Can one be absorbed in an activity while remaining a separate witness?

Beloved Osho, can one be absorbed in doing something -- for instance, these dynamic meditation techniques -- with absolute total intensity, and at the same time remain a witness who is separate, apart?

The same is the problem in many forms. You think that a witness is something apart, separate. It is not. Your intensity, your wholeness, is your witness. So when you are witnessing and doing something you are not two -- the doer is the witness. For example, you are dancing here in kirtan. You are dancing: the dancer and the witness are not two, there is no separation. The separation is only in language. The dancer is the witness. And if the dancer is not the witness then you cannot be total in the dance, because the witness will need some energy and you will have to divide yourself. A part will remain a witness and the remaining will move in the dance. It cannot be total, it will be divided. And this is not what is meant, because really this is the state of a schizophrenic patient -- divided,…

Osho, witnessing and absorption appear mutually opposed. Are they really opposed?

And if you begin with absorption, at first it feels, “I am becoming absorbed. Ah, how I am descending into rapture!” But so long as the I is there, what absorption is there? You are only persuading yourself. The I will return again and again. Slowly, as absorption deepens, the I melts. Then absorption remains—you are drowned, but there is no one left who is drowned. The I-sense is gone. And where the I-sense is gone, witnessing is born; it cannot but be. Therefore, Jagdish Dave, choose one of the two and start. And remember, this is not an intellectual question; it is existential. The secret opens only through experience; it has always opened that way. Say what you like, explain as you wish—this is not a matter of explanation. Choose whichever is dear to you. Know yourself a little; observe your inclinations, your temperament. And whichever attracts you… If…

Where is the witness when the observer and the observed become one?

Anand Pravesh, the observer and the observed are two aspects of the witness. When they disappear into each other, when they melt into each other, when they are one, the witness for the first time arises in its totality. But this question arises in many people; the reason is that they think the witness is the observer. In their minds, the observer and the witness are synonymous. It is fallacious; the observer is not the witness, but only a part of it. And whenever the part thinks of itself as the whole, error arises. The observer means the subjective, and the observed means the objective. The observer means that which is outside the observed, and the observer also means that which is inside. The inside and the outside can't be separate; they are together, they can only be together. When this togetherness, or rather oneness, is experienced, the witness arises.…

For years I am most of the time witnessing and I feel it like a disease. So is it that there are two kinds of witnessing and mine is wrong? Tell me.

And only then can the third step be taken, which will bring you close to what Gurdjieff calls self-remembering, or Krishnamurti calls awareness, or the Upanishads call witnessing. But first the two steps have to be fulfilled; then the third comes easy. Don't start doing the third immediately. First the object, then the consciousness, then the subject. Once the object is dropped and the emphasis on the consciousness is no longer a strain, the subject is there but there is no subjectivity in it. You are there but there is no "I" in it, just being. You are, but there is no feeling that "I am." That confinement of "I" has disappeared; only amness exists. That amness is divine. Drop the "I" and just be that amness. And if you have been working too long on witnessing, then for a few months, at least for three months, drop it completely,…

Osho, if witnessing is possible through the knowledge-senses, is it also possible through the action-senses, or not?

One can be a witness to the body, because inside, consciousness is separate and distinct. I raise this hand—at that moment an action is occurring: I have raised the hand. Ordinarily we only know that I am the doer of the hand’s raising. But look within: while I am raising the hand there is a consciousness inside that is seeing the hand being raised. When you are walking on the road there is someone within who is seeing that you are walking. When you are doing anything there is someone within who is seeing that you are doing something. Twenty-four hours a day there is a seeing point within you. But you are not aware of it. Witnessing means: we gradually come to remember that point; its remembrance keeps returning; its awareness dawns. As awareness of that point grows, as awakening happens there, the coverings fall away; you will find…