Published 2024-03-26, last updated 2024-03-26.
During 2023 I translated the central work of Douglas Harding, the book On Having No Head to Swedish: Om att inte ha ett huvud. It will be published by The Shollond Trust during 2024.
Douglas Harding was a British philosopher and spiritual teacher who lived between 1909 and 2007. Already as a youngster he started investigating of who or what he really was and started writing a massive book, The Hierachy of Heaven and Earth. During that process he discovered something peculiar. Through self-inquiry that if dropping everything he learned from anyone and trusting only what he saw in first person, here and now that he did not have a head.
Usually, the first question that arises from that statement is: “So what, what is so special about that? Of course I can’t see my head!” But to Harding (and to many others) it turned out to be a life changing experience when realizing this in its depth. It may even alter one’s existential perspective. Not only did he not see his head he realized fully that he had no head.
This insight made him restart The Hiearchy as it changed the foundation of his investigation and it took more than 10 year to complete the work. It is an extremely difficult read, but C. S. Lewis (author of Narnia books) understood that Harding had created a masterpiece which helped to get it published, including a foreword by Lewis.
Harding wrote more books but it was not until 1961 he summarized his ideas about headlessness in the book On Having No Head – Zen and the rediscovery of the obvious (which is the full title). This is the very book I have now translated. Originally it had three chapters. For 20 years he travelled the world to tell and share his experience. With time he realized that the key for people to understand was to participate in simple experiments which are cleverly designed to see our own headlessness. In 1986 Harding added a fourth chapter to the book. It summarizes headlessness in 8 steps that he calls The headless way.
This is the first book I have translated and it all started back in the spring of 2011 when I our of curiousity discovered Douglas Harding and his experiments. There is still plenty of material on the Internet that presents the concepts but I was soon also intrested to read something, so I bought the book in English. Normally I easily read english texts, but it turned out it was very difficult to read and understand Harding’s language. He sometimes constructs long and intricate sentences, especially after the very beginning of the book and I struggled to contiune.
Just for fun I did a test translation of the first chapter, which is fairly short. I realized quickly that translating a book is not a spare time job and I put the translation aside. More than 10 years later I moved to a new apartment and in the moving process I suddenly found the book again and also the initial translation in my computer. It happened to coincide that a recieved a small sum of money which made it possible to take a 3 week leave of absence from my regular work. In April of 2023, I spent three weeks in our summerhouse in Bohuslän in Sweden working with the translation. I am not anticipating to making any money from the translation, it was never a driving force.
It was however a very interesting project. Quickly I relalized I had understood the central parts of what Harding wanted to tell. More or less everything is captured in that first chapter! Penetrating the book through the translation process that understanding deepened and I hold chapter 4 as the key to this. Additionally I learned a few more things about myself: I really like the translation process and I notice a longing to continue with that. Also, it was very satisfying to focus on one concrete task for a longer time. This is in stark contrast to my regular job as a project manager in an engineering company, where I juggle dozens of work tasks, constantly shifting focus. Further I noticed how difficult it is to truly work efficiently for 8 hours in a workday, especially several days in a row. The work days varied significantly and I let myself follow this flow rather than letting be controlled by “rules”.
Headlessness is about waking up to our true nature, here and now. It probably sounds familiar and it can be experienced in a multitude of other ways. I was tempted but chose not to add my own reflections of the book as footnotes or as end notes. It is Harding’s work and so I want it to remain on its own. But of course I had my own insights and formed my own opinions during the process and I feel drawn to share those. I am currently working to get those down in writing. Exact what final form this will take is to early to say. It could be here, or as a separate print.
Regardless, if you are interested to discuss the book, the translation, the translation process or just anything else you are of course very welcome to connect with me. More information about the publishing process and when the book is available will come.