On Having No Head summary

The author’s experience in the Himalayas lasted for just a few moments. When it was over, he immediately started to try to make sense of it. 

The key message: The author’s experience in the Himalayas changed the way he thought about himself. 

After learning about the author’s experience and his initial observations, you might be feeling a little perplexed or incredulous at this point. What the heck is this all about? What is it getting at? And why did he think it was such a big deal?

To answer these questions, let’s try to recreate his experience for ourselves. The first part is pretty easy, and you can do it right now. Look down and to your sides. There you’ll see your legs, arms, and torso. Now, follow your torso upward, and eventually, you’ll come to where your head “should” be. But it’s not there. It’s missing. 

You can’t see your own head. As strange or silly or obvious as it might seem, that’s the basic point of contention here. Later on, we’ll take a look at why it matters so much, but first, let’s look at the objections that can be made against it. After all, there’s no point in trying to understand the significance of the claim if it’s not even true in the first place.

Let’s start with the most obvious objections. First off, can’t you see your head in a mirror or a photograph? Well, imagine you’re looking at your image and focus on what you actually observe in your field of vision. Do you actually see your head? Or do you just see some splotches of color? 

We’re on a roll, so let’s keep the objections coming!

Continuing where we left off, we could say the following: OK, sure, without the aid of a mirror or a photograph, we can only see a couple of splotches of color that we interpret as being our nose. And maybe it’s true that there’s a distinction to be made between those splotches of color and what we think of as being our nose itself. But can’t the same argument be made about every part of our body?

Alright, so at this point in the argument, we’ve lost not only our heads, but our whole bodies as well. Have we also lost our minds in the process? Surely it’s ludicrous to claim that we don’t have heads or bodies, no matter how clever our argument might be.

The key message here is: The claim that we don’t have heads or bodies is more reasonable than it might appear.

We started with a claim that we can’t see our own heads. We’ve now expanded that claim into an even bolder one: as far as we can tell, based on the direct evidence provided by our senses, we don’t even have a body, let alone a head! 

Now, here’s one of the most obvious objections that can be made against this expanded version of our claim: Can’t we just go up to someone and ask, “Hey, do I have a body?” She might give you a rather quizzical look and ask if something is wrong with you, but surely she’d say, “Yes, you have a body.” And everyone else in the world would agree. Doesn’t their testimony provide us with evidence for having a body? 

To avoid getting bogged down in too many details, let’s focus on just one aspect of our conscious experience – the same one we started these blinks with: our vision. How would modern science explain this to us? 

The key message here is: The scientific explanation of consciousness fits the claim that we do not have bodies.

To recap the author’s argument and then drive it home, let’s imagine we’re in his shoes, going for a walk in the Himalayas. After realizing we can’t see our own heads, we stop and look around. What do we see? 

The key message here is: As far as we can tell, there’s nothing beyond our immediate experiences. 

At this point, all of these ideas might seem like much ado about nothing. And in a way, that’s exactly what they are. But this nothingness is absolutely essential to our experience of consciousness. So it’s well-deserving of our attention. 

The key message here is: Nothingness is at the heart of consciousness. 

Alright, so nothingness is at the heart of consciousness. But who cares? Even if it’s true, why does it matter? 

Well, if it were true, it would demolish many of the main assumptions underlying Western ideas of consciousness and selfhood. And in their place, we could construct a very different conception of who we are as conscious human beings. 

If all of this talk about “nothingness” sounds kind of “Zen” to you, well, there’s a reason for that. As the author tried to make sense of his experience in the Himalayas, he studied many ancient and modern texts of philosophy, religion, spirituality, and poetry. Some of the most useful texts, he found, were those written by the masters of Zen Buddhism. Here, he found many reflections and descriptions of experiences that seemed to be similar to his own. 

The key message here is: Zen Buddhism contains many parallels to the author’s experience and reflections.