In Meditation: Observation Strengthens The Ego

Melting is the way to awareness

You cannot practice the witness. If you practice the witness you will be practicing only the observer, and the observer is not the witness.

Forget the object - melt!

Then what has to be done? Melting has to be done, merging has to be done. Seeing a roseflower, forget completely that there is an object seen and a subject as a seer. Let the beauty of the moment, the benediction of the moment, overwhelm you both, so the rose and you are no more separate, but you become one rhythm, one song, one ecstasy. Loving, experiencing music, looking at the sunset, let it happen again and again. The more it happens the better, because it is not an art but a knack. You have to get the knack of it; once you have got it, you can trigger it anywhere, any moment.

When the witness arises, there is nobody who is witnessing and there is nothing to be witnessed. It is a pure mirror, mirroring nothing. Even to say it is a mirror is not right; it will be better to say it is a mirroring. It is more a dynamic process of melting and merging; it is not a static phenomenon, it is a flow. The rose reaching you, you reaching into the rose: it is a sharing of being.

Witnessing cannot be cultivated

Forget that idea that the witness is the observer; it is not. The observer can be practiced, the witness happens. The observer is a kind of concentration, and the observer keeps you separate. The observer will enhance, strengthen your ego. The more you become an observer, the more you will feel like an island -- separate, aloof, distant. Down the ages, the monks all over the world have been practicing the observer. They may have called it the witness, but it is not the witness. The witness is something totally different, qualitatively different. The observer can be practiced, cultivated; you can become a better observer through practicing it.

Osho, excerpted from The Book of Wisdom #23

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No time to meditate?

Experiments with melting: Meditation Seconds

Osho book recommendations on meditation

The Book of Secrets: Keys to Love and Meditation

Awareness: The Key to Living in Balance (Osho, Insights for a New Way of Living)

Lunchtime Enlightenment: Modern Meditations to Free the Mind and Unleash the Spirit - at Work, at Home, at Play

Meditation: The First and Last Freedom

Everyday Osho: 365 Daily Meditations for the Here and Now

Meditation For Busy People: Stress-Beating Strategies To Calm Your Life

Discover the Buddha: 53 Meditations to Meet the Buddha Within

The Everyday Meditator: A Practical Guide

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In this Osho quote about meditation the difference between witnessing in meditation and observing is becoming clear. Observing strengthens the ego whereas witnessing cannot be cultivated. Witnessing in meditation is more like a melting, the object disappears and the subject too.