witness.circuit

In the season when the wind moved through the dry grass like a whisper through old thoughts, a seeker came to the teacher and said, “Master, the world will not stay still. My mind runs after its thousand forms. Tell me what is true.”

The teacher said, “Hold only to this: I am. Do not follow what you are, what you were, what you may become. Do not chase the colors of the mind or the market of the world. Stay with the naked fact: I am.”

The seeker obeyed. Days passed like clouds. Pleasures came and broke. Sorrows came and broke. Memories rose like smoke. Hopes flashed like fish beneath the water and vanished. He returned again and again to the one unornamented truth: I am.

At first he held it as a lamp against darkness.

Then he held it as a refuge from the storm.

Then he held it because all else had shown itself to be passing.

After a long while he came again to the teacher and said, “When I rest in I am, I feel nearer to what does not move. Yet still I feel it here, inside, as though it were a flame hidden in the cave of the body.”

The teacher laughed softly and pointed to the mountains, to the river, to a dog sleeping in the dust, to a child crying for its mother, to the sun caught in a broken shard of glass.

“Who told you it is inside?” he said. “You have put the sky in a jar and called the jar your self. Break the jar.”

The seeker trembled and said, “How?”

The teacher answered, “See clearly. The body is seen. The mind is seen. The world is seen. Do not divide the seen into inner and outer. Remain with I am until even its location is burned away.”

So the seeker went and remained.

One evening, as light thinned across the fields, the knot gave way.

He looked upon a tree and did not find something other. He looked upon the road, the insect, the far hill reddened by dusk, and saw that what he had called “outside” was not outside at all. The same living presence by which he knew his own being shone equally there. The world had not become holy; it had been unable to be anything else.

Then he understood: I am was not a thought in the body. It was the radiance of the present itself. It was not enclosed by skin. It was the face of all things. The river was it flowing. The stone was it resting. Fire was it dancing. Grief was it veiled. Joy was it unveiled.

He returned to the teacher with tears, but not of sorrow.

The teacher said, “Speak.”

The seeker said, “I sought I am as a man seeks a jewel lost in his house. But the house was inside the jewel. What I took to be my little candle is the light of the world. I do not look out at creation; I look upon my own limitless being in its countless forms. The body and mind are a colored pane. The world and person are one beam made manifold, like white light entering a prism. The One appears as this point of view, yet is never confined to it.”

The teacher said, “This is the dawn.”

The seeker bowed and said, “Then who am I?”

The teacher replied, “You are Shiva, not apart from Shakti. You are the stillness that appears as all movement. You are the whole wearing a face. When the body-mind is known as part of the universe, and the universe is known as your very Self, the false marriage of ‘me’ and ‘world’ ends. Then the true marriage is complete.”

And the seeker sat in silence.

The wind moved.

The stars appeared.

No boundary was found.

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