Are you the witness of the witness?

The following excerpt is from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question (Q): Acharya Ji, once I had the experience of the ‘seer’, but it remained only for few minutes. How can I be the seer forever?

Acharya Prashant (AP): And you are the seer of that ‘seer’, now that you are talking about it.

Q: I can’t say that surely.

AP: Then how do you know about that ‘seer’?

Q: It’s in a sense.

AP: How do you know about that ‘seer’? To know about that ‘seer’, you must be seeing that ‘seer’.

Q: But I am not sure that it is the ‘witness’.

AP: If the ‘Witness’ is really a witness, you won’t be able to say anything about it.

The ‘Witness’ remains unseen. And if he is unseen, he can neither be talked of, nor thought of, nor imagined, nor described. You can never say, “Ah! The Witness does exist.” How do you know he exists? Are you witnessing the ‘Witness’?

Who are you then? The Witness of the ‘Witness’? The Truth behind the Truth?

Q: Then what happens when there is no one to observe? What is the point when there is no one to observe?

AP: Observe. See what is going on.

Observation is one thing — it’s sensual, it’s mental. You can claim and talk as much as you would like about the faculty and the process of observation, but let’s not lay our hands on ‘Witnessing’.

The Witness really doesn’t even exist, and we least of all have the right to talk about the Witness.

But in the spiritual circles, the word ‘Witness’ is used so very liberally and so very casually. Everybody is talking about the ‘Witness’.

Those who gave us the word ‘Witness’ said, “The Witness is the supreme Truth — akathya (cannot be talked of), achintya (cannot be thought of), akalpya (cannot be imagined of).”

You will not be able to look at it, the tongue can’t talk of it, the mind can’t conceive it.

You must not even try to make it a ‘thing’ of your consciousness.

But the ego loves to play around with even the Sacred, the Sublime.