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Douglas Harding
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On Having No Head Paperback – Illustrated, July 8, 2013

4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 717 ratings
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'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.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    124 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Shollond Trust
  4. Publication date
    July 8, 2013
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.29 x 8.5 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1908774061
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1908774064
  8. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Shollond Trust; Illustrated edition (July 8, 2013)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 124 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1908774061
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1908774064
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.9 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.29 x 8.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 717 ratings

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Douglas Harding

Douglas Harding

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4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
717 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Vic S
5.0 out of 5 stars More than a metaphor
Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2020
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The interesting thing about becoming "awake" is that to others there is nothing special that has occurred within you. People can have an intellectual understanding and yet lack the full scope of understanding that comes with waking up. And so the door is opened for critics.

Harding's work is more than a metaphor. Certainly, the metaphor is apt — we are physically geared to see what is "out there," yet forget to consider who is "in here," as the seer. The idea that we have no head is a pointer back to the source. But in a more literal sense, we do not have a head and the head has us. All of what we see, hear, touch, smell, and taste are images, not objectively provable. Even our own image is a falsehood.

For many who have gone the route of self-enquiry and have studied and practiced the teachings of Ramana, Nisargadatta, Krishnamurti, and others of their enlightened ilk, Harding's work is a shortcut to instantaneously knowing this infinite, undefined, unchangeable void that is in the general direction of this human head and yet not contained within it. If you are a materialist you won't get it, and if you're a lofty New Age believer then you may fall for it without truly seeing. But if you truly want to know what you really are at the core then you'll contemplate Harding's work and make it your own realization.
41 people found this helpful
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Nune H.
4.0 out of 5 stars A good start for those trying to grasp Zen
Reviewed in the United States on May 22, 2023
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I picked up this book following recommendation of Sam Harris in his Waking Up app in order to understand better the concept of “headlessness” he refers to.
This turned out to be a unique introduction to Zen written in a simple language making it somewhat more understandable. The book is leaving the reader with the thirst to explore more and dive deep into the concepts the author presents, so I’d definitely recommend this.
7 people found this helpful
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William Arsenis
5.0 out of 5 stars Simple, Clear and Useful.
Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2017
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ON HAVING NO HEAD is a short, funny, and down to earth book—literally pointing at who we really are.

It is simple without being at all simplistic. People with a non-dual background would likely find this book easy to understand.

Direct Path inquiry uses direct experience exclusively, disregarding the thoughts that explain and interpret. From this perspective, no one has direct experience of actually having a head. That is Mr. Harding’s initial point, but it is not the essence of the message.

Point at your head and there is nothing to be seen. This nothing is the space in which everything arises. In non-dual circles, this is not a new concept, though the approach (pointing at your head) most certainly is.

I love his sense of humor—it is so very English.

If you are open to different perspectives and approaches to the question “Who am I?” ON HAVING NO HEAD offers more than mere philosophy, it offers a refreshing view and a direct technique to apply this view.
46 people found this helpful
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Brian Hines
3.0 out of 5 stars Neuroscience explains Harding's experience
Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2018
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I’d read the original version of this book quite a few years ago, then gave away the book. Recently, though, I heard Sam Harris speak about the book in his Waking Up iPhone app, so I decided to re-buy and re-read it. Here's my review, which is of this second edition of the book that contains a "Bringing the story up to date" section that was written over forty years after Harding wrote the first edition.

My main problem with On Having No Head is the problem that I have with all books about personal spiritual breakthroughs or realizations. In the early days after I turned toward atheism, I was more interested in stories of how someone uncovered the Secret of the Universe. 

Now I’m much more skeptical about these sorts of stories. Why? Because I've got a better understanding of how the human mind works -- the result of both my own experiences with meditation, and a lot of reading about modern neuroscience and psychology. 

Here's a short version of what Harding experienced on a walk in the Himalayas, after he realized that he wasn't seeing his head (excerpt for a part of his nose).

“It took me no time at all to notice that this nothing, this hole where a head should have been was no ordinary vacancy, no mere nothing. On the contrary, it was very much occupied. It was a vast emptiness vastly filled, a nothing that found room for everything - room for grass, trees, shadowy distant hills, and far above them snowpeaks like a row of angular clouds riding the blue sky. I had lost a head and gained a world…It was self-luminous reality for once swept clean of all obscuring mind. It was the revelation, at long last, of the perfectly obvious.”

OK. I have no doubt that Harding had a breathtaking experience. But here's the thing: like he said, his revelation was of the perfectly obvious. Yesterday I jotted down a note about something Sam Harris said in lesson 28 of the guided meditations in his Waking Up course:

“You're the space in which everything appears. Everything is already happening. All you are is consciousness and its contents.”

These three sentences are pretty much the gist of Harding's book. They indeed are perfectly obvious. Everything in the world, or indeed the entire universe, the Himalayas included, has to appear in our consciousness if we are to be aware of it. How else would we know anything?

But here's some facts about the human brain and mind (the mind is the brain in action, basically) that Harding doesn't address in On Having No Head, either because he wasn't aware of them, or chose not to mention them. 

1. The brain has no feeling. This allows surgeons to operate on the brain while a patient is conscious. So we aren't aware of what our hundred billion or so brain cells are doing in the same way we feel our muscles contracting, our fingers touching something, or our stomach digesting a heavy meal. 


2. In the quotation above, and elsewhere in his book, Harding speaks of a "vast emptiness" of consciousness. This may be how it feels to us, but that isn't reality. When Harding looked at the view of the Himalayas, his brain was busily piecing together data from his optic nerves, integrating it with past memories/experiences, and presenting him with what he calls a "superb scene." Visual perception isn't a passive mirroring of the world. It involves a lot of brain activity. 

