Summary: Speaks of the true nature of witnessing which is the result of an inner awakening; explains that the being has many levels and that freedom does not mean indifference. Gives the examples of the deep feelings of Christ, Rama and Krishna.

There is a witness in you, an observer. Really, the free experience of this witness, observer, comes as a result of the opening within; ordinarily otherwise the observer is bound to the observed. Today, there is much talk about the observer and the witness, but the true experience of the observer, the witness, comes as a result of the opening within. This free space that you arrive at within is a result of the awakening. Ordinarily you are observing, watching, witnessing, but it does not have the quality of free space, a sense of freedom from that which is the observed.

Ordinarily you are observing, witnessing things, objects, even your thoughts and feelings, but true witnessing as a result of opening within has a qualitative difference from the ordinary. It is an extraordinary experience wherein your being, the observer and the witness is subjectively free of the observed in actual experience.

While the observation is being done, while the witnessing is happening, ordinarily you do not experience much, if any, exuberance. But when it is the outcome of the free and open space within there is great exuberance. That exuberance is from the sense of freedom. Of course until one arrives at this freedom, inner freedom… Which is your first freedom, and really, the beginning of all freedoms at all levels, one continues to remember, to be watchful of all that one does: of thoughts, feelings and states. Watch and observe also the shift that keeps happening to the rhythm of your being and how things repeat themselves. Your observation must be so sharp as to see if there is a difference each time there is a repetition – in the thing itself or in you, subjectively, in the way you observe – if the space is freer each time and if there is a greater capacity and understanding.

Relate one situation to another; relate one state to another. In this way you can come to a greater understanding of things. For example, the higher levels of consciousness in relation to the lower levels and vice versa; your emotional states in relation to your most idealised mental states, as also in different situations with different states: the passions rule over your passionate being and emotions rule over your emotional being, thoughts rule over you, your mental being, and physical sensations and physicality rule over your physical being. All of it together makes for a complete and comprehensive being – the being in life.

Yesterday, could it be that you felt the cold more because of being more in the physical consciousness? If you notice, there are moments when you feel something more emotionally or something more passionately or something more physically. The more you become aware of these things through your self-observation and self-watching you can come to understand the different levels of your being – ‘I am aware of that’ – and therefore of all realms that make the whole of yourself. It is just that ordinarily when you are at one level, it occupies you completely. In that moment you are not aware of the other parts and realms of your being. But if you were to make yourself remember and aware and lay one against the other, one moment against another, one part and realm against another, and try to see, there would in progressive time dawn in you a greater understanding of things and self. You then start to have a more comprehensive view of things and understanding of the play of consciousness. You become freer to deal with the consciousness and its contents. You can open yourself out to new things; you can bring changes in your being, in your personality. It gives you a greater freedom. The self-enjoyment is so much more when you are free.

Freedom does not mean indifference. Ramakrishna used to give the example of the coconut. The coconut is made of the core and the shell: when the coconut is green and unripe, the core is stuck to the shell but when the coconut is ripe, the core becomes free of the shell. Before this inner freedom, like the unripe and green coconut, we are stuck, attached and bound to the shell, the body: the body with its mental, emotional, vital and physical content – thoughts, ideas, memories, emotions, feelings, passions, sensations, even so diseases and illnesses, etc. But after the opening within, like the ripe coconut where the core is freed of its shell and body, one experiences and lives them from a progressive freedom making it greatly possible for effective change and transformation. So there are still the emotions and affections, yet there is also the freedom from them while experiencing them in all their special beauty. There are still the loyalties and sincerities as there is great faith. There is still the commitment and care and relationships – all these of course from the process of awakening and the progressing freedom.

Coming back to watching and witnessing – so much talked about amongst a certain class of people almost to a fashion – Krishnamurti should be credited for popularising this watching cult which of course was because of his opening within as a result of the awakening of the process as he called it. Really why I am emphasising this is the importance of awakening of the process as a result of meditation and sadhana and not just talking about it and expecting that it comes on its own. What is very handy as you travel the journey of life as sadhana and meditation is to be mindful, as the Buddha says – and as I say, to be committed to seeking in yourself.

Initially you begin by seeking in the outside before you start to seek within and as your seeking deepens you start to give emphasis to even small things that happen around you, while yet digging into yourself. Your mind is to be watchful as to how you deal with these things, so that you enter into yourself deeper and deeper.

To be consciously committed and to be joyful and playful even in a crisis, to develop skills, to be able to love in spite of hate, to be able to be of humour, playful in spite of anger and resentment, is to transcend, is to become more. Through one’s mood swings much will come up: anger, resentment, hate, dislike – they all form part of the play of consciousness. When we observe and feel them, we try to understand the reasons for them being present and from where they come – not just in one’s subjective consciousness but universally.

