It’s a way of thinking about the two sides of yourself: the appearance and the reality, if you like. This is very simple in physical terms. You can see what I look like from over there, so that’s my 'public' identity, or rather one of my public identities because everyone sees a different Richard.

And then of course, if you look at me from further away, you’ll see the planet, and that’s what I look like that far away, and I accept that as another one of my identities. So we have layers.

What am I, at no distance from myself? Well, I am looking and I find no face here, no thing at all.

Publicly I’ve got a head; privately, I don’t. You can see my head but you can’t see my no-head.

My private self is a secret. I think we work these things out as we go along. I had to realize that your private self, who you really are, your no-head, whatever you want to call it, is completely private.

When you look at me there are two directions, aren’t there. There’s the view out and the view in. Your view out is towards Richard and your view in is back towards yourself.

I’m the same, but my view out is full of you, Paula; my view in is empty, I don’t see any colour or shape or psyche. My thoughts and feelings - I don’t find them centrally, there’s no box to keep them in. My thoughts about you are woven into you in this moment, they are out there in the world. My mind is the world – there are no boundaries; thoughts and feelings are not separate from the world.

I would put it differently. Let me first say that I think that the experience of ‘who we really are’ is nonverbal and incredibly obvious and simple. I have put it in the most simplest terms possible: ‘Can you see your head?’ I bet no one can see their own head. This is not a deeply philosophical question. That to me is the experience of who you really are. But because we make some meaning of it, we use words to communicate this – saying 'I have no-head' is a verbal communication.

My way of describing this nonverbal experience is different from yours but the experience is the same – you can’t see your head.

So I say this because I think everyone has this experience all the time, because no one walks around seeing their head. It sounds very simple, doesn’t it. Privately, in fact, the whole world moves through me – I am not in the world, the world is in me.

I think it is a matter of how you understand this. My understanding is that when you are a baby, you are headless but you don’t yet know about your head. You don’t know about what you look like, you don’t know how you appear as a baby. You wouldn’t be wondering how you looked at me, you wouldn’t really be conscious that there was a 'me' out here.

You’re headless, at large, without knowing it. But as you grow up, you become conscious of your appearance, and you become conscious of other people. It’s called 'theory of mind' – you learn that you are not the only one, you are not the centre of the world, and there are others here, for example Richard. You are cut down to size from being at large. You are also beginning to become conscious of what you look like but you can’t see it; you are beginning to learn about your appearance and take responsibility for yourself, but you are still not in the box. This is at about five years old, which is a beautiful and carefree time.

But then, as you grow up, you become increasingly conscious of what you look like, and you identify with that, and you overlook your ‘headlessness’. And if ever you are conscious of it, you dismiss it as meaningless, or it’s a bit scary and you prefer to forget it. So by the time you are an adult, you are not conscious of your spaciousness and of who you really are; you are self-conscious – conscious of being a person.

Now, a lot of people stop at that stage and then ultimately die, and think that was what life was all about – finding out about who you were only as a person; but there is another stage, which is reawakening to your private point of view, that has always been there, without rejecting the public view. That’s the important thing. You can’t deny the public; when push comes to shove, you’ll throw out your philosophical ideas and act as if you are Paula.

This is not a mistake. I used to think it was a mistake, to identify with Richard, that there was something wrong.

Yes, this is not a mistake. In fact, it is a marvellous invention because it means that you are now conscious privately of being ‘the One’, and publicly of having a unique voice with which to express ‘the One’ – say for example, talking with someone else who is also ‘the One’.

So ‘the One’ is having a conversation with itself now, as if it is two. That’s a marvellous thing. Would you rather have just remained as the One, or would you rather be the One that is both the One, and one of the many.

Yes, and it’s not the way people act.

You are living a two-sided life; you are aware of being both an individual and being the One. It’s a two-way thing. Because, as an individual, you now realize that within you is this vast resource, which is private, that no one can see. You are backed by God because you have this unlimited creativity and confidence within you. And that’s a marvellous thing, as a vulnerable human being, to have within you.

