Thank you Allan for your compilations on both Rupert spira talks and the headless way. For all the seekers who've stumbled upon the headless way ,I'd like to mention this : There was an English woman who often went to Nisargadatta Maharaj's satsangs. As she was leaving India to go back to England she asked Maharaj who should she visit back home. Maharaj said, Go visit Douglas Harding!!
Thank you so much. I stumbled upon headlesness a while ago and found it very liberating and easier to experience than all other non dualistic methods. I hope it brings peace and happiness to many people. Thank you.
I went through a horrible period of dissociation over the past few months, fueled by conceptualizing existence from every perspective but my own. Though it took a lot of time and reframing to get my head back on straight (or my no-head haha), Richard was a big help along the way and gave me my first sustained glimpse into nondual perception 💙🌀💙
Such a beautiful compilation Alan. Thank you. I find the 'headless man' so enabling of realising the space of 'no thoughts' and non duality. I was thrilled to hear him bring in the 'one and the many'. It is so integral to the space of 'headless man' for me. The one blurs into the many and vice versa. It is not the one or the many.
Hi Alan, thank you very much for introducing us to Richard, great video and experiment. Actually, if I didn't know any better I would have thought it was Roger Penrose speaking :)
It's nice seeing the comments echoing my experience with this. Also some cognitive dissonance having it confirmed by Sam Harris, him being the hyper-analytical, intellectual type I would normally expect to be deriding it. One of the determinants of whether the headless way will resonate is one's willingness to push past the egoic fear of looking foolish :)
Yes! It's the most important thing. I spent years believing that knowledge would take me home. As soon as I was shown how to look in direct experience, my spiritual life took off. 💕
Alan, it is indeed! I like when he made mention of exercise of pointing the finger outward and then turning it around to pointing onwards. The outward search ends immediately!
How wonderful, Alan! Thank you! What a beautiful, powerful, joyous exploration! I have loved and shared with delight your Rupert compilations over the years, and many have commented how valuable and precious they have become to them... just this week I received an email from a friend I met at a Rupert retreat, thanking me especially for sharing your lovely videos with her. Rupert also expressed his appreciation for your work. He remembered meeting you once, and said you were very sweet. ❤︎
So cool! Cuts right to the chase. Isn't it funny, after years of study and search for all sorts of solutions, here it's always been in plain sight. Glorious.
The 7:35 question has to do with logic. And if one follows that logic then the conclusion must be - whenever i percieve my own face, my own body, that experience arised out of darkness and silence. So just like everything else if i can experience it and see it, it can not be me. Everything that i experience happens out of that darkness and silence of awareness. How can the absense of experience be percieved without creating that experience? That's why it is said, it's impossible to look at your own face. Consciousness is not experience. It must use experience to know itself and be what it's made to do. Therefore. all exprriences prove that it is, that i am, that there is existance, there is life. That is the logic behind - i am aware that i have a face even if i never get to see it. It's actually quite a profound thought Thank you for doing this video ❤ i've learned a lot
Logic IS not a route to the SELF. Neither is an engrossing Neo-advantaged talk by Rupert Spira at one of his 2 grand retreats in the English countryside, useful as these are as a “preamble” to the real spiritual work that must also contain a firm base of ethical commitment if the path is to succeed. The headless way is no different, a useful prelude.Its doubtful that Sam Harris can ever become an enlightened person since he thinks he can bypass these necessary commitments, charted out by mainstream religious practices.
Headless way is no different. Our attention goes outward because we are unwilling to give up our desires, the ego is the problem. So the traditional practices of yes mainstream religions which stress strong ethical practices go hand in hand with “practice”: such as we see here. It’s very doubtful that neo-advaita therefore on its own as exemplified here can lead to the SELF, and it’s die hard materialists like Harris who seem to think that through a few awareness tricks this can be accomplished but it cannot
Harris' example of self-consciousness when one realizes someone is looking back at them directly in a cafe only scratches the surface of consequences of having a face. A more telling example might be the way one is treated based on skin color. This impacts deeply on such basics as physical security (against violence or oppression), employment prospects, and life-chances generally. To say that none of this is "really you" is a denial of the actual 1st person experience of your life and the world that you see and engage in without awareness of having a head. The world is socially and politically mediated, and being seen *as* X or Y-- friend or foe, slave or freeman, black or white, can't but change what you pay attention to and in what ways ( defensive, monitoring for safety, etc.) The whole experience of life depends not only on what we can and can't see, but what others can and can't see. We see their actions and reactions directed at ourselves, and this makes impression management skills, as sociologists call them, quite necessary just for survival.
