The earliest ancients sages used the word ‘I’ to the witness of the three states not to the ego as moderns use it and think the ‘I’ without the body is self.

 “What is self?"

 The self, the soul or  Atman or consciousness,is pure knowing.” When there is a duality, doubt comes. And so long as a man thinks there is a second thing to be obtained, he can never be happy because the duality is always there. The Gnani, on the other hand, regards nothing as different, i.e. as a second thing, and therefore escapes experiencing the duality as reality. 

The experience of the pain and pleasure are within the waking or dream, but the witness of the three states does not disappear, for that which is called soul or Atman, uncuttable, indestructible. It is infinite because one cannot say where it begins or ends. It is immortal, because one has never seen it die.

The earliest ancients sages used the word ‘I’ to the witness of the three states not to the ego as moderns use it and think the ‘I’ without the body is self. The seeker has to understand the fact that the fact that ‘i’ is not the self but the witness of the ‘I’ is the true self, which is eternal. 

People think that the ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ is something different from the mind. They believe that the mind is really two. This is the confusion among religionists and intellectuals. If ‘Soul’ has any meaning, if ‘spirit’ has any meaning, so long as one thinks of them, they are merely ideas. No, Mind is the highest: it is consciousness, non dual wisdom.

The individual is a bundle of memories, desires within the waking or dream. The memories and desires are part of the duality. Therefore the individual self is entirely part and parcel of the mirage. Peoples ideas of that they will go to some world after death, some astral plane or religious heavens will disappear as nonsense with the disappearance of belief in the reality of the ‘I’.  

Illusion means that one knows the unreality of a thing only when it disappears

One does not perceive an object as it really is in truth, but only as it appears through the screen of imagination.

 Illusion means that one knows the unreality of a thing only when it disappears. When one knows these three states are continuously appearing and disappearing, he may perceive its unreality. As one goes deeper inquiry he becomes aware the consciousness is in process of changing every moment, to moment. 

Death is but an idea within the waking/dream. It is connected with the body of the waking/dream. Waking/dream comes and goes. But that which sees the birth, life and death within the waking/dream is the Atman,which is in the form of consciousness  is  the true self. The true self is immortal.

Knowledge does not destroy the world with in the waking; it only destroys its unreality—because everything is Ataman.

 Knowledge of the dream world, which does not destroy the dream world; it shows that everything is mental or unreal.

Because of one’s attachment to the body, and his identification with it, he does not   feel this waking to be unreal. Not having inquired one is unaware of the fact that the body and the world are within the waking/dream and waking/dream are of constantly changing in their nature. One has to take the Witness-attitude to see the three states as fleeting appearance. 

Waking experience is continuously presenting with changing conditions. Whatever is within the waking experience may appear to be real and existent. It is a mistake to think that mental creations are seen to be unreal and non-existent. 

One knows most intimately and directly of his waking experience; whatever seen, known, believed, experienced of the world are within the waking experience. One is first aware of the existence of his body and the world in waking experience. 

People mistake and have impression that how can external world be illusion, when they are experiencing it.  They say they are born and living and they are going to die in it.  Suppose one is born, living and going to die in dream world, which is as real as the waking world, he will find it as reality until waking takes place.  Same way the waking world in which man exits is reality until wisdom dawns. One can call it illusion only when the non dual wisdom dawns. Until then he experiences the duality as reality.

 The world does exist as reality, but it exits within the waking/dream. But the existence of waking/dream is mental. The waking is illusion on the standpoint of its formless witness/soul. 

As nobody has ever seen the beginning of the three states, nobody can ever see its end, and hence it cannot be mortal. This does not refer to things in the waking/dream, those one does see have a beginning and an end; it refers to the waking/dream as a whole.

The idea of time is within the waking/dream; of seeing this at one time and that at another; time does not touch the perceiver. It is mirage. 

It is impossible to get to the knower, the formless witness, before it is understood that the three states are mere mirage.

The Atman or consciousness  itself is the Formless Witness: it can never be seen. One knows nothing of it directly.  The three states come and mind goes; they do not really exist. Nothing external to the formless witness exists. The three states come and goes are external to the Formless witness.  That which saw knows this is the real self: the Formless Witness; the rest is mirage. To perceive this requires a special sharpness and receptiveness. 

Non duality is of the nature of the essence of the soul or self. The ego/physical self dies daily in dream: because change identities there, as present, or billionaire and in deep sleep. The ego of childhood is dead too; thus ego changes constantly, and yet one mistake it for a reality, that which perceives the ego is the unborn, the unchanging reality. 

The three states is what the self knows, what it perceive; perceiver is distinct: three states  is an object; self is not an experience/state. 

