Douglas Harding was thirty-three when he made a wonderful discovery. Though it certainly came out of the blue, it did so in response to an urgent enquiry; he had for several months been absorbed in the question: what am I? The fact that he happened to be walking in the Himalayas at the time probably had little to do with it; though in that country unusual states of mind are said to come more easily. However that may be, a very still clear day, and a view from the ridge where he stood, over misty blue valleys to the highest mountain range in the world, with Kangchenjunga and Everest unprominent among its snow-peaks, made a setting worthy of the grandest vision.
At that point he stopped thinking. A peculiar quiet, an odd kind of alert limpness or numbness, came over him. Reason and imagination and all mental chatter died down. For once, words really failed him. Past and future dropped away. He forgot who and what he was, his name, manhood, animalhood, all that could be called his. It was as if he had been born that instant, brand new, mindless, innocent of all memories.
