X-Message-Number: 14707
From: "George Smith" <>
References: <>
Subject: 2 more identity books to consider
Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2000 18:15:44 -0700

Look For Yourself (1998 Inner Directions Publishing, ISBN 1-878019-01-5) and
Face To No-Face (2000 Inner Directions Publishing, ISBN 1-878019-15-5) both
by retired British architect Douglas E. Harding, now age 91.

I had the distinct pleasure of spending a weekend with Douglas Harding last
week in Portland, Oregon where he and his wife, Catherine, conducted a
workshop.  My own work with dissassociation applications for therapy
independently dovetailed with Mr. Harding and, after I send him some of my
videotapes to his home in England, he asked me to meet with him to talk.
And so we did.

The reason I mention these books here is because they are based entirely
upon examining (and remembering!) the qualities of experience we have when
we stop viewing ourselves in the third person.  I don't mean this
metaphorically but physically.  Perception not conception, is the entire
focus.

This phenomenological perspective provides remarkably weird results when you
honestly work with them.

Curiously this quickly produces a different concept of what your "self" is
from what most of us in our culture would expect it to be.

Douglas Harding is definitely a mystic who seems uninterested in wanting to
extend his physical existence (what he refers to as "little Douglas" due to
a physical measurement!) but he supports his perspective with simple (and
sometimes silly) though effective experiments.  In the effort to deal with
the issue of identity in cryonics especially, I feel his work is remarkable
appropos.

Anyone wanting to model human consiousness (such as in uploading, for
example) needs to understand these issues first or they will only create a
monster in my opinion, not something which we commonly refer to as "self
conscious".

You can find his books at www.InnerDirections.org and his experiments are
online at www.headless.org as well.

Additionally, these books are great fun.

My only regret is that Douglas Harding would probably turn down the cryonics
option (I could be wrong as we did not discuss it) as I would be fascinated
to learn what he would discover if he played with his ideas for at least
another sixty years!

Best wishes,

George Smith

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