Turiya: The Supreme Witness So we are in the process of going through an introduction to Integral Life Practice, one of the most complete and all-embracing practices of self-realization and self-fulfillment. Integral Life Practice includes exercises that address Growing Up, Waking Up, Showing Up, Opening Up, and Cleaning Up, among others, and we ll see what each of those mean as we introduce them. In the sessions that I m presently covering, we re dealing especially with Waking Up and Growing Up. Waking Up is an ancient practice, going back in some cases two or even three thousand years. Human beings discovered, beginning several millennia or so ago, that there really dos seem to be an ultimate Reality, a groundless Ground of All Being, an Unborn and Undying Truth, and further, humans can realize this ultimate reality in a state known as Enlightenment, Awakening, Moksha or Freedom, nirvana or formless Infinite,
Heaven or ultimate Wellbeing. This is known as the path of Waking Up, and it is one of the developmental paths we are looking at in these presentations. The other is the path of Growing Up. A human being isn t born in a fully grown and developed form, but rather, like all living things in Nature, undergoes a series of developmental steps or stages or levels, from quite immature to mature to greatly mature, with each step consisting of a considerably different view or perspective of the self and its world. And the important point is that, for any growth and development that humans want to undertake, they should always include, at the very least, both of these paths both Waking Up and Growing Up. These are two very different things, and you can be quite highly advanced in one and quite low in the other, and vice versa, and in almost any combination thereof. We want, of course, the best of both worlds if we really are to be fully and completely grown, developed, evolved. And so those two paths are what we are especially focusing on in these particular presentations. Right now, we re looking at the process of Waking Up, the process of realizing our very highest state potential. We saw that many of the world s great Wisdom Traditions maintain that there are at least 5 major states of consciousness including a waking or gross/physical, a dreaming or subtle/luminous, a deep dreamless or formless/causal, and the two highest ever-present states, a pure Witnessing (or vast, open, empty, clear Spaciousness or Mirror-Mind or pure Observing Self), and then beyond even that to a pure nondual Unity Consciousness or radical Oneness. We noted that most people are already familiar with the existence of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep states, and so we are going to cut directly to the end point, and focus on the two highest states, known in Sanskrit as turiya, which literally means the fourth (that is, the fourth state in
addition to the first three of waking, dreaming, and sleeping), and it indicates a pure, open, clear Witnessing state (also known as the True Self, the Observing Self, Mirror- Mind, Absolute Subjectivity, Consciousness without an Object, the Cloud of Unknowing); and then the fifth and highest, turiyatita, which simply means beyond the fourth beyond the Witness and is a state that occurs when the pure Witness itself collapses into everything witnessed, and a state of pure Unity or radical Oneness results, where subject and object are one, and you find yourself in a Condition the Sufis call the Supreme Identity, where you are literally one with the entire universe the entire Kosmos is arising within you, and you are that, which is your real, true, and timeless nature, a genuine Enlightenment or Awakening. So we re going to start with the Witness, and then we ll move to nondual unity consciousness and along the way we ll also go through some 6-to-8 major levels of Growing Up and directly experience why they are so important to develop along with Waking Up (in fact, along with the entire Integral Path). So, we start with the Witness, your pure Self. Sit back, relax your mind, and right now become aware of what you feel is your self. Just very simply, be aware of what you call your self. Then briefly describe it to yourself. You might say, I am this many years old, I weigh this many pounds, I m this tall, I went to this college, I have this degree, I work at this job, I m in this relationship with a person whose name is such-and-such, I enjoy being on the computer, I like movies and all kinds of music, next week is my birthday, and so on. (Go ahead and do this at least briefly. It s important that you get a good, general, objective view and awareness
