After my regular spiritual practice of Art of living’s Yoga, Pranayam and short sudarshan Kriya, I opened my eyes. The birds were chirping, Adviti – my daughter – was playing with my mother. Our drawing room was shining with the morning Sun light.
I was sitting on my yoga mat with my eyes open. The light was falling on my eyes. Objects – the dining table and chairs – were making reflections. It was a fraction of a second that these objects were there visible to my eyes yet there was something within me that was an observer – no more than that. This observer was witnessing everything as it was. There was no filter of naming the objects, sounds were falling on the ears – sweet and pleasant – yet there was no division or interpretation of the sound. Sound was just experienced, no label on sound such as “my dauther’s voice”, kuku or pigeon or sparrow. Most intriguing of this label is the experiencer was just there, I dont remember if the word “My” was there in the dictionary at that moment.
The intelligence that defines all the objects of senses was there, yet there was only observer. There was no definition. I thought to write about it for a couple of weeks. However, it was difficult to explain and felt very small incident to write as a blog pos.
Today, suddenly this picture popped up in a Mumbai Police tweet. This made me think about the previous Sadhna incident and a possible experiment.
What if someone is sleeping and we somehow slowly – without waking that person up – open his eyes. Assume the person is still asleep, would this person – be able to see, discern and still remain asleep? What gives us power to interpret what our eyes see, ears to hear and define these?
When do we become more aware? Is it a time when the intelligence that interprets is still there inside yet someone within only observes without contaminating the observed with the biased interpretation? Is it true?
The intelligence gives us only as much possibility to interpret, as much it can fathom. A very cliché example of this in Indian spirituality is – seeing a piece of rope as a snake. Intelligence in that way seems limited in its abilities, yet the observer does not.
Disclaimer – I am a practitioner of spirituali practices, the thoughts were complicated to explain. Therefore possibly confusing.
Image source – Twitter handle of Mumbai traffic police.
5 Comments
rummuser · April 6, 2019 at 4:34 pm
It is an intriguing idea to open the eyes of some one in deep sleep to see if they can see. I think that it can be done only with children as adults are likely to wake up. Did you try with Adviti? What was the result?
KRD Pravin · April 6, 2019 at 9:18 pm
I may be a better subject, she may not 🙂 she sleeps like an alert person, wakes up on slightest of noise and movement around her.
preeti aland · April 6, 2019 at 9:51 pm
Dear Pravin, about your experience of being the ‘observer’ , simply being there- gotten me in my days at one residential area, I had lived during 1998-2002 and observed such moments – I really feel so lucky to be alive during the times of Realised Masters – J. Krishnamurthy, Osho, Sri Sri and Sadhguru- reading them- pondering over their thoughts and /or practising certain kriya- surely leads one to those ‘observer’ moments for which seers, otherwise, achieve through lots of Sadhna.
KRD Pravin · April 14, 2019 at 1:22 pm
Yes, we have to do Sadhna to reach that level. The point is how to stay in that level forever.
Coronavirus - Lock down? Stop and introspects - Business to the Buddha · March 15, 2020 at 8:28 pm
[…] Yoga – Secular or not? The observer […]