This is a curated selection of Douglas Harding quotes (personally curated by me on my own lifelong learning journey). This page is intended as a learning resource for educational purposes and only meant to offer an overview/introduction. Short quotes aren’t a substitute for source material, so if this page sparks your interest, explore more deeply by checking out Douglas Harding’s books (Amazon).
Page Contents:
25 Douglas Harding Quotes on Spirituality, Self-Inquiry, Headless Way, & More
Douglas Harding Quotes on Socialization
“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 will be better members of the human club when we withdraw, secretly, our subscription.” — 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
“The great delusion, the great nonsense, of the as-if world is that I am here what I look like there (in the mirror) … 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
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.” — 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?” — 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
“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
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
“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
“It’s not for nothing that the enlightened are called seers and not hearers or smellers or touchers—and certainly not thinkers.” — 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
“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
“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
“Go out in the world and deal with people in all circumstances of life from our space and not from our face … Have you ever in your life been face-to-face with anyone? Hasn’t it been face-to-space?” — Douglas Harding
Douglas Harding Quotes on Headless Way Realization
“The best day of my life—my rebirthday, so to speak—was when I found I had no head.” — Douglas Harding
“To put all in a nutshell, I promise you I’m not a bit what I look like. Thank God!” — 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
“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
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