of your general self as you see it and feel it right now. The following introduction to your True Self will work much better the more you do this preliminary, so take at least a few minutes and ponder this self of yours.) {Pause} Now notice that this process actually involves two selves. One is the self that you are aware of as an object, the one that you have just been seeing and describing. Those descriptions are all objects that you can see, they are all things that are seen about yourself. But then there is the Self that is doing the seeing, the Self that is doing the describing, the actual Seer, the Observing Self, the Witness. This Self does the seeing, but can t itself be seen any more than an eye could see itself or a tongue could taste itself. It s a pure Subject or pure Seer, not an object or something seen. (Zen master Shibayama calls this Absolute Subjectivity. Ramana Maharshi called it the I-I, the big I aware of the small I. ) If you try and find this Seer, and you end up seeing anything, that s just more objects, not the real Subject, the real Seer, the real Self. The real Seer, the real Self, has an awareness that instead is much more like: I see the mountain, but I am not the mountain. I have sensations, but I am not those sensations. I have feelings, but I am not those feelings. I have thoughts, but I am not those thoughts. I am not anything that can be seen; I am the pure Seer itself. I am Awareness, not the contents of Awareness. So as you rest in this pure Seer, this Witness, you won t see any particular objects (whatever objects you see are fine); rather, all you will begin to notice is a sense of Freedom, a sense of Openness, a Space or Clearing you are not identified with any objects at all, you are their Witness. As the Witness of them, you are Free of them. You have feelings, you are aware of feelings, but you are not those feelings you are Free of
them. You have thoughts, you are aware of them, but you are not those thoughts you are Free of them. All this time you have been identifying with some of these objects that you can actually see, and you have been mistaking them for a real self but they re not a real self, not a real subject, they re objects, they are something seen, not the true Seer. That first self, which you just described to yourself, is actually what you are not not really and truly and deeply (it is, in fact, connected with one of the 6 or 8 hidden maps, the basic levels, of Growing Up that we have already mentioned. In each case, they are the small, conventional, finite self and its hidden maps through which the Witness is looking at the world; as soon as you use mindfulness to make that small subject an object, then the next higher level conventional self and its hidden map can emerge, and you will identity with that, and the Witness will then look through that map at the world, seeing and interpreting the world through the characteristics of that map. And so on until all subjects, all hidden maps, have been made objects, have been dis-identified with, at which point there is only the pure Seer, the True Self, the Witness, Absolute Subjectivity, radical Openness and Emptiness and pure Freedom and then the final step of its move into nondual unity consciousness, which we will discuss next). And that is why the meditative traditions the world over maintain that we are the victims of a huge case of mistaken identity we have identified the Seer with something that can be seen. (Patanjali, the systematizer of Yoga, said that Ignorance meaning non-enlightenment is the identification of the Seer with the instruments of seeing. ) And where the Seer, the Witness, is infinite (and one with Spirit), the seen self, the little ego, is finite, partial, limited, fragmented, and often terror-ridden. The Witness has no fear, it is the Witness of fear. The Witness is not the victim of life, it s the Witness of
life. When you switch your identity from the little seen self or object self, to the true Seer or Real Self, all you sense is a vast Freedom and Release, an ocean of Openness, a vast clear field or Space or Clearing in which all objects, inside and outside, are arising moment to moment. You are this vast, open, empty Clearing or Space or Spaciousness in which everything is arising, moment to moment to moment. You are what the Awakened call neti, neti, which means not this, not that. I am not this, not that, not any object or thing that can be seen, but rather the vast Opening or Clearing in which all those objects or things are arising, now and now and now. This vast opening is an ongoing sense of pure I AMness. It is an ever-present awareness, whether you realize it yet or not (and is present even in deep dreamless sleep). I AMness is the one constant experience you always have; truly ever-present. You probably can t remember what you were doing on this day a month ago but you can be sure I AMness was present. You likely can t remember what you were doing a decade ago, but I AMness was present. You probably can t remember what you were doing a century ago, a millennium ago, but I AMness was there. And that simply means, not that I AMness is literally everlasting, but that it is timeless, it lives in the present timeless moment, the pure Now-moment, and never enters the stream of time, and so all time is present for it. The Witness is aware of time, and thus is itself Free of time neti, neti. And we saw that the real meaning of eternity is not everlasting time, but a moment free of time, the timeless Now-moment or pure Present. We quoted Wittgenstein, If we take eternity to mean not everlasting temporal duration but a moment without time, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the Present. And since you are always already grounded in pure I AMness, you are always already, realize it or not, living in eternity.