The religious idea throughout the ages has been to deny the so-called negative emotions. Why? And to give in to only the positive ones like forgiveness, love, compassion, etc. But why? What is the place, if any, of these negative qualities like anger, hate, dislike, envy, jealousy, etc., that coexist with the positive qualities in this play of consciousness? They coexist in your consciousness and universally; if one is present the other is just waiting to present itself. Where there is disagreement there is agreement, where there is night there is day – just so life and existence is made up of opposites. Of course we have the capacity to choose, but most times our choices are impulses, most times without much understanding. I mean, life begins from the most basic existence, from the most basic instinct. For example, life in its most basic existence, felt hunger. That compelled it instinctively to forage for food for its survival. It did not think where this hunger came from or the why of it, what it should eat, what it should not eat. As something instinctively felt and looked good enough to eat, it ate it raw and unprepared. It did not think about preparing a special dish… But now as a human it does, in all its variety, as life has evolved to a certain level of consciousness.

Your impulses are your vitalities, it is one level of your being; your emotions are another, your thoughts yet another – and there are more… All these secrets are revealed to you through observation, the result of the awakening, the process of unfolding as you progress in your sadhana and meditation. So while one is committed to awaken oneself to the process of unfolding, one is constantly preparing to be watchful and mindful as we go about our lives, as we go about meditation. Really, for a seeker it is all a meditation. As the seeker becomes more aware of this, the journey becomes more fulfilling. A sense of fulfilment develops, they go together. There is the level where you experience yourself as a doer; for example, when you speak you are the speaker, you have that experience and yet there is another where you experience yourself behind and beyond and even above, beyond speech while yet speaking, while yet doing – as if the words pass through you. It is an extraordinarily different state.

Do they both have a place, is the question – or do you have to ascend to one leaving the other behind? This is how usually it is understood. Is one a state of un-enlightenment and the other of enlightenment? Usually one is termed as a state of ego, the other as a state of no-ego, an egoless self-effacing state. Really, the ego is only an I-ness, small or big, unenlightened or enlightened, or as Ramakrishna used to say unripe or ripe… When Krishna says to Arjuna, “I am the Supreme,” one could easily say he is egoistic. Really, He is only stating a fact, speaking the simple truth. But for someone who does not have that realisation to say that would be falsehood and coming from an untrue and unripe egoism.

When Christ said, “I am He,” they crucified him. It was because to those who crucified Him it seemed as being false and egoistic and therefore blasphemous – although true. And yet the same Christ said on the cross, “Why have Thee forsaken me, Father?” which seems to be a contradiction in the light of the above statement. So when you point this out, some people say He is play-acting. He couldn’t be feeling it for real. This is their belief and not the reality. In fact that is what makes Him great as an individual – Son of man; in spite of the pain, humiliation and persecution he stands by the Truth, God and His ways, and therefore – Son of God. It is real. He is both, Son of man and Son of God. He is both man and God.

Just so with Rama when Sita is abducted. He feels the loss so deeply, he collapses on the ground, and yet he is renowned for his poise and self-carriage as a result of self-knowing as to who he is. Rama is the Avatāra, God Manifest and worshipped as such. He is renowned for his poise under any and every adversity. He could face anything, brave anything – yet when Sita was lost, abducted, he collapsed and broke down. Laxmana is shocked. Laxmana is in disbelief when he sees this, “My brother, even you, even you in this state!”

So the people, like with Jesus, say that Rama is a God and cannot feel pain and is only play-acting, but I tell you, like Jesus he is just being himself. He is really feeling what he is feeling. He is not a lifeless and feeling-less God. In His godliness having taken to embodiment he feels – he feels everything. He lives life true. Even Krishna is known to have wept breaking down each time he remembered Radha! He missed her so much. He loved her so much. People’s interpretations of what is an enlightened state or an unenlightened state is not very enlightened. Their idea of such special people are based more on belief and not from the true understanding of the different levels and the comprehensiveness of the consciousness and its contents.

So long as the being, even if godly, is in the embodiment it will experience the realm of embodiment. Rama, Krishna, Christ – feel their emotions, they are as much in life as they are above and beyond it, for they especially are not permanently stationed in a state of consciousness above life, rather descend time and time again into the life-levels for the continuous and progressive transmutation, transformation and upliftment of it in the ways and light of God and therefore God Manifestation in and of life – here on Earth as it is in Heaven. There is a difference between the ordinary experience and their experience. They experience the same emotions, yet there is a qualitative difference, they are free in their experience while yet experiencing them, and not only that, even feel them with a greater intensity, depth, refinement and beauty, and even so sensitivity. There is godliness even in their emotions and in the living of it. Theirs is a continuous manifestation of an increasing godliness in their feeling and living of life and its actions. Just so too, the whole of your being is going through a process of evolution for an increasing manifestation in and of godhead of what is to come and what is to be, especially so through your meditation and sadhana.

