Witnessing: practice, experience, questions

I'm starting to explore the witnessing state but have some lingering confusions or uncertainties about what exactly is meant by "witnessing." I was hoping we could clarify that by discussing the practice leading to the witnessing state, and also the phenomenology of witnessing-- what it actually feels like, how you know you're there rather than some "near enemy" of the witness or something else entirely. I'll start with discussing some of my own experiences and then raise some questions. It would also be helpful if other people could provide descriptions of what it feels like to witness in their own experience.

Here's a report from a sit about a week ago regarding what I suppose was my first witness experience:
_______
Without making a conscious effort, I noticed spontaneously that sensations in the head were observed and so did not belong to me. I had a spontaneous mental image of a bubble inside my head, where the bubble represented the head sensations that I still identified with. The bubble contracted and disappeared, and I understood that all head sensations are observed and so not mine. For a while it felt rather ambiguous about where "I" was actually located. Then, I had the feeling as if "I" were observing the whole experiential scene, including all of my bodily sensations, and so "I" was actually smeared out across the whole field of experience. Or, by another analogy, "I" was outside of experience and looking at it from afar through a "screen", just like I normally experience things, except usually the "screen" is somewhere behind my eyes. Now the "screen" was surrounding the whole field of experience, of which my body was just one part and not particularly privileged.
_______

(con't)

In the aftermath of that I have had some similar but less intense experiences. An effective way to get there is that I look for sensations that seem to be "me", usually physical sensations in the shoulders and head and internal mental sensations. I examine one sensation at a time and inquire "is that me?" The implicit answer I have learned from practice is that this is observed, and so is not me. Doing this for a while, momentum builds up and eventually I get some flavor of experience like the following:

I feel like I am detached from "Brian" and his thoughts, watching him think and act in the world. I perceive "Brian" very much like I perceive any other objective person. A striking difference is that I see "Brian"s internal subjective states right alongside the outside world, and indeed there's a weird kind of continuity or weakening of the boundary between "inside" and "outside". The correlation between "space" and "awareness" one sometimes hears about begins to make some sense. There is just this kind of canvas of experience containing sensations. Usually the "internal" part of the canvas is thought of as awareness and the "external" part of the canvas is thought of as physical space. But with the loosening of that boundary the sense of awareness is no longer confined to bodily/mental sensations and so extends to include all sensations. Experience also sometimes has a "picture" kind of quality that is hard to convey. Everything, including body and mind, is tinged with the sense of being watched, as you might feel looking at a painting while having a subtle self-consciousness of the act of looking at it.

(con't)

So some questions...

1. What is the difference between the experience of witnessing and the experience of not-self? In my recent practice, the most pronounced aspect of experience is thorough de-identification. There is not a strong sense of "I" as watcher or witness. I'm not sure if this is really doing witnessing practice or just getting better at seeing not-self.

2. What is the role of sense of location of "I"? It seems as though a "pure" witnessing state is along the lines of the one described in my report, smeared out through all of space or even outside of space. Is one really witnessing if still "in the head"? Doesn't this imply residual identification with sensations?

3. Are there levels of witnessing, or is it all or none? At a low level, one might seem to be witnessing and yet still be identified with a stream of thought commenting on the witnessing. At a higher level, there is still the sense of having an experience of awareness itself, e.g. feeling as though awareness is smeared through space is perhaps still identifying awareness with sensations (now "space" instead of "body/mind")?

4. Fun factor. Several folks have talked about enjoying the witness, taking no-dog for a walk, etc. Not that I want to access the state for the enjoyment factor, but this is not really what I experience. I experience mostly a dissociative kind of state that is either neutral or mildly anxiety provoking, and very weird and alien. Is this just a difference in taste or does it indicate we're talking about different states?

