24 posts in this category
This is the question behind nearly every major Upanishad. It is also the question that every serious life eventually arrives at — through loss, through achievement that does not produce what was expected, or through the simple accumulation of honest observation.
The yogic tradition distinguishes between the mind that processes experience (Chitta), the awareness that illuminates it (Chetana), and the pure Consciousness that is the ground of both (Chitti). These are not philosophical abstractions — they are directly experienceable realities that describe the actual architecture of what you are.
Every moment, a thought appears. Then immediately: I am thinking that. How does pure witnessing awareness become entangled with mental content? This is the mechanism of all suffering — and understanding it is the beginning of the way out.
Meditators often discover: I am the witness. But is there really a witness standing apart from experience? Or is the witness itself another construct? Abhinavagupta pushes beyond even the witness — and what he finds there is more interesting than the witness.
Imagine no thought, no perception, no memory, no sensation. Would awareness remain? Or is awareness inseparable from what appears within it? This question cuts to the deepest level of what you are — and the answer is not what you expect.
The intellect seeks answers. But what is aware of the intellect? What notices confusion? What recognises understanding? This sounds like a simple question. Ramana Maharshi gave his entire life to it. The depth it opens has no bottom.
There is a part of you that has never panicked. Never been humiliated. Never been destroyed by what happened. It watched everything. It is watching now. This is Sakshi — and the ability to access it under pressure is the only real emotional intelligence.
We are uncomfortable with stillness because we have confused it with emptiness. Stillness is not the absence of content. It is the presence of the ground from which all content arises. The ones who have touched it — truly touched it — do not describe it as empty.
Awareness is not something you have or do not have. It is a skill — one that is developed through specific practice and deteriorates without it. The most important question you can ask yourself each day is not what did I accomplish but what did I notice.