What is usually understood is, when one is enlightened there would be no sorrow. Yes, when in your state and consciousness you are above and beyond body and embodiment there is no sorrow. The sorrows and the joys happen at the level of life. They happen because of the embodiment, the consciousness embodied. It is inevitable even for Christ, Buddha, Rama, Krishna to whatever degree, depending on their status and situation of consciousness. As the oft repeated example of Ramakrishna, who when informed by his relatives of his nephew’s death for whom he had much love, feels no pain of emotion – rather has a vision of the soul emerging from the body and departing, and in his own words, “Like a sword emerging from its sheath,” because at that time the status and situation of his consciousness is above the life-levels, but when he descends into the consciousness of the life-levels he starts to feel intense sorrow and emotional pain. It is because each level of consciousness has its own dharma, own reality, own vision and world as it were, its own reason and expression, and so it is – for the moment He descended to the level of embodiment, emotions came and he wept bitterly. Would you say Ramakrishna is unenlightened? No, rather the process happening in Him is a comprehensive one.

One can station oneself permanently up above and beyond, devoid of the process and devoid of life – but that does not make that station superior as such and the rest ignorantly superfluous! Rather, I would say it is not complete for it denies the manifestation of God in life even though it needs to be worked out over time. When the process awakens it does not mean that the whole of your being is instantly illuminated and transformed. Rather, when unhindered, it is a continuous process of movement, inward and outward, upward and downward, a mutating transformation, a transmutation and an increasing evolution godward and manifestation of God in life, divine life. There is therefore the process which provides for all this.

Most approach the sadhana with the objective that only sets and seeks the Reality above life, above embodiment, as the only truth and the sought-after thing. Their simple explanation for life: it is either an illusion as in Mayavadi, a perpetual suffering as in Buddhism, or that life is to remain permanently unenlightened and the way it is; to make life as comfortable and profitable for oneself as one can, otherwise nothing much can be done about it, which is rationalist crass materialism. So it is better and sensible, if not the inherent cosmic intention, to escape life and leave it behind for bountiful bliss and happiness above or wherever, as in exclusive transcendentalism and Nirvanic Buddhism; or to the perfumed gardens of Jannat, with all its allurements, as in Islam.

But then why did life ever come into being?

Again, the answer that some people give is, ‘You have to return home’ which is not much of an answer.

But why did you ever leave home?

Oh, because God was bored! Well, if He can get bored, then there is no end to boredom. This explanation seems straight out of a comic book and would be truly funny if it wasn’t that it was seriously believed and therefore is tragically pathetic. What an answer! I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. God’s ways are truly inscrutable. People and their minds and their beliefs!

As this process awakens it gives you a complete and comprehensive understanding of the Reality, but one must not be caught up in some pre-conceived notions, mental concepts and beliefs, especially not the regressive, comically pathetic, intellectually impoverished types exampled above, God forbid! This process is a mother to you – it gives you a new birth, a new way of looking at life, a progressing enlightenment wherein one should always be open to see if there is anything more to uncover, discover and realise, besides allowing for the transformation to continue unabated.

If the Divine gets bored then there is no place left to go! In fact then humans are better off with their girlfriends and boyfriends, their wives and husbands, their children and relatives, their computers and their various toys, capers and shenanigans, etc. which can help them to escape their boredom – while that fellow is all by Himself up there and must truly be bored – but then why seek Him? Really there is no reason for Him to be bored for He is complete in Himself. Whether alone or in a crowd the self-completeness is there and completeness does not mean monotony.

This process brings us to an increasingly complete existence. It does not deny movement, for both movement and rest make for a complete existence. Embodiment itself needs movement; otherwise there is no reason to embody. It needs time, and time is movement, motion. The single, mono-Being and consciousness multiplies into a multi-layered differentiated being and consciousness through motion and time while yet remaining whole and transcendent.

That which is One is the many; that which is the many is the One. This is its inscrutable wholeness.

It is the same with each of us. While yet one, we go through so many shifts in our being. In our different emotions, passions, feelings and sensations, thoughts, we express ourselves differently each time – but it is one being with its many faces. Each time we express differently we do not become a different person! It is one person expressing in different ways. Om Tat Sat Om.

Arya Vihar

26 Nov 2000