8 Dec 2021
#18 - Richard Lang: Reflections on Subjectivity and Headlessness
In this episode, Geoff and Richard discuss the Headless Way, which is a set of reflections and guided meditations that centre around seeing *who you really are*. Richard even guides the listener through a few ‘experiments’ from the Headless Way.
The Headless Way seeks to highlight what experience is like from a first-person point of view – as a subject. When you look at the world as a subject, you have no head. That’s ‘headlessness’. Of course, you still have a head, but it’s only visible from the third-person point of view – as an object, as a person.
As adults, we go through life seeing ourselves as others see us. For others, we are an object, a person (with a head), a thing. So, we learn to see ourselves as an object for others. Richard encourages us to re-learn what it is like to see ourselves from the first-person point of view – as headless subjects, as empty space for the world.
Geoff and Richard discuss the many, deep implications of the Headless Way: identity (who is at the centre of experience?); third-person science versus the science of the first person; links with psychology and mainstream science; theory of mind; stages of development; learning to wear your face; creativity; learning to live with dualisms; otherness and separateness; projection and reflection; sociology, politics and foreign policy; perception; our experience of time; the distance of observation in physics; other animals; other sense modalities; language and culture; and other topics.
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Richard Lang discovered the Headless Way in 1970 when he met Douglas Harding, author of On Having No Head. Though he was only 17, Richard recognised that the Headless Way experiments are astonishingly effective at delivering the experience of *who you really are*. Since then, Richard has been involved in sharing the experience of *who we really are* with others and now has many friends around the world. In 1996, he set up the Shollond Trust, a UK charity dedicated to sharing the Headless Way.
Richard is the author of the books Seeing Who You Really Are (2003), Open to the Source: Selected Teachings of Douglas Harding (2005), Celebrating Who We Are (2017), The Man With No Head: The Life and Ideas of Douglas Harding (2017) – and the editor of a recent volume of Douglas Harding’s work, As I See It: Articles, selected by Richard Lang (2018). He is also the narrator for audiobook versions of Harding’s books, The Science of the First Person and On Having No Head.
You can find more material on the Headless Way in several places: on Richard’s website (headless.org); on YouTube (youtube.com/RichardLangHeadexchange); through The Headless Way app (on iTunes App Store or Google Play); through Waking Up, a meditation app by Sam Harris; and on Richard’s own podcast channel (search for ‘Richard Lang – Headless Way’).
If you wish to attend a free Zoom meeting with others who are interested in the Headless Way, please contact Richard through his website (headless.org).
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