(How is the Witness only aware of the Now-moment, without making any effort whatsoever to do so? Well, think of any past moment you wish. You think that past is real, but notice that all you are directly aware of is just a memory of that past, and that memory is arising only in the present Now-moment. That thought of the past is itself actually occurring Now. And when that past moment was actually occurring when it was really real it was a present Now-moment, too. Likewise, think of any future event you like. That thought, as well, is a present thought, a Now-moment. And when that future becomes real, or actually occurs, it, too, will actually be a present Now-moment. As Schroedinger, cofounder of modern quantum mechanics, said, The Present is the only thing that has no end. There is only and actually nothing but the Now-moment as it unfolds, now and now and now and this Now-moment is the only thing that is ever actually entering your awareness. The Witness is always and only aware of the Now-moment, which means, as we ll increasingly see, that the Witness is living in eternity. Some spiritual practices would have us practice living in the now or be here now by focusing our attention on just the present moment, deliberately excluding thoughts of past and future; but that gives us just the narrow present, the passing present, split from the past and the future; but the real Now is not something you have to work to achieve, it s something that you can t avoid it s all you re ever aware of and it includes and embraces thoughts of past and present and future all in its eternal/timeless/all-time Present.) And that is what the Witness does it is always perfectly Witnessing all the objects and events and things that are arising in this vast, empty, open clearing that is Now.
Christ said, Before Abraham was, I AM. And that s exactly right. God said, Tell them I AM that I AM right on the mark. That I AMness the immediate and direct feeling of pure I AMness that you feel right now not I AM this or I AM that, but just the immediate, direct, pure feeling of I AMness itself is timeless, eternal, the Original Face you had before your parents were born, before the universe was born, before time itself was born right Now! (Exactly the I AMness that you are feeling in this very moment you re aware of that, yes?, just as it is before it is anything else? That s it! That s always it! And always has been.) So as you practice mindfulness of any object, you are actually resting in nothing but the pure Witness, and you are witnessing the present timeless Now as events come and go through it, as they come and go through you, through the Witnessing awareness that you are. That Witnessing awareness is the spacious, groundless Ground of all that exists, and all that did exist, and all that will exist all arising in this vast open empty Clearing timeless Present after timeless Present after timeless Present an ongoing timeless Presence as the timeless Present. And this very sense of pure present I AMness this simple immediate feeling of Being again, you are aware of that right now, yes?, just this simple present feeling of Being? this is your True Self, your Real Self, beyond any temporal or finite ripple of this or that, but the Ground, the Source, the Witness of all of that. So, resting in this pure sense of Witnessing awareness, which is no object whatsoever, take it to its conclusion, and radically, radically, let go of all of the objects we have spent the last hour or so identifying and objectifying. You are not, in your real Core, any particular level or hidden map whatsoever zero, none you are truly neti,
neti. Every single thing and event and object your ego is now aware of is simply part of the limited, manifest, object world and you are Free, radically Free, from all of it. Rest in that state of pure infinite Freedom feel it as radiant spacious Freedom (with no limits or boundaries whatsoever) which, no matter what object arises, within or without, you immediately dis-identify with I am not this, I am not that and simply let it arise as it wishes to arise, in the pure clear Mirror-Mind that you are, with no resistance, no grasping, no contracting, just a pure simple Reflection of All That Is. I am the pure Witness of this and that, the pure Observing Self, the True Seer, the vast clearing or open Space in which all of this arises, and which is identified specifically with none of it. This is making every finite subject into an object of Infinite or Absolute Subjectivity (which is beyond both subjects and objects, and is the simple Clearing or Space in which all objects and subjects arise). But this making of all subjects anywhere into objects of the True Self or Real Seer is to be free, radically and totally free, from all of them. We saw that Patanjali said that ignorance is the identification of the Seer with the instruments of seeing. And that is what we have been doing as we have identified our True Self or pure Seer with something that can be seen, dragging our infinite real Condition or Boundless Freedom down and into the finite, limited, partial, fragmented, and suffering realm, hence opening ourselves to endless agony and dismay, with life ending up an endless series of unsatisfying, painful, unfulfilling moments. As Thoreau famously said, The mass of men and women lead lives of quiet desperation. But to be free of those little finite objects is to be Free, period. That is radical Freedom, Freedom from all objects anywhere, Freedom from the entire universe, Freedom from all of manifestation itself in any realm. It is the Freedom
