Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Q: Consciousness itself is a reflection. How can it hold the real?
To know that consciousness and its contents are but reflections, changeful and transient, is the focusing of the real. The refusal to see the snake in the rope is the necessary condition for seeing the rope.
Q: Only necessary, or also sufficient?
One must also know that a rope exists and looks like a snake. Similarly, one must know that the real exists and is of the nature of witness-consciousness. Of course it is beyond the witness, but to enter it one must first realize the state of pure witnessing. The awareness of conditions brings one to the unconditioned.
Q: Can the unconditioned by experienced?
To know the conditioned as conditioned is all that can be said about the unconditioned. Positive terms are mere hints and misleading.
Q: Can we talk of witnessing the real?
How can we? We can talk only of the unreal, the illusory, the transient, the conditioned. To go beyond, we must pass through total negation of everything as having independent existence. All things depend.
Q: On what do they depend?
On consciousness. And consciousness depends on the witness.
Q: And the witness depends on the real?
The witness is the reflection of the real in all its purity. It depends on the condition of the mind. Where clarity and detachment predominate, the witness-consciousness comes into being. It is just like saying that where the water is clear and quiet, the image of the moon appears. Or like daylight that appears as sparkle in the diamond.
Q: Can there be consciousness without the witness?
Without the witness it becomes unconsciousness, just living. The witness is latent in every state of consciousness, just like light in every color. There can be no knowledge without the knower and no knower without his witness. Not only you know, but you know that you know.
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