But there is another direction you can go. Privately you are the One, but as God you need the person that you are to walk about, to touch others, to love, and to communicate. The One needs your unique individual human body as much as you need the One. It’s a two-way thing.

Yes, they are all powerful words for describing the nonverbal. Once you’ve got the experience, which in headless terms is seeing you have no head, it is utterly simple and always available; you can’t not get it. Once you’ve got it, then the heat and weight is taken off having to define it in words.

Actually, you realize you can use any words you like – the void, the Self, Buddha nature – and you realize they all have slightly different meanings and power. Void I do use, but it is not a very attractive word.

Yes, it’s one-sided. In fact, I would say it’s better to say full emptiness; the filled voided; the One that is many.

Only some kinds of Buddhism. There are other kinds that emphasise loving kindness – Metta – and so on. You can always veer off onto one side and miss the other.

I was. I trained in vipassana and taught vipassana retreats but that was after I came across headlessness. What attracted me was that there was time just to sit still, as well as do body work. I liked being quiet. There’s nothing ultimately special about it, but just the feeling of how nice it is to be quiet and be the One, without having to do anything. I just needed that at that time in my life. I was drawn to it.

He was a great friend of Douglas.

Yes, it is tough there. The commando-type approach…

I think on those kinds of retreats, it makes a difference if you are seeing who you are because if you go there trying to get somewhere, it just adds stress. You might attain something for about three and a half seconds and then it’s gone, and then you are struggling to get it back again.

But if you go seeing who you are, you are already home, and everything that is happening is emerging out of this emptiness and returning into it; that’s not boring. This is not to say, however, that difficult feelings don’t come up.

The other day I was writing about resistance and trying to be honest and truthful about it. Then, I had to go away and I didn’t want to go away, so I had a perfect example of resistance. So I devised this little experience where you put your hands together and then you push – there’s resistance there but if you let one hand yield, there’s no resistance.

And then I thought: I am going to do that whilst noticing who I am. I feel the resistance, and I am looking at it from open space, so to speak, and this open space doesn’t resist the resistance. The open space is saying Yes! to anything that happens.

I find in my life, I am always resisting things. It might be that I don’t want to go to the shop or I don’t want to get sick. What I noticed from having to go away last weekend was that for a while I resisted, and then when I realized that it was already happening, that it was too late to go back, I began to yield. In fact, whatever I have been resisting turns out to be good, whatever it is.

I have come to the conclusion that having seen who I am for forty years, if it were the case that there should no longer be someone who resists anything, well, I have long since missed the boat! But then I think, actually, I am seeing who I am, so maybe resistance isn’t such a bad thing. When I am noticing this resistance from open space, the open space allows the resistance, and then the resolution of the resistance, and the good that comes from it.

This is the two sides of myself, if you like: I resist, I yield; I resist, I yield. But my innermost identity says Yes! to everything.

It’s like having the perfect master within you, as well as being the wavering student! Both are you, I find. This is something I have recently been thinking about.

Do you trust the void, do you trust who you are? I have to say, sometimes yes; other times, no. But I have come to the conclusion that this is a natural rhythm. The void, who you really are, doesn’t doubt itself at all; it just is. And this is total inner confidence.

You have this outward wavering and this inner stability, so it’s a perfect union of opposites. Suddenly, you don’t have to become perfect as a human being.

Yes. You also reconnect with things like, for example, traditional religion at its best. Different religions offer different slants, and they complement each other. I was brought up a Christian, and despite leaving it behind, it still means a lot to me.

One of the things about it is: praise of God – I am a sinner and so I praise God; it’s a rather guilt-laden way of putting it but it is right. Richard is incomplete and wavers all the time; however, within Richard is this glorious, perfect, wonderful, totally yielding, totally loving Being.

This takes the heat off trying to be perfect as a person, because you find out where perfection is and it’s not for improving on, it’s for bowing down before and praising.

