Perhaps once a week I get a phone call - sometimes from someone I've not been in touch with before - asking me a question about headlessness. Today was someone wondering what I thought about the 'advaita idea' that there is 'no person to do anything', or 'nothing you can do to see who you really are'. Plus questions about being 'one with the world'. This is often the heart of a questioner's questions - if I am seeing who I really am, how come I still feel like a person? Does this mean I am not 'doing it' right? Does even the idea of 'doing it' mean I'm not doing it right!

My experience is that I see who I really am, here and now, and at the same time I am aware of being Richard - and other levels of myself too, such as being English, or planetary... This is the private AND the public. Both go together. The private is my direct experience of myself, the public is hearsay, what others say I am, what I see in the mirror... But I act as if the public is real - at its own level. This is having your cake and eating it. I am the One appearing as Richard... or, I am Richard whose true Self is the One.