I am just a Witness
Birthday of Indian mystic Swami Ram Teertha
22nd October is the birthday of the Indian mystic Swami Ram Teerth (often spelt as Rama Tirtha) also known as Ram Soami. Born in a Brahmin family in Punjab (part of which is now in Pakistan) in 1873, he became a professor of Mathematics in Lahore University. After meeting Swami Vivekananda in Lahore, he was inspired to become a sannyasin and he left his family and profession in 1899. He toured United States and lectured on Hinduism and Advaita Vedanta. He famously travelled around the world without any luggage or touching money! He is also known for always referring to himself in the third person, a spiritual disciple to help detach oneself from the ego.
Swami Ram is known to have made a significant prediction – “After Japan, China will rise and gain prosperity and strength. After China, the sun of prosperity and learning will again smile at India.” The first part of his prediction has come true. The second part has begun to look very promising lately!
Osho has spoken on Swami Ram Teerth in His discourses. Osho says Ram Teerth used to call himself ‘Emperor Ram’. Nobody took offense in India because we know that happens: a moment comes when a person becomes an emperor without any kingdom. Really, a person becomes an emperor only when there is no kingdom. Ram Teerth was invited by the president of United States. The American president felt uncomfortable because Ram Teerth kept referring to himself as ‘Emperor Ram’. So, the president humbly asked – I don’t understand; you don’t seem to have any kingdom, why do you claim that you are an emperor? Ram Teerth replied – That’s why I claim – because I have nothing to lose. My kingdom is of the eternal, you cannot take it from me. Your presidency can be destroyed. Nobody can destroy me. I am an emperor because I have no desires.
When you can forget the method, the effort, the self, the other, when everything has been dropped and you have become simply a flow of energy, spontaneous, then really something is attained — not before. And look at the difference in the Eastern and Western attitudes about painting, and about everything else also. In the West you have to make conscious effort and bring the effort to a peak. You become a technician and the other part is missing. In the East you have to become a technician, and then drop that whole technicality and become again innocent, simple, as if you were never trained.
Once somebody asked Winston Churchill, one of the greatest orators the West has produced, “Don’t you get afraid of the audience? Thousands of people staring at you — don’t you get afraid, scared? Don’t you get a little fear inside?”
Churchill said, “This has been my constant practice: that whenever I stand to speak I look at the audience and I think, ‘So many fools!’ The moment this thought comes to my mind I am okay, then I don’t worry.”
Somebody asked the same question of a Zen master, Rinzai: “You speak to thousands, don’t you ever get worried about it? Don’t you ever get scared? Don’t you ever get an inner trembling? — because so many persons are present, judging, observing, looking at you.”
Rinzai said, “Whenever I look at people I say, ‘I am sitting there also. Only I am in this hall.’ Then there is no problem. I am alone, these people are also me.” This is the Eastern and Western difference. Churchill represents the West: if others are fools then you are okay, then the ego is strengthened. You don’t worry about them, because who are they? — nobodies. And Rinzai says: The other is not. They are just me, my forms. I am alone. I am the speaker and I am also the audience. Then what is the fear?”
In your bathroom when you are alone you can be a good singer — everybody is, almost everybody. And bring the same man out of the bathroom, let him stand here, and the moment he sees you he is no more capable of singing — even humming becomes impossible. The fear grips the throat; he is not alone, the others are there, they will judge. The moment the other is there fear has entered. But the same man was humming beautifully, singing beautifully in the bathroom — nobody was there. The same happens when you can see in the other your own self. Then the whole earth is your bathroom; you can sing, you can dance. The other is no more there, there is nobody to judge. Through these eyes you are looking, and through others’ eyes also you are looking. Then it becomes a cosmic play of one energy in many forms. But the ultimate of any method is to become methodless, the ultimate of every technique is to become nontechnical, innocent. All effort is only to attain an effortless spontaneity.
THERE ARE TWO KINDS OF NONATTACHMENT: THE ORDINARY AND THE SUBLIME.
The ordinary is the first aspect of vairagya, nonattachment. The sublime is the spontaneous, the end; the other aspect of the same when things have become spontaneous.
THAT ATTITUDE OF NONATTACHMENT TO THE OBJECTS OF DESIRE IN WHICH THE SEEKER KNOWS THAT HE IS NEITHER THE DOER NOR THE ENJOYER, NEITHER THE RESTRAINED NOR THE RESTRAINER, IS CALLED ORDINARY NONATTACHMENT.
The emphasis is on the word knows. He has to maintain that, he has to remember it: “I am not the doer. I am just a witness. Whatsoever happens I am not involved. I am an outsider, just a spectator.” But this has to be remembered, this has to be maintained. This point must not be lost. And it is very difficult to remember it constantly. To remember even for a few minutes is difficult, because for many many lives you have been the doer, constantly you have been the enjoyer.