Thought remains as a thought and gives you back only a thought not truth

Seeker of truth has to realize the fact that, when one cannot see into a man’s mind he can only say he cannot accept that there is a multiplicity of minds, he can only see his physical moments but not his mind moving. Hence one can neither accept nor deny the theory of multiple individual souls. It is unproven hypothesis. To say that each mind is different is unproved, because no one has ever seen the mind. One cannot say where it starts and stops; no one ever measured its thickness, no one is aware of its location. All is supposition, not proof. 

There are two factors--the experiencing capacity and that which is experience. The experiences are all passing away and are therefore unreal. Without the knowing capacity i.e. the experiencer in existence, there could have been no such thing experience. What is meant by word experience? Experiencing implies two factors, the experiencer or the experiencing capacity, or that which is aware; and the experience. Without these two factors one cannot use the word experience.  One finds the experience always passes away. 

Waking or dream are mere is only a seen or objects, no matter how exalted it be. Waking or dream never touches the formless witness, but formless witness remains always in the seen as its formless substance. It is erroneous to believe that the more one thinks, the more he will get.

 Thought remains as a thought and gives you back only a thought not truth. One has to become aware of the fact the thoughts arise only  to the physical entity within the waking or dream. Thus one has to trace the source of the three states not the source of the thought   to unfold the mystery of the duality.  

One can only know an experience when one discriminate between it and the state of mind when it was nonexistent just as he knows a black by its contrast to white.

The only certain thing about the waking is that it is forever changing; it changes into deep sleep and deep sleep changes in to dream, no one can prevent this change it is happening on its own accord. In contrast to the three states, the self or  witness of the three states is the only thing of whose unchanging character one can be certain. Through the self or  witness one becomes aware   about all the changes in consciousness, remaining itself relatively constant, as a standard of reference for them. 

The term witness, Seer, Self  is used in a non-dual sense, without reference to the three states witnessed, absolute awareness, not relative. 

Experience is present in feeling. Mind is an experience. Feeling is a kind of experience. Experiences, feelings, will are all modifications, nothing more. Even if it is of God, it is still in the feeling. 

Birth, life and death and appearing and disappearing apply to waking or dream. Therefore birthlessness is the characteristic of the witness of the three states. 

If by consciousness one means awareness of the experience of duality, i.e. when waking or dream are present. Unconsciousness means the absence of duality, not the absence of the capacity to know; unconsciousness does not mean the nonexistence of that which disappears from consciousness, it merely means that mind has ceased its functioning.

Finally there must be a kind of awareness which one do not understand and which is still existent when the waking or dream experiences are absent.

Analyzing between the formless witness and the three states gives the seeker a key to analyzing all statements, all revelations, all assertions, and all gods even. It tells one that anything that can be made known by the formless witness is but an idea; or illusion, mirage never reality and helps him to bifurcate mentally and realize what is real, and what is unreal.

As long as a person clings to the belief in causality, he will find cause producing effect. But when this attachment to causality wears away, cause and effect become non-existent.

Consciousness usually means a duality, something to be conscious of is implied. Therefore it is an unsuitable word to indicate the pure objectless awareness which exists prior to thought. The ego, the individual self is not the self, which is the Witness because it often disappears even during waking as in reverie when one is lost in the art and music. 

 The three states which is an object to the formless witness [soul or self] is ever-changing but never the formless witness. The three states come and go, but that does not prove that one state produces  or causes another. If the previous state of consciousness has really vanished, memory of it would be impossible. Its disappearance into source or soul is no real disappearance. One only remembers that it has gone and come; that which perceives these states can alone be said to exist: That is the soul or self. One only relies on the formless witness or soul, and none has seen the birth or change of formless witness or soul.

v  Does consciousness mean a duality; knowledge, knower and known? Does consciousness mean that which is capable of knowing, non dual wisdom? Is one conscious of anything in deep sleep?

 One is conscious of it only when he is in the waking experience. Consciousness there may be with or without waking/dream experiences.

The Idea of an object does not prove the object exists. Ego is only an Idea within the waking or dream. The ego, body and world exists together and disappears together along with waking/dream.  When one thinks of the "ego" alone he is in the grip of duality. The formless witness knows the appearance and disappearance of the waking/dream as a whole, not ego alone.

Trying to overcome the ego alone is impossible. One has to get rid of experience of duality, by mentally focusing the attention on the formless witness of the three states. The witnessed [three states] appears and disappears; the formless witness is never known to be appearing and disappearing. That which appears and disappears is not the permanent.

People think negating means negating the objects and they think that it is impossible to negate objects. “They are thinking negating the objects as a person within the waking experience. It is not so, it is the negating the three states, on the base of the formless witness/soul.

 Since the three states are made of the same essence, they are non-different, but appear to change. The three states are of the same essence as soul/consciousness, is non-different from it but appears to change and be different from it.

