When you become deeply aware, the one who looks and what is looked at are the same happening—just seeing.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, there is a statement by j. Krishnamurti that "the observer is the observed." will you please kindly elaborate and explain what it means?
Gautam Buddha stopped talking and asked Prasenjita, "Can you tell me, why are you moving your big toe?" In fact, Prasenjita himself was not aware of it. You are doing a thousand and one things you are not aware of. Unless somebody points at them, you may not take any note of it. The moment Buddha asked him, the toe stopped moving. Buddha said, "Why have you stopped moving the toe?" He said, "You are putting me in an embarrassing situation. I don't know why that toe was moving. This much I know: that as you asked the question it stopped. I have not done anything -- neither was I moving it, nor have I stopped it." Buddha said to his disciples, "Do you see the point? The toe belongs to the man. It moves, but he is not aware of its movement. And the moment he becomes aware --…
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.…
Beloved master, a few weeks ago, I was awake, and suddenly there was only talking. There was no talker. For years I had listened to the statement that the observer and the observed were one. I saw there was no room, no necessity for a thinker; only consciousness and the arising of phenomena. Instead of jumping out of bed, I turned around and slept. Insight seems to be like a gentle breeze, a whisper. Will you say something about the non-dramatic quality of real insight?
I used to stay in a very rich man's house. He was so rich that he used to collect all kinds of junk, and in the guest house where I used to stay, he had put everything you can possibly conceive. When he took me for the first time to the guest house he said, "This is going to be your room." I looked inside and I said, "But where is the room?" A big, beautiful piano, radios, very costly furniture, many paintings and even though television had not come to that city at that time, he had a beautiful television set. Some day, television will come. I said, "I can see so many things, they have destroyed the room completely! If you want me to stay in this place, I refuse. You take all this junk so that I can have some room." He could not understand me. He…
Watching the energy changes that are constantly happening in me, suddenly the question arises: what is that which is watching and in what sense is it different from the observed energy?
Kosha, this is a beautiful space to enter into, when the question arises for the first time: What is the observed and who is the observer? This is a beautiful space to enter into -- when the question becomes relevant. Now, on each step, you will start losing the duality of the observer and the observed. The observer and the observed, in the ultimate sense, in reality, are one. They are two only because we have not yet been capable of seeing the One. Remember THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER. It says: Tao is one; then it divides itself into two, yin and yang, darkness and light, life and death. But the reality is One. It looks like two; it looks like two because we see it through the prism of the mind. The twoness of it is a creation of our minds, it is not there. It is…
Someone has asked: You say, “Whatever is seen is never the seer”; and Krishnamurti says, “The observer is the observed.” These two statements seem contradictory—who is right?
A parable: a jeweler dies, leaving “gems” in a safe. His friend, also a jeweler, delays selling while training the son for three years. When they open the safe at last, the son laughs and tosses the bundle into the garbage: “These are stones.” Only then could they be rightly discarded. That is samyak-tyāga. Thus, repeating “I am not the body” while feeling you are the body is useless. When it is seen, repetition ends. The mind fragments—philosophy, science, then physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, endless specializations. The whole person is lost. Religion moves the opposite way: from leaves to branches to trunk—toward the One. Science reaches the particle; religion reaches the Vast. Therefore: vibhāgam iti santyaja… Abandon dividing. See the indivisible, the One behind all forms. Whenever you say, “I am this,” you draw a small circle and break the whole. Why not say: I am life? Better: I am…