The Freedom to Love: The Life and Vision of Catherine Harding

Catherine had already experienced a rich life when she met Douglas Harding, a renowned English mystic and philosopher. As a child she had lost her beloved father in World War II, and a few years later, in Paris, she fell in love with Driss Chraïbi, now one of Morocco's most renowned writers, and raised their five children. When the marriage ended she went to India to study under the yoga teacher Iyengar. On her return to Paris she was persuaded to attend a workshop on The Headless Way ... Catherine's life story provides a backdrop to the direct and practical experiments of perceiving who we really are, found in this book and developed by Harding.

As a teenager she had already realized, 'There is another reality here which is luminous Light and silence', and through Douglas' experiments she learned how to access this at will. Catherine brought a feminine voice to Douglas' teachings and together they introduced countless people to the art of Seeing, conducting workshops throughout the world till his death in 2007.

Karin Visser met Catherine in 2014 and their conversations inspired this book: 'More and more,' Catherine tells Karin, 'I realize that I am not Catherine, the little Catherine. I am the eternal universal consciousness, experiencing life in the form of Catherine, just as you are the universal consciousness experiencing being you. At the root of ourselves we are this clear universal consciousness.'