One cannot say how the waking /dream have appeared; only that they are and they are in the mind and are the mind. When mind is there they are present. Absent of mind, absent of waking/dream. 

True Self is not this body, nor this world; true self is the seer of both. The body may be moving within the world in waking/dream, but the true soul or self, seeing the changes. The body is born and lives within the waking/dream but true soul or self, remains as the witness of these changes. Soul or self is the Witness, the Awareness.

Seeker of truth should not imprison himself in his own creation by imagining the mind or ’I’ to be limited to the physical body. Just as space fills both inside and outside of bottle, so the true self or soul permeates the whole waking or dream.

One can't see the three states independently without the true soul or self. "Time, Space and Causation" are mental and present only in waking/dream. The essence of the three states themselves is Atman alone.

Mysticism encourages people to be lazy, to think the external objects are created by Iswara and internal objects created by Jiva. Both Iswara and Jiva are man’s creation. Seeker of truth should not waste his time in talks of Jiva and Iswara disputes; rather inquire into the nature of Ataman.

There is no such thing as knowing the knower. That knowledge implies two factors, and the knower [soul/self] not being something to be seen, can never be known as such.

When one speaks of relation, one deals only with the known world within the waking/dream. When the known [waking/dream] goes, he says that because he actually sees the known [waking/dream] going; but he can never see the knower go.  He can only say "he does not know" about it.  One cannot speak of the known [three states] without the formless knower. But when the known [three states] has vanished, there is nothing to be said about the knower.

The act of conceiving in thought demands two factors. One cannot conceive the Formless Witness, the seer or knower, because he can say nothing about it, without making it an object. It cannot be pulled down to the level of an object, the seen.

The duality of formless witness  and the seen[three states] is not the same as the duality of two things in the objective world within the waking or dream, for here both  are known and seen, whereas there one  is known; the formless witness  remaining unknown and all one can say of it is "he  cannot make any statement about it. It is incomprehensible.

“If formless witness disappears, as does the three states then one must posit another seer to replace it; but in fact no one has ever seen its disappearance. One never uses the word formless witness without the three states. It has no meaning apart from it.

Self is not a thing unknown to any one at any time. Let a man think. As soon as waking experience comes, there must be a knower there before in order to know that he is in waking experience.

The formless witness exists before the waking appears or the thing is seen; otherwise neither knowledge nor sensation could happen. The formless witness is always there. Even if one say it can be reached only at the end of a long path, it is impossible for it to be ever absent even while he says this.

 The knower alone makes it possible for one to know anything at all. “Though, thus quite self-evident, easily known, quite near, forming the self, Ataman appears, to the unenlightened mind as unknown, very remote, as though he were a separate thing. Those who do not look at the seer, the witness, and perceive it is the only thing that neither comes nor goes, are deluded, and turn outward towards things objective, which run away.

So long as one is ego bound  he only runs from one object to another, from one idea to another, impermanent and unreal, he  ignores the Atman and is  ignorant. There is no time for them to think about the formless witness, since they are engrossed in their god, belief and their own accepted truth or materialistic life.

Soul in illusion is called mind! When illusion ceases, it sinks back as soul, which is in the form of consciousness. . The essence, the substance or material of the three states it consciousness the innermost self and innermost self is ultimate truth or Brahman. 

One has to remove all the obstacles and mental barricade one by one by realizing the self is not the form but the self is formless.

Self-knowledge or Brahma Gnana or Atma Gnana  is the destroyer of ignorance.  The self is the inner guru, god, the all-pervading principle and the cause of all three states and it itself is uncaused.

The serious seeker should constantly reflect on the true self constantly through inquiry, analysis and reasoning, which is in the form of consciousness because it is the only means to acquire Self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is the only tool   for the acquisition of final freedom from experiencing the illusory duality as reality.

Seeker has to have the indifference mentally to all the three states because the three states are mere mirage created out of consciousness. Holding the three states as reality is great hindrance in pursuit of truth.  One has to remove all the obstacles and mental barricade one by one by realizing the self is not the form but the self is formless.    The   three states are perishable in their nature because they are   mere mirage created out of consciousness. The consciousness, which is the formless substance and witness of the mirage, is real and eternal.  Thus the consciousness is the inner most self. And knowing and realizing consciousness as self is the means to the attainment of Self- Realization or Truth Realization. 

Consciousness is the true self is the formless substance and witness of the three states is alone real and permanent. The three states are an object opposed to it, which is transient – such a settled conviction is truly known as discrimination.

Turning attention completely from all the three states and concentrating only on consciousness which is the formless substance and the witness of the three states is the only means to acquire non-dual wisdom.

Intense urge to become free from the bonds of this birth, life deaths and world, leads one to indulge in pursuit of truth.