5. It's early in my practice, but it seems as though dwelling as the witness can leave me kind of spaced out, demotivated and with a fuzzy memory for a brief period of time when I come out of it. Is that just me or do other people experience a witness hangover?

edit: typos

The day after that sit mentioned above, I had some involuntary residual experiences along these lines. First it was kind of joyful and light. Later on, very anxiety provoking. More recently I do not access this experience spontaneously but can access a weakened form of it by practice. In the "weakened" form "I" do not identify with space or seem to be outside of space. Rather "I" seem to be located in the head, or just behind the head, or sometimes the location of "I" is ambiguous. I also find part of "I" is still subtly identified with mind. I de-identify from "Brian" and watch one pattern of thoughts, but then another pattern of thoughts might arise commenting on my performance of doing this.

(con't)

hello
i am also trying to dwell as the Witness, and the experiences you describe is also what is happening to me. But for me the best way to trigger it is through the visual sense, what i mean is that eyes closed it's impossible to get this feeling of "witnessing", usually i keep asking myself "who am i" in daily life, and then it's like a switch,the feeling is here for a few seconds and then it goes away. it seems to me that it is a very slight change in perception. as i'm not english but french i won't be able to express as precisely as you did, but basically your description matches mine. I'd really like to see your questions answered. Particularly the part on the mild anxiety provoked by this practice, i'd really like to know if it's a normal outcome of the practice or it just means that i'm doing it wrong. This anxiety seems to be connected with some fear as this state is alien as you said and also because my sense of personality seem to be watered down, anyway i don't experience this state as being blissful but there is a kind of subtle peace coming along with it, i'm "calmly witnessing" even in the midst of the bus ride, but it's often after it that i experience some anxiety, some fear of losing myself. i would add one more question to yours, while we are supposed in general buddhist practice to experience the absence of self, we are looking for the feeling of "i" in the witness practice, is there a risk of solidifying this "i" ?

I hope we can get some answers from people who have been in this territory before.

nicolas

Hi Obobinde,

I'll respond to one of your questions and then go back and look at Brian's. Brian and I work one-on-one by email and phone, which may be why I've been so slow in responding to this thread, but I see that other people can also benefit from this discussion.

Your question, "while we are supposed in general buddhist practice to experience the absence of self, we are looking for the feeling of "I" in the witness practice, is there a risk of solidifying this 'I'?" is especially relevant on this board where we use so much Buddhist language and technique. To answer directly: yes, there is a danger of solidifying this supposed "I" that is the transpersonal watcher, but I don't worry about it for my students. That's because forewarned is forearmed: you already know better than to fall for this apparent "I". What's more, my instruction to you is to dwell as this supposed Witness with the intention of objectifying it and seeing through it. In other words, the Witness is just a transitional state. It is "the stick that stirs the fire and is eventually consumed by it" as Ramana Maharshi was fond of saying. So, go ahead and dwell as the Witness, confident that the subtle subject/object duality that creates it will eventually collapse of its own weight. As far as reconciling Buddhist and Advaita terminology, I don't wory about it much. I don't believe that any one tradition has a monopoly on Reality. The Buddhists talk about no-self, and the Advaitists talk about the Self. Whether they are talking about the same thing or whether one of them has something the other does not have is something you can only discover for yourself by doing the practices they recommend. Whether you reach the highest levels of Advaita realization or the highest levels of Buddhist realization or both, I feel confident that you won't be disappointed.

Kenneth

Hi Nicolas,

My experience of this state has changed over time. It's gotten a bit more mellow; I've gotten more used to it and similar experiences; and also my baseline experience has shifted a bit over time in the direction of de-identification. For those reasons it hasn't really been a cause of anxiety for me, though it hasn't been fun either, more neutral. The biggest cause of anxiety back then was one occasion where I wasn't practicing and went into a heavy dissociative/witnessing state anyway, which felt like I was stuck or trapped in this place I didn't necessarily want to be. I think if that happened to me now I would be able to roll with it without any problems, being more familiar and comfortable with the experience, though it hasn't really happened like that since then so I can't say for sure. I also have not really had any witness hangovers since that last post.

Your mileage may vary, but if you're like me it will probably get more comfortable over time. If it's a cause of anxiety at the moment it might be a good idea to ease up a little bit and be more gradual about getting into the deeper states.

Thank you for your answers they are very helpful, by the way these are my first posts on this forum and i want to say that this is the best place i've ever encountered on the net, really thank you for making this place exist.
i'll let you know of any change in my practice