We're not denying the apparent individual we are finding out the difference in our behaviour when we simultaneously see what we really are along with the apparent individual 🙏
@@alanneachell9092 Thanks for responding. I am not denying the *experience* of spacious awareness, of sky-like consciousness which goes by many names in different mystical traditions. I have had, at least, glimmers of such experience and take them to be important aspects of human existence. It is the metaphysical privileging of these states as the only "really real" ones, and the corresponding trivialization of the everyday social experience of ourselves as objects of others' attention and expectations that I feel compelled to question. I may be many things-- a husband, father, prisoner, king, slave, man, woman, hungry refugee, comfortable bourgeois, etc. At other times, in mystical states, I may experience myself as the "is-ness" of awareness itself, unfettered by those other social, psychological and historical realities I listed. This liberated state is a profoundly healing one in my view. But it is not self-evidently "more real" than what you call "appearance" or the *merely apparent individual* experience of being a socially situated self in the world. That view is a metaphysical position *about* the direct experience. What some Buddhists and yogis call the "conventional self" or namarupa (name and form) may be just as integral to the human life experience overall as the direct experience of being a world within a world-- a space wherein all of which we are aware transpires. Why? Because the "conventional self" is rooted in nature, evolution and the resulting human groups that give us crucial underpinnings of consciousness such as language, meaning, cooperation as well as conflict, stable societies as well as social crises. These seem far too basic and profound to dismiss as "illusory" or even "less real" (whatever that means) than the phenomenology of the mystic or the spontaneous awareness of an infant before socialization. These latter states are unsustainable without the existence and background of the "conventional world" with its socially shared systems of meaning, norms, roles etc. It is these that enable hunting-gathering, acquisition of language, the possibility of mating and procreating, of protecting oneself and fellows from danger,etc. The healing state of oneness, unsupported by a life of socialization and mastery of symbols and meaningful roles (not make-believe roles, but actual and deep ones like being a parent or a daughter or son, as Confucius points out) is unthinkable. We must (just to survive) begin with and remain within a natural, social world which has evolved to enable, protect and perpetuate human life over generations. That world is not "less real" than the undivided world of awareness itself from the 1st person perspective. They are, I think, better viewed as different, but potentially complementary, ways of being, living and experiencing. Sorry for the length of this, but these things are not very easily communicated. I hope it makes sense, even if you disagree.
@@silverskid yes, I agree that the appearance is wonderfully profound in its coherence, continuity and creativity. The world in my experience is definitely real but not in the way that fits with the present concensus model. Thanks for commenting 🙏
@@silverskid both and …… both and…… emptiness IS form and form IS emptiness……. when this is “seen” , behaviors tend to change……. more love tends to be present and propel more loving action. this has been my experience ❤️
So to make this more simple having no head means quit thinking . I remember Eckhart Tolle talking about it when he had his awakening. Suddenly he wake up and his mind was free of chattering. That free you from mind identification and body identification. I found Eckhart explanation easier to grasp than Sam ‘s .
Quitting thinking is not necessary. Forget headless if it doesn't work for you. If you want to chat more, you can find me on Facebook and send a message
Excellent interview! Sam is so cute, so serious. An awesome philosopher for sure, but way too stiff and defensive (reminds me of he same issue with Randian objectivists). He needs to smile and lighten up a bit. The Headless Way is. A good practice for him. Embracing warmth and our humanity is as essential as didactic techniques.
