September 17th, 2007 Fred McVittie
The ‘Headless’ technique developed by Douglas Harding as a means of cultivating non-duality quite possibly works in similar ways as practices which produce ‘out of body experiences’. Such techniques, whether embedded in spiritual or religious practice, or discovered more informally in secular situations, (during pharmaceutical use, at times of great stress or danger, etc) give the impression that the material body can be separated from a seemingly non-physical mind, allowing this mind to function extra-corporeally. During an ‘OOBE’ one experiences oneself as existing not ‘within’ the body but as a detached, remote viewpoint outside of that body, thinking and being see to be taking place without the usual support apparatus of physical embodiment.
The significant difference that Harding brings to the effecting of this experience is that, instead of attempting the deeply counter-intuitive trick of ‘moving’ consciousness out of its apparent location in the head, he uses naïve self-observation strategies that allow one to disbelieve in the existence of one’s own head, the usual seat of consciousness. This results in a feeling that one’s consciousness is located in a space where not matter exists, a feeling of self-awareness which is experiences as hovering uncontained just above the torso. When the containing substantive entity, head or body to which consciousness is attached, is no longer present, the boundaries of the self become fuzzy, permeable, and extensible.
“The true getting up is not bodily but from the body; in any movement that takes the body with it there is no more than a passage from sleep to sleep, from bed to bed; the veritable waking is from corporeal things.”
Turnbull (ed) – The Essence of Plotinus. O.U.P. New York, 1948. in Harding 1961.
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