Becoming a Witness

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Becoming a Witness

Before we can transform our suffering our misery into something good, we will have to learn to become a witness. To do this we have to learn to transform ourself from within – we need to change our inner alchemy. We can do this by learning to accept evil - don’t resist it, don’t fight with it, don’t be angry with it; absorb it, because it can be transformed into good.

The art of transforming suffering, pain, evil, into something good is the art of seeing the necessity of the opposite. Light can exist only if darkness exists. Then why hate darkness? Without darkness there will be no light, so those who love light and hate darkness are in a dilemma; they don’t know what they are doing.

Life cannot exist without death. Then why hate death? Because it is death that creates the space for life to exist. This is a great insight, that death is the contrast, the background, the blackboard on which life is written with white chalk. Death is the darkness of night on which life starts twinkling like stars. If we destroy the darkness of the night the stars will disappear. That’s what happens in the day. The stars are still there - have they disappeared? They are still there, but because there is too much light, we cannot see them. They can be seen only in contrast.

The saint is possible only because of the sinner. Hence, realised Masters like Buddha say don’t hate the sinner, he makes it possible for the saint to exist. They are two aspects of the same coin.

Once we realise, one is neither attached to good nor detached from bad. One accepts both as part and parcel of life. In that acceptance we can transform things. Only through that acceptance is transformation possible.

And before we can transform suffering, we will have to become a witness. First: do not resist evil. Second: know that opposites are not opposites but complementary to each other, inevitably joined together, so there is no choice - remain choiceless. And the third is: be a witness, because if we become witness to our suffering, we will be able to absorb it. If we become identified with it, we cannot absorb it.

The moment we become identified with our suffering we want to discard it, we want to get rid of it, it is so painful. But if we are a witness then suffering loses all thorns, all stings. Then there is suffering, and we are just a witness to it. We are just a mirror; it has nothing to do with us. Happiness comes and goes, unhappiness comes and goes, it is a passing show; we are just there, a mirror reflecting it. Life comes and goes; death comes and goes; the mirror is not affected by either. The mirror reflects but remains unaffected; the mirror is not imprinted by either.

A great distance arises when we witness. And only in that witnessing can we transform the baser metal into gold. Only in that witnessing do we become a scientist of the inner, a detached observer.

Now we know the opposites are not opposites, so they can be changed into each other. Then it is not a question of destroying evil in the world, but of transforming evil into something beneficial; transforming poison into nectar.