Here's a link to a short video by Rupert that points at exactly the thing Douglas Harding shows us through his headless experiments. ruclips.net/video/MnEL3W6u34k/видео.html
Thank you Alan. I think mixing things up is the right thing to do. It gives greater insight and focus. Any chance of getting Chuck Hillig to do an interview ? I am in awe of Chuck. Remaining of course a Rupert Spira Devotee. Peace and Love
No not at all. I know Tony. All they are saying is all there is, is this. Rupert says all there is, is knowing, knowing knowing. Rupert is however willing to make consessions which Tony and Jim wouldn't. 🙏❣️
I started the waking up meditation. Why is it a big deal be headless or not seeing our head ? The reason we don’t see our head is because the eyes are on our head, if they were located in another place ( the forearm) I can raise my arm and see my face. Nobody knows what consciousness is or where is located . Does it matter to know ? Consciousness is not tangible, you can’t locate it or see it . Why are these people obsessed with it ? It’s ok not to know .
The reason we are introduced to consciousness is because it brings a balanced view. If we are heavily leanning to appearance only, then the appearance takes on an importance which leads to suffering and excessive control. The headless way is only one of many ways for the introduction to consciousness to take place. It worked for me 🙂
@@Hissage the headless way has a whole set of experiments for the blind. The important thing is to find what works for you. Having a balanced view between consciousness and appearance is vital.
(continued from previous) Then one must go ahead and live as if that were in fact the case but very few if any do this, perchance happened to notice that that face in the mirror and suddenly become obese or pimply or homely, we headless viewers that we are with all the resulting shock within our hearts to realize that that effigy of ourselves has come to such a pitiable state in our purported absence... Let us, then, above All things, ourselves and our felt responses, and not pretend that these anomalies have occurred within anybody else's being but our own. In other words, if we must persist in saying that we are not our faces, we must at least have the honesty and compassion to completely and fully owned them as ours, intimately and completely hours and no one else's, not even the headless woman over there who is saying that our face is really his or hers.
Afterthought... Of course, let's not play games in the ostensible pursuit of reality... If, as Richard reports, we do infact see the face in that mirror that's other than ourselves, then of course we must proceed to go ahead and
The 'showing: is the easy part... Because of course nobody can see his or her own face in ones subjective space, or else one couldn't see anything at all, being blocked by that very face. That's easy.... But, as always, the truth does not lie in the facts, even the fact that we cannot see our own faces. The truth lies beyond the fact, and it's most readily and reliably demonstrated in the living out or not living out, the expression or the lack of expression, of that supposed insight. Does the person behave as if he or she he's still lurking there, even behind the no face that they say they see? Many do, despite their protestations that there is no one at home. In fact, Douglas Harding himself was one of the most 'personred-up' individuals in my experience, speaking as one who had known him quite well Indeed, it was inevitable that he would have had an extraordinary li pronounced sense of self
(continued from previous) ... Because, he was on inspection night and day, having grown up admits the most extreme of Christian colts, the Plymouth brethren, with at least infraction would have been an egregious sin against the divine. This extremity of self-consciousness, amazingly to some, did not depart from him even long after his supposed Awakening. Rather, he continued, inevitably, as it does in us all, because it is a result not merely a personal anomalies, but rather of evolutionary existential which we will not go into here.. however, even so, that I consciousness was far more painfully pronounced in him than in many others do to his, one might say, almost overdeveloped insulate, on top of which one must inevitably take into account the almost dysfunctional propriety and decorum and behavioral code of the English mindset, almost suffocating in its constriction. A social dysfunction which persists even to this day. But Douglas was at least grateful to find some exit from this hyper self, the kind of meditative portal through which he could repeatedly to find himself somehow beyond Still, honesty demands that I share that I have met any number of far more naturally and spontaneously free human beings than he... True, none with his encyclopedic database, or his Shakespearean predilection for drama and rhetoric , but still, refreshingly simple and guileless folk. Unfortunately, Sam Harris does not energetically events the true expansiveness of a human being who actually gets the message and is able to release his intellectual prison, or else release himself from it. Rather, he seems afflicted with a Woody Allenrsque intellectuality which has him and which refuses to release him until death do they part. Alas, his intellectual acumen is pitifully insufficient to succeed and truly rebirthing him into a natural and warm-hearted embrace of life and people. He is always on the hunt, always in the end analytical mode, always looking for the unspoken secret, the unseen key that will bring him to his wrongly imagined revelation he does not realize that his salvation lies and going back, not forward. Before the mind, rather than Intuit. Listening to him vainly attempting to penetrate the profundities of Awakening he's a troubling experience, knowing that he is steadfastly taking himself in the direction of further mayhem and cognitive congestion... One might almost have to conclude that he is a misbegotten son of the tribe of Judah, doomed to wander into the desert of his own mind until crack of Doom.
