Many Are Standing At The Door, But It Is The Solitary Who Will Enter The Bridal Chamber – The Gospel of Thomas.
That is one of the first quotes that Douglas Harding used at his recent Princeton workshop. He used the image of the door often. A door from the “dark side” to the “side of light.” It is a physical door, though, not just an image. Only the Alone can go through that door.
I didn’t recognize Douglas when Eric and I walked into the workshop. There were three rows of chairs in an elegant room adorned with portraits of distinguished looking, long- dead, old men. Perhaps eight people were there; all in the second row. It wasn’t until we sat down that I realized Eric was sitting next to Douglas. Douglas wore a T-shirt which, with a plant printed on it, looked like it came from a nature center gift shop, a pair of grey dress pants with suspenders, and black shoes with no socks. Oddly, the suspenders were under the T-shirt. I knew he was ninety years old, but he looked in his seventies. About five feet ten, with thinning white hair, a short white beard (thin on the cheeks), he was healthily tanned. He had a hearing aide in each ear and some swelling of his ankles.
Immediately, his lack of ego and his breadth of knowledge impressed me. When someone mentioned they purchased his “large tome,” The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth, Douglas pointed to his stomach and laughingly said, “Yes, I have a large tummy.” Douglas quoted from authors I can’t remember just two days later. Obviously well read, he used quotes only for emphasis. His own ideas are startlingly fresh.
In the Gospel of Thomas is a clue to the procedure, Douglas said. Only alone are you allowed through the door. “One of the most dangerous words is ‘we.’ You look at the people around you and say we drink tea. You see them putting tea into a slit with teeth located in an oval mass and you think you do the same. No, that is out there. In here, (pointing his finger to his face), the tea is poured into a clear void. Those faces out there cannot go through the door. Only the One can go through (again pointing to his face).”
Douglas and his wife Catherine co-led the workshop. Catherine is an elegant looking seventy-year old French woman who married Douglas around ten years ago. Their relationship seems amicable. They kid one another throughout the workshop and occasionally hold hands. Catherine smiles too much for my comfort. My impression is she believes everything Douglas says, but doesn’t know for sure. Perhaps it is the pressure to perform in workshops, since Douglas quite often has her explain experiments. While Douglas seems at ease; without facades, Catherine seems like a deer in the spotlight – frozen in a radiant, posed smile of cosmic consciousness.
The Hardings spoke for a few minutes to set the stage for the experiments. Douglas said he attempts to move philosophy from “concepts to precepts.” There are millions of books filled with inspiring, heavenly ideas, but how do you make them real? The experiments are his key. As he said, this door is a physical door and you (singular) can walk through it and experience the Real. He mentioned that, “You won’t get a peak experience, rather it’s more like an ‘ahhh’. If the gates of heaven open up for you, that’s great, but that’s not what this is about. It’s about seeing the obvious.”
In the first experiment, everyone received a piece of cardboard with an oval cut out (large enough for a face) and another smaller oval cut out with a mirror taped to it.
Douglas said there is a wall between the real and the unreal. There is a doorway between as well as a window. The key to the experiments is to observe. See what you see; not what you think or remember or feel or imagine. See like a child. Look in the window (the mirror) and what do you see? “That face is out there, an arm’s-length away. Is that you? Is that thing out there what is looking from in here? Now try to go through the wall via the window. Slowly move the mirror toward you and see what happens. Next look through the doorway. Slowly move toward the doorway, until you are through. Notice what you see. You have lose a head and gained a world. Look around you at all these other faces peeking through cardboard like animals in a burrow. Is that you? Hold a mirror in front of you. Does that face looking out of its burrow, bear any relationship to your experience. It is out there; not in here [in awareness].”
There I was with my face sticking through a piece of cardboard in a room with twenty other likewise adorned heads, and Douglas telling me I had no head. Crazy, yet my sight verifies his words. I really have never seen my face, or my head. It is always out there. “In mirrors, doorknobs, spoons, and glasses.” I have assumed I must have a face like all those others around me. When I look through the cardboard though, I am awareness and all is within me.
