The Absolute Witness

People often ask me about quote the witness and about nondual awareness.

One of the difficulties in answering questions.

On these topics is that there's quite a bit of ambiguity as to what the words. The witness or the phrase Nondual awareness should refer to In other words, these words and phrases are used differently by different People.

And so to give a sort of.

Single answer to questions regarding these without taking into account. The fact that the terms may mean different things to different People is the road to disaster actually gross misunderstanding and possibly even contentious.

Malaise.

So.

One can use the word.

Witness.

I think in two senses.

One is the sense that.

There is a thing over here. That sort of observing the it's over there and in some way detached from the it's that are being observed.

This is one sense of witness.

In that sense, witness is just a.

Way of describing a certain level of equanimity.

And from that perspective, yeah, that's a good thing to have that sense of unjust witnessing stuff is.

You know there's the phenomena are coming and going and they can't get to me because I'm back here. I call that a distance, creating metaphor for equanimity.

I should point out it's not the only metaphor for equanimity. You can also have a distance collapsing that metaphor, which is I'm so totally with the phenomenon that it can't get to me because I'm glued to it.

But in any event if we want to use the word witness in the sense of a metaphor for equanimity that's fine.

That is not at all, however.

At the same level as?

Witness in the sense of.

The absolute witness.

When you have a sense that.

There's

Your there's a sort of observer a thing. That's observing or a person that's observing but sort of separate and attached.

That's good because it's equanimity, but it's also important to realize that that's being produced by subtle feel image talk.

So I wouldn't say that that's the absolute witness or pure consciousness.

But it's a good thing it's a stage that People go through, however.

It's of the utmost importance that a person not get stuck in that stage and think Oh well this is like?

The ultimate goal of things.

So then what is?

The true witness.

In my way of thinking the true witnesses contentless consciousness.

That, in my system you directly eyeball for just a brief 2nd.

Every time you observe a phenomenon disappearing.

In other words, whenever any phenomenon disappears.

What is actually happening is that the 2:00 forces that are molding that phenomenon?

You can call them life and death or affirmation negation or expansion and contraction.

Or, a whole lot of other things.

The two forces that have molded that phenomenon.

Cancel out.

And there is a cessation Nero to.

A collapsing or disappearing.

Of.

Time space.

For quote a fraction of a second dance. Of course, the time metaphor right by an external Clock for a fraction of a second.

There's a little puncture.

In the time space Continuum. Of course, that little puncture eats up all of time and space. It's the black hole that sort of eats up the universe and then spits it out again.

In the next moment of consciousness.

My teacher Sasaki Roshi calls that 0 that's what I would call the true witness. But the true witness doesn't see anything and it's not back here somewhere because there is no back. There is no forward. There is no extension in time and space. It eats up time and space, not inside time and space.

And you when you become the true witness. There's no sense of witnessing anything any phenomenon. Uh there's no sense of anything, it's contentless consciousness. It's nothing whatsoever. Now, some People wouldn't call that the witness. Some People would just call that emptiness or the source or cessation nirodha moment of cessation.

If you had to say there's a witness.

That's what as in an absolute sense that's what I would point to and that witness punctures. The time space Continuum. Thousands and thousands and thousands of times every day for everyone.

The only difference between the so called enlightened People and everybody else is they notice it.

And they know that they are that nothing.

If you read in the yoga sutras potentially the classic text of Roger Yoga.

He begins the yoga sutras by saying.

After Yoga Nosha, Salaam.

Yogas Chitta Vritti Nirodha her.

Octodad roster Swaroop Devasthanam, so after yoga new shason I'm OK here. This is the science of yoga.

Yoga is teeth are pretty narrow to the cessation Nero to the cessation of the fluctuations of consciousness.

Then and only then.

Does the drifty the true observer abide in its nature?

So if we wanted to call that nothingness that very special nothingness. The true observer. We could, but that's very different from the sense of there's somebody back here detached watching things in order to go from there, somebody back here detached watching things too.

The experience of cessation you have to be able to detect.

Uh the disappearance of the subtle feel image talk.

That creates the sense that there's anything or person.

Extended in time and space.

Or in positioned in any location.

You have to see the disappearance of the subtle feel image talk that creates that impression and the place where that relative witness disappears too.

Is the place of the absolute witness?