The body is in you. See that you know your thoughts, so you can't be your thoughts. It's the same with your body. Go slowly and just look at your direct experience without memory or concepts. Feel free to ask anything as you investigate the above.
Two points about this. 1) It isn't 100% clear from the video that these "headless" techniques can produce startling new states of consciousness. The pointing exercise, for example, can seem quite uninteresting, but it can trigger an uncanny state of consciousness. 2) The claim that this is "our true nature" is dodgy. Nevertheless, it is common for people to have an altered state of consciousness and conclude that it is the ultimate state of consciousness. I challenged Richard Lang on this, but he never changed his tune. Same with many others.
There is no altered state of consciousness. Our present experience has only been wrongly interpreted. Headlessness corrects that misunderstanding. 🙏 Thanks for commenting.
@@worldwidehappiness No offence taken. I can only confirm my experience of contentment and love. Anything else would be arguing over the incredible mystery of what I am.
Only psychedelics can produce startling states of consciousness. ' seeing who you are' is plain, simple, familiar, intimate and obvious. So easily missed and so grossly undervalued . We overlook our presence and do not see our absence in favour of the given. When we really see th absence here while pointing at our no face we see that we are built open for loving, for total acceptance of what's given at the other side of the no face . We are not just built open but also built surrendered!! And thats what is extraordinary!!! In the Zen teachings it's called finding your original face, the face you had before your parents were born. That is the no face Douglas Harding is inviting us to explore.
Interesting that my initial comments should so soon be removed from the site... Very briefly, they shared, they didn't my personal experience of him, Douglas was the most 'personified' of individuals, with a heavy penchant for theatrics and an overly vast intellectual database to buttress his many arguments in favor of headlessness. However in the process, he invariably let his converts through a process of, for want of a better 'Hardingidication', prepping and priming them to view the world and their own experience through the lenses he readily provided for them, even though ostensibly concerned with removing any such lenses from their sensorium. And that's it is, that among the ' headless', one finds a large quotient of extremely uptight, self-conscious and hyper intellectually active souls. ... Such as the compulsively cognitive Sam Harris!
@@alanneachell9092 Yes. It was edited well. I love listening to Richard. I almost deleted my comment because Harris softened a little during the course of the interview but left it. I enjoyed your edited version. Thanks
The headless Way takes us to the same experience as being aware of being aware.
I hope you enjoy Richards exploration into that experience.
Love it, the headless was something I found very direct along with Rupert's 'Am I aware' question. Great stuff
The headless way demonstrates the self to be a phenomena that comes and goes!!
Love the single vision reference - I had not noticed that about seeing until listening to this interview. 💓
Richard Lang is such an excellent communicator of Douglas Harding’s philosophy.
Thank you Allan for your compilations on both Rupert spira talks and the headless way. For all the seekers who've stumbled upon the headless way ,I'd like to mention this :
There was an English woman who often went to Nisargadatta Maharaj's satsangs. As she was leaving India to go back to England she asked Maharaj who should she visit back home. Maharaj said, Go visit Douglas Harding!!
Great! 💕
Thank you so much. I stumbled upon headlesness a while ago and found it very liberating and easier to experience than all other non dualistic methods. I hope it brings peace and happiness to many people. Thank you.
I hope so too. Thank you 🙏
I went through a horrible period of dissociation over the past few months, fueled by conceptualizing existence from every perspective but my own. Though it took a lot of time and reframing to get my head back on straight (or my no-head haha), Richard was a big help along the way and gave me my first sustained glimpse into nondual perception 💙🌀💙
It's a great way to experience ourselves as we really are. 💕🙏
Such a beautiful compilation Alan. Thank you. I find the 'headless man' so enabling of realising the space of 'no thoughts' and non duality. I was thrilled to hear him bring in the 'one and the many'. It is so integral to the space of 'headless man' for me. The one blurs into the many and vice versa. It is not the one or the many.
Thanks Erin, I like this approach very much 🙏💕
Hi Alan, thank you very much for introducing us to Richard, great video and experiment. Actually, if I didn't know any better I would have thought it was Roger Penrose speaking :)
Thanks David. I really like this method of seeing. His website is very well done. Headless.org I think.
