“But this I sense is essentially the primordial you. In its unpurified/identified state, it appears as the John Smith aspect of yourself....
This is why I sometimes scratch my head when people talk about their ego. You don't have an ego. You are an ego. You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You are your ego. The rest of it is mind stuff. You may be identified with mind stuff but you are still you. It is probably just semantics.”
Well... sort of! You could also say that ultimately the supreme Self is beyond differentiation, and so is beyond the “I sense”. As Yogani says, we move from “I Am” to simply “Am”, because even the “I” requires differentiation. This is I believe why people say that ultimately the ego is transcended.
“You are no longer identified with the clouds of the mind, and you are inhabiting a much vaster, and more free state, but there is still the fundamental pain of separation.
I gotta tell you, this state was anything but painful. ”
I’m sure! But “the fundamental pain of separation” is a subtle thing. It can exist in its gross forms: anger, pain, fear, grief... or it can exist in joy, happiness, bliss etc. It is simply a subtle sense of incompleteness, or unwholeness which underlies every action, or thought, or state that is not the wholeness that comes from “being home”. It is the cause of all spiritual seeking, and is the driving force behind all movement in life. Even in the witness state this separation is there, pain is there, and this pain will either lead us back into identification with mind/body, or leads us on through an intense longing for unity, to the supreme self beyond all form.
“The problem with Krishnamurti, from my point of view, is that he didn't give you a map to get to where he was trying to get you. He just expected you to jump from NY to LA. No planes necessary.”
The maps are there if you look for them! And the methods, and practices. I do them every day. Don’t forget, he didn’t want you to jump from NY to LA, he wanted you to wake up in LA, which is where you fell asleep, and started dreaming you were in NY. He doesn’t give you the tools to fly from NY to LA, but he does give you the tools to wake up in your own bed.
“Is the witness still an identified condition, a mind identified self with desire?”
The witness is beyond the mind. It is an aspect of consciousness. But it is still conditional, for it is dependent on a witnessed object arising. The witness arises in each moment with the object (form), and ends with the dissolution of the object. So it is a dependent condition (dependent on the existence of that which is witnessed). Desire still exists in the witness state, which is a good thing because it is this desire, which takes us beyond the witness to the absolute self.
“That is an interesting take. That "observer is the observed" stuff always confused me and I finally came to the conclusion that he meant that you are your conditioning and that what you perceive is what your belief system has conditioned you to see. I.e., your experience of life is the result of your conditioning.”
If he had wanted to say that, I think he would have said that “we are all the end product of everything we have ever done and everything we have ever thought”, which is true, but is not the same as saying “the observer is the observed”. Krishnamurti was quite capable of speaking directly, and the “observer is the observed” stuff sounds very much like the merging of the witness and the witnessed which happens in the unification stage beyond absorption in the witness self.
“And he spoke so much in the third person when referring to himself: "the speaker...." “
It’s an Indian thing... to avoid using the word I as it is associated with the ego so strongly. Amma (the hugging mother) also calls herself “Amma” in the third person. Yogani sometimes says “here” instead of “I”.
“The average person is not able to experience this condition, because he does not know his SELF."”
There’s an understatement if ever I heard one!
“So that’s how I would differentiate between the self and the Self. If there is still something you are not, then this is the “self”. If there is nothing you are not, this is “Self”. As we have always been “Self” and none other, then “self” is always illusory. Self is always real.
I can't make this distinction. They are the same to me. They are one and the same. It is only a matter of perception. Right or wrong, that is the way I think about it.
You could maybe call them the relative self and the absolute self. The only difference is that the relative self has the impurity of perceived separateness.”
I don’t think it is so important what names we use... illusory/ relative, absolute/ supreme, lover, beloved... love....
“From the Self Inquiry book by Yogani:
"When the witness is present, a natural inclination toward self-inquiry becomes self-evident, for then the innate condition of
the practitioner as the witness becomes the answer to
every inquiry – the eternal stillness that does nothing
even as life carries on in all of its diversity." “
I’m glad you found this in the Self-inquiry book, because it clearly shows that the witness self is not the highest stage in yoga, not the ultimate self, for if it were, then why engage in self-inquiry once the witness self is the established state of consciousness? But it also shows that there is a condition which exists in the witness self, eternal stillness, which is also a condition of the supreme or absolute Self. It is like when the sun is seen reflected in a mirror, there is a quality, sunlight, which is present in both the sun and in the mirror. But the mirror is not the sun.
In my own experience there is a movement of consciousness from the silence of the witness self towards the supreme Self, and this movement I can only describe as ecstatic love. It is like a flow, and everything is taken up in it. It happens to me when I am in (samvikalpa) samadhi, and I contemplate the nature of the absolute self. When I am taken up in that flow I loose consciousness of the body and the mind. But I am still conscious of myself as the flow of ecstatic love towards the supreme Self, the Beloved. Occasionally I begin to loose the identification of myself as the flow... but then everything starts to get a bit Bright, for want of a better word. Sometimes there is another flow, a flow from the supreme Self towards the witness self, which is also a flow of love, and this is Grace.
“So the question, "Who am I?" is like a koan because the correct answer is not a thought; it is inner silence. Correct?”
I would say, yes, it is at first...(merging with the witness), and then it becomes ecstatic love (the pouring of the relative/ witness self into the supreme consciousness), and ultimately it is outpouring divine love (the pouring of our true self into the world as love).
I don’t know that last one first hand, so I am taking Yogani’s word on it.
Christi
“God is ecstatic love. How else can he be known except through ecstatic love?”
Ramakrishna, from the Gospel of Ramakrishna
