This word sakshi is very beautiful and very valuable.
The whole philosophy, genius and wisdom of the East is implied in this small word. The East has contributed no other more important word than sakshi, the witness, to the world.
What does sakshi mean?
Sakshi means the seer, the witness.
Who is this who is experiencing that "I am not the body?" Who is this who is experiencing that "I am not the mind?" Who is this who goes on denying that "I am not this, I am not this?" There is an element of seeing, of watching, of the watcher within us which sees, which observes everything.
This seer is the sakshi, the witness.
What is seen is the world. The one who is seeing is who I am, and what is being seen is the world. Adhyas, the illusion, means that the one who is seeing misunderstands himself to be all that is seen. This is the illusion.
We see everything, but we are not able to see ourselves. And we will never be able to. Whatsoever you can see, know well that that is not you. Thus take one thing to be certain, that whatsoever you are able to see is not you. If you are able to see God, then one thing has become certain, that you are not God. If you have seen light within you, one thing is conclusive, that you are not light. If you have an experience of bliss within you, one thing is determined, that you are not bliss. Whatsoever has been experienced, you are not that. You are that which experiences.
So whatsoever becomes your experience, you are beyond it. Therefore it will be useful to understand one difficult point here, that spirituality is not an experience. Everything in the world is an experience, but not spirituality. Spirituality is reaching towards that which experiences all, but which itself never becomes an experience. It always remains the experiencer, the witness, the seer.
Remember, all! The experience of sex is of course dropped, the experiences of meditation are also dropped. The experiences of the world, of love and hate are dropped, the experiences of bliss and enlightenment are also dropped. Only the pure seer remains. Nothing is there to be seen, only emptiness remains all around.
Only the watcher remains, and the empty sky all around. In the middle stands the seer, the watcher, who sees nothing because everything has been denied and eliminated that could be seen. Now he experiences nothing. He has removed all experiences from his way. Now he remains alone, the one who was experiencing.
When there is no experience, there is no seeing; there is nothing seen and there is no object to be seen, and the witness alone remains. It becomes very difficult to express in language what really happens because we have no other word except 'experience' in our language, therefore we call it 'self-experience' or 'self-realization'. The word experience is not right.
We say "experience of consciousness" or "experience of the Brahma, the absolute," but none of these expressions are right, because the word experience belongs to that same world which we have eliminated. The word experience does have a meaning in the world of duality, where there was 'the other' too. Here it has no meaning at all. Here only the experiencer remains, the witness remains.
The search for this witness is spirituality.
With grace, love & peace,
HolyKarma.au
Comments