Great, thanks. I'm hitting 'duality' from so many directions recently I don't know whether I'm coming or going....
Sounds like a good sign to me 😊
As always awesome, unbeatable & uncomparable . Thanks alot.🙏🙏
🙏🙏
Thank you Alan, This conversation is very incredible too. Thank you for the insight both sides gave. 🙏💛
Wonderful, Glorious, Beautiful ! Magical indeed ! Thank you for this compilation, Alan ! 🙏
🙏
I love that telephone conversation example. That's true instantaneous transformation directly! Thanks for this sharing this video.
It's nice seeing the comments echoing my experience with this. Also some cognitive dissonance having it confirmed by Sam Harris, him being the hyper-analytical, intellectual type I would normally expect to be deriding it. One of the determinants of whether the headless way will resonate is one's willingness to push past the egoic fear of looking foolish :)
Thank you Alan! Such a noteworthy interview. It is so significant that people get this in their own experience.
Yes! It's the most important thing. I spent years believing that knowledge would take me home. As soon as I was shown how to look in direct experience, my spiritual life took off. 💕
Alan, it is indeed! I like when he made mention of exercise of pointing the finger outward and then turning it around to pointing onwards. The outward search ends immediately!
How wonderful, Alan! Thank you! What a beautiful, powerful, joyous exploration!
I have loved and shared with delight your Rupert compilations over the years, and many have commented how valuable and precious they have become to them... just this week I received an email from a friend I met at a Rupert retreat, thanking me especially for sharing your lovely videos with her. Rupert also expressed his appreciation for your work. He remembered meeting you once, and said you were very sweet. ❤︎
Thanks Corinne. Lovely comments 💕❤️
I've enjoyed attending Headless workshops with Richard Lang.
So cool! Cuts right to the chase. Isn't it funny, after years of study and search for all sorts of solutions, here it's always been in plain sight. Glorious.
Thank you for sharing this Alan🙏🏼
Thanks Alan 😊👍 i'll definitely explore this
It's well worth it 😊
Thank you! 🙏💎
The 7:35 question has to do with logic. And if one follows that logic then the conclusion must be - whenever i percieve my own face, my own body, that experience arised out of darkness and silence. So just like everything else if i can experience it and see it, it can not be me. Everything that i experience happens out of that darkness and silence of awareness. How can the absense of experience be percieved without creating that experience? That's why it is said, it's impossible to look at your own face. Consciousness is not experience. It must use experience to know itself and be what it's made to do. Therefore. all exprriences prove that it is, that i am, that there is existance, there is life. That is the logic behind - i am aware that i have a face even if i never get to see it. It's actually quite a profound thought
Thank you for doing this video ❤ i've learned a lot
Thanks for your great comments 🙏
@@alanneachell9092 thank you as well ☺
Logic IS not a route to the SELF. Neither is an engrossing Neo-advantaged talk by Rupert Spira at one of his 2 grand retreats in the English countryside, useful as these are as a “preamble” to the real spiritual work that must also contain a firm base of ethical commitment if the path is to succeed. The headless way is no different, a useful prelude.Its doubtful that Sam Harris can ever become an enlightened person since he thinks he can bypass these necessary commitments, charted out by mainstream religious practices.
Headless way is no different. Our attention goes outward because we are unwilling to give up our desires, the ego is the problem. So the traditional practices of yes mainstream religions which stress strong ethical practices go hand in hand with “practice”: such as we see here. It’s very doubtful that neo-advaita therefore on its own as exemplified here can lead to the SELF, and it’s die hard materialists like Harris who seem to think that through a few awareness tricks this can be accomplished but it cannot
@@fizywig Really? They are speaking of direct experience and the need to practice.
Thanks for posting.
Harris' example of self-consciousness when one realizes someone is looking back at them directly in a cafe only scratches the surface of consequences of having a face. A more telling example might be the way one is treated based on skin color. This impacts deeply on such basics as physical security (against violence or oppression), employment prospects, and life-chances generally. To say that none of this is "really you" is a denial of the actual 1st person experience of your life and the world that you see and engage in without awareness of having a head. The world is socially and politically mediated, and being seen *as* X or Y-- friend or foe, slave or freeman, black or white, can't but change what you pay attention to and in what ways ( defensive, monitoring for safety, etc.) The whole experience of life depends not only on what we can and can't see, but what others can and can't see. We see their actions and reactions directed at ourselves, and this makes impression management skills, as sociologists call them, quite necessary just for survival.