When you are eating you are the eater, when you are walking you are the walker, when you are listening you are the listener. You have never made any effort to remember that while doing anything you are not the doer but the witness. While eating, try it. The food is going into the body, not into you. It cannot go into you, there is no way, because you are the consciousness and the food cannot enter consciousness. It will go into the body, it will become the blood and the bone, whatsoever the body needs, but you remain a witness. So, while sitting at your table eating your food, don’t be the eater. You have never been the eater; this is just an old habit, an old conditioning. Look at the eater, the body, and the eaten, the food, and you be the third. You just witness, you just hover above, you just look from a distance. Stand aloof and see your body eating, the food being eaten, and don’t get involved in it. But you can maintain it only for a few seconds — again you will become the eater. It has been such a long, long conditioning; it will take time to break it.
You are walking on the street. Don’t be the walker, just watch the body walking. For a few seconds you may remember; again, you will forget and you will enter in the body and become the walker. But even if for a few seconds you can maintain it, you can remember that you are not the walker, then those few seconds will become satori-like, those few seconds will be weightless, those few seconds will be of a joy such as you have never known. And if this can happen for a few seconds, why not for ever?
Somebody is insulting you — it will be more difficult than with walking or eating to remember that you are the witness. One Indian mystic, Ram Teerth, went to America in the beginning of this century. He never used the word ‘I’; he would always use the name Ram. If he was hungry, he would say, “Ram is hungry.” It looked unfamiliar and strange. If there was a headache he would say, “Ram has a headache.”
One day it happened that a few people insulted him. He came back laughing and his disciples asked, “Why are you laughing?” So he said, “Ram was insulted very much, and I enjoyed. I was standing out of Ram and looking. Ram was in much difficulty; much inconvenience, discomfort, was there in Ram.”
You become an object of your own consciousness. This is coming out of the body, out of the ego, out of the mind. This is difficult not because it is unnatural, this is difficult only because of a long conditioning. You may have observed that small babies in the beginning never say ‘I’; they say, “Baby is hungry.” They seem to be witnessing the phenomenon. But we train them to use the ‘I’ because it’s not good to say, “Baby is hungry,” or “Baby wants to play.” We train them to use the ‘I’.
‘I’ is not existential, ‘I’ is a social entity; it has to be created. It is just like language: it is needed because if people go on speaking like babies or like Ram Teerth, if like Ram Teerth people go on saying their names, it will be very difficult to say whether they are talking about themselves or about somebody else. It will create confusion. If you say, “I am hungry,” immediately it is meant that you are hungry. If you say, “Ram is hungry,” if people know that you are Ram then it’s okay; otherwise they will think somebody else is hungry, not you. And if everybody uses it, it will create confusion.
It is a social convenience to use the ‘I’; but this social convenience becomes truth, it becomes the center of your being, a false thing. The ‘I’ never existed, can never exist. But just because of social utility the child is trained, the consciousness becomes fixed around a center which is just utilitarian, not existential — and then you live in an illusion. And the whole life of a person who has not come to know that there is no ego will be false, because it is based on a false foundation.
To be a witness means to drop the ‘I’. The moment you can drop the ‘I’, immediately you become the witness. Then there is nothing else to do. This ‘I’ creates the problem. Hence the emphasis of all religions to become egoless, to be humble, not to be proud, not to be conceited about it. Even if you have to use it, use it as a symbol. Use it knowingly — knowing that this is just a social convenience.
THAT ATTITUDE OF NONATTACHMENT TO THE OBJECTS OF DESIRE IN WHICH THE SEEKER KNOWS THAT HE IS NEITHER THE DOER NOR THE ENJOYER, NEITHER THE RESTRAINED NOR THE RESTRAINER, IS CALLED ORDINARY NONATTACHMENT.
When you become capable of remembering that you are the witness, this is the first stage of nonattachment.
Source:
Listen to complete discourse at mentioned below link.
Discourse series: Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi Chapter #10
Chapter title: Sublime is the Spontaneous
16 January 1974 am in Mt. Abu, Rajasthan, India
References:
Osho has spoken on Mystics like Dadu, Farid, Gurdjieff, J. Krishnamurti, Kabir, Nanak, Patanjali, Swami Ram Teerth, Rumi, Sahajo, Sai Baba, Saraha, Socrates, Tilopa, Zarathustra and many more in His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourses:
- Sermons in Stones
- Come Come Yet Again Come
- The Hidden Splendour
- Beyond Enlightenment
- The New Dawn
- The Sword and The Lotus
- The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty
- Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries
- Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 1
- The Path of Love
- The Book of Wisdom
