The Nature of the Self: The Witness of the Three States
You are not the changing, limited “person” (the body-mind complex) that appears in these three states. Instead, you are the One Unchanging Soul/Consciousness in which all three states appear and disappear.
1. You are the Witness, Not the Actor
* The Waker: When you are sitting and talking, you think, “I am this person.” But this “person” is just a character in a waking-state drama appearing in your awareness. You identify with the physical body and perceive an external, material world through the senses.
* The Dreamer: In a dream, you might be in Paris. That “dream person” feels just as real as the “waker” does now. Both are mental projections. In this state, you identify with a mental body as the mind creates its own space, time, and objects.
* The Deep Sleeper: In deep sleep, the “person” vanishes. There is no world, no body, and no mind. You are not “gone”; you are simply without objects. The fact that you know “I slept well” upon waking proves you were there as the witness to that silence. There is no subject-object duality; the mind and senses have simply folded back into a causal state.
2. The Truth: One Soul/Consciousness
You are the Fourth , which is not a separate “state” but the underlying reality of the other three.
* The Constant Background: It is the background awareness that is present now, was there before you were born, and remains when the body dies.
* The Screen of Reality: Just as a movie screen remains unchanged whether a fire or a rainstorm is projected onto it, your Consciousness/Soul is untouched by the experiences of waking, dreaming, or sleeping.
* The Light of Awareness: You are not the person experiencing the world; you are the Light in which the world (and the person) appears.
3. The Analogy of the Dream
* Realization: When you wake from a dream, you realize: “I was the dreamer, I was the place, I was the people, and I was the events.”
* Subject and Object: You alone became both the subject and the object. You became the time, the space, and the experience.
* The Waking Dream: In the exact same way, the waking state is a projection. You are the Consciousness that appears as both the “waker” and the “waking world.”
Conclusion: Who You Are
You are One Consciousness, the eternal witness, who is:
* Not the Waker (The physical body/gross world)
* Not the Dreamer (The mind/subtle world)
* Not the Sleeper (The absence of world/causal state)
You are Consciousness/Soul: the timeless, non-dual foundation of all experience. This realization is not a new state to be attained, but a remembering of what you already are.
“You are the LIGHT by which the waker, dreamer, and sleeper are known, but you are NONE of them.”