We're not denying the apparent individual we are finding out the difference in our behaviour when we simultaneously see what we really are along with the apparent individual 🙏
@@alanneachell9092 Thanks for responding. I am not denying the *experience* of spacious awareness, of sky-like consciousness which goes by many names in different mystical traditions. I have had, at least, glimmers of such experience and take them to be important aspects of human existence. It is the metaphysical privileging of these states as the only "really real" ones, and the corresponding trivialization of the everyday social experience of ourselves as objects of others' attention and expectations that I feel compelled to question. I may be many things-- a husband, father, prisoner, king, slave, man, woman, hungry refugee, comfortable bourgeois, etc. At other times, in mystical states, I may experience myself as the "is-ness" of awareness itself, unfettered by those other social, psychological and historical realities I listed. This liberated state is a profoundly healing one in my view. But it is not self-evidently "more real" than what you call "appearance" or the *merely apparent individual* experience of being a socially situated self in the world. That view is a metaphysical position *about* the direct experience.
What some Buddhists and yogis call the "conventional self" or namarupa (name and form) may be just as integral to the human life experience overall as the direct experience of being a world within a world-- a space wherein all of which we are aware transpires. Why? Because the "conventional self" is rooted in nature, evolution and the resulting human groups that give us crucial underpinnings of consciousness such as language, meaning, cooperation as well as conflict, stable societies as well as social crises. These seem far too basic and profound to dismiss as "illusory" or even "less real" (whatever that means) than the phenomenology of the mystic or the spontaneous awareness of an infant before socialization. These latter states are unsustainable without the existence and background of the "conventional world" with its socially shared systems of meaning, norms, roles etc. It is these that enable hunting-gathering, acquisition of language, the possibility of mating and procreating, of protecting oneself and fellows from danger,etc. The healing state of oneness, unsupported by a life of socialization and mastery of symbols and meaningful roles (not make-believe roles, but actual and deep ones like being a parent or a daughter or son, as Confucius points out) is unthinkable. We must (just to survive) begin with and remain within a natural, social world which has evolved to enable, protect and perpetuate human life over generations. That world is not "less real" than the undivided world of awareness itself from the 1st person perspective. They are, I think, better viewed as different, but potentially complementary, ways of being, living and experiencing.
Sorry for the length of this, but these things are not very easily communicated. I hope it makes sense, even if you disagree.
@@silverskid yes, I agree that the appearance is wonderfully profound in its coherence, continuity and creativity.
The world in my experience is definitely real but not in the way that fits with the present concensus model.
Thanks for commenting 🙏
@@silverskid both and …… both and…… emptiness IS form and form IS emptiness……. when this is “seen” , behaviors tend to change……. more love tends to be present and propel more loving action.
this has been my experience ❤️
Thank you, Alan.
It's a bonus video. I'll still post Rupert on Tuesday
So to make this more simple having no head means quit thinking . I remember Eckhart Tolle talking about it when he had his awakening. Suddenly he wake up and his mind was free of chattering. That free you from mind identification and body identification. I found Eckhart explanation easier to grasp than Sam ‘s .
Quitting thinking is not necessary. Forget headless if it doesn't work for you. If you want to chat more, you can find me on Facebook and send a message
Excellent interview! Sam is so cute, so serious. An awesome philosopher for sure, but way too stiff and defensive (reminds me of he same issue with Randian objectivists). He needs to smile and lighten up a bit. The Headless Way is. A good practice for him. Embracing warmth and our humanity is as essential as didactic techniques.
Thank you so much for sharing this Gem💖
Here's a link to a short video by Rupert that points at exactly the thing Douglas Harding shows us through his headless experiments.
ruclips.net/video/MnEL3W6u34k/видео.html
Thank you Alan. I think mixing things up is the right thing to do. It gives greater insight and focus. Any chance of getting Chuck Hillig to do an interview ? I am in awe of Chuck.
