Question – Are Witnessing and Sensitivity two sides of the same coin?
Osho – They are not two sides of the same coin — witnessing and sensitivity. But sensitivity is one of the qualities that develops in you with witnessing. Other qualities also develop. With witnessing you become almost a garden — many flowers and many fragrances develop in you. Witnessing becomes your very base of transformation. The more you see your mind, the more you witness it, the less you will find it. It needs unconsciousness to be there. It is an animal that exists only in darkness. As you bring the light in, the mind with its thoughts starts disappearing.
And it is the thickness of thoughts that makes you insensitive. When there are no thoughts and you are simply a witness, just a mirror, then your sensitivity is infinite. Then anything