The Witness Is Self-Illuminating

 

In you two things are happening. One is a cyclone of thoughts, emotions, desires - a great whirlwind around you, constantly changing, constantly transforming itself, constantly on the move. It is a process. Behind this process is your witnessing soul - eternal, permanent, not changing at all.

It has never changed. It is like the eternal sky: clouds come and go, gather, disperse... the sky remains untouched, uninfluenced, unimpressed. It remains pure and virgin. That is the lord, the eternal within you.

Mind goes on changing. Just a moment before you had one mind, a moment afterwards you have another mind. Just a few minutes before you were angry, and now you are laughing. Just a moment before you were happy, and now you are sad. Modifications, changes, continuous waves up and down; like a yo-yo you go on. But something in you is eternal: that which goes on witnessing the play, the game. The witnesser is the lord. If you start witnessing, by and by, you will come closer and closer to the lord.

Start witnessing objects. You see a tree. You see the tree, but you are not aware that you are seeing it; then you are not a witness. You see the tree, and at the same time you see that you are seeing; then you are a witness. Consciousness has to become double-arrowed: one arrow going to the tree, another arrow going to your subjectivity.

It is difficult, because when you become aware of yourself you forget the tree, and when you become aware of the tree you forget yourself. But by and by, one learns to balance, just as one learns to balance on a tight-rope. Difficult in the beginning, dangerous, risky, but by and by, one learns the balance. Just go on trying. Wherever you have an opportunity to be a witness, don't miss it, because there is nothing more valuable than witnessing. Doing an act: walking or eating or taking a bath, become a witness also. Let the shower fall on you, but inside you remain alert and see what is happening - the coolness of the water, the tingling sensation all over the body, a certain silence surrounding you, a certain wellbeing arising in you - but go on becoming a witness. You are feeling happy; just feeling happy is not enough - be a witness. Just go on watching - "I'm feeling happy...

I'm feeling sad... I'm feeling hungry" - go on watching. By and by, you will see that happiness is separate from you, unhappiness also. All that you can witness is separate from you. This is the method of viveka, discrimination. All that is separate from you can be witnessed, and all that can be witnessed is separate from you. You cannot witness the witnesser; that is the lord. You cannot go behind the lord; you are the lord. You are the ultimate core of existence.

The mind itself can be seen. It can become an object. It can be perceived, so it is not the perceiver.

Ordinarily, we think that it is the mind which is seeing the flower. No, you can go beyond the mind and you can see the mind, just as the mind is seeing the flower. The deeper you go, the more you will find that the observer itself becomes the observed. That's why Krishnamurti goes on saying again and again, "The observer is the observed; the perceiver is the perceived."  When you go deep, first you see the trees, and the rose and the stars, and you think the mind is witnessing. Then close your eyes. Now, see the impressions in the mind: of roses, stars, trees. Now who is the perceiver?

The perceiver has gone a little deeper. Mind itself has become an object.

These five koshas, these five seeds, are five stations where the perceiver again and again becomes the perceived. When you move from the gross body, the food body, the anamayakos, to the vital body, you immediately see that from the vital body the gross body can be seen as an object. It is outside the vital body. Just as the house is outside you, when you stand in the vital body, your own body is just like a wall around you. Again you move from the vital body to manomayakos, the mental body; the same happens. Now, even the vital body is outside you, like a fence around you; and this way it goes on. It goes on to the ultimate point where only the witnesser remains. Then you don't see yourself as, "I am blissful"; you see yourself as a witness of bliss.

The last body is the bliss body. It is the most difficult to separate from because it is very close to the lord. It almost surrounds the lord like a climate. But that too has to be known. Even at that last point when you are ecstatically blissful, then too you have to do the ultimate effort, the last effort of discrimination, and of seeing that the bliss is separate from you.

Then is liberation, kaivalya. Then you are left alone - just the witnesser - and everything has been reduced to objects: the body, the mind, the energy. Even the bliss, even the ecstasy, even meditation itself is no more there. When meditation becomes perfect, it is no more a meditation. When the meditator has really achieved the goal, he does not meditate. He cannot meditate because that too is now an activity like walking, eating. He has become separate from everything. That is the difference between dhyan and samadhi, between meditation and samadhi. Meditation is of the fifth body, the bliss body. It is still a therapy, a medicine. You are still a little ill, ill because you are identifying yourself with something which you are not. All illness is identification, and absolute health is through non-identification. Samadhi is when even meditation has been left behind.

Tweet