There has been some interesting comments and messages after I helped post the Headless experiment videos at YouTube.

Different responses: hooked, not hooked, and upset

As with so much else, some get it right away and are hooked (like me). Others get it and move on to something else. Some are interested, but don't quite get it. And others again don't get it and are upset that somebody can be so stupid. (The second and third seem to be quite common when I show the videos to people, and I got the third response from someone through YouTube.)

It seems that people who have some experience with what the headless experiments point to are more likely to get it. And why some who get it are hooked and others not must have to do with how we are individually put together, it is our unique flavor that shines through.

Here is one way to talk about the headless experiments...

Conventional view

There is of course a head here, attached to this body. And as long as the center of gravity is in this human self, there will be an identification with this head. It will appear as the center, as I as opposed to the rest of the world.

Headless shifts

The headless experiments invites us to shift our center of identification out of this body, this head, and this human self. It invites us to find ourselves as what the world of form appears within.

I as awake space, capacity for the world

In the beginning, it may be helpful to see this as space, awareness, capacity for the world, and so on. I am the awake space the world of form arises within. This human self is just one small part of the tapestry of this world of form as it arises right now, and there is no more identification with this human self than with anything else. It is all just happening, living its own life. There is doing but no doer.

Headless = Big Mind, realized selflessness

And then, there may be another shift into realizing that even this seeing, this awareness, this space, has no I in it. There is no I in the seen, as this human self and the rest of the world of form, and there is no I in the seeing. It is all just happening, with no I anywhere.

This is Big Mind, already right here, even as there is a sense of I placed in the seen or the seeing. Through the headless experiments, or the Big Mind process, or other forms of inquiry, Big Mind can notice its own nature - as a seamless field of seen and seeing, absent of I anywhere.

Movie analogy

One way to talk about this is to use a movie analogy.

The content of awareness stays the same: it is the sensations, smells, tastes, sights and sounds conveyed through this human body, reflecting this human self and its surroundings.

Yet the context shifts from a sense of I, typically placed on this human self, to realized selflessness. None of this, the seeing or the seen, has any I in it.

It all becomes a field, a terrain, a tapestry, absent of any I anywhere.

And it is similar to a movie screen with characters and their surroundings, yet with no I anywhere, not as the seen up on the screen and not as the seeing of it. It is all just happening on its own.

Relative and absolute

So there is this field of emptiness and form, of capacity and world, of seeing and seen, realizing itself as absent of I anywhere. At the same time, it is somehow functionally connected with this particular human self. It is all absent of any I, yet within the world of form - and for purely practical purposes, this human self is me and the rest of the world is other. And this human self has a head, so if there is a low doorway it will bend down.

I am headless, since this I is either awake space for the world of form, or absent. But this human self very much has a head, and will take care of it as needed.

Labels: big mind process, headlessness, talking about