Skip to main content

Difference: Awareness, Consciousness and Witness


Awareness-Witness-Consciousness 
________________________________________________________________________
What is the difference between awareness and witnessing? 

     There is much difference between awareness and witnessing. Witnessing is still an act; you are doing it; the ego is there. So the phenomenon of witnessing is divided between the subject and the object.
     Witnessing is a relationship between subject and object.
     Awareness is absolutely devoid of any subjectivity or objectivity. 
There is no one who is witnessing in awareness; there is no one who is being witnessed. Awareness is a total act, integrated; the subject and the object are not related in it; they are dissolved. So awareness doesn't mean that anyone is aware; nor does it mean that anything is being attended to.
     Awareness is total – total subjectivity and total objectivity as a single phenomenon – while in witnessing a duality exists between subject and object. Awareness is nondoing; witnessing implies a doer. But through witnessing awareness is possible, because witnessing means that it is a conscious act; it is an act, but conscious. You can do something and be unconscious – our ordinary activity is unconscious activity – but if you become conscious in it, it becomes witnessing.
     So from ordinary unconscious activity to awareness there is a gap that can be filled by witnessing.

     Witnessing is a technique, a method toward awareness. 

     It is not awareness but, compared to ordinary activity, unconscious activity, it is a higher step. Something has changed: activity has become conscious, unconsciousness has been replaced by consciousness. But something more still has to be changed. That is, the activity has to be replaced by inactivity. That will be the second step.
     It is difficult to jump from ordinary, unconscious action into awareness. It is possible but arduous, so a step in between is helpful. If one begins by witnessing conscious activity, then the jump becomes easier – the jump into awareness without any conscious object, without any conscious subject, without any conscious activity at all.
     This doesn't mean that awareness isn't consciousness; it is pure consciousness, but no one is conscious about it

     There is a further difference between consciousness and awareness.
     Consciousness is a quality of your mind, but it is not your total mind. Your mind can be both conscious and unconscious; but when you transcend your mind, there is no unconsciousness and no corresponding consciousness. There is awareness.
     Awareness means that the total mind has become aware. Now the old mind is not there but there is the quality of being conscious. Awareness has become the totality; the mind itself is now part of the awareness. We cannot say that the mind is aware; we can only meaningfully say that the mind is conscious.
     Awareness means transcendence of the mind, so it is not the mind that is aware. It is only through transcendence of the mind, through going beyond mind, that awareness becomes possible. 
     Consciousness is a quality of the mind, awareness is the transcendence; it is going beyond the mind. Mind, as such, is the medium of duality, so consciousness can never transcend duality. It is always conscious of something, and there is always someone who is conscious. So consciousness is part and parcel of the mind, and mind, as such, is the source of all duality, of all divisions – whether they are between subject and object, activity or inactivity, consciousness or unconsciousness. Every type of duality is mental. Awareness is nondual, so awareness means the state of no mind.

     Then what is the relationship between consciousness and witnessing? Witnessing is a state, and consciousness is a means toward witnessing. If you begin to be conscious, you achieve witnessing. If you begin to be conscious of your acts, conscious of your day-to-day happenings, conscious of everything that surrounds you, then you begin to witness.
     Witnessing comes as a consequence of consciousness. You cannot practice witnessing; you can only practice consciousness. Witnessing comes as a consequence, as a shadow, as a result, as a byproduct. The more you become conscious, the more you go into witnessing, the more you come to be a witness.
     So consciousness is a method to achieve witnessing.
     And the second step is that witnessing will become a method to achieve awareness.

     So these are the three steps: consciousness, witnessing, awareness. 

     But where we exist is the lowest rank: that is, in unconscious activity. Unconscious activity is the state of our minds.
     Through consciousness you can achieve witnessing, and through witnessing you can achieve awareness, and through awareness you can achieve "no achievement." Through awareness you can achieve all that is already achieved. After awareness there is nothing; awareness is the end.
     Awareness is the end of spiritual progress. 
     In awareness you lose the witness and only witnessing remains: you lose the doer, you lose the subjectivity, you lose the egocentric consciousness. Then consciousness remains, without the ego. The circumference remains without the center.
     This circumference without the center is awareness. Consciousness without any center, without any source, without any motivation, without any source from which it comes – a "no source" consciousness – is awareness.
     So you move from the unaware existence that is matter, prakriti, towards awareness. You may call it the divine, the godly, or whatever you choose to call it. Between matter and the divine, the difference is always of consciousness.
Osho: Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Career Plan for Bachelor Students

Dear folks, Plan your life from the second year of your bachelor's degree. To execute your plan, you need to exercise practices of career with different probabilities and opportunities. Questions arise while accomplishing these tasks and further it leads to variety of lifetime experiences. One among such experiences is to fight with companies to secure a job one while the other one is to fight with the organizations to acquire an admission into a reputed institute. Prior one is industry related while the posterior one was institution/higher education.  Life-Career Balance happen when we face the tough situations with our control on senses. One example of my life I would like to share is that when I was going through my PhD degree in IIT Kharagpur, I faced mental abuse from my supervisor every day. Often, she uses derogatory words to teach us lessons. Words like "idiotic" or "stupid" or "mediocre" or so on... One of my juniors used to get shivering an...

Aristotle's perceptions on ‪‎life‬

Aristotle's perceptions on ‪#‎ life‬ -------------------------------------------------- 1. “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” 2. “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” 3. “Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.” 4. “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.” 5. “It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.” 6. “To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.” 7. “Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives – choice, not chance, determines your destiny.” 8. “The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life – knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.” 9. “There is no great gen...

India -a face of spirituality of the earth

In India like country we cannot teach  ‪#‎ spirituality‬  because the biggest problem in teaching here is people's  ‪#‎ prejudice‬  about god and the oldest culture of priesthood which has been existed here on this land for a  ‪#‎ millenia‬ .... Not even a single one understood about a meditation from thousand which i am encountered with in my entire life till today just after from the realization of my self and just after i started my life as my self not as an ego but as a self.... Eveywhere there is an inferiority of loosing  ‪#‎ identity‬  in people's attention, jealousy at nearest neighbour about small things and for a mundane misconceptions and lack of attention to ones' own  ‪#‎ silence‬  inside. Looking at gadgets, accumulated knowledge, persona's, property, penny (PPP) of others. I just get exhausted by being a part of many arguments about the simple adaptation of ‪#‎ materialistic‬  way of living as westerners doing ...