The Freedom to Love

Catherine had already experienced a rich life and raised five children, when in 1991 she met the English philosopher Douglas Harding. She had lived through the occupation of France and the death of her beloved father in World War II. A few years later, in Paris, she met and married Driss Chraïbi, who was to become one of Morocco’s most renowned writers. When the marriage ended she went to India to study under the yoga teacher B. K. S. Iyengar. On her return to Paris she was persuaded to attend a workshop on the Headless Way presented by Douglas Harding…

Catherine's life story provides a backdrop to the direct and practical experiments of perceiving who we really are, found in the appendix to 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 until 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.’