The Witness Self, pp. 283-284

Opening Remarks
The mind enters a witness state where one is indifferent towards everything. The strong grip of desire is loosened and the restless mind rests in some vast quietude.

Vast quietude
His mind reflected this vast quietism.

The Light of the Self begins to fall upon the quiet mind as moonbeams on a lake that is still and undisturbed.

The witness hush
This witness hush is the Thinker’s secret base:
Hidden in silent depths the word is formed,
From hidden silences the act is born
Into the voiceful mind, the labouring world;
In secrecy wraps the seed the Eternal sows
Silence, the mystic birthplace of the soul.

This state of witness and its quietude is the base from where thoughts and words arise and flow towards expression. This inner silence is where all true power is born. It is in this state of quietude and silence that the Eternal acts sowing great ideas that would move the world. It is in this inner silence that one becomes aware of the soul.

The dual power
In God’s supreme withdrawn and timeless hush
A seeing Self and potent Energy met;
The Silence knew itself and thought took form:
Self-made from the dual power creation rose.

In this Silence is hidden the true Knowledge and the power that works in the depths of creation. This Silence is self-aware, the impersonal Brahman, It is unborn and eternal that not only watches the works of Time but out of which the executrix Maya emerges. Brahman manifests Itself as the Lord and His Maya that build the world. He is the base and She is the dancer who builds creation by Her dance and rhythms.

The still self
In the still self he lived and it in him;
Its mute immemorable listening depths,
Its vastness and its stillness were his own;
One being with it he grew wide, powerful, free.

Thus Aswapati grows one with the Brahman consciousness as reflected in his vast impersonal Mind now grown a witness. He experiences the vastness, the stillness, the freedom and the power that is the share of those who enter and are identified with this state.

Unbound
Apart, unbound, he looked on all things done.
He stood apart from creation looking on all things as a silent witness.
Spectator and scenes
As one who builds his own imagined scenes
And loses not himself in what he sees,
Spectator of a drama self-conceived,
He looked on the world and watched its motive thoughts
With the burden of luminous prophecy in their eyes,
Its forces with their feet of wind and fire
Arisen from the dumbness in his soul.

The world appeared as a scene imagined by a Spectator someone but without losing himself in it. He saw not only the surface but the deeper motive forces that worked in creation. He grew into a prophet watching the forces at play and the direction towards which they moved. All this arose as a film in the dumb spaces of his soul.

Freedom from desire
All now he seemed to understand and know;
Desire came not nor any gust of will,
The great perturbed inquirer lost his task;
Nothing was asked nor wanted any more.

It is a state of Wisdom where silence settles within and one is free from desire and the restless wandering and questioning mind.

The Self and the Silence
There he could stay, the Self, the Silence won:
His soul had peace, it knew the cosmic Whole.

His soul had found peace with the cosmic whole. He had found the Self and the Silence that is the state of those who have grown one with the Universal Self.

Closing Remarks
This is the celebrated witness state of the yogi, the base of the thinker, the seat of one withdrawn from the world and the images it builds with the help of some cosmic Mind. This is the release that comes by knowing the Self as revealed through the still mind free from the turbulence of desires.