In the updated part of his book, Harding does speak about some neuroscientific truths: there is no evidence for an independent "self" within the brain/mind, nor does it appear that we humans possess free will, which seemingly would require the aforementioned self that doesn't exist. 

Here's what Harding says in his Bringing the Story Up to Date section about his final stage of "The Eight Stages of the Headless Way." It's called (8) The Breakthrough.

“This amounts to a profound declaration of intent. It is the realization at gut level (so to say) that one's deepest desire is that all shall be as it is -- seeing that it all flows from one's true Nature, the Aware Space here. 


How is this breakthrough actually made? What can one do to bring it nearer?


In a sense, nothing. 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?


After all, one's initial in-seeing -- no matter how 'brief' and 'shallow' -- was already total self-surrender: everything here went: or rather, it was clear there's nothing here to go. It was the essential quantum leap from the fiction of egocentricity to the fact of zerocentricity. 


And for sure the faithful day-to-day seeing put in since then -- the seeing that already one is Nothing and Everything -- is a most valuable preparation for the discovery that at the deepest level one already wills Nothing and Everything.” 


Now, Harding goes on to talk about an unconditional surrender to God's will in which we welcome all that the world is bringing to us. But as noted above, his insight also can be framed as a realization that there is no self residing within our psyche, and there is no free will belonging to that nonexistent self.

This is fully in accord with how Sam Harris understands the human brain/mind, which explains why Harris is a fan of Harding's book.
244 people found this helpful
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Trevor
5.0 out of 5 stars Clearest articulation of these things that I know of
Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2021
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I didn't quite "get" what Harding meant by headlessness when I first started reading this book a couple years ago, but with some time and practice (of both the headless and other varieties), I now see that this book puts into very clear, no-nonsense language some of the most important things that a person can discover about their own situation as a conscious being. The clarity is almost unique among the many books on meditation that I have read. I would say that Harding doesn't quite give the more traditional meditation practices the credit they deserve, but the style of meditation he presents is certainly quite potent and deep on its own.
7 people found this helpful
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timeDrapery
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing Crumbs
Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2023
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Read this text here and now and then do the same thing later on down the road. You will not regret it one bit.
3 people found this helpful
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larry
4.0 out of 5 stars Loved the information
Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2018
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Good reading on self realization. Like the author.
One person found this helpful
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eventually22
5.0 out of 5 stars Get it
Reviewed in the United States on January 25, 2019
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I really enjoyed this book and I’m glad I bought it. I’m just starting to learn the headless zen way but this was a great introduction and I can’t seem to stop thinking about it and doing it. Buy it and try it. It makes life more interesting and easy.
7 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Suvie
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful
Reviewed in India on January 26, 2024
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If you are on a journey on Self discovery, give this book a read. Nice refreshing personal insights...moved me closer to my own Center. Thank you
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Alexander Howard
5.0 out of 5 stars Priceless... If you get it
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 29, 2021
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I've been studying non-duality for a number of years and had yet to have any 'glimpses' of this reality. Having read this book, I can literally see this non-dual reality, albeit rather briefly. If you think the recommended exercises are just an interesting "parlour game", then it may be worthwhile reading up on what it is trying to point to. For example, the classic I Am That (Nisargadhatta Maharaj) is both an excellent starting and ending point (though I've only reached the former). Also, the teachings of Tony Parsons and Jim Newman are a wonderful way to get into the concept. Another reviewer has stated that one experience is not enough; it has to be a lived experience. The material is backed up with stories and quotes from the Zen tradition, which I knew little about. I think it's a wonderful book and thoroughly recommend it.
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Alexander Howard
5.0 out of 5 stars Priceless... If you get it
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 29, 2021
I've been studying non-duality for a number of years and had yet to have any 'glimpses' of this reality. Having read this book, I can literally see this non-dual reality, albeit rather briefly. If you think the recommended exercises are just an interesting "parlour game", then it may be worthwhile reading up on what it is trying to point to. For example, the classic I Am That (Nisargadhatta Maharaj) is both an excellent starting and ending point (though I've only reached the former). Also, the teachings of Tony Parsons and Jim Newman are a wonderful way to get into the concept. Another reviewer has stated that one experience is not enough; it has to be a lived experience. The material is backed up with stories and quotes from the Zen tradition, which I knew little about. I think it's a wonderful book and thoroughly recommend it.
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11 people found this helpful
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Miguel Duarte
1.0 out of 5 stars Bad Condition overall
Reviewed in Spain on March 3, 2021
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The item was damaged, with several pages mistreated and with a substantial bent on the overall shape of the book.
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Sîr Alîce
5.0 out of 5 stars ¡¿?!
Reviewed in Mexico on October 11, 2019
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If you think you have a head.. this is a book for you!
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Canerrity
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book! The writing is delightful
Reviewed in Canada on April 10, 2017
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Great book! The writing is delightful. Reminds me of C. S. Lewis and Chesterton. Harding has one of the most original and practical approaches to enlightenment I have ever read. It is not really about Zen per say, but is universal in its approach. It is one of the most influential books I have read (and I have read hundreds). I have re-read it again and again.

I also bought the audio book. I do not recommend it solely because it is audible and they only give you a proprietary file format (aax), so they control how you listen, either through itunes or audible. What I purchase I expect to own and to do with as I please. I certainly won't be buying anything through audible again.
3 people found this helpful
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