"For example, I have pain in my leg. The pain is there in the leg; the consciousness is in the head. The actual fact is that I become aware of the pain, I am a witness to it. But that happens rarely – what happens is quite different: I begin to feel pain not as a witness, but as an experiencer. I feel this pain happening to ME – pain HAPPENING TO me – not pain as WITNESSED BY me. If I am a witness to it, there is a gap – pain is somewhere, and I am somewhere else, and there is space. If I feel that the pain is happening to me, the space is lost, the gap is bridged. Now there is no space between me and the pain – I become pain.

"This is a fiction of the mind, but we live in fictions. This is a fiction, absolutely a fiction, because pain is not happening to the consciousness; it is happening before it. It cannot happen to the consciousness itself, it always happens before it. The consciousness is just a mirror. It mirrors... but when a mirror is mirroring something, that something goes deep into the mirror. It never really goes, it only reflects. But it appears that it has gone deep into the mirror. If the mirror could become conscious, then it would feel that ‘this thing has come into me, has become part of me. Now this thing is me.’ Because the mirror is not conscious, it never falls into this identification.

"We are a conscious mirror, so whenever something is before us it goes deep down inside. And a conscious mirror catches it, identifies himself with it. Pain in the leg is something before the mirror of the consciousness. But then, reflected, the pain goes in. And then consciousness becomes identified and I begin to feel pain as happening to me – not happening BEFORE me.

"This is the distinction between a non-witnessing consciousness, and a witnessing consciousness; between an identified consciousness, and a non-identified consciousness. And this is the distinction between the world and liberation, between the world and the divine. This distinction looks small, but it is not. This distinction is the greatest distinction possible, the greatest distance possible. When you are identified with any object, you are in the world. When you are not identified, you are beyond the world.

"So how to achieve this witnessing consciousness?

"Consciousness, we have – but identified. This is what bondage means: consciousness identified with things which are not part of it, and can NEVER be part of it.Consciousness is intrinsically, inherently, an outsider; it remains always outside of whatsoever is reflected in it. It always transcends whatsoever is experienced, known, felt, looked at. It is a transcending mirror. But it becomes identified, it becomes one; whatsoever reflects in it becomes part of it. This is illusory – it cannot become part of it. But it appears to have become, and then we live as if it has become part of us. This living is bound to be just a dream, based on a very illusory thing, based on a very fallacious conception, based on an absolute error. The whole life becomes erroneous, illusory. This sutra says that unless one becomes a witnessing consciousness, one is really not awake, one is just asleep – dead asleep. One is not really conscious unless one is witnessing."