Weekly Definition - sAkShin or Witness

March 26, 2007

I have just uploaded last week's definition of dRRigdRRiShya viveka,

from Durga-ji, to the Novices folder. It is also available at my

website -

http://www.advaita.org.uk/discourses/definitions/dRRigdRRishya_viveka.htm.

This week's definition is for sAkShin from Sri Ananda Wood and I am

posting it on his behalf, below.

Dennis

*****

In Advaita philosophy, our perceptions of the world are considered

objectively, as part of an objective world which is perceived through

them.

This world is taken to include our bodies, our senses and our minds --

as changing instruments which act in the world. These instruments make

up our personalities. And, as they act in their containing world, they

produce a succession of perceived and thought and felt appearances,

which come and go in each of our minds.

But how is this succession known? It's known through passing states of

mind, whose limited attention keeps on turning from one changing

appearance to another. Here, in the mind, each passing state brings an

appearance which replaces past appearances and which is then replaced

in turn.

To know that change has taken place, what knows the change must carry

on. As mind's appearances get changed, a continued knower must stay

present through the coming and the going of these changing appearances.

That knower must stay present silently. It is completely uninvolved

with the distraction of noisy appearances, which clamor to replace

each other in the mind's attention.

That silent knower is called 'sAkShin' or the 'witness'. It is an

impartial witness that remains invariably the same, beyond all change

and difference. For it is never in the least affected by any of the

differing appearances which come and go before its disinterested

witnessing.

That witness is not a changing doer. It does not do anything which

changes it in any way. It is just that pure knower whose continued

presence is shared in common by us all, beneath all changes and all

variety of personality and world.

From there, the world is rightly known, with a complete and impartial

objectivity.

In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 3.8.11, Yajnyavalkya describes the

witness briefly -- as an unchanged observer, beneath all continuity of

space and time in changing world. The relevant passage is appended

below, with a somewhat free translation.

tad vA etad akSharam gArgI

adRRiShTam draShTRRi, ashrutam shrotRRi,

amatam mantRRi, avij~nAtaM vij~nAtRRi;

nAnyad ato 'sti draShTRRi, nAnyad ato 'sti shrotRRi,

nAnyad ato 'sti mantRRi, nAnyad ato 'sti vij~nAtRRi;

etasmin nu khalv akShare gArgI

AkAsha otash cha protash ca.

[This, Gargi, is just that which is not changed.

It is not seen, but is the see-er.

It is not heard, but is the hearer.

It is not thought, but is the thinker.

It is not known, but is the knower.

Apart from it, there is no see-er.

Apart from it, there is no hearer.

Apart from it, there is no thinker.

Apart from it, there is no knower.

Gargi, in this alone which is not changed,

all space and time are woven, warp and woof.]

March 27, 2007

Re: Weekly Definition - sAkShin or Witness

Namaste Tony,

You said in message # 35443 of Mar 26: " Ultimately there is no

'sakshin' or witness for there is nothing to witness or ever was... "

As I see it, this is in agreement with Shrimati Durga's description

of the witness as " a pointer to the Self " . The witness is of course

not truth itself, but a concept that is used to point towards truth.

If a sadhaka follows where this concept points, the concept is left

behind and finally disappears.

Viewed by reflecting back from mind, the witness is conceived as a

changeless knower, which knows a succession of changing states that

come and go. But when the mind reflects completely back to this

changeless knower, it turns out that the knower is itself the true

reality of each passing state. So, in knowing these states, the

knower only knows itself.

What was approached as the 'witness' is thus realized to be a

self-illuminating reality whose very being shines with knowing

light. In that realization, the 'witness' concept is completely

dissolved in a non-dual self.

What the witness concept does is to provoke the mind into asking

questions that reflect it back into its truly knowing self. But when

the mind gets reflected all the way back, it completely disappears

along with all the objects it has conceived.

Accordingly, the witness is a conceptual limit that the mind

approaches, by removing what is found to change from this mind's

idea of itself. As more and more of the changing mind is removed

from its idea of itself, the mind approaches closer and closer to

its true self.

So long as anything that changes remains, the mind must look

questioninly back to a changeless witness at the final limit of the

changing mind. On getting closer and closer to that witness, the

mind gets closer to changelessness and to the absence of all

changing things.

In that borderland near to the final limit, the mind may get stuck

in a sense of listless and hopeless nothingness. Tennyson describes

this somewhat mythically, but rather beautifully, in his poem

" Tithonus " :

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,

The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,

Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,

And after many a summer dies the swan.

Me only cruel immortality

Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms,

Here at the quiet limit of the world,

A white-haired shadow roaming like a dream

The ever-silent spaces of the East,

Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.

....

Tithonus is here speaking to the Goddess of Dawn, with whom he has

had a love affair. As a result of that affair, she has granted him a

boon of immortality, but not of the eternal youth that he forgot to

ask for. I take the whole poem as describing an unpleasant aftermath

of visionary or mystic exaltation, leaving poor Tithonus badly stuck

and wasting away " here at the quiet limit of the world " . He's stuck

of course because he hasn't actually reached that limit, but stays

teetering a little distance still away from it. That distance is an

immeasurable gulf which still remains to be lept across.

When the leap is made and the witness is finally reached, all world

and mind and witnessing are found dissolved in knowing truth.

Advaita reasoning is thus directed back paradoxically, to a

supporting truth from which no supported mind or world can truly be

recovered.

Ananda

March 27, 2007

advaitin , Ananda Wood <awood wrote: