Dr. Raj Balkaran 0:05
So, what is witnessing? And what on earth does it have to do with wisdom? Welcome back to the new Muslim podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Raj Balkar. On more importantly, you, you are looking for inspired insight and you probably enjoy a tale or two. Maybe you enjoy being educated when you least expect it. So witness consciousness, the witness what on earth is this, in order to begin to understand what this is and its value for spiritual awareness, spiritual growth, spiritual evolution, one needs to turn one's attention to this little thing called a person. Okay, let us think about what a human being is. Okay. There are aspects of who we are, which are utterly manifest, tangible, you know, fungible, are wonderful, meat body or food body, the Annamaya Kosha is fairly well understood by medical science, give or take. But it's manifest, you know, when we see people, we typically see their physical selves, we know we are much more than physical selves, if only it were that straightforward. Right, we can experience the presence of an emotional self, where in our emotional processing, or habit habits lie, we are intellectual selves. And ultimately, we are our spiritual selves. So you have, if you have been paying attention to yourself into life, then you will certainly notice that you're not the same as you were five years ago, you know, pre COVID, perhaps, but much more than what happened in the outer world in terms of the changes that COVID In the post COVID Fallout have facilitated has have affected in the world, there have been changes in your inner world, perhaps you are resentful, because of having been locked down for so long. Perhaps you have some patients, perhaps, etc, etc, etc. The list goes on and on, perhaps you were in lockdown with a loved one who was no longer a loved one. By the end of lockdown. Perhaps you were locked down with someone who became a loved one by the end of lockdown, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But it doesn't take these, you know, cataclysmic global events, such as the pandemic, to facilitate change in your life. And if you pay attention to who you were five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, provided that your human being and you're not in a coma, you will notice that you are seeing the world differently, you will notice that there were people in your life who maybe you wouldn't have in your life anymore. Perhaps there are people you were dating or seeing or married to who you no longer date or dating and seeing and married to anymore. Why? Because you see something now that you didn't see then then there was an aspect of the situation to which you were blind. We all have blind spots without question. Question is whether or not we are collecting blind spots. If this is our hobby, you know, if we're collecting ignorance, or if we are illumining, blind spots, if we're whittling away at the crevices that we can't see. And so, by virtue of the fact that you can see a I was quite different 10 years ago, you could infer that there's an aspect of you. That is unchanging. There's a frame of reference, right? If all that you are is who you are now. Right? You wouldn't be able to see who you were five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. There is the power of awareness that you can abide in or approximate or call upon So as to see yourself then. And if you have extraordinary self awareness, you could actually see clearly who you are now, in the moment and be cognizant of what you are doing, and why you're doing what you are doing. What is it that you seek? What are your attachments? What are your aversions? What is your goal? Why are you upset that this person didn't respond to your text? You know, we always think it's about them, it's never about them. It's about something going on, in our brains, in our minds in our hearts, which we need to understand. Have we attached some meaning to the absence of response? Have we told ourselves a story about wow, this person doesn't care etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Right. So, through awareness and through witnessing one's behavior, one can more deeply understand that behavior and become free of behaviors, which are binding, limiting, habitual, instinctive, right. So, arguably, awareness is the thing that separates life from non life, arguably, what do all life forms have in common which dead things or nonliving things may not, may not have in common living things, awareness, they are aware of their surroundings. Now, we take this for granted, but really, if you have a watch, and the watch becomes aware, Now, clearly we have watches who know a great many things simulate intelligence and awareness. But I mean to say, if you're old school like myself and have this sort of wind watch, and if the watch actually was able to suddenly become aware of its surroundings in question, who would was in question, why was and wonder why it was stuck on my wrist, we will see this as a miracle. Well, you know, that miracle is the miracle of life. It's taken millions of years, right? For sophisticated life forms to evolve, but their evolution is part and parcel of their ability, their capacity to be aware, to be cognizant of surroundings, of self ultimately. So, it could be argued that awareness or consciousness is not only the Sinequan known the essential feature of life, but that the cultivation of awareness may well be the meaning the purpose of human life to some in some way, shape or form. Right. So witnessing, you know, when there's a crime committed, and investigators, well, I'm sure many of you have seen a great number of of TV gram shows. Investigators are trying to piece together what happened, do they generally find a cohesive picture from the 357 eyewitnesses, all of the eyewitnesses were there and they all had eyes, presumably for the ability to see and yet so disparate. So incongruence at times are the reports to which people swear. Now, this is a testament to the extent to which people don't pay clear and careful attention. They are not fully aware they're partially aware they're peripherally aware, they may project from their memory, from their hopes, from their fears, but really, as opposed to this sort of unreliable, shoddy eye witnessing. What we want to do is cultivate the ultimate eye witnessing, the witnessing of the eye, which is ultimately you because all the aspects of you will change over the course of the days and the decades. But there is an aspect of you, unchanging, which looks upon and registers, all that is changing within you.
This is a really profound idea actually. And it's more than Id it's an experience because there's folks delve into spirit will practice beat meditation be it yoga postures Asana, be it mantra. Without question what starts happening is the burgeoning of an awareness of the subtle of the intangible and awareness of aspects of reality and aspects of self, which are not bound stringently to the material into the gross. implicated there and, but somehow not quite dependent upon gross reality, one develops subtle awareness and the subtlest of the subtlest form of awareness. Actually, he's awareness itself. It's not becoming aware of subtle reality, where that is an object of the awareness. It is awareness turning upon itself, abiding in itself, realizing itself as the ground of being, as the ground of existing, you know, in the Yoga Sutras, taking a fair bit about the Yoga Sutras for a course that I'm currently preparing called the yoga illumined. Not just the sutras, but I'm also the Bhagavad Gita. I think they make a superb compliment. But in the sutras, quite tersely and quite profoundly yoga is simply defined as the cessation of the fluctuations of mind. Right. And immediately after that, the sutras say, and then the DoD rush to so whoever started, and then the seer abides in its own state. Well, who was the seer who was the watcher, this is the ultimate self. This is no witness. This is the atman atman equals approximately witnessing, because selfhood and seeing are inextricable our ultimate self is seeing power. Not the seen, the seer itself, seeing itself. Otherwise put, witnessing, there is a parable of the Upanishads about two birds in a tree, let's call it a tree of life, and one bird eats the fruit of the tree. Sweet and sour, rejoicing recoiling, pleasure, pain. And the second bird watches on in peace, not so much a bird brain, this one as the capacity to witness. Now that witness consciousness is variously understood as the atman the self, or the language of yoga, Sankhya philosophy brucia spirit if you will, or in the language of Shava schools of thought to tantric schools of thought it's Shiva. She Shiva is that awareness. Shiva is the dynamic awareness which watches which has no power to do. Shakti is other half his concert, she is the doing she is done. She is the field of karma. Maybe a tail. Maybe maybe a teeny tiny tail might illumine some of this witness nonsense about which I'm going on. So long time ago, a demon Taraka took over the heaven and was terrorizing the gods. In old trope indeed Turkers greatest strength with was that he could only be defeated by a child of Shiva. That was his boon. You know, everyone's got to have something special about them. Ie you can only be defeated by a child of the great ascetic Shiva. But wait a minute. If she was a great ascetic and ascetics are known for practicing Brahmacharya or the retention of their libidinal energy, the preservation and the sublimation of the little bit a little bit and if such as an aesthetic, and if he's a great aesthetic, I want earth can you have a child? Yes, that's why Tanaka wanted this boom, because he thought it would grant him mortality. You know, these deities, these beings these sorrows are always doing great penance. burning a boon. They're not allowed to have immortality because the their cousins of the gods coveted the elixir of life for themselves. So, the next best thing is to do a whole bunch of SADHNA and craft a boon that you think will serve as, you know, immortality in effect. And as always, here we go. So what happens? Indra, the king of the gods, now imagine he's upset he's been usurped, he's been dethroned II decides to send down the God of desire comma, the ancient Indian Cupid, Cupid, perhaps Perhaps, he sent comma down to shivers mountainous abode, because what is he wanted, he wants a Kindle desire in Shiva, so that Shiva may procreate so that they may be granted their Savior and so that they may retain their power in heaven. Okay, so karma goes down to kalosha to the mountaintop to, to do his thing to do what he's supposed to do. His task is to make sure that Shiva falls in love with the beautiful daughter of the mountain Parvati the lovely poverty. Poverty actually loves Shiva greatly. And she'd always really long to be with him. She was a little a bit aloof. I mean, he kind of goes into meditative states. And like, you know, he never answers his text messages honestly. So difficult to get a hold of, but she's pretty patient and part of him kind of, part of her kind of admired his stoic in a returning spiritual thing. So call him arrives on the scene is he she sees Shiva meditating. His eyes were closed, is consciousness, one with the one because there's only one, we appear as many. But guess what, I've got news for you, the self, myself or yourself? Yes, there is one self. This is the mysterious paradox of human existence. There is one spark of consciousness that we all share and Miss identify as our own. Right, we are ultimately a wave. But we behave as particles, much to be said about the metaphysics of human life and physics actually. And the particle wave nature of light, but more, more physics comparisons and other day, but we really are energetically a wave, the Divine is this way of witness consciousness. And when we measure it, the wavefunction collapses. And we are as if particles, but this aspect of our nature is ultimately illusory. And there's Oh, so profound wisdom in in the idea that the ancient Indians have this profound insight that all the we perceive as real isn't really real. I mean, it's cogent. In a sense, it's it's cohesive, obviously, but it's not real, that ultimately it's all spunda or vibration. Waves, if you will, energy. And really, it's called Maya. No, Maya is from the verbal roots ma to measure. Just grok this idea, what they're saying is, all that can be measured, is illusory. Reality is immeasurable. So anyhow, here we are, these waves of witness energy, the wavefunction collapse by the measuring Maya, which is the ego self, you know, she was one with the one meditating, his eyes closed. Right? He wasn't quite aware of his immediate surroundings, he was connected to source which he happened to be. One could say this is quite self serving, but as long as you understand his capitalist self and not Thoris self poverty, the beautiful, benevolent daughter of the mountain, was close by.
She was kind of, you know, reading about Shiva, shack, and Kama. He saw his chats, he let loose his arrow is arrow of Eros, which struck the Lord, whose eyes fluttered open and as awareness returned to the scene is awareness of the collapse of the wavefunction. Yeah, metaphorically speaking, perhaps, is awareness. turned to his article state his particularity to his body consciousness and where it was located in space. Because when you're one with the one, you're connected with the Wi Fi that pervades all of creation, not just the hardware and software of your local reality. And you know, while you came present of that reality, it was also present of the intoxicating presence of the lovely delightful Goddess Parvati and it was so enticed by her radiance for beauty in her and out. In that moment, Shiva wanted nothing more than to love poverty and to express his love, physically by becoming one with her desire to enjoy the pleasures embodied existence, but a split second later, he came to as it were, returned to his yogic senses and realized that this shift in his consciousness had been caused by comma desire, pun intended. This is a mythologize ation of, to my mind most Indic myth is a dramatization of the inner world of psycho spiritual processes. But he realized that karma had interrupted his trance, pun intended, and he was annoyed, felt a little bit violated, a wave of spiritual power, energy surged up towards through Shiva is third eye opened and from it an intense blast of yogic fire emanated instantly incinerating karma by karma Well, that's one way to get rid of desire isn't it? Karma was destroyed by his deed was done is our did hit Shiva before he was incinerated. Shiva, the great ascetic is in love. He turned his gaze to poverty and the eyes locked and loving exchange eternity seem to pass between their glances and the rapture of their union overtook them, when after a time, a deep concern arose in Parvati. Great Lord Shiva. Now that a coma is destroyed, he can no longer kindled desire among the beings of Earth. They will now isolate themselves in die out. Do not understand that desire is the most primal important force in all of Parker T material creation. Surely this fate cannot come to pass for the beings of the earth. Shiva was so enchanted with her, replied, Your beauty is matched only by your wisdom, my love, replied. Sure, all resurrect karma in spirit. So that desire may dwell in the creatures of earth and they may propagate and enjoy material existence. Oh, I personally have no didn't use for karma or desire. is sure about that Shiva. As Parvati, or mood had