As I See It

Sometimes people criticised Douglas Harding, author of On Having No Head, by saying he was like a record whose needle had got stuck. His reply was that at least his needle was stuck in the Centre! The Centre being the eternal, all-embracing Heart of oneself, one’s True Self, the Stillness which is the hub of the turning world, the infinitely small Point that is all the while exploding into Everything. No bad place to be stuck! The articles in this book, arranged in chronological order, span the period of Harding’s life (1909–2007) from the early 1940s to the late 1990s. And though they are the sound of a needle stuck on one subject—the changeless subject of our true identity—the only Subject!—they reveal something of the wide repertoire Harding composed, inspired by that single, silent, mysterious, nearer-than-near, nothing-that-is-everything. These writings also demonstrate how Harding’s understanding developed over many years as he explored in different contexts the meaning of what he saw himself to be, in contrast to what others made of him. These writings are selected by Richard Lang, a long-time friend of Harding’s.