body.
Continuously remember that the head is not there.
Visualize yourself without the head. Have a picture of yourself enlarged without the head; look at it. Let your mirror be lowered in the bathroom so when you see, you cannot see your head, just the body.
A few days of remembrance and you will feel such weightlessness happening to you, such tremendous silence, because it is the head that is the problem. If you can conceive of yourself as headless – and that can be conceived, there is no trouble in it – then more and more you will be centered in the heart.
Just this very moment you can visualize yourself headless. Then you will understand what I am saying immediately.
By Osho