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On Having No Head
This book is a breakthrough in terms of sharing, simply and clearly, the direct experience of who we really are - the boundless awareness at everyone's centre.
'Reason and imagination and all mental chatter died down... I forgot my name, my humanness, my thingness, all that could be called me or mine. Past and future dropped away... Lighter than air, clearer than glass, altogether released from myself, I was nowhere around.' Thus D.E. Harding describes his first experience of headlessness, or no self.
'Reason and imagination and all mental chatter died down... I forgot my name, my humanness, my thingness, all that could be called me or mine. Past and future dropped away... Lighter than air, clearer than glass, altogether released from myself, I was nowhere around.' Thus D.E. Harding describes his first experience of headlessness, or no self.
- GenresPhilosophy
Paperback
Published July 8, 2013
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October 14, 2025This hit me as hard as George Berkeley in Philosophy 101. It is, in a sense, the most English book of mysticism ever written. (This guy’s so English, his name begins with two initials.)
On Having No Head is utterly solipsistic, which ultimately troubled me. Do other people even exist? But it’s kindly. Though all the supplementary material (“Bringing the Story up to Date”) seems a bit superfluous.
Opening at random:
“It was no good. I was unable to describe my experience in a way that interested the hearers, or conveyed to them anything of its quality or significance. They really had no idea what I was talking about – for both sides an embarrassing situation. Here was something perfectly obvious, immensely significant, a revelation of pure and astonished delight – to me and nobody else!”
On Having No Head is utterly solipsistic, which ultimately troubled me. Do other people even exist? But it’s kindly. Though all the supplementary material (“Bringing the Story up to Date”) seems a bit superfluous.
Opening at random:
“It was no good. I was unable to describe my experience in a way that interested the hearers, or conveyed to them anything of its quality or significance. They really had no idea what I was talking about – for both sides an embarrassing situation. Here was something perfectly obvious, immensely significant, a revelation of pure and astonished delight – to me and nobody else!”
Displaying 1 of 1 review