hallucination is defined as "apparent perception of an object not actually present." is perceiving the existence of our head not exactly this?
there is no distance to measure when there is no head to measure it from. but interestingly,
even if there were a head here to measure outwards from, the measuring-rod stretching from it to that mountain peak would, when read end-on—and there's no other way for me to read it—reduce to a point, to nothing.
on how writing down the experience of headlessness is different from actually experiencing it:
To try to set down the first-hand, immediate experience in these or any other terms, however, is to misrepresent it by complicating what is simplicity itself: indeed the longer the postmortem examination drags on the further it gets from the living original. At best, these descriptions can remind one of the vision (without the bright awareness) or invite a recurrence of it; but they can no more convey its essential quality, or ensure a recurrence, than the most appetizing menu can taste like the dinner, or the best book about humor enable one to see a joke. On the other hand, it is impossible to stop thinking for long, and some attempt to relate the lucid intervals of one's life to the confused background is inevitable. It could also encourage, indirectly, the recurrence of lucidity.
what about seeing the edge of your nose, or the sensations you sense in your face? or the sensation of touch when you hand goes to your face or head?
No doubt a great variety of sensations are plainly given here and cannot be ignored, but they don't amount to a head, or anything like one.
What sort of head is it that, though containing innumerable sensations, is observed to lack eyes, ears, mouth, hair and indeed all the bodily equipment which other heads are observed to contain?
the head vs the world:
Present experience, whatever sense is employed, occurs only in an empty and absent head. For here and now my world and my head are incompatibles: they don't mix. There is no room for both at once on these shoulders, and fortunately it is my head with all its anatomy that has to go.
on reflections of your supposed head in mirrors and surfaces:
These loose heads [the ones in mirrors, spoons, doorknobs] can never amount to more than impermanent and unprivileged accidents of that "outer" or phenomenal world which, though altogether one with the Central Essence, fails to affect it in the slightest degree. So unprivileged, indeed, is my head in the mirror, that I don't necessarily take it to be mine: as a very young child I didn't recognize myself in the glass, and neither do I now, when for a moment I regain my lost innocence.
does our scientific understanding of how vision and sensation manifest (light travels from an object to our eye, then to our iris, then through nerve endings and brain lobes to formulate the experience of sight) make it clear that we have a head? quite the contrary:
[In the scientific view], all I can know is what is going on here and now, at this brain terminal, where my world is miraculously created. I have no way of finding out what is going on elsewhere—in the other regions of my head, in my eyes, in the outside world—if, indeed, there is an elsewhere, an outside world at all.
merging of self with the outside world:
There are no obstructions here, no inside or outside, no room or lack of room, no hiding place or shelter: I can find no home here to live in or to be locked out of, and not an inch of ground to build it on. But this homelessness suits me perfectly—a void needs no housing.
everything is one. we can feel identified with the entire universe to whatever degree seems fitting in the moment. we can identify with our head, our body, our clothed self, our vehicle, our family, our country, our planet, our solar system, and on. in the process of identifying with these larger concentric circles, we never come up against a limit or barrier.
how do you see if you don't have eyes?
As we have already noted, modern science itself agrees that we don't really see with our eyes. They are merely links in a long chain stretching from the sun, through sunlight and atmosphere and illuminated objects, through eye lenses and retinae and optic nerves, right down to particle/wavicle-haunted space in a region of the brain, where at last (it's said) seeing really occurs.
how come we emphasize the non-existence of the head as opposed to the rest of the body? the main reason is that the head is the only part of our embodiment that is always absent.
How much the Void currently includes, and excludes, is unimportant: for I see that it remains infinitely empty and infinitely big regardless of the scope or importance of the finite objects it's taking care of. It makes no real difference whether it's dissolving my head (as when I look down), or my human body (as when I look out), or my Earth-body (as when, out-of-doors, I look up), or my Universe body (as when I close my eyes). (36)
as we grow up,
our learned view of ourselves from outside begins to overshadow, to superimpose itself upon, and eventually to blot out, our original view of ourselves from inside. (51)
recognizing headlessness is breaking down this belief:
the belief that (contrary to all the evidence) we are at 0 meters what we look like at 2 meters—solid, opaque, colored, outlined lumps of stuff. (52)
as we grow up, we are forced into viewing ourselves from the outside, from believing we have a head, in order to function in society. Harding argues that this is actually a necessary step in eventually achieving headlessness: the illusion of a head enables us to engage with others and provides an opportunity for revelation.
describes five traits of this true seeing:
it's extremely easy – you just need to point at yourself.
it's very all-or-nothing, once you see it, you see it in its entirety. in fact, seeing headlessness (or emptiness, or the Void) is a more clear vision than seeing anything in the exterior world (e.g. looking at the text on a page), because the latter is inherently a dim view:
This seeing of the Subject is a perfect and all-or-nothing experience, compared with which the seeing of objects (such as this page covered with black marks, and the hands holding it, and their background) is mere glimpsing: a very great deal of the scene is missed, just not registered. (59)
it is very deep – there is more vastness in this sight inwards than in any sight outwards
it's extremely easy to communicate because it is such a fundamentally shared experience
it can be seen regardless of the circumstances
this experience is not to be remembered; it is only to be experienced in the present, in the timeless now.