This page lists some of the all-time best Douglas Harding quotes. Enjoy!
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50+ Douglas Harding Quotes on Spirituality, Self-Inquiry, Headless Way, & More
Douglas Harding Quotes on Socialization
“Everything I had been brought up to believe about who I really am was upside down and wrong.” — Douglas Harding
“A confidence trick has been played on you and on me—on all of us. We have to forget what we have been told and look afresh at what is right where we are. If you do this, I think you will find real peace of mind.” — Douglas Harding
“The great con, the great sellout, is to say, ‘I’m not going to dare to look at what I am. I’m going to take everybody’s word for it.’” — Douglas Harding
“We’ve been told what is not true. Other people have told us what we are really, and we’ve listened to them—not realizing that on the question of who we are right at the point we exist at the center, nobody can tell us what the answer is but ourselves. You are the sole and final authority on what it’s like being you now, right where you are. Nobody else is in a position to say.” — Douglas Harding
“Nearly all of us live and die convinced that the as-if world—the world of convention mediated to us by parents, teachers, and language—is the real world.” — Douglas Harding
“The great delusion, the great nonsense, of the as-if world is that I am here what I look like there (in the mirror).” — Douglas Harding
“The art of life is to transfer from the ‘as-if world’ (man’s world) to the ‘as-is world’ (God’s world).” — Douglas Harding
“We will be better members of the human club when we withdraw, secretly, our subscription.” — Douglas Harding
“‘Evil’ is the name we give to alienation, separation. Evil is failure to be open. Evil is turning your back on the world.” — Douglas Harding
“All the alienation that we suffer from, which is really what bugs us in our lives, is because we’re separate. Now, we’re built getting room for each other—totally unseparate—and we come together finally as this one reality.” — Douglas Harding
Douglas Harding Quotes on Self-Inquiry
“The first motive for looking at this is curiosity. I’ll be damned if I’ll live and die without ever looking to see who is doing that … I’m making sure I don’t live and die without having a look at who’s doing that.” — Douglas Harding
“The cure of my problem is to see who has the problem … The answer to all your problems is who you really, really are.” — Douglas Harding
“My whole life is about seeing who you really, really are at center.” — Douglas Harding
“What I’m up to, at its briefest, is to wake up to the mystery of myself.” — Douglas Harding
“You are, and I am, a tool for living. It’s a good thing to find out what the tool is.” — Douglas Harding
“We’ve occurred, and we’re not going to die without having a look for ourselves at what has occurred.” — Douglas Harding
“I think my first reason for going into this whole question of my true identity is a kind of thankfulness at having happened. It’s as though one needn’t have happened, isn’t it? But, having happened, and being capable of asking such a question—’Who am I?’ or ‘What has happened?’—it seems so chickenhearted and unadventurous to live and die without ever inquiring who’s doing so. Can you really think of any question more interesting or worth asking than ‘Who am I?’ Can you really think of anything more important? … Isn’t it not only a fascinating question, but an extremely important practical question, to live not from a lie but from the truth of who I am?” — Douglas Harding
“I was an architect. But, all my life since youth, my passion has not been architecture at all. I earned my living at it, but my passion is to find out who I really, really, really am. The issue of my identity has been what makes me tick all along … Who am I? Who is this architect?” — Douglas Harding
“The word ‘I’ is no more the experience of ‘I’ than the word ‘red’ is tinted red. Notoriously, words become substitutes for their meaning. This is tragically true when they are about my 1st-personhood. Talking and reading and writing about Who I am, without seeing Who I am, is a well-worn escape route from Who I am.” — Douglas Harding
“Any road home is a good road. Any ticket home is a valid ticket.” — Douglas Harding
Douglas Harding Quotes on Spirituality
“What is the message of all the great religions? Nearer to you than your hands, nearer than your feet, nearer than your breathing is the origin of the world. Who you really, really, really are is not a product of the world—it is the origin of the world … They say that nearer to you than all else is the eternal awakeness, awareness, reality from which all flows.” — Douglas Harding
“What I do in all these books and all my meetings with people is to go around and say dare to look for yourself what you’re looking out of, and you will find that you are this immense, immortal, imperishable, awake capacity for the world—and this is the heart of all the great religions.” — Douglas Harding
“This is so awesome, so extraordinary. We discover at our heart the power and the glory behind the world. This is the message of Christianity, of all the great religions: that your heart is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory. Not because you deserve it. It’s grace! … It’s a free gift begging to be noticed.” — Douglas Harding
