If you can see it or think about it, it isn’t the real watcher; keep watching everything without grabbing it until nothing is left to watch and only quiet watching remains.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved master, how do I come to know when I am really witnessing my body, feelings and thoughts, or when it is only my mind pretending to be a witness?
The question is only intellectual; you have not even tried to pretend. When you are witnessing and you start feeling that it may be just the pretense of the mind, then it is certainly a pretense of the mind... because who is thinking about it as pretense of the mind? -- something behind the pretense. You can never get confused about witnessing, because behind witnessing there is nothing. You cannot witness witnessing. Anything that you can witness is part of the mind. So if you witness that it is a pretense, it is a pretense. Witness the pretense, don't get identified with it. Witnessing has a beauty: it cannot be reduced to an object, you cannot witness it. It is irreducible, it always slips back; it remains only witnessing. So whatever you feel, that means you are getting identified with the mind. You have not tried it -- the question…
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, it feels that to be a witness is also a kind of thought. So what is the difference between the witness and a thought of the witness?
The mystic laughed. He said, "Not underneath this tree, but within me there is a treasure and I am watching it. And the treasure is growing every day, it is becoming bigger and bigger, hence I have to be more and more alert." The mystic said to the king, "You can sleep, you have nothing to lose. I cannot, I have much to lose; and if I can remain awake I have much to gain." The king was very much impressed. He asked him to come to his palace, he invited him. The monk agreed. The king was a little puzzled: a monk agreeing so soon without even refusing once is not thought to be right. A monk should say, "No, I cannot come to the palace. I have renounced the world. It is all futile. It is all dream, illusion, maya I cannot come back to the world. I…
By knowing oneself as the individual witnessing self of the intellect, and all its moods, and cultivating such feelings as "I am that," one should renounce any identification with all things except the self. After ceasing to follow others, one should create a distance with one's own body. Then one should stop following scriptures and give up one's identification with the self also.
WHEN A YOGI IS ROOTED IN THE SELF, HIS MIND IS DESTROYED BY FOLLOWING RIGHT METHOD, RIGHT LISTENING, AND HIS FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE, AND BY SEEING OTHERS AS HIS OWN SELF. HE THEN, CONTEMPLATES THE SELF, INSIDE THE HEART, WITHOUT GIVING AN EAR TO WHAT PEOPLE SAY, WITHDRAWING HIS ATTENTION FROM THE OBJECTS OF THE SENSES: SOUND, TOUCH, SIGHT, TASTE AND SMELL COLLECTIVELY; AND HE DOES NOT GIVE IN TO SLEEP OR FORGETFULNESS OF THE SELF. The word "witnessing" is one of the most significant words, particularly in Eastern spiritual alchemy. This word is a key word. So we must understand what witnessing means. We act, we do something, and the moment we do it we become the doer -- you walk, you become the walker. But there is one more possibility -- to remain a witnesser, to remain a witness. Walk, eat, or do whatsoever; don't be identified with…
Osho, last night you said that the mind cannot do two things together -- that is, thinking and witnessing. It seems then that witnessing is a mental faculty and an act of the mind. Is it so? Please explain. Is there anything like partial witnessing and total witnessing?
WITNESSING is not a mental activity; thinking is a mental activity. Rather, it would be better to say that thinking is mind. When the mind is not, when the mind is absent, when the mind has disappeared, only then do you have witnessing. It is something behind the mind. Zen Buddhism uses mind in two ways: the ordinary mind means thinking; then Mind with a capital "M" means the Mind behind thinking. Consciousness is behind the mind; consciousness comes through the mind. If mind is in a state of thinking, it becomes opaque, non-transparent, just like a clouded sky -- you cannot see the sky. When the clouds are not, you can see the sky. When thinking is not there, then you can feel the witnessing. It is the pure sky behind. So when I said that you cannot do two things, I meant either you can think or you…