Remaining of course a Rupert Spira Devotee. Peace and Love
I'll see if I can find something from Chuck 😊
hi alan.would you say tony parsons and jim newman are deluded?
No not at all. I know Tony.
All they are saying is all there is, is this. Rupert says all there is, is knowing, knowing knowing.
Rupert is however willing to make consessions which Tony and Jim wouldn't. 🙏❣️
@@alanneachell9092 🌹♥️
This is fantastic
Yeah, I love the headless way 🙏
I started the waking up meditation. Why is it a big deal be headless or not seeing our head ? The reason we don’t see our head is because the eyes are on our head, if they were located in another place ( the forearm) I can raise my arm and see my face. Nobody knows what consciousness is or where is located . Does it matter to know ? Consciousness is not tangible, you can’t locate it or see it . Why are these people obsessed with it ? It’s ok not to know .
The reason we are introduced to consciousness is because it brings a balanced view. If we are heavily leanning to appearance only, then the appearance takes on an importance which leads to suffering and excessive control.
The headless way is only one of many ways for the introduction to consciousness to take place. It worked for me 🙂
@@alanneachell9092 how this exercise works if someone is blind? 🙂
@@Hissage the headless way has a whole set of experiments for the blind.
The important thing is to find what works for you. Having a balanced view between consciousness and appearance is vital.
Yes! When did this interview take place?
I'm not sure when it took place. If you go to the Facebook page ' No Facebook' you will find the full interview there.
The headless way was first introduced by?
Can't remember his name, oh yes, Douglas Harding if I am not mistaken.
Correct
the parable of the sower some see some don't
❤🙏❤🙏❤🙏
(continued from previous)
Then one must go ahead and live as if that were in fact the case but very few if any do this, perchance happened to notice that that face in the mirror and suddenly become obese or pimply or homely, we headless viewers that we are with all the resulting shock within our hearts to realize that that effigy of ourselves has come to such a pitiable state in our purported absence...
Let us, then, above All things, ourselves and our felt responses, and not pretend that these anomalies have occurred within anybody else's being but our own. In other words, if we must persist in saying that we are not our faces, we must at least have the honesty and compassion to completely and fully owned them as ours, intimately and completely hours and no one else's, not even the headless woman over there who is saying that our face is really his or hers.
To live our realisations is to find their authenticity (or their falseness)
Afterthought...
Of course, let's not play games in the ostensible pursuit of reality... If, as Richard reports, we do infact see the face in that mirror that's other than ourselves, then of course we must proceed to go ahead and
Wow
The 'showing: is the easy part... Because of course nobody can see his or her own face in ones subjective space, or else one couldn't see anything at all, being blocked by that very face.
That's easy.... But, as always, the truth does not lie in the facts, even the fact that we cannot see our own faces. The truth lies beyond the fact, and it's most readily and reliably demonstrated in the living out or not living out, the expression or the lack of expression, of that supposed insight.
Does the person behave as if he or she he's still lurking there, even behind the no face that they say they see? Many do, despite their protestations that there is no one at home.
In fact, Douglas Harding himself was one of the most 'personred-up' individuals in my experience, speaking as one who had known him quite well
Indeed, it was inevitable that he would have had an extraordinary li pronounced sense of self
(continued from previous)
... Because, he was on inspection night and day, having grown up admits the most extreme of Christian colts, the Plymouth brethren, with at least infraction would have been an egregious sin against the divine.
This extremity of self-consciousness, amazingly to some, did not depart from him even long after his supposed Awakening. Rather, he continued, inevitably, as it does in us all, because it is a result not merely a personal anomalies, but rather of evolutionary existential which we will not go into here.. however, even so, that I consciousness was far more painfully pronounced in him than in many others do to his, one might say, almost overdeveloped insulate, on top of which one must inevitably take into account the almost dysfunctional propriety and decorum and behavioral code of the English mindset, almost suffocating in its constriction. A social dysfunction which persists even to this day.
But Douglas was at least grateful to find some exit from this hyper self, the kind of meditative portal through which he could repeatedly to find himself somehow beyond
Still, honesty demands that I share that I have met any number of far more naturally and spontaneously free human beings than he... True, none with his encyclopedic database, or his Shakespearean predilection for drama and rhetoric , but still, refreshingly simple and guileless folk.