of your Original Face, the total freedom of Spirit, the freedom of Christ consciousness, the radical Freedom of I AMness, which is pure I AMness before it identifies with anything not I AM this tall, I AM this weight, I AM at this job, I AM this name, I AM this body, and so on just the pure I AMness before it is any of that, the simple feeling of I AMness itself before it is anything else at all, your True Self, not your object self. But what happens, at each stage of Growing Up, is that you will identify your small, conventional, finite, subjective self with the particular level or hidden map of that stage. And the Witness will then look through that small self and its map at the world, using that map to interpret what it sees. Not even the Witness knows what that hidden map is remember, you can t see any of those maps by looking within, by simply giving them awareness or Witnessing them. The Witness will continue to look at, and interpret, the world from the map of whatever level you are at. Notice that when the Witness is aware of a particular small subjective self, and sees it as an object, it still doesn t see the hidden form or the hidden map of that little self. It just sees all the words and sentences and letters and paragraphs of that little self, but not the grammar holding it all together that can t be seen merely by looking or Witnessing. So this is why the path of Waking Up can proceed, state by state by state, but never be aware of any of the actual levels or stages of Growing Up that it happens to be going through. The hidden maps remain hidden even to the Witness, to the True Self. It doesn t even know that it is interpreting the world in only one of 7 or 8 different ways of doing so. It simply does so, since that is what is showing up Now in Awareness, and is none the wiser as to the hidden map that it is unknowingly using.
That is why you can practice mindfulness all you want, and it still won t give you a higher level of Growing Up, because the hidden map never becomes an object of mindfulness, because it is indeed completely hidden it no more becomes an object of mindfulness than the rules of grammar will become an object. This is why, to repeat, that no meditation system anywhere in the world shows us the hidden rules of grammar, and no meditator anywhere experiences them consciously. And it s the same with the hidden maps. Both hidden maps and grammar remain unconscious. But this unconsciousness is different from the typical, common form of the unconscious, where the self represses, denies, dissociates, or dis-owns something that it finds disturbing and banishes it to the basement of the unconscious. You re not unaware or unconscious of these hidden maps because you are repressing them, or avoiding them, or don t like them, or dis-own them, but simply because you don t know they re there. If you learn about them, and know they are there, and actively look for them, they will rather quickly and easily show up in awareness. But if not, they remain unknown, hidden, unconscious although fully active and fully working to interpret your world, just without your knowing it. Unless, to repeat the central point, you know specifically to look for them, unless you specifically have an overview of the levels of hidden maps in your own system unless you have something like Integral Theory (or any good developmental model) to alert you to these hidden maps, so that you can indeed make them an intentional object of mindfulness, thus making those hidden subjects into conscious objects, and therefore dis-identifying with them, letting go of them, which then allows the next-higher level of Growing Up to emerge, with its next-higher conventional self with its hidden map,
through which the Witness will now view and interpret the world. If you don t know about those, then Witness all you want, and you ll never see them. They will remain unconscious but very present and active, and your Witness will continue to look through that hidden map at the world, even if you become fully awakened to, and enlightened to, that Witnessing awareness. But if you know that map is there, and you know its basic characteristics, then you can focus on those, making those hidden subjects objects, and thus, once again, transcending them, letting them go, becoming free of them, and moving up. That s what Integral Mindfulness is all about. Combining a knowledge of the levels of Growing Up with a practice of the states of Waking Up, thus reaching the highest level of Growing Up and the highest state of Waking Up (at this stage in evolution), a full and complete and more total Enlightenment, or state of fundamental and all-pervasive Wellbeing.