we learned in Chapter 9, Claxton did not end up
running over old ladies for fun and Harris felt his
ethics and his state of mind had improved, not dete-
riorated. Nonetheless, it would be foolish to embark
on a search for spiritual transformation expecting it
to make you happier. It may, or it may not. But, as
many traditions point out, chasing after happiness
may itself get in the way of finding it.
SPONTANEOUS AWAKENING
Awakening is often described as though it were the
endpoint of a long journey on a spiritual path, but
some people claim that they just woke up, and that
their awakening was the beginning, rather than the
culmination, of their spiritual life.
The best day of Douglas Harding’s life, his rebirth-
day, as he called it, was when he found he had no
head. At the age of 33, during the Second World War,
he had long been pondering the question ‘What am
I?’ One day, while walking in the Himalayas, he sud-
denly stopped thinking and forgot everything. Past
and future dropped away, and he just looked. ‘To
look was enough. And what I found was khaki trou-
serlegs terminating downwards in a pair of brown
shoes, khaki sleeves terminating sideways in a pair
of pink hands, and a khaki shirtfront terminating
upwards in – absolutely nothing whatever!’ (Hard-
ing, 1961, p. 2).
We can all do what he did next. We can look where the head should be and find
a whole world. Far from being nothing, the space where the head should be is
filled with everything we can see, including the fuzzy end of our nose and the
whole world around. For Harding, this great world of mountains and trees was
completely without ‘me’, and it felt like suddenly waking up from the sleep of
ordinary life. It was a revelation of the perfectly obvious. He felt only peace, quiet
joy, and the sensation of having dropped an intolerable burden.
Harding stresses that headlessness is obvious if you look clearly. There are not
two parallel worlds, an inner and an outer world, because if you really look you
just see the one world which is always before you. This way of looking explodes
the fiction of inside and out, and of the mythical centre; it explodes ‘this terminal
spot where “I” or “my consciousness” is supposed to be located’ (1961, p. 13). He
might equally have said that it blows up the Cartesian theatre.
Harding soon discovered that others did not share his revelation. When he tried
to explain it, people either thought he was mad or said ‘So what?’, but eventually
he stumbled upon Zen. There he found others who had seen as he did, such as
Hui Neng, who told a fellow monk to see. ‘See what at this very moment your own
‘It’s not a doing but
an undoing, a giving
up, an abandonment
of the false belief that
there’s anyone here to
abandon. What else is
there to do?’(Harding, 1961, p. 73)ACtIVItY 18.1
The headless wayHere are two little tricks to do all together in class,
or on your own. Some people can be flipped into an
entirely new way of experiencing, but others just say
‘So what’. So the tricks may, or may not, work for
you. Take them slowly and pay attention to your own
immediate experience. Don’t rush.
Pointing. Point at the window, and look
carefully at what you see there. Note both your finger
and the place it points at. Point at the floor, and look
carefully at where your finger is pointing. Point at your
foot, and look carefully at what you see. Point at your
tummy, and look carefully at what is there. Point at
yourself, and look carefully at what you see there.
What did you find there?
Head to head. Find a friend to work with.
Place your hands on each other’s shoulders, and
look steadily at your friend’s face and head. Now
ask yourself – how many heads are there? Don’t
think about what you know, or what must be true;
pay attention to your own direct experience now.
How many heads can you see? What, in this present
experience, is on the top of your shoulders?