Can we see that we are the seen? 

Vic Shayne

Douglas Harding was a spiritual genius in that he was able to communicate ideas in new ways. Fortunately, we have Richard Lang to carry on his teachings, because they get to the core of what it means to turn the attention around from the objective world to the subjective. The subjective-objective relationship is also stated as the duality of the seer and the seen. Jiddu Krishnamurti said that if you can understand this relationship as a fact, not just as an intellectual idea, then you’ve got it! 

By accepting the teachings of authority figures — including parents, teachers, relatives, and so on — we have all been psychologically conditioned to see ourselves as individuals apart from the totality of consciousness. By default, we have accepted secondhand information, ideas, and beliefs, and made them our own, perceiving the world in a certain way, including that the seer (the self) is separate from all that is seen. While it is important and necessary to see the differences in things so that we can navigate the world and know the difference between a banana and a hammer, on a spiritual-psychological level, we are left confused and conflicted and we have to learn that there’s really no separation at all. 

I would propose — and I am certainly not the first to perceive things this way — that all of what we see is a reflection of us, from the physical, atomic, and molecular substances to the singular movement of life that is called consciousness. In effect, then, consciousness is seeing consciousness. And this means that the seer (consciousness) is the seen (consciousness). What we see is ourselves on all levels. 

Consider this analogy, which is how I came to realize how this is true. 

Several years ago I was engaged in a dream in the middle of the night. In the dream I was angry at my sister-in-law, Lisa, but my brother kept calling my name until he got my attention. Then he said, “Don’t you get it? This is your dream. It’s all your mind. Lisa is actually you. I am actually you.” Then, still in the dream, I had the Aha! moment that I was creating my own reality. Suddenly I woke up and the entire world had changed. I realized that not only do I create all that is in my dreams, but that I also create all that is in my waking life — not as the individual egoic self, but as consciousness. In short, I am consciousness and therefore all that I see is consciousness. I am what I see. The seer is the seen. 

But there is more to this dynamic; it goes deeper. When the egoic self — the psychologically conditioned mind that leads to the belief in a separate self — looks at another person, it is seeing itself. This is because the contents of consciousness is consciousness. In other words, the good, bad and indifferent that we see in other people is no different than that which exists as our own traits. There are not multiple angers, fears, or greeds; there is only one, and this one and only exists within different expressions. But we cannot let the outer expressions distract us from seeing that the expressions are expressions of the one and only consciousness. What we are seeing is ourselves physically, subatomically, molecularly, emotionally, psychologically, and as consciousness. The seer is the seen. 

Now back to the genius of Douglas Harding and Richard Lang whose experiments have the potential to bring about an awakening. Their experiments show us that when we look at a person ten feet away we are seeing him/her as a physical expression. When we move further away we see him/her as a city. Even further away and we see the person as the planetary self, and so on. What does this imply? Among other things, this means that we are seeing ourselves as a person, as a society, as a city, as a state, as a planet, and as the universe. We are all of these things that arise out of the infinite void of the subjective Self that recedes back into the ineffable silent stillness from which consciousness arises. Out of the void arises the “I am” of consciousness, and out of the “I am” arises the egoic self of “I am this or that.” This is true for all of us, not only those who have awaked to this fundamental truth. 

Vic Shane is author of The Self is a Belief .

I am a mystery even to myself

Vic Shayne

Although we are all brought up differently, whether we are in the same family or as different nationalities anywhere in the world, there is one undeniable commonality that marks our lives: We are all introduced to ideas before we can figure out who we are, and these ideas, first coming from our parents and family members, inform us, though incorrectly, of who we are. Thus, we believe we are something that we are not. So what are we if not what we have been told?

Richard Lang, who carries on the work of his mentor Douglas Harding, founder of “The Headless Way” teachings, beautifully explains that “growing up is learning to see yourself as others see you, as a person, not as ‘the one’…growing up is learning who you are in the world and identifying as that.” This learning is from a skewed perspective that does not recognize this mystery of what we are, and because we all grow up with this perspective as taught by significant others, we all are mistaken that we are definable beings who are limited to a body and an image. For some there is at least an inkling that there is more to us than meets the senses and that we have been taught.