“When I trust who I really, really, really am, where I’m coming from—my true nature, my Buddha-nature, the indwelling holy spirit, kingdom of heaven, God, or whatever you would like to call this—I find I’m taken care of and that things work out.” — Douglas Harding
“The great traditions say that this incredibly blessed thing is true: who you really, really, really are is the eternal reality, the imperishable being, from whom all come and to whom all return—and that this is visibly available and absolutely obvious when we dare to look.” — Douglas Harding
“As the great ones down the ages have said, if we live from what is given in all obviousness, we shall find blessing heaped on blessing and we shall see that we are built open for one another.” — Douglas Harding
“It’s been advertised to be the most inaccessible, mysterious, difficult thing to see who we really, really, really, really are—you know, all this enlightened stuff. But, if you read the real masters, they will say it’s the most obvious thing in the whole damn world who you really, really are.” — Douglas Harding
“It’s not for nothing that the enlightened are called seers and not hearers or smellers or touchers—and certainly not thinkers.” — Douglas Harding
“We’re all living from our enlightenment. Here we are fully established in our enlightenment. All we got to do is not to achieve it but turn around and acknowledge it.” — Douglas Harding
Douglas Harding Quotes on the Headless Way
“What’s all this business about having no head? Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Well, really it’s about the question of your true identity and my true identity—about who and what we really are.” — Douglas Harding
“Here, surely, is the biggest hoax, the greatest illusion, the silliest farce—that a man should scrutinize the world for a lifetime and never once see that his own head is missing.” — Douglas Harding
“All we’ve got to do is turn our attention around 180 degrees from what we’re looking at to what we’re looking out of. It’s absolutely obvious.” — Douglas Harding
“We all know that inside we aren’t what we look like.” — Douglas Harding
“When one loses one’s head and is busted wide open, then I find my center of gravity in fact does move down—I lose my head, and I find my heart.” — Douglas Harding
“The best day of my life—my rebirthday, so to speak—was when I found I had no head.” — Douglas Harding
“Your business is to look at your true face—which is no face.” — Douglas Harding
“Your absence of face is filled with the presence of my face … Trading faces is what we really do.” — Douglas Harding
“Go out in the world and deal with people in all circumstances of life from our space and not from our face.” — Douglas Harding
“There’s a total difference between what we are for ourselves at center—that’s our reality, where we’re coming from—and what we are in appearance out there for others at a distance.” — Douglas Harding
“Your appearance is real, but it’s real as appearance. It’s not real as real; it’s not really what you are. It’s one of your myriad appearances at a certain range.” — Douglas Harding
“My appearances are many, and they depend on how far the observer is away.” — Douglas Harding
“What one is depends on where you are looking at one from … The distance of the observer determines the nature of the observed … What is perceived to be at the center depends on the range of the observer.” — Douglas Harding
“It’s not a question of what we’re looking at only, but looking simultaneously at what we’re looking out of.” — Douglas Harding
“Isn’t it true that you are taking on whatever is on offer—the universe as is presented to you at this time?” — Douglas Harding
“Can you see any difference—any distinction, any separation—between the space right where you are and what fills it?” — Douglas Harding
“Have you ever in your life been face-to-face with anyone? Hasn’t it been face-to-space?” — Douglas Harding
“It all boils down to the simple thing: what am I in my own experience at this time? What am I looking out of? That’s real, that’s my reality—as distinct from what I’m looking at and as distinct from my appearance.” — Douglas Harding
“Are we face-to-face at this moment, or is it not rather—from your point of view—face-to-noface? Are you not, as first-person, right there where you are in your chair headless, faceless? … We are surely face-to-noface, completely asymmetrical in our relationship … Now, isn’t it very odd that we should overlook this simple truth of what it’s like where we are?” — Douglas Harding
“Nobody has been where you are except you … Only you are in a position to say what it’s like being you at this time.” — Douglas Harding
“You are the sole and final authority on what you are in your own experience as first-person, singular, present tense—where you’re coming from, what you’re looking out of, what is sitting in your seat at this time, who you are in your own direct, unmediated experience of what it is like having happened into the world.” — Douglas Harding
“I really would recommend this as a way of enjoying life because it’s full of discoveries. Don’t treat it like an exercise for keeping up the experience so much as adventure because it really is that.” — Douglas Harding
Experiments:
“The heart of our work is the experiments which take us beyond words to direct experience.” — Douglas Harding
- Point: “Point at your face, and see it’s pointing at nothing.”
