Douglas Harding - The Turning Point

The Turning Point

To Being, Awareness, Joy

D.E. Harding

The Shollond Trust

The Turning Point

This book was typed up by the following volunteers. The Shollond Trust is extremely grateful to them for their help: Al Matanovic, Axel Tanner, Barbara Becker, Bill Gillies , Bruce Wilding, Carolann Sharp, Cathy Christian, Chris Owen, Damien Thomas, Danielle Bol-De-Greve, Dave Croce, David A. Burnet, Helen Connor, Howard Davies, Jane Jannotta, Janet Cook, Jenny Legge, Jim Van Meggelen, John Boynton, Julie Hawkins, Julie Pogachefsky, Kevin Michael, Kevin Young, Laudis Rodriguez, Mary M. Walsh, Melanie Gamble, Michael Haederle, Miguel Angel Sosa Cravioto, Nelly Beraud Edmeads, Nick Cramp, Nina Finnigan, Rakshita-Athalia, Richard Lang, Rob Vlaar, Roy Potter, Shane Keher, Stephanie Klauser, Toby Philpott, Wilf Gotham.

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ISBN 978-0-9568877-9-5

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

This book has three essential components. (1) A lot of words, plus the points they make. (2) Pictures and diagrams of mine to help make sense of those points. (3) Half a dozen experiments or tests or exercises designed to reveal what you can see you are, in sharp distinction from what you think you are and are told you are. These experiments are the backbone of the whole. I cant stress too strongly that they are for doing, and just reading about them is worse than useless. Yes, much worse!

Because each chapter is self-contained and complete in itself you can read them in any order you like. But this does mean that you will find a good deal of verbal repetition, and instructions to repeat experiments that you have already done. For this I make no apology. They are for repetition, and cant be done too often. In fact, they are for doing till they come so naturally that its as if they do themselves.

Two more pieces of advice about how to read this book. (1) If you are new to the headless way I urge you to read the chapters in the order printed. They do build up to a climax. (2) Since at Root every chapter is about the same Thing or, rather No-thing it matters little if you find some chapters obscure or incomprehensible. Just read on, and you will come to other parts of the book that are quite clear and easy going. Take for instance the last chapter entitled I AM: some friends find it far too complex, while others dont. But Im sure that all my headless friends will come across frequently in this book the Great Simplification that works wonders.

I conclude on a warning note to believe anything you read in this book without testing it to the limit is to condemn yourself to bondage and slavery. As Nicolai Berdyaev tells us: God has laid on mankind the duty of being free, no matter how difficult that may be, or how much suffering that may involve. This sounds much more miserable than it is, seeing that in fact this is the only real freedom, as well as the unfailing cure for suffering and the sure recipe for divine and lasting joy.

D. E. Harding

I dedicate this book to my wife Catherine, who so helpfully examined and passed every chapter, without necessarily agreeing with all of it. Shes French, and for the French, of course, liberty comes first, before equality and fraternity.

1. LETS GROW UP

Man is a shocking case of arrested development.

When not cut short, our life is a four-stage affair.

First, the new-born baby who has no boundaries.

Second, the child who some of the time agrees with grown-ups that the object in the mirror is himself, while the rest of the time hes still boundless.

Third, the adult who has lost his space and become his face. Almost all of us are stuck at this stage. We substitute the dying thing we look like over there for the deathless no-thing we are here, thereby condemning ourselves to death and fear, hate, greed, and delusion.

Fourth, to grow up we must turn our attention round 180 and look at What were looking out of. Then we rediscover the clarity and immensity we enjoyed as infants, and find that we are, in all vital respects, the opposite of what we look like. In particular, we find that the face-to-face confrontation of Stage Three is a lie and that we all are disappearing in one-anothers favour.

Our job is to live this way, and so help Man grow up.

Im not suggesting that the third and desperately difficult stage of our life can be dispensed with, but it needs cutting down. The longer it drags on the harder it gets to stop. Seventeen is a good age for discovering you are still space for the world to happen in.

Few reach this Fourth Stage, and the ability of those who do so to change the world seems negligible. The individual seems powerless, but before giving up hope, lets face what our Fourth Stage amounts to. Its the realization that by grace you and I are One with our Source, identical at Centre with the Power thats giving rise to Itself, plus all things from quarks to galaxies, and that we arent through to the One as human beings, but as the One, as the only Real Power.

Theres an early Buddhist story that the Buddhas enlightenment ensured the enlightenment of all sentient beings. Im saying that when you see into your boundless, immaculate, imperishable, all-inclusive, wide-awake Nature and Source and Centre, you do so as One with and empowered by the only Real and Ultimate Power that, having already achieved the impossible miracle of Self-origination, isnt easily baffled. Tell me, whats impossible for the One that creates Itself? And whats impossible for those who enjoy union with that One?

Man has survived ice-ages, ages of stagnation, every sort of nastiness and nonsense. Its up to us, who see that we are by grace One with the One, to see our brothers and sisters through to the love and the glory that shines here at the heart of All.

You cant grow up apart from them, for the simple reason that to get Home to the One as the One you must take with you, piggyback, all that comprise the One.

2. WHATS GONE WRONG?

Few people would agree with Robert Brownings rapturous cry that alls right with the world. Most of us, most of the time, feel that somethings terribly amiss. The aim of this chapter is to find out what it is that has gone wrong, and what if anything you and I can do about it. An ambitious project! Yes indeed! But lets see how far we can get.

We need hardly bother to list the things about ourselves and the world that we dont like, that arent as they should be. They are too many and too obvious. So lets move straight on to consider the various ways we can and do respond to the troubles that threaten to engulf us.

As I see it, we have four alternatives, the first of which is

Resentment

And a very natural reaction it is! We had no choice, no say at all, in the sex and temperament and appearance and social status and circumstances imposed upon us. We werent consulted about when and where we were flung into the world and what kind of world it was and is. Our preferences and needs were it seems unfeelingly ignored. We were pitchforked into this blood-soaked arena which, apparently, is all set up to hurt and mangle and soon destroy us. What sort of Creator or Demiurge is it (we want to know) who gives us one nature, and along with it all sorts of frustrations and contradictions of that nature? Who gives us, so to speak, a nature and an anti-nature, who actually fixes it up that whereas we need love and security and success and joy and peace, most of the time we get their opposites? What have innocent babies done to deserve all the pain and disillusion, ending in sickness and senility and death itself, that is steadily coming to them? Surely the only appropriate reaction is anger.