You Have Forgotten the Way Home
From:The Golden Future
"Shivam Annette, the question you have asked is one of the most important questions as far as the people who are meditating are concerned. Before I go into your question, a few necessary distinctions have to be understood.
"When I say, 'Go inwards,' that does not mean that you will find someone there waiting for you. On the contrary, the more you go inwards, the less and less you are an ego. You are, but the feeling of I-ness starts disappearing – for the simple reason that the I can exist only in reference to Thou. If the Thou is not present, the I starts melting.
"Outside you are confronted with many Thous, they keep your I alive. But inside, there is no Thou; hence, there can be no I."
"That does not mean that you are not. It simply means you are in your purity – not in reference to somebody else, but just yourself, without any reference, in your absolute aloneness. Because our whole life we live as an ego, as an I, this disappearance of the I naturally creates fear and an effort to run away. Although it is natural, it is not right.
"You have to go through this fear, darkness, anxiety, tension, because your I is dying. Up to now, you have remained identified with the I, so it seems as if you are dying. But just look at a single point: you are watching fear, you are watching the disappearance of I, you are watching tension, you are watching blackness, darkness, you are watching a feeling of nobodiness. This watcher is you.
"Going inwards is to find the witness in its absolute purity, unpolluted by anything – just a pure mirror, not reflecting anything. If mirrors were thinkers – fortunately they are not – and if they were brought up always with somebody looking in them, that would have given them an idea of who they are. And for many years, always reflecting somebody, they would have created a certain image of themselves – that they are the reflectors.
"Just visualize that one day suddenly nobody reflects in the mirror. The mirror will feel fear. The mirror will feel as if he is falling into a deep abyss, dark, dismal, into non-existence – who is he? His identity is lost just because nobody is looking in the mirror. The mirror has not changed, in fact the mirror is pure. But with this purity he has never been acquainted; nobody has introduced him to this purity.
"Meditation takes you to your purity.
"Your purity is witnessing, watching, awareness.
"You have not asked, 'Who is the watcher?' You are asking, 'I find there is nobody.'
"Who finds it? – that's you! You will find nothingness, you will find nothing reflected in you; you will find emptiness. You have to change your focus from the object to your subjectivity. One thing is certain: the witness is present, and the inward journey is to find the witness – is to find the pure mirror of your being."