shifted, her loving gaze faded, and or manner became more serious, foreboding, even Shiva thoughtlessly continued. Of course, of course, desire. Come on, I'm a great yogi. I've raised my spiritual power to the point of transcending desire, do not realize this. Though he did not know it, Shiva had sparked a deep anger, resentment within Parvati. She presented his ignorance and the ways in which she was demonizing desire and demonizing material creation. The light and color of her complexion drained in her presence expanded, darkening the very mountains. Even the mighty Shiva trembled as our fields grew darker and larger and blacker, still, as a gaping black hole, are fully enough to devour the galaxy. Even he fell to the ground in utter submission, in utter reverence and astonishment, that the majestic didn't maniacal force before him, was no longer in the presence of poverty. He for him instead was Kali. The feminine force of all creation, withdrawn from the universe, unbridled Shakti itself. It was Kali manifest in her most great and terrifying form. Shiva lay lifeless corpse like utterly still, before her. Kali loomed over him and her terrible laughter, echoed cackling to the cosmos. And then she spoke work these unforgettable words, you are the consciousness, the seeing power, the witness of the universe. I am its energy, its dynamism. Its name its form. Without my power, all beings merely lie on Earth as you do now. I'm the primordial power, the propels the galaxies, and all beings within the cosmos, I am desire, without which there is no action. Even your meditation is born of desire, how else could it be? Do you not see this? You are the walker, but I am the walk. You are the dancer and I the dance, and how indeed can you separate the two. But when my Shakti when my power when my energy is removed from you, when you are bereft of such you are awareness alone, inputted incapable that action. Now that you have seen now that you know the power of desire allow me to return my energy to you behold my colossal power as a return to the universe in all beings within it, including you great Lord. His tail was actually told to shed light on savasana corpse pose, Shiva as a Shiva, a corpse without Shakti. Shiva learned a great lesson that day about the power of Shakti, the feminine divine, and its relationship to the universe and to desire. He learned what it's like to be completely inert. And witness creation is dynamic play. When Callie withdraws from Shiva is little more than Shiva, a corpse. And so as you embrace the inner stillness of shavasana, practice, witnessing, sees becoming, or that time, cease having time for that time, embrace being alone, the practice of divine inertia. Now shavasana the capacity for witnessing from stillness can come to accompany even as you move to the turbulence of life. Now we're all aware that these are these are, can be quite trying times. We've spoken last week's episode about the wisdom of breath and stillness and the wisdom of trees and perhaps this the wisdom of witnessing is an extension there of Yes, witnessing, watching is being acting is becoming it is possible to act without incurring karmic residue. If one does so while witnessing, most of us don't act. In the vast, vast majority of situations we react, the actions we undertake, are spontaneous, impulsive reactions to the stimuli about us, of which there are many. In order to truly act, there needs to be space between the stimulus and the response. And that is the space of consciousness, that is a space of awareness, that is the space that renders the response, conscious, a purposeful, deliberate response, in full awareness of what is being done, and why it is being done. Absent this mere merely links in the causal chain of action reaction. And this is how we live out our days, perpetually provoked by the stimuli around us. What if we can find the space to witness we will not be pulled into property, we will be able to enjoy it.
We'll be able to navigate it
rather than being fettered by it bound by
such is the power of awareness. And this is the wisdom of witnessing. With any luck, you had nearly as much fun as I have today. is continuous and we would love if you could share this content if you think it would be of service to others. These to share, like, feel free to reach out to me to request further content. And also you may wish to study with me yet named amongst them school. Until next time, eat well. Eat, practicing, listening and keep witnessing the mistake