The funny thing about coming to the end of the search for what I am is that I had to conclude that I do not know. All that time, introspection, inquiry, and experience — over more than 60 years — and all I can come up with is that I am a mystery. In the end, the seeker is that which he has sought, and thus ends the duality of the seeker and the sought, the seer and the seen, the egoic self that has separated itself from the capacity that is all.

In trying to describe what we are in a spiritual sense we have all sorts of words we use, such as silence, consciousness, totality, God, and so forth, but these are only words, and words are limited. It seems, however, that none of us are actually limited or definable — once we get past the idea of being an individual person with a body, brain, and senses. 

When I bring the attention away from all things ‘out there’ in what we call the world, and I place the attention here where the source of all senses and perspective emanates from, then I find something I have no words for.

When I am awake and not in a deep sleep, all that I perceive is out of some mysterious capacity that makes up the source of all perceiving. And if I try to find the beginning or end of this source I cannot. It has no edges, limitations, boundaries, or qualities at all. It is simply the source without a a traceable source, a center without a center. 

To anyone who looks at me, I am a person with certain features, characteristics, nuances, proclivities, moods, emotions, quirks, and behaviors. This is what I am to others, but right here at the point of perspective, I am emptiness, a bottomless capacity. When people speak to me they see me and they also have an image of themselves. But when I speak to them, I see a person but the person is inside this capacity that has no locus. From my point of view, such a person is speaking to no one but a void that holds everything that exists. 

I am aware that you are in me as the totality of capacity, but you perceive me as outside of you, somehow separate and “other.” I am certain of this, especially because this used to be my perspective as well. 

I have heard so many people say that we are all one, but I am not so sure they truly grasp what they are saying from an experiential point of view. It is easy to repeat ideas, but another thing to have a certain reality. Are we all one? You need to find out for yourself if you so desire.

I am something that is aware, but the word “something” is quite inadequate, because I am not a thing in the material sense. Maybe it’s better to say I am a perspective that is aware, and this perspective never changes, grows, shrinks, lives, dies, evolves, or becomes involved with ideas or thoughts. There is nothing else like it, and the perspective is not contained in, or attached to, anything.

I am not special, just mysterious. If I am that which I tried to describe, then you must be as well. If there is a oneness then there can be only oneness and therefore this is what we all must be beyond the images of bodies, personalities, and expressions. When the senses see, hear, taste, touch, and smell so sharply, it is difficult to put them aside in favor of what exists behind them, fundamentally. And this fundamental layer is what we are. It is a mystery because we have no words for it and nothing to which it can be compared. 

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‘On Present Evidence’ is the Key to Me 

Vic Shayne 

I spent my entire life trying to find what exists at my own core. Paying close attention to Krishnamurti, Ramana, and Nisargadatta, it all became clear to me several years ago. Then my wife read a passage in “I AM That” about a visitor who told Nisargadatta about Douglas Harding. So I began looking into him and was awestruck by his brilliance and the simplicity of his message and experiments. And now I find Douglas Harding and Richard Lang to be a gift to humanity. 

Finding “what is” is so simple that it is ignored, overlooked, disregarded, and usually dismissed. Instead of letting the egoic mind go — the sense of “me” — we are apt to pontificate, gather information, read a lot of books, meditate, do all sorts of exercises, listen to experts, engage in rituals, and try to figure things out. But how can the mind know something that is beyond the mind itself? It can’t. We expend tremendous amounts of mental, physical, and emotional energy looking for something, some way to understand reality. We also spend inordinate amounts of time looking “out there,” but no time looking back “in here,” in the direction of the thing that is doing the looking. 

Douglas Harding’s phrase “on present evidence” seems to get to the point in a way that no other guru, at least in my decades of experience, has been able to do. The idea of “on present evidence” bypasses all the mental gymnastics and thought. 

Only when you turn around and take a serious look at your sense of self can there be any true transformation from the egoic self to the substrate, or the core, of what you are. And it’s simple; so simple that you may cry or laugh, or do both. It is eternally amusing to be observing without an observer. 

So here it is in a nutshell: If you want to know the absolute Truth, or what Douglas Harding refers to as knowing who you really, really, really are, you just take a look on present evidence. There is a world that you sense, and there is a placeless place that is the source of this world. “On present evidence” suggests that you leave all the stuff of the me-created mind behind. Let it go, because where you’re headed it doesn’t do you any good. Education, brilliance, insight, learning, teaching, ideas, memories, money, status, talent, gifts, experience, and judgments do not help in the least, because all of these are of the mind, which means they are of the past. “On present evidence” is about now, the present. Leave the past out of it and just take a look. 

For 70 years Jiddu Krishnamurti spoke about “freedom from the known” and observing without the observer. What we know is not “it” — it is not present evidence. The sense of self is created out of thought, and all thought is past-tense, old news. Thought creates knowledge, making all knowledge of the past. So it’s impossible to behold the present by using thought, the self, or knowledge to do so. 

Krishnamurti repeatedly said that if you truly understand the relationship between the seer and the seen then you get it. Everything else falls into place. Douglas Harding’s “on present evidence” says it all. If you are seeing the world with the overlay of the egoic self, then the seer and the seen are two sides of the same coin — two images created by the sense of self. But when there is an observing of the world only on present evidence, then the egoic self is absent and a newness to reality emerges. 

Old habits are hard to break, including the habit that is brought about by psychological conditioning that tells us who we are, what people we are related to, what our religion is, what 

is ugly or beautiful, what our gender is, which political party is better than another, what we look like, and how we should act. All of these factors and much more make up the sense of self, the egoic mind. But seeing reality “on present evidence” cuts to the quick. Of course, you have to have an overwhelming desire to know what you really, really, really are, otherwise this is all a passing interest that the mind likes to play with and then leave behind to continue its conditioned life. However, if you are truly interested and have insatiable desire and persistence, you can see what exists on present evidence. 

Now, what does “present evidence” tell you? Can anyone answer this for you, on your behalf? Of course not. And no one can transfer the knowingness to you. There is nothing to learn and nothing to practice. Knowing/seeing is instantaneous, which is why Krishnamurti repeatedly said that Truth is a Pathless Land. “Present evidence” always exists, and therefore it is pathless. You don’t need to get or obtain anything to realize this, you just have to look without bringing the past into the looking. 

“On present evidence” shows you the world of expression, form, and phenomena, as well as the source of the seeing in an instant. And then you wake up. I often think of those stereograms that were a fad in the early 1990s where there was a colorful design in a pattern, and if you stared long enough at the pattern you’d see a 3D image appear. The image was there all along, but you never saw it; and once you saw it you knew it was there and could easily re-see it. Reality beyond, or beneath or before, the egoic self is just like this. It always exists, but we’re too busy being distracted by the designs, patterns, colors, and other goings- on to take a close look. 

If you want to get off the hamster wheel you have to take a good look at what exists only on present evidence. All the talk about nonduality, the power of now, past lives, meditation, kundalini, yoga, the law of attraction, psychic phenomena, other dimensions, self-awareness, mental clarity, mindfulness, and so on, is just the stuff of “out there.” This doesn’t mean it’s bad stuff, but it has nothing at all to do with what this source of the “I” really, really, really is. Concepts, ideas, and teachings are not to be found on present evidence. Once “present evidence” is experienced then reality becomes clear. All that is sensed, including all phenomena, nature, people, objects, and thoughts — even your own body and mind — is contained within “present evidence.” All of the contents are transient, but the container is permanent, nameless, faceless, boundless, formless, indescribable, immeasurable, imageless, and of course, headless.