The One Who Notices
Part 1 · Who You Are
From Part 1: On Who You Actually Are
न त्वं विप्रादिको वर्णो नाश्रमी नाक्षगोचरः। असङ्गोऽसि निराकारो विश्वसाक्षी सुखी भव॥
na tvam viprādiko varṇo nāśramī nākṣagocaraḥ asango 'si nirākāro viśvasākṣī sukhī bhava
"You are not of any caste or stage of life. You are not anything the senses can perceive. You are unattached, formless, the witness of all — be happy."
— Ashtavakra Gita 1.5
The scenario
You catch yourself thinking about something painful. Then you catch yourself catching yourself. Then — you notice this is also a thought. Whatever is doing the catching can never quite be caught, because the moment you turn around to look at it, the looking itself slides into the place behind the look.
You laugh, a little, alone. Some part of you has been hiding in plain sight for forty years.
What the verse actually says
Three precise words to focus on: asanga, nirākāra, viśvasākṣī.
Asanga — usually translated as "unattached," but the literal meaning is "not stuck to." Imagine something to which nothing adheres. Light passes through it. Sound passes through it. Thoughts arrive in it and leave again, and it is unmarked by their passage.
Nirākāra — "without form." Not formless in the sense of vague or empty, but in the sense of being the medium in which all forms appear. The screen on which the movie plays is not itself a character in the movie.
Viśvasākṣī — "witness of everything." Not a watcher located somewhere observing the world from a distance. The very fact of awareness itself, in which world, body, and thoughts all arise.
Ashtavakra is not describing a mystical state. He is describing the structure of the noticing itself. And then, at the end of the verse, with stunning casualness: sukhī bhava — be happy. As if it were that simple. (And, he is suggesting, it is.)
How it lands in your life
You spend most of your life inside the contents of consciousness — thoughts, feelings, sensations, plans, regrets, predictions. You confuse all of this churn with yourself. So you live as though you are the churn, and when the churn is unpleasant, you suffer.
Right now, for a moment, can you turn attention to what is conscious? Not the thoughts. The consciousness in which thoughts appear.
You will not find an object. You won't find a thing. You will find — if you look honestly — only the looking itself. That is the verse, in your own first-person experience.
This is not difficult because it is hidden. It is difficult because it is so close that you keep walking past it, looking for something more impressive.
A small practice
Three times today — pick anchors: when you sit down at your desk, when you take a sip of water, when you lock your front door — pause and ask: what is aware right now?
Don't try to answer in words. Don't try to find an object. Just turn attention back toward the noticing.
You will not find something. You will find no-thing — and the noticing of that no-thing will be unmistakable.
Carry this: You won't find awareness as an object. You are the looking, not the looked-at.