- One Eye: “Check that you’re looking out of two eyes or one eye.”
- Two-Way Looking: “Two-way looking is not losing sight of the looker … It’s looking in at the space and out at what is currently filling it. This is real meditation for ordinary life.”
- Space: “See that as space you never move … Truth is you’ve never moved an inch in your whole life … It’s as simple as that to come home to the place we never left.”
- Tube: “How many faces are there in the tube at this time on present evidence? Look at the difference between the far end of the tube and the near end. Have you ever, inside this tube or outside, been face-to-face with anyone in your life?”
Douglas Harding Quotes on Headless Way Realization
“It’s a matter of life and death to get this right.” — Douglas Harding
“The basis of what it’s all about is looking to see what it’s like right where you are, and seeing that you are not a thing. Your essence there is capacity, emptiness, openness, space, void, fulfilling.” — Douglas Harding
“You’re shaped by the world by whatever is in view because you have no shape of your very own. But, you are free then to take on every color, every shape, every form that’s available. It’s such incredible liberation.” — Douglas Harding
“To put all in a nutshell, I promise you I’m not a bit what I look like. Thank God!” — Douglas Harding
“Who we really, really are is not subject to stress but is absolutely and totally free of stress where we are at center. The one you’re looking out of is unstressable.” — Douglas Harding
“The center of your world and the world of everyone—the center, the being, where we are—is in fact the reality we come from, our source.” — Douglas Harding
“You are not a product of the whole darn world, you are the source of the whole thing—where it’s all coming from. Right where you are is the beginning of all things, the ending of all things, the meaning of all things. You are not in the world as a product of it, it is in you—and you are where it all comes from and goes back to.” — Douglas Harding
“When I look here and see who I really, really am at this moment, I am aware, capacity, and space—which is infinite. Space every which way—awake space and unbounded space for the world.” — Douglas Harding
“Things come and go in my space which is not the kind of thing that comes and goes.” — Douglas Harding
“What you really are is no thing and all things.” — Douglas Harding
“After and before don’t quite apply. Where we’re coming from is timeless. Where there’s no thing, there’s no change. There’s no way of registering time.” — Douglas Harding
“The aware no-thing that you are is not the kind of thing that can be destroyed.” — Douglas Harding
“Your whole story is a story of onion peeling—simplification, dropping characteristics—and coming in a way towards nothingness, no-thing.” — Douglas Harding
“You are not what you look like. You look like a thing which perishes, but you are a no-thing which cannot perish.” — Douglas Harding
“This place is free of of every thing.” — Douglas Harding
“When we see who we really are, we don’t crave unnecessary objects.” — Douglas Harding
“When the world is yours, why go for a million dollars? That’s chicken feed!” — Douglas Harding
“We’re built busted wide open for each other.” — Douglas Harding
“To see who I really, really am means to take on the suffering of the world.” — Douglas Harding
“Nature won’t stay still enough to have her photo taken; she is much too elusive to be tied down, much too abundant to be got into any library or laboratory.” — Douglas Harding
“What is the essence of loving but to disappear in favor of the loved one.” — Douglas Harding
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