Clarifies the Scriptures

The difference between Harding's headless way & Advaita, Vedanta, or Zen Buddhism, & so on, is that instead of trying to conceptualize or understand in theory the "atman" or the "no-mind" or "emptiness", etc., & meditating & cogitating on it for years & years in hopes of somehow grasping it or magically inducing realization, one just simply looks. One by-passes the thought patterns, the cultural conditioning, the religious dogma, & other such verbiage, & one simply sees without preconceived ideas. Drop the rhetoric & simply look for yourself.

I look back over my notes of other teachings from various traditions of self-realization but none of them advocate simply & clearly just seeing, as the headless way does. I think alot of the old Zen masters & Advaita Vedantists were self-realized but they lacked an efficient method to share this realization with others & were reduced to merely preaching or trying to describe their experience to seekers, most of the time leaving seekers dazed & confused by it all.

And not only does the headless way advocate simply looking, it shows you how & where to look. Ramana couldn't show them how to see. He could only sit there & do it for them in silence or he'd try to explain it to them or he'd give them some enquiry instructions & so on. But he never showed them how to just look in the mirror & see for themselves. Or, how to simply point to it.

Harding has bestowed upon the world a precious gift. D.C.

I've been delving pretty seriously into Nisargadatta's work lately. He is yet another person who I have heard of through Douglas's work. My own interests have, up until now, been very much tied to Buddhism and Taoism--"Seeing" has remained the key that has opened the doors to these other vistas. I feel certain that if I had come across Nisargadatta before encountering Douglas, I would have had not the slightest inkling of what he was going on about (now I think I do have the slightest inkling.) S.J. USA

I love the power and simplicity of the headless way! It helped tremendously in facilitating the shift from body-mind identification to the re-cognition of what I truly am. It made the No-thing and Emptiness of Zen teaching jump out of a dusty closet of mere ideas to an alive experiential knowing - a direct knowing. F.S.

Thank you for the wonderful gift you are providing by teaching D. Harding's experimental method. Having been brought up in a Hindu background, I was familiar with Advaita but could not grasp the essence due to the baggage associated with studying Advaita within the Hindu bakhti context.

After a few years of agnostic materialism, I got interested in existentialism, Zen and Taoism and instead of focusing on the academic classifications of these, I started to look for a common method and it was not easy to find it. I read extensively on the subject and references and cross references brought me to Harding's teaching and your website. Having done the experiments, I can say that the impact is tremendous. I still need to keep at it though.

Recently I was diagnosed with a retinal disorder called CSCR where I see a dark patch in whatever I see. Simply looking to confirm that the Subject is really a space that is awake for all objects meant that the dark patch I was seeing due to my retinal disorder was part of the objective world and the Subject is still devoid of any objectivity.

I have a type A personality. I thrive on stress at the expense of good health. Headless seeing gives me the break to be my real self that cannot me touched by  stress. Thanks again. J.

I practice Mahamudra and also have great interest in Advaita, but I am delighted by the simplicity and directness of the Headless Way. Ian.

Fascinating recent discovery of Douglas Harding's work, of which now I cannot get enough of. Having studied the more sceptical branches of Buddhism for nearly 10 years now, I find Harding's work a true gem. C.B.

I have been a seeker, mostly in an informal sense, since the death of my parents when I was eleven - more recently, I have become involved with Soto Zen to try to introduce some structure to my search. Although the practice was beneficial for many reasons over the last 5 years, completing Douglas's experiments consolidated in an instant what had remained theoretical. His ability to cut through all the bells, whistles, gongs and secret handshakes of formalized religion and reveal the core essence of all teachings (especially for a cement head like myself!) is a quality that I can't express enough gratitude for encountering. K.

Although I am new to the "headless" way, I have ten years of experience in various meditation practices, mostly Zen. However, using the experiments on the web site, I immediately recognized something (actually a lack of something) that I have missed my entire life, because it was so obvious. Although the euphoria wore off after several days, my "practice" has been changed for good. I wish to thank you very much for setting up the web site and making the information so readily available. J.G.

I have been practicing Dzogchen for a few years. The headless exercises make it so breathtakingly obvious that you are the space in which everything arises and are directly liberating that way. T.S.