The Experience of the Witness Consciousness

The standpoint of the witness consciousness, separated from the exte
al being, is not something that is acquired through thinking or the exercise of will-power based in the mind. Many people have developed approaches or systems to not react to outer circumstances, such as stoicism, various forms of training disciplines, or attempts at acclimating oneself to particular forces and thereby increasing one’s capacity to resist their influence. These approaches may be useful in ganiing some manner of overview or control over the actions and reactions of the exte
al nature, but they do not actually provide the experience itself.

People who have had an “out of body” experience report a sense that they can see the body, they can see others responding to the body, but they feel disassociated from the body and its activities. They can observe, but do not have the sense of wanting to intervene in any way. This experience is akin to the separation of the witness from the nature and provides us an inkling about the experience itself.

An individual reported an event that occurred to him at the time of the Mother’s Mahasamadhi in 1973. He was residing at the time at Sri Aurobindo Ashram. He notified the Mother’s secretary of his birthday and he received the Mother’s birthday blessings on November 17, 1973 in the morning, in other words, earlier in the same day as her leaving her body. The message he received said “Live within — be not shaken by outward happenings.” He reported that he fell into a deep state of walking meditation, feeling separated and abstracted from everything occurring to him that day. That night, as he slept he had a dream that he recalled upon waking, that everything had become intensely dark and foreboding, and then suddenly there was a brilliant light and the darkness was dispelled. He was working during that period in the fruit room helping to hand out fruits to the sadhaks each morning and this required him to reach the Ashram building while it was still dark early in the morning. When he reached the Ashram he was surprised to see all the lights on, and people milling about everywhere. Some people were grief-stricken and crying. He learned that the Mother had left her body. He indicated that he was still experiencing the almost trance-like separation of his awareness that had begun the prior day and he had no reaction other than that this seemed like an “outward happening” and his dream experience told him an entirely different tale. Over the next several days, as people poured in from all around the world, he continued to feel the state of abstraction and separation as he became an observer of the event as the Mother’s body was placed in the meditation hall for the Darshan, as he participated in all the activities, and as the Samadhi was prepared for the internment of the body. His report was that he could carry on all the activities of his life, but felt totally separated, uninvolved and unaffected by all of them — he became a pure observer. This was not some mental idea, nor was it some discipline; rather, he indicated that it was to him a Grace, a gift he had been given by the Mother, and he accepted it without question, he surrendered to the experience and simply observed his own internal responses, and everything going on around him. While eventually the intense experience receded and his normal psychological standpoint reasserted itself more or less, he kept the remembrance of the experience and recounted it as an modest, extended period of a shift of standpoint to that of the witness consciousness. He later indicated he had been able to remain observant of his inner thoughts, feelings, perceptions and reactions to some degree since that time.

While this is a first-hand recounting of an experience, there are many such similar experiences recounted in the spiritual literature. Individuals who have such an intense experience frequently find that some constant sense of separation and observation stays with them, while the intensity recedes and the experience becomes normalized.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “The attitude of the witness consciousness within — I do not think it necessarily involves an exte
al seclusion, though one may do that also — is a very necessary stage in the progress. It helps the liberation from the lower Prakriti — not getting involved in the ordinary nature movements; it helps the establishment of a perfect calm and peace within, for there is then one part of the being which remains detached and sees without being disturbed the perturbations of the surface; it helps also the ascent into the higher consciousness and the descent of the higher consciousness, for it is through this calm, detached and liberated inner being that the ascent and descent can easily be done. Also, to have the same witness look on the movements of Prakriti in others, seeing, understanding but not perturbed by them in any way is a very great help towards both the liberation and the universalisation of the being….”

“As for the surrender it is not inconsistent with the witness attitude. On the contrary by liberating from the ordinary Prakriti, it makes easier the surrender to the higher or divine Power. Very often when this witness attitude has not been taken but there is a successful calling in of the Force to act in one, one of the first things the Forces does is to establish the witness attitude so as to be able to act with less interference or immixture from the movements of the lower Prakriti.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pp. 148-149