Finding the Witness

This was the technique given to Pythagoras. Pythagoras went with this technique to Greece. And, really, he became the fountainhead, the source, of all mysticism in the West. He is the father of all mysticism in the West. This technique is one of the very deep methods. Try to understand it. Modern physiology, scientific research, says that between the two eyebrows is the gland which is the most mysterious part in the body. This gland, called the pineal gland, is the third eye of the Tibetans—Shivanetra: the eye of Shiva, of tantra. Between the two eyes there is a third eye existing, but ordinarily it is non- functioning. You have to do something about it to open it. It is not blind. It is simply closed. This technique is to open the third eye. Close your eyes, then focus both of your eyes just in the middle of the two eyebrows. Focus just in the middle, with closed eyes, as if you are looking with your two eyes. Give total attention to it.This is one of the simplest methods of being attentive. You cannot be attentive to any other part of the body so easily. This gland absorbs attention like anything. If you give attention to it, both your eyes become hypnotized with the third eye. They become fixed; they cannot move. If you are trying to be attentive to any other part of the body, it is difficult. This third eye catches attention, forces attention. It is magnetic for attention. So all the methods all over the world have used it. It is the simplest to train attention because not only are you trying to be attentive: the gland itself helps you; it is magnetic. Your attention is brought to it forcibly. It is absorbed. It is said in the old tantra scriptures that attention is food for the third eye. It is hungry; it has been hungry for lives and lives. If you pay attention to it, it becomes alive. It becomes alive! The food is given to it. And once you know that attention is food, once you feel that your attention is magnetically drawn, attracted, pulled by the gland itself, attention is not a difficult thing then. One has only to know the right point. So just close your eyes, let your two eyes move just in the middle, and feel the point. When you are near the point, suddenly your eyes will become fixed. When it will be difficult to move them, then know you have caught the right point.If the attention is between the eyebrows, for the first time you will come to experience a strange phenomenon. For the first time you will feel thoughts running before you; you will become the witness. It is just like a film screen: thoughts are running and you are a witness. Once your attention is focused at the third eye center, you become immediately the witness of thoughts. Ordinarily you are not the witness: you are identified with thoughts. If anger is there, you become anger. If a thought moves, you are not the witness—you become one with the thought, identified, and you move with it. You become the thought; you take the form of the thought. When sex is there you become sex; when anger is there you become anger; when greed is there you become greed. Any thought moving becomes identified with you. You do not have any gap between you and the thought. But focused at the third eye, suddenly you become a witness. Through the third eye, you become the witness. Through the third eye, you can see thoughts running like clouds in the sky or people moving on the street. Try to be a witness. Whatsoever is happening, try to be a witness. You are ill, the body is aching and painful, you have misery and suffering, whatsoever: be a witness to it. Whatsoever is happening, do not identify yourself with it. Be a witness—an observer. Then if witnessing becomes possible, you will be focused in the third eye..Secondly, vice versa is also the case. If you are focused in the third eye, you will become a witness. These two things are part of one. So the first thing: by being centered in the third eye there will be the arising of the witnessing self. Now you can encounter your thoughts. This will be the first thing. And the second thing will be that now you can feel the subtle, delicate vibration of.breathing. Now you can feel the form of breathing, the very essence of breathing..First try to understand what is meant by ‘the form’, by ‘the essence of. breathing’. While you are breathing, you are not only breathing air. Science says. you are breathing only air—just oxygen, hydrogen, and other gases in their. combined form of air. They say you are breathing “air!” But Tantra says that air. is just the vehicle, not the real thing. You are breathing prana—vitality. Air is just the medium; prana is the content. You are breathing prana, not only air. By being focused in the third eye, suddenly you can observe the very essence of breath—not breath, but the very essence of breath, prana. And if you can observe the essence of breath, prana, you are on the point from which the jump, the breakthrough happens.