To Witness Is Not to Think about Witnessing
Questioner: Sir, so one when day I was taking a bath, I was applying soap so there was a moment when I realized - the one who is applying the soap, and to whom it is getting applied to, both are somewhere different but both are one. But there is a thing that if there was another moment I was taking a shower and I felt that - why I am not getting wet?
Something is getting wet but why I am not getting wet? This happens If I identify myself that I am Ranveer, and I am standing in the bathroom and I’ve seen everything around. Then I am the person who is getting the soap or getting the bath. But when I see that, I am, I just look at the moment like this, then I am the person who is doing all the activity but not to whom I am getting, not the person who is getting wet. So how to manage this, because this is a very confusing situation for me. That who is doing the activity, and to whom the activity is done?
Acharya Prashant: There is a thing to be managed, what you are talking of is a thought. If you want to keep thinking like this, you can keep repeating this thought. To witness the bath is to take the bath fully and totally clean. In the bathroom, if you are thinking like this, then you will come out with shampoo in your head.
Witnessing does not mean that one thinks that he is witnessing. Witnessing means that, while taking a bath, just take the bath, and don’t think of this and that, that is witnessing. Otherwise, you can keep repeating this thought. If that is your definition of witnessing that I am not getting wet, but conceptually what you are saying is not misplaced. Yes, of course, and that is also the way conventionally it has been put that the witness is that one - who cannot be wetted by water.
We all know what Krishna has said in the Gita about the Atman, right? What is it? “nainaṃ chindanti śastrāṇi nainaṃ dahati pāvakaḥ,” the fire cannot burn it, the weapons cannot pierce it. So what you are seeing, is in that league. It belongs to that kind of literature, which is all very right. But what Krishna is saying is not a product of thought, what you are saying is a thought that you are having in the bathroom. So even though the words appear similar their genesis is very different.
Questioner: When I sometimes put witnessing like this, when I sometimes just to touch the skull like this, I feel that from a cell how this thing can form - the skin, this voice, everything which is from one single cell transforms in such thing, and if I look closely, if I close my eyes, and see there’s skull, there’s eyeballs, there’s lungs everything but everything is working together, so how can you know………that is working together, the person who is speaking this, because cell, everything is.
Acharya Prashant: This is a useful inquiry that science can very easily answer. Everything that you can ask using thought, is something that science can answer. So do not take it as something metaphysical. You are asking about the body, and how one cell multiplies into the entire organism. Science is …… in these questions, they properly belong only to science. This may sound a little strange, but I re-iterate, that any question that emerges as a thought, properly belongs only to science, it does not belong to spirituality. Which means that actually no question, really belongs to spirituality.
Questioner: Then sir, how we can differentiate between whether I am really experiencing it or it’s just a thought?
Acharya Prashant: No, every experience is accompanied by a thought. So experience and thought are much the same. You see there is an internal activity, the moment you call it an experience, you have verbalized it. Don’t you say, this is happening to me, that is what you name as experience, and this verbalization is a thought, so experience and thought go together. You must figure this out, is there an experience without enunciation of the experience? In fact, one day I asked, is there experience without language? Is that experience the same as the one you have … language?
Questioner: No sir, one day I was sleeping and the room was totally dark. So for the first time, I could not see my hand like this, and after sleeping on the bed, I realized that I don’t have any boundaries but that’s not the thought. It was not that for the first time I could not feel my body, it was like the darkness is everything, so that is what I am asking, whether it was experience, because for me
Acharya Prashant: It's just an experience. Obviously, it is a thought and an experience. Little by little you would have passed into sleep, were you still feeling unlimited in sleep? Or are you feeling even limited? Neither limited nor unlimited. What you call as limitation is a thought, what you call as being limitless is also a thought. Non-duality is not the opposite of duality, all that you see around, all that you can think of is all dualistic thought. So whenever you’ll come up with something that you experienced or you thought of is all much the same.