Well, they all have something special, you see. Douglas Harding wrote a great book, Religions of the World. In it, he makes a plea for each of the religions and how each one expresses a special aspect of the One. I guess you could say that Christianity is partly about self-giving love, but the others are just as important in different ways.

I was 17. By then, I had left Christianity, having been particularly interested in the mystical side of it, when I was 14 and 15; but by the time I was 16, I couldn’t get what I was looking for from being with other Christians. So I started looking elsewhere; it was the late '60s, and Eastern religion was coming into public awareness, so I got interested in Buddhism. I found out about the Buddhist Society Summer School. So at 17 I went there with my brother, to Hoddesden in Hertfordshire, in 1970.

Douglas had been connected with the Buddhist Society for some years and he was there. He gave an informal workshop one afternoon. I went along, as a very shy 17-year-old, but someone who was really seriously interested in Enlightenment, only also totally scared out of my wits!

Douglas did the experiments, the pointing – pointing out at a thing, then pointing inwards. It was so clean, so unreligious, so undogmatic, so sensible and yet so real. It gave you the goods and I came away just seeing, and it was so natural. Then I went back to school for a term and took the Oxbridge exams and went to see him with my brother again that Christmas with my mum at his house near Ipswich. That clarified any doubts I had about it. It was just a weekend of ten people at his house and he was very open.

The whole thing about Douglas was that he didn’t want to accept someone else’s word for what was true, he wanted to find out for himself in a modern Western way. He did what any good scientist would do; he looked instead of thought. And he looked above his chest and found open space instead of his head.

He had been working on this for years; it didn’t just come out of the blue. And then he worked on it for more years and then wrote one of the greatest philosophical books, The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth; it will be out on disk later this year with all the drawings, everything. The condensed version has an introduction by C S Lewis.

I am going to write his biography; I am also making a film of it at the moment, which will be finished by the end of the year. His story is so great, he was so prolific; people don’t realize how much work he produced during his life.

Right. With headlessness, it’s the opposite. Only you are the one at your centre, so you are the only one who can see. I can help you by pointing there but I can’t see it for you, I can only see from where I am. But once you look and see, we can now share our experience. There isn’t a hierarchy here; you can say to someone, now you have got it, you don’t need me any more. I now accept and welcome you as a friend.

In the long run people really love this because it is deep respect. And it comes out of the experience of who you really are, because when you see who you really are, you instantly see who everyone else is as well. So this now leads you to seeing their essence, to having the greatest respect for others, because you see that others are the One. You can’t have higher respect than that.

I would say that they are both right. There’s a place for both. I think it might be useful to think of it in terms of the experience and the meaning. The experience of who you are is nonverbal, non understandable, non emotional, but absolutely available. But we do need to have some understanding of that, of what sense it makes to us, otherwise it’s just, 'so what?'

But if you only have the understanding but not the experience, it’s a whole load of words; you need both the meaning and the experience. I think the brilliant invention by Douglas of the experiments is a breakthrough because they are nonverbal pointers; you point back at your face and what do you see there? No one can look for you, it’s very clear.

I look at you and the only thing I see is you; now the meaning starts to emerge. I don’t have an appearance at my centre. What I do have is the world. I am the world; there is no distance. Now the meaning starts to flow.

Regarding the debate about whether or not you can do anything to see who you really are – I take the view you can do something. You can point and look at this place. Is that doing something or is that not doing something? I don’t care, just point and look! While you work out whether or not you are doing anything, have a look. I find that through the experiments, hundreds of people are getting this and they are waking up. To me, it is an extremely useful thing to ask people to do the experiments. It just works.

So while people are arguing whether or not you can do anything, there’s a whole load of people doing the experiments and seeing. I feel like just quietly getting on with sharing seeing; the evidence is there.

In Douglas’ book, The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth, he goes into all these questions, but within the context of knowing who you are. If you work only on the physical level, the level of appearances, of what someone looks like, which includes their brain activity, you are missing out consciousness. Once you include that, it’s a different picture.

In the discussion on the radio, they mentioned there is an infinite regression; you can’t get behind yourself, because if you do get behind yourself, there is someone else thinking whatever is being thought, and you have to get behind that person, and so on. So there is no original point of reference. But you can get behind yourself – that’s the emptiness. You can look at all activity from this free space – they were not recognizing that.

The thing is, if anyone starts to raise those questions in a workshop, for me, I don’t argue the point because you can argue for a thousand years. I just step back, if someone brings up an argument that is philosophical; I just step back and say, OK, where are we at emotionally, what’s the energy in the room here? Is this person genuinely asking, and if so, I am going to respond on that level, rather than at an intellectual level, because generally, resistance is at an emotional level. Besides, these days, I don’t feel I have a point to prove.

I agree. You need both.

Yes, when you do an experiment, you then have to look into the meaning of the experiment. Otherwise, what’s the purpose? What does it mean? Otherwise it’s a meaningless experience.

But similarly, if you are just talking about the meaning and don’t have the experience, that’s not helpful either.

Yes, ‘The Experience and the Meaning’.

Yes. T S Eliot says, ‘We had the experience but not the meaning,’ and Douglas says, ‘We have the meaning but not the experience.’

Yes, they are. Douglas’ book The Hierarchy is about levels and he used to say that it is not whether or not something is true, it is on what level it is true…

Yes. If you are not seeing who you are, you are playing the ‘face game’, as Douglas said. Playing the face game is when I can’t see my face but you tell me I have a face, so I believe you. You weren’t playing the face game as a baby, but as you grow up, you learn to play the face game; you learn to imagine a face where you are and then pretend you are wearing it, and then you act as if you have got one. It’s a game but it is a game that is so deep, you think it is real.

So, if I am playing the face game with you now, I am totally profoundly convinced that I am behind a face here, and you are behind a face there. Or we could call it the body game. I am in a body here and you are in a body there. Now, all my interactions with you are based on that face-to-face idea which we think is real.

When you see through the game, you see who you really are, you are liberated from that game. You are now seeing it was a pretence to think you are looking out of face. It was an imaginary game that you have seen through. You are now seeing that you are no-face to no-face.

I am not sure that you can. My experience is that I haven’t got past it. I am still conscious of all those things going on – I am still concerned about my appearance, how I look, how I go down, but it’s different when you see that privately you are not in the game, the game is in you. You are the space for it all. Now you can continue playing the game, but better.

Yes. That’s a good way of putting it. Psychotherapeutically, it is unhelpful, unreal, to deny the reality of the game. The thing is, where did the game come from? Where did the game come out of? The void. It came for a reason and anyone who says that the world isn’t real, well, I just say: OK, just stand in front of a red bus. You may philosophically believe it’s not real but instinctively, you’ll jump out of the way. Now, is that a mistake? No.

When you were a baby, you didn’t know the world was real. Growing up is discovering you’re real, others are real, the world is real. When you see who you really are, you see what is really real, but the world also remains real. It is a very precious thing, you treat it with the upmost reality and depth; it has the profoundest meaning and includes everything. I feel passionately about that. I think it is recognizing the beauty and the depth and danger of the world; even though you know you are never going to die, it is a dangerous place sometimes.

Yes, it’s immature, I think.

Yes, but no one lives as if that’s really true. Imagine the following conversation: ‘I think I am going to pop out and get some milk.’ ‘But the shop doesn’t exist; it’s only an idea in consciousness.’ ‘I know but I have faith it’s going to materialize when I get there.’

It’s public and private, you see. Publicly it exists; privately, it’s an idea you have about it. We are sharing the secret of our private identity, in public.

This is the One sharing with itself as if it really is two; not pretending to be two, really being two. It’s an amazing invention.

Yes, that’s a valid feeling!

Fully accepting and respecting the public, highlights the preciousness of the private, and the difference between them. It’s having each in its place. And this experience deepens and deepens and deepens. It’s fantastic.

[Interview conducted Spring 2011]