Experience oneness with X-ray eyes

Recently I explored http://www.headless.org/, a site dedicated to the work of Douglas Harding. On the site are several simple exercises which when carried out gave me an instant shift in awareness, no longer did I feel I was a separate entity looking out at the world through my ‘own’ eyes, but pure awareness looking out at the world where my head and eyes are located.

Richard Lang, who manages the site, explains in simple participatory exercises how our perception of objects in our visual sphere is created and labelled by our minds, dependent on the distance from we perceive those objects.

What we are usually ‘seeing’ is only the surface perception of an object or person from a fixed distance (several feet away is our usual sphere for close perception). If instead, we were to examine all objects from a different distance, what then would we see?

Using the human body as an example, if we were to move our visual perception to an inch away the person viewed, what would we then see? We would see skin, hair, freckles, blemishes etc. And if we were peer further inside the body (via X-ray and microscopic vision) we would see bones, blood, vessels organs, and then on even closer inspection molecules, atoms and eventually only the space between.

The usual fixed view of all we see is essentially artificial, as it is simply perception based on the distance an object is seen, and seen at its surface only. And yet we base our experience of life and of others from this limited perception.

This morning I played with this concept while travelling to work in my usual way, travelling across Sydney Harbour on the Manly Ferry.

As I observed all around me both animate and inanimate objects (people and things) I imagined I could see through everyone and everything with super powered X-ray eyes and experienced some very blissful feelings as I was suddenly struck by actually ‘seeing’ for the first time the one space that holds and connects us all.

Even the Sydney Opera House, which I pass on the ferry, this morning, took on a ghostly appearance as I X-rayed through its solid opaque exterior to see only the space between all of the elements which comprise its structure.

From this little experiment I have really seen how superficial our view of life is; as it is simply based on the distance it is perceived.

And how on closer examination and investigation of what we view superficially and believe to be the final reality, the unifying space that connects all reveals there is no separation between anyone or anything.