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Podcast by Douglas Harding – The Headless Way

'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, 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.

Two friends, one a specialist in archaeology, the other an artist, were spending a day or two in the interesting old town of Bingly. 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, sending Joshua Briggs post-haste to his sister-in-law’s house.

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.

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.

The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth was originally published in a condensed form (condensed by Harding) in 1952 and described by C.S. Lewis as "a work of the highest genius". This publication, and this audio version, now makes available the original huge work. It is clearly and beautifully written and read. This book opens your eyes to the universe as it is actually presented and opens your mind to the way it functions. One day, this book will be recognized as one of the greatest works of philosophy.

This remarkable work by the author of On Having No Head is didactic fiction in the English tradition of More, Bunyan, Butler, Orwell and Huxley. Taking the form of a court case in the year AD 2003 in which a man is tried for blasphemy, the book dramatises Harding's highly original techniques for Seeing Who We Are, and gauges our myriad ideas about our relationship with the divine. It is also an indictment of the cruel sport of heresy hunting and a passionate plea for tolerance and forgiveness in our time.

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.

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.

This book demands the listener'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.

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 nothingness that stands so magnificently alone, is certainly no mere void, no common emptiness, no negligible nothingness, for it is conscious of itself as void and empty and nothing. This very statement is sufficient evidence of the fact!

Visible Gods is an imaginary dialogue between Socrates and four fictitious modern-day characters. Socrates' worldview is of a living cosmos with man only half-way up the hierarchy of all beings; above him reign suprahuman beings of great majesty and power - the visible gods. The moderns with whom Socrates converses disdain his ancient Greek cosmos as primitive and false.

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.

In this book, Harding explores the proposition that tools are "extensions of the body", and that there's no absolute boundary between the "natural" and the "artificial". Crossing over the line between the self and the not-self, Harding realized that there is no definite frontier where you can say you stop and the rest of the world begins. The Meaning and Beauty of the Artificial takes you on a wide-ranging safari through the animal kingdom and then into the human world, where you see "man and machine" with new eyes.

Tematem „O nieposiadaniu głowy" jesteś ty - twoja „prawdziwa tożsamość". W sposób zadziwiająco bezpośredni Harding wskazuje na wspaniałe ponad wszelkie słowa miejsce wewnątrz ciebie. Miejsce, które jest twórczym, bezkresnym źródłem wszystkich rzeczy.

If these tales were by an unknown author, they would be no more than reflections on a childhood in the early 20th century. But they gain in interest because of who wrote them, for they provide insight into the young life and mind of a great philosopher and spiritual teacher: Douglas Harding (1909-2007), author of The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth, On Having No Head, and other books. The stories open a window on Harding's early life; their autobiographical nature is only thinly disguised. After listening to them, you will understand Harding in a new and more intimate way.

These two autobiographical essays by Douglas Harding were written 30 years apart. Harding wrote the first one in the 1960s when he was in his early 50s. He wrote the second one, "On Having No Head," when he was 80. They are instructive, insightful, and entertaining.