seeing the seer

Keith Williams

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We can experience things—can touch, hear and taste things—only because, as bodies, we are ourselves included in the sensible field, and have our own textures, sounds and tastes. We can perceive things at all only because we ourselves are entirely a part of the sensible world that we perceive!

We might as well say that we are organs of this world, flesh of its flesh, and the world is perceiving itself through us.

Walking in a forest, we peer into its green and shadowed depths, listening to the silence of the leaves, tasting the cool and fragrant air. Yet such is the transitivity of perception, the reversibility of the flesh, that we may suddenly feel that the trees are looking at us—we feel ourselves exposed, watched, observed from all sides.

We feel that our experience of the forest is nothing other than the forest experiencing itself.


—David Abram
The Spell of the Sensuous

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Traditional Koyukon people live in a world that watches, in a forest of eyes. A person moving through nature—however wild, remote, even desolate the place may be—is never alone. The surroundings are aware, sensate, personified. They feel. They can be offended. And they must at every moment be treated with proper respect. 

All things in nature have a special kind of life, something unknown to contemporary Euro-Americans, something powerful. The presence of the world is precisely the presence of its flesh to my flesh.

—Richard K. Nelson
Make Prayers to the Raven

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I will explain to you a simple technique, which is called Dhyana Yoga
[realization via meditation]:

Sit in the open air every day in the morning— at any convenient time, irrespective of any laws and regularities—on a simple asana [seat or posture], for 30-60 minutes.

Keep your eyes half open and [be aware of] your nose-tip. This is only to withdraw your mind from external sense-organs.

Then try to be aware of the Seer. You have not to think about sense-organs. You have only to do nothing—no thoughts. Be only aware of the one who is sitting in Dhyana [meditation]. You have to focus on him only. Be aware of the One, who is beyond body, without body [videha].

Practice this slowly, slowly every day and all your problems will be solved. Have the feeling of Chaitanya Brahman [Divine Reality as Pure Consciousness]. Be aware of Purnam [wholeness, fullness]. If your eyes close during this, let it be.

You will be aware of space. All forms of which you are aware of within are modifications or shapes of the One who is sitting.

Call him Krishna, Shiva, or any other divine Name.
It is all darshan of the one who is sitting.

Continue sitting in this sadhana [spiritual practice]. From within, That will give its message, guidance, and spontaneous insight.

Remember: “I am not the body.”

Be aware of the Seer.
I am beyond the body.


—Nisargadatta Maharaj

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