Catherine said your center of gravity shifts from the head to the chest when you do this, but that was not my experience. When they asked for feedback on this experiment, I said I felt my head expand to encompass the world. Catherine said with practice it would shift, but Douglas’ attitude was more of, “that’s your experience, so I can’t debate it.”
After a short time for feedback (there was little from the audience), Douglas and Catherine talked before the next experiment. That was the style of the workshop. An experiment, time for questions, a short lecture, another experiment, etc. Douglas addressed the condition of the fellow in the mirror - the “little one” he called it. He said the ’little one’ couldn’t get through the door. “We try to go through the door on the human ticket [by character development], but the human ticket only ends in the morgue.” That really resonates with me. I respect any teacher who addresses death; who says plainly that this body is, as Rose said, “A blob waiting to be thrown in a hole so it won’t stink up the place.”
We did an experiment where we pointed at objects and drew an imaginary circle around them with our finger. This led to pointing to our feet, legs, tummy, chest, and finally outlining the void above out chest. In outlining the void, we outlined the entire world.
Instead of “two holes [eyes] looking out of a meatball,” we really have one eye. Make glasses with your fingers and hold them at arm’s length. Slowly move them towards you and the two dissolve to become one.
We held up a mirror to our face, turned to our right, and positioned our face onto the body of the person on our right. “Doesn’t that thing look much better there,” said Douglas amidst much laughter.
Alas, these experiment produced more of a “hmmm,” in me than an “a ha!” At least until the “tube.” The tube is a paper tube with three holes in the top and bottom walls for ventilation. You and a partner (or a mirror) place your faces in the ends of the tube. Douglas talks you through the subtle discoveries within the tube. Again, he says to not think, imagine, remember, or feel, just see what you see; be attentive. “Don’t believe what I say, find out for yourself.”
First, he simply asked us to count how many faces are in the tube. I see one, but immediately think, “No, that can’t be, I know there are two.” “Don’t think, see, you idiot,” I tell myself. Douglas had us look at our partner’s face, look at the detail, look at how much detail we miss, at how our eyes try to capture the complexity of a human face. “Now, look at your end of the tube. Is there any straining to see? Or is it perfectly clear, an infinite clarity at your end of the tube?”
Douglas called it a de-conditioning tube and I felt like his voice hypnotized me, or perhaps broke the hypnosis already there. I don’t remember all he said, but in the end he had us look into our partner’s eyes and look for the consciousness there. “You can’t find it, can you. It’s not in the eyes or face. But what about your consciousness. That luminous void at your end of the tube. Isn’t it large enough, infinite enough, to contain that consciousness at the other end of the tube? That fellow at the other end of the tube – he is you. He is You.”
The words “He is You” sent chills up my spine. I felt for a moment that Eric was me. Not that I knew his thoughts, but that this awareness was in both of us. “All of life is confrontation, but where is the need to confront now?” “Nowhere,” I thought, “I love this person.” Catherine said people have fallen in love in the tube and I see why. All barriers drop, all facades, your heart is on the table, your games and agendas are laid aside. If that happens with any member of the opposite sex your bodies will be drawn to one another. If the minds are attuned, then the magnetism of the body will be allowed to come into play. Confrontation keeps people separated, without it they are drawn together. In ordinary life, though, the attunement of the minds disappears and what is left is the hunger of the bodies for one another or the needs of the personalities.
Toward the end of the day, Douglas did an experiment that didn’t use sight as its basis. Unfortunately, we had to close our eyes and I drifted in and out of sleep, so I can’t report on its efficacy.
