The Results Of Seeing

Douglas Harding

In so far as one sees clearly and steadily into one's Void Nature, into how it is right here and now, what happens is this:-

One's senses waken. Colours, textures, sounds, tastes, smells – all sensations are apt to take on a new brilliance, poignancy, novelty, in the sharpest contrast to their plain Background here. For instance, it is common (even when one has just begun to see) to find colours – such as the traffic lights and pavements and the sides of taxis – unbelievably glowing and beautiful.

One's heart goes out to the world. The more I take care of the Coolness here the more the warmth takes care of itself there. It's not that I feel myself to be more loving (my love goes out to you and cannot be retained here) but that you are seen to be more lovable. My feelings, adhering now to their objects instead of their Subject (Who finds nothing here to attach them to) become real and spontaneous feelings and no longer put-on or worked-up, sentimental ones. Ceasing to cultivate and wallow in my own states – an anxious, self-defeating, absurd habit – I'm free at last to enjoy people and the world just as they come, from this their Empty Source. In other words, my mind, with all its thoughts and feelings, is centrifugal. Ceasing to be a small, local, private, personal possession abstracted from the universe there and shut up in a brain-box here (as if it could be!) my mind is at large, is the same old world, yet utterly different. It is replete with a mind and meaning I no longer abstract from it. It is all there, because I claim none of it for myself. It is sane. It makes sense. It is loved.

One's mind awakens. Ideas, inspiration, guidance from moment to moment, flow without obstruction from their Source, which is experienced here as Itself mindless. Paradoxically, to be really creative, to be really intelligent about things there, one must be a conscious numb-skull here, empty-headed, clueless, blank.

One's day-to-day problems are sorted out. These range from finding a parking place to deciding where to live, from how to get rid of mice to how to get on with one's mother-in-law. Their answer is to see Who has them. Then they – the problems – are removed rather than abolished, placed rather than solved; but this placing is, in effect, their solution. Here, one is shot of all problems. Minding one's own Business here, one notes with interest events there, and what one is led to do about them. The result may be surprising, mysterious, even shocking or absurd, but in the long run it shows a wisdom, an uncanny prescience, far beyond mere human computation. When at last, baffled and exhausted, one has the good sense to hand over from one's human computer (which takes account of only a fraction of the relevant data), to one's Universal Computer, to the Void Itself (which takes account of all the data), the answers that come out are the right ones. Not man, but the One who lives in man, knows best. So he finds when he abandons his imagined self to his true Self. The radical answer to every problem is never to lose sight of this Self in any circumstances.

Whatever the problem there, its solution lies here, at 180° to it: the one-way, direct approach is never good enough. Perseus' problem was Medusa – to view her directly was to be made into stone, so he turned round and viewed her indirectly, mirrored in the shield given to him by the Goddess of Wisdom, and was safe. Similarly the world and its faces cease to petrify me – making me into a mere 3rd person, a face among faces and a thing among things – once I turn to What mirrors the world here so clearly. Only the 1st person, the No-thing, can cope with 2nd and 3rd persons, with things.

One's unconscious is taken care of. Only the No-mind can cope with the mind – conscious and unconscious. Another ancient myth puts the whole matter beautifully. An Eastern King sent his son down to Egypt to find the Pearl of Self-knowledge. Arrived there, he ate the food and wore the clothes of the Egyptians till he became drugged and forgot Who he was and why he was in Egypt. His Father, hearing of this, sent a bird-messenger to remind him, and the Prince set out to find the Pearl. Eventually he learned that it lay at the bottom of a lake, guarded by a terrible serpent. Braving the monster, he dived in, snatched the Pearl, and returned with it to his Father's house, on the way there donning his blue robe – the starry firmament.

Note that the Prince neither ignores nor takes on the serpent (his own unconscious, demonic, animal nature) but by-passes it. If one fights the serpent (as in direct moral discipline) he's always about to give in but never actually does so; and if one makes friends and parleys with the serpent (as in the many varieties of psychological exploration and analysis) he's delighted to keep up the dialogue indefinitely – and meantime to sit snugly on the Pearl. But if, like our hero, one creeps by the serpent when he's least alert and seizes the Pearl, one is then armed with the perfect dragon-taming charm. The sword of discipline only scratched and stimulated him, friendly overtures only encouraged him to keep one talking for life, but the talisman of Self-knowledge he respects. It doesn't allow one to ignore him (quite the contrary) nor is he reduced overnight to a pussy-cat (indeed he can put up a show of angry violence at the loss of his Jewel) but he knows his Master – and how to serve Him.

Take any psychological trouble large or small – for example, one's irritability, one's meanness, one's fear of spiders and of heights, one's anxiety that one isn't loving enough. The cure of the trouble isn't to go into it out of Oneself, not to retreat from it into Oneself, but to face it from Oneself – to look into it from Here, consciously to view it from this trouble-free Home whose windows open wide and clear onto the troubled scene. As always, the solution is two-way looking, seeing simultaneously what one's looking at and What one's looking out of – face to No-face, thing to No-thing, problem to No-problem. This therapy works because it fits the facts, for in truth one can never leave Home, nor shut out the view from Home, nor separate them.

One ceases playing games. The basic move in all the tragi-comic games one plays is pretending to leave Home, stationing oneself in imagination over there and turning in upon oneself and putting on a face here – putting on some particular act and its masks for the benefit of the audience. And the basic cure is to see oneself Home and live here facelessly, live from within outwards, live to express not impress. What people make of one then is their business: one's own business is one's Void – and the people who fill It. To strike them as a real, sincere, natural, game-free person, it is only necessary to attend to the Nothing here and leave all such build-up – one's development from this Empty Source here to its regional effects in them – to take care of itself. To be interested in one's self-image is to spoil it. Deliberately to project a self is to project a false self. While seeing Who one really is, one is game-free; while overlooking This, one is at least playing the Face Game, and probably some of its derivatives as well.

One finds peace of mind. At the Centre is always perfection, off-Centre always imperfection. Man as man is (to say the least) lacking, and no amount of seeing Who he really is will make a human into an angel or the human scene into Utopia, let alone Heaven. The effects of his seeing will, if he persists, certainly become evident in his personality and environment, but they will vary immensely and will often seem to him to be very meagre indeed. One thing alone can be relied on through all circumstances, and that is their Core of Peace. The seer may often find himself in a tragic and sad and puzzling and troublesome world, but he never (so long as he's seeing) lacks peace of mind. His basic anxiety has gone. Seeing that he is indeed Peace Itself, he is at rest.

(From The Toolkit for Testing the Incredible Hypothesis [out of print] by Douglas Harding, quoted in Seeing Who You Really Are by Richard Lang)