Unfortunately, Sam Harris does not energetically events the true expansiveness of a human being who actually gets the message and is able to release his intellectual prison, or else release himself from it. Rather, he seems afflicted with a Woody Allenrsque intellectuality which has him and which refuses to release him until death do they part.
Alas, his intellectual acumen is pitifully insufficient to succeed and truly rebirthing him into a natural and warm-hearted embrace of life and people. He is always on the hunt, always in the end analytical mode, always looking for the unspoken secret, the unseen key that will bring him to his wrongly imagined revelation he does not realize that his salvation lies and going back, not forward. Before the mind, rather than Intuit. Listening to him vainly attempting to penetrate the profundities of Awakening he's a troubling experience, knowing that he is steadfastly taking himself in the direction of further mayhem and cognitive congestion... One might almost have to conclude that he is a misbegotten son of the tribe of Judah, doomed to wander into the desert of his own mind until crack of Doom.
Am i not inside my body ?
why is this not clicking for me
The body is in you. See that you know your thoughts, so you can't be your thoughts. It's the same with your body.
Go slowly and just look at your direct experience without memory or concepts.
Feel free to ask anything as you investigate the above.
Try not to be too serious and investigate from interest.
Do you know how to identify yourself as awareness?
@@alanneachell9092 no I don't know how to identify myself as awareness... can you advise ?
@@alanneachell9092 the body is in you ...could you elaborate what this means please.
@@marykavanagh531 find me on Facebook and message me there?
👍
Two points about this. 1) It isn't 100% clear from the video that these "headless" techniques can produce startling new states of consciousness. The pointing exercise, for example, can seem quite uninteresting, but it can trigger an uncanny state of consciousness. 2) The claim that this is "our true nature" is dodgy. Nevertheless, it is common for people to have an altered state of consciousness and conclude that it is the ultimate state of consciousness. I challenged Richard Lang on this, but he never changed his tune. Same with many others.
There is no altered state of consciousness. Our present experience has only been wrongly interpreted. Headlessness corrects that misunderstanding. 🙏
Thanks for commenting.
@@alanneachell9092 No offence, but that's just a common spiritual belief at the moment.
@@worldwidehappiness No offence taken. I can only confirm my experience of contentment and love. Anything else would be arguing over the incredible mystery of what I am.
Only psychedelics can produce startling states of consciousness. ' seeing who you are' is plain, simple, familiar, intimate and obvious. So easily missed and so grossly undervalued . We overlook our presence and do not see our absence in favour of the given. When we really see th absence here while pointing at our no face we see that we are built open for loving, for total acceptance of what's given at the other side of the no face . We are not just built open but also built surrendered!! And thats what is extraordinary!!! In the Zen teachings it's called finding your original face, the face you had before your parents were born. That is the no face Douglas Harding is inviting us to explore.
Acknowledging you dont look like your MIRROR IMAGE is the most basic FACT in LIFE!!
Harris is too thinky, he still wont look.
Yep, it has to be direct experience
Interesting that my initial comments should so soon be removed from the site... Very briefly, they shared, they didn't my personal experience of him, Douglas was the most 'personified' of individuals, with a heavy penchant for theatrics and an overly vast intellectual database to buttress his many arguments in favor of headlessness. However in the process, he invariably let his converts through a process of, for want of a better 'Hardingidication', prepping and priming them to view the world and their own experience through the lenses he readily provided for them, even though ostensibly concerned with removing any such lenses from their sensorium. And that's it is, that among the ' headless', one finds a large quotient of extremely uptight, self-conscious and hyper intellectually active souls.
... Such as the compulsively cognitive Sam Harris!
Sam Harris is so irritating
Good interview though eh?
@@alanneachell9092
Yes. It was edited well. I love listening to Richard.
I almost deleted my comment because Harris softened a little during the course of the interview but left it.
I enjoyed your edited version. Thanks
@@da4 love Richard 😊
sometimes i doubt that headlessness is just an illusion or my delusion .. can I delude myself ??
Thinking will refute direct experience because thought is not present there.
@@alanneachell9092 Thank You Alan,you helped me today tremendously ..probably more than Richard & Sammy : ))) got my subscription too ;: ) thanks