I asked Douglas if we could permanently dwell in this state. “Enlightenment is a trap. You can’t rest permanently on the light side. It’s like a battery. There are the two poles represented by the light side and the dark side. It’s [the light side] always there, like an undercurrent.” I wasn’t clear on the battery analogy and I later realized that he contradicts himself in On Having No Head. In that book he speaks of the breakthrough and the window to eternity staying wide open. I discovered the next day, that Harding has a bias against the word ’enlightenment.’ He thinks it is a loaded word and doesn’t like to use it, so that may explain the contradiction.
To conclude the workshop, Douglas emphasized the need to share the experience. To tell others, but not to preach. He said, “You all are of the third millenium, while I am firmly of the second. You must carry this on.” “Not only does sharing it help others, but it helps you.”
The next day, I got Eric and I invited to visit Douglas and Catherine at the home of George Schloss, the workshop organizer. Amazingly, no one else from the workshop was there. Only a couple from New York who missed the workshop took advantage of this opportunity. The seven of us sat in the backyard of George’s condo under a shade tree for a magical two and a half hours.
Douglas, in the same T-shirt and dress pants as yesterday, is at ninety far more animated in his speech than I at thirty. Like Rose, there is a presence about him. When he stares at you, as he often does after making a point, he eyes seem to be infinitely deep and I feel he’s looking into my soul. I feel he’s had a deep experience. I don’t know if it’s enlightenment or cosmic consciousness, but it’s given him everything he wanted. “Everything my heart could desire is to be found in the center,” he said.
I question him about enlightenment and his answer is refreshingly confrontational. “So Shawn here is after enlightenment, which is way up here, while what Douglas is talking about is way down here. So Shawn will forget about what is right here and go after enlightenment. I wish you luck.” “Enlightenment is a loaded word which I think is best avoided.” Douglas finds that people confuse enlightenment with perfection of the personality. “Perfection of the human is not attainable.”
Trying to get some grasp of his experience, I ask if it is possible to reach an end to wondering who you are, what happens after death, etc. “Knowing who you are is attainable,” he says.
Are results proportionate to energy applied? “I wouldn’t say results are proportionate to the amount of practice, but rather to the passion. You have to have a passion for this. You can have anything you desire if you have passion.”
I agree with his point that all life on the dark side is confrontation, but am suspect of his point that confrontation dissolves in headlessness. Is this some kind of loving-kindness fantasy? What would you do if you faced a physical confrontation, I ask? “Let’s say someone comes at me with a sword and says, ‘Douglas, I’m going to cut off your no-head.’ What will I do? I don’t know. Perhaps I will say, ‘Go ahead, I’ve lived long enough.’ Perhaps I will punch them in the nose. I can’t say. This is not staged. There’s not a preconceived set of rules. There are no rules. I don’t know what will happen until I see what Douglas does. Why don’t you go ahead and try me and we’ll see what happens?” I decline the invitation, satisfied that he is not posing as a saint.
His take on peak experiences is that they are often a distraction. “The spiritual life is not a memory or an anticipation, it is now.” Don’t chase after experiences, attend to what you see now.
How do you know if you are making progress, if there are no signposts, I ask. Is there progress? “Yes and no,” he says, “There is no partial seeing of reality. What you see the first time is what you always see. So in that sense there is no progress. However, with practice it does become easier to rest in that seeing, so there is progress of a sort.”
Douglas and Catherine had work to do, so we eventually had to leave. Catherine is translating one of his books into French, Douglas is making changes here and there and continually modifying his experiments. Just a few weeks ago, they added the use of the mirror to look at your self as the animal emerging from the burrow in the cardboard door experiment. They are continually busy trying to pass it on. When Eric invited them to speak in Raleigh, Douglas said they would like to, but, “At ninety, I have to be careful about making long-term commitments!”
I wanted to bask all day in his presence. It was so reminiscent of being with Mr. Rose - inspiring, frustrating, challenging, humorous, and real. As we prepared to leave, I noticed Douglas looking at us, shaking his head. I wonder what he saw.
Everything is the opposite of what you have been told. Are you going to live the hallucination that there are two faces here, or are you going to see what is?