The Lexicon
Who you really are
Witness
The Witness is the silent observer within you that watches all experience without being caught in it. Thoughts arise, emotions surge, the body acts and rests — and through it all there is one who simply sees, unchanged and uninvolved. To find the Witness is to discover that you are not the contents of the mind but the awareness that knows them, the seer who can never become the seen. From this vantage the dramas of life are watched with a quiet, unshaken spaciousness.
Carried by 8 teachers · across 4 traditions · 3 quotes
The yogic and nondual paths make witnessing a doorway to freedom. The yogis call it the purusha, the unmoving seer behind all movement; Krishnamurti points to a choiceless watching with no chooser standing apart; Tolle teaches the simple act of watching the thinker, and in that watching the grip of thought is broken. To rest as the Witness is to be free of identification with all that passes, while remaining fully and tenderly present to it.
In their words
We are dominated by everything with which our self becomes identified. We can dominate and control everything from which we dis-identify ourselves.Roberto Assagioli
You are not the body, you are not the mind — you are the awareness in which both appear.Nisargadatta Maharaj
Watch the thinker. When you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought.Eckhart Tolle