How Can I Be The Witness of All That is? (Ashtavakra Gita 1.7) - 8th October 2016

Well, when I check, the best or most truthful thing I can say is witnessing is happening here, but not witnessing of everything. Yes, it seems to be limited by the senses. So I can see ahead of me, but not behind me. Anything could be happening behind me; I have no idea. Like, the curtains were blue when last I looked, maybe somebody came in and changed them to green ones.

Yes, yes, yes. So we'll definitely get there as to what is there or not. First, I want to ground you strongly in this witnessing position so that the rest of the conversation will make more sense. So you see that this witnessing is... is it separate from you?

Well, no. It is me, really.

It is you. Do you see that if you are this witnessing, then anything it might witness, any appearance might come and go, this witnessing remains unthreatened, unhurt, untouched by it, isn't it?

Yeah, that's... that is fine.

This is very good. So already we see that the play of... that's why we call it the play of. If something cannot hurt you, it's more like we are playing. So the play of this appearance in this world actually leaves awareness or the witnessing unconcerned, untouched, unhurt, no matter what might happen in the play. Firstly, this aspect is clear, isn't it?

It's clear right now, yeah.

Right now. Right now is all we can do. Okay. So now for this witnessing, you say that it is witnessing only part of the phenomena. That is the trouble, isn't it?

Well, that's the experience that I'm truthfully experiencing right now.

Yes. Now, how do you know that there is a part of the phenomena which is not being witnessed?

Well, it's a bit like... it's highly unlikely that everything behind me and out of sight has disappeared. So it's a kind of a belief or a concept, but also it would be probably validated by you because probably I'm imagining there is still a wall and so on behind me, and you could verify that. It would be really weird if that was not the case.

Firstly, can you validate the existence of another in the first place? Is that you're seeing or the sounds that you're hearing in front of you? Can you testify to my being? How can you? You can only testify to your being.

But that's... that's why it's really like a dream, yeah. Because in a dream I create the world and experiences and they're all totally real, but actually they don't exist at all. So I can't... I can't really do that. But yeah, okay. It just seems highly likely that you probably do exist.

It's completely fine, actually, because the core of the pointing is not to show you that there is no difference between the dream state and this state. That is not the core of this pointing. But it most likely will be an insight which will come to you eventually. Because I've seen that most of us in Satsang, you see, start with the same sense that: “What do you mean there's no wall behind me?” You see, if I don't see it, as more and more insights come, this seems more and more clear that only what is seen here exists, just like a dream. And there's actually no difference between the dream state and the waking state. But we don't have to rush into that. So don't rush into any of that inquiry. Clearer and clearer that there is no “here.” There is a sense of being which is here, and there is a witness of even the sense of being. There is awareness even of being. And fundamentally, primarily, I am this awareness. As you are recognizing yourself in this way and dropping all that was false and belonged to you personally, you see, then all the insights will not stop. They haven't stopped here till this day, you see. Then what will happen is when you come across even scientific experiments like Schrödinger's cat—you put a cat in a box and there's no observer, is there really a cat there or no? Then you make a tiny atomic-size slit and pass one ray of light through the slit; does that lead to the existence of the cat or what is actually observed? You see? And things like this. Then even what the sages have said in the past: “Who hears the sound of a falling tree in a forest where there is nobody? Is there such a sound at all in the first place?” Then all of these will become part of your contemplation. And it might be that you might one day say, “But there is no actual distinction between a dream that I seem to have just a little bit earlier and this appearance.” And when it starts becoming clearer and clearer that actually all of this is projection—in the same way, projecting Consciousness, projecting, you see—and all our concepts about dream versus this so-called reality we can look at and say, “Okay, but I have a memory of yesterday here. In a dream there was no yesterday, I just wake up in the middle of something.” Isn't it? Like this can be an objection which comes from the mind. But when we look, we say that yes, but we recognize those ones that were there in the dream. You don't wake up in a dream with amnesia and say, “Where am I? Who am I?” You're leading your life, you see. So some memory is functioning even there. So step by step we can look at this. But again, I'm saying that is not the core of my provocation. My provocation is to look at who you really are. Is there a person here at all? What is really going on, you see? And if you start finding yourself more identifying with the sense of beingness—I am that I am—or more identifying yourself with that which is the witness even of this sense I am, you see, then this world becomes your existence. Your play in this world will become one which is without suffering, or just momentary suffering. And when we are not so concerned about this “me, me, me, me, me” all the time, “what's in it for me” all the time, then you'll find that you have a lot more space to contemplate some of these deeper topics. What is the nature of reality versus a dream? What is this Consciousness that seems to be the light of this world? You see, these kind of insights, when the clutter of the “what's in it for me” is taken away, then more and more these become your true insights. So if it seems a bit unnatural for me to say unless you see something it does not exist, then leave it for now. Just stay with your true nature. What are you in reality right now? That's why if the first part is making sense to you—that you are the solitary witness—you see, at least... okay, so one tip I want to give you is that here we go with what is being experienced directly and we don't presume anything. So we are not presuming what Petri next to you is doing or what he's experiencing, what his eyes are seeing, because there is no way for us to validate that. We cannot even validate whether there is some reality to this appearance called Petri.

It seems like if we were the solitary witness, yeah, then we would be able to validate everything because it's all happening to the one solitary witness. So there couldn't be anything happening that one wouldn't be aware of. But I'm not feeling that.

So that's what I'm seeing: that all that is happening is just this. All of this is your game, your dream. This is just... all of you are just dream characters which are appearing here, right? The play of Satsang is to share what is being experienced here with the presumption that it is experienced there. So I see that all of this is appearing in the light of the Consciousness which is here. And every time I've asked anyone in front of me to check, and when they're open to checking, then they've also seen the same thing.