Buddhism: Buddha Consciousness - Become a Witness

By Sukshmananda Swami

Detachment is not indifference or lack of love. In fact, it is real love because it is not related to appearance. Witness has no attachment and hence no detachment is needed. Ego has attachment therefore detachment has to be developed.

If appearance was a permanent reality we could not make changes. We make changes in our lives in order to gain new experiences. This is possible only because that particular part of life is not reality, it is appearance, and until we know what reality is we will continue the game of changes to modify our experiences.

This is the age of browsing. We browse quickly through a variety of experiences, including relationships. The browsing will continue till we reach reality. So in one sense, by browsing, we are indirectly searching for reality. Spirituality eliminates the disparity between appearance and reality.

The answer: ‘‘I don’t know why I love you, I just do’’ reveals the ridiculousness of the situation. If you do not know why you love, it simply means you are not conscious about your love. True love never generates problems but is always part of the solution; it is part of witness, not ego. 

Harmony, love and compassion are not the products of religion. They are spiritual products, spiritual property. Often, religion strengthens the ego, because religion needs the individual to remain in the ego so that its strength and power can be maintained. We like those who enforce our ego and we dislike those who weaken it. The person who talks adversely about our religion indirectly tries to weaken our ego; hence it hurts our religious feelings.

Do not expect religion to assist in transforming the ego. The strength of all religions lies in untransformed egos. The love of a terrorist is a good example of religion-induced love and the love of the Buddha is a good example of spiritually-generated love. If we are still on the ego level no transformation has been made, so there is a lack of development and we could therefore never reach the level where one can love the entire world. The family-love consciousness is of a lower state than that of Buddha-consciousness or the global-love state.

The ability to love the whole world is a post-transformation state. A single glimpse or a single darshan of God alone is insufficient to transform a person’s whole life. The darshan should become the background music of our lives, or, it will appear and disappear like everything else in life. Appearance and disappearance may be recognised through an underlying factor, the witness. Without the witness, it is impossible to notice appearance and disappearance. The part of us that is witnessing may not develop into the object, as that is who we really are, our true selves. A popular way of explaining reality is: the eye cannot see the eye. However, do not miss the point because of this platitude. 

Witness is God, witness is reality, and ultimately, it is a higher state of consciousness, beyond the ordinary state of consciousness. We have to develop into the mystical state of consciousness and for that, a glimpse is insufficient. Therefore, travel through the glimpses regularly until you become a part of mystical state of consciousness, the higher state of consciousness. 

We hanker for permanence while paying tribute to transient emotions. We bond with the image while ignoring reality. Only when we see the difference between the eternally real and the ephemeral image, our problems will disappear.

(Excerpted from Mind the Gap . The writer, Sukshmananda Swami,  is a disciple of Sri Narayana Guru.)