Only serious seekers who have an intense urge to acquire Self- Knowledge should have courage to discard the false-knowledge with a view to attaining non-dualistic wisdom.

Self- Knowledge is not brought about by any other means than inquiry, analysis and reasoning on the true base. Trying to attain self-knowledge through other means is like trying to find fish in the desert sand.

v  What is ‘I’?

v  How this universe is created?

v  Who is its creator?

v   Of what material is this universe made?

 This is the first step of Inquiry, analysis and reasoning.

True Self is neither the body, nor the ‘I’, nor the universe.  The true self is within the universe but it is apart from the universe and its contents. This is the way the seeker must proceed in inquiry, analysis and reasoning.

All the three states are produced by ignorance, and dissolves in the wake of non-dual wisdom. The material /cause of this the duality is the One without a second, subtle and unchanging Existence, just as the water is the material /cause of the cloud and the like.

The self is in the form of consciousness. As true self is also the One, the Subtle, the Knower, the Witness, the Ever-Existent, and the Unchanging, so there is no doubt that it is the consciousness.

Consciousness the true self is verily one and without parts, whereas the body consists of many parts; and yet everyone confound these two as one due to ignorance.

Consciousness is the ruler of the three states and is internal; the three states are the ruled and are external.

Consciousness is permanent.  All the three states are illusion created out of consciousness. Consciousness is the Illuminator and purity itself; the three states is said to be of the nature of darkness.

Consciousness is eternal, since it is Existence itself; the three states are transient, as they are non-existence in essence.

It is very strange that a person ignorantly rests contented with the idea that self is the body and world as reality, while he knows that the body and universe exist because of the consciousness.

True Self verily consciousness, being equanimous, quiescent, and by nature absolute Existence, Knowledge. True Self is neither the body nor the mind which are non-existence in their essence. This is called true Knowledge by the Gnani.

Consciousness is without any change, without any form, free from all blemish and decay. Consciousness not subjected to any disease, and it is beyond all comprehension, free from all alternatives and all-pervading.

Consciousness is without any attribute or activity, true self is eternal, ever free, and imperishable.

Consciousness is free from all diversity; true self is immovable, unlimited,     undecaying,  and immortal. 

To be a witness of something implies subject and object relationship.

Witness and witnessed analysis is better tool for understanding,assimilating and realizing  the ultimate truth or Brahman. 

To be a witness of something implies subject and object relationship. To be witness of phenomena means that one is standing apart from the situation and not identifying with it. Whatever is witnessed as a person and the world is part of the witnessed. The witness is that which witnesses the physical body and the world together.  Thus the man is not the witness of the three states to take authorship of the three states because the man is present in waking or dream and absent in deep sleep. The one which is aware of the three states is not waking entity but the formless soul, which is the true self.  Thus the subject is formless and the object is form.

The true Self as the soul and soul is in the form of consciousness. Consciousness is  the ultimate reality. Thus, the whole physical existence is based on the soul not on the person who perceives the world within the waking experience. Therefore our understanding and assimilation has to be based on the soul not on the physicality.

There is need for deeper understand the Witness and Witnessed analysis to know the duality is mere a passing phase and not the true nature of the true self.

By developing this watchfulness and one’s ability to observe the three states on the base of the soul as self, gradually weaken the roots physicality and transform the base of witnessing from form base to formless soul. The idea behind Witness, Witnessed analysis is very deep and profound. Those with superficial understanding will not be in position to understand and assimilate Self-knowledge because they base themselves on the form not the formless self. When the self is not physical it is erroneous to base and judge the truth on the base of the physical self. Therefore, there is a need to rectify the seeking base to understand and assimilate the ultimate truth.

By reducing the power of understanding based on physicality or intellectuality and uprooting the physical base, “Witness, Witnessed Analysis” can lead one towards the perfect understanding and assimilation of the Self-Knowledge, which is based on the innermost self  or soul. 

Those who are able to witness the three states  on the base of the soul, the innermost  self will be able to have mental yardstick to discriminate the truth and untruth or reality or unreality and dual and non-dual. The one who has mastered the art of witnessing on the standpoint of the soul will develop a wonderful richness of the spirit and are helpful to their fellow seekers in their pursuit of truth.

The real approach to Self-Realization, the mind has to rests in spirit and that leads to non-dual Self-Awareness.

A Gnani may be engaged in worldly activities and yet he is fully aware of the fact that,  his bodily actions and his experience of the world are mere mirage created and  witnessed by the soul, which is in the form of consciousness.  he body and mind are one in essence. thus there is no second thing exists other than consciousness. 

Constantly reflecting on the innermost “Self”, and negating the three states, and bring the attention back from witnessed  to  the formless Witness leads to non-dual self-awareness. 

 The perfect understanding of what is what leads to  better understanding and assimilation of the ultimate truth r Brahman.