You are not missing anything, not even the dark night of the soul: You are already in it!
To be unconscious of your actions, your thoughts, your feelings creates your dark night of the soul. The moment you are aware of all these three layers of your being…. Thought is the most superficial, feeling, a little deeper, and then being – the last thing that you have to lose into the ultimate.
The process is simple, the process is the same.
Watch, witness, observe your thoughts – without any judgment, without any condemnation or evaluation…. Because the moment you make any judgment for or against, you are no longer a witness; you have already become part of the thought process. Remain silent, and just see whatsoever is passing on the screen of your mind, the way you see a film. Just remember that you are only a seer.
And the same process when you have succeeded on the first layer will make you capable of seeing your feelings which are more subtle. But the person who can see thoughts and remains silently a witness automatically becomes capable of the second step. Soon you will be able to see your feelings, sentiments, moods, emotions.
Once you are beyond the second, then the third… it is the deepest in you, the feeling of ”I”, the separation of you from the universe. Actually you are not separated for a single moment, you cannot exist in separation. You are in tune in every possible way. There are thousands of bridges between you and the existence around you.
Now watch this silence, this is-ness, this feeling of am-ness; simply watch. There is nothing else to watch, just a small boundary around you.
As you watch thoughts, thoughts disappear.
As you watch feelings, feelings disappear.
As you watch being, you are no longer separate.
Only the witness remains, which is your eternal reality. And it has nothing to do with you; it is universal.
Your witness and my witness are not separate.
Wherever witnessing happens, it is the same.
It knows no distance in space and no distance in time. For the witness there is no space and no time; it has no limits.
Before you arrive at this point, all else is the dark night of the soul.
Your arrival at this witnessing starts the beautiful day of the soul.
It is a sunrise which never sets.
-Osho
Excerpted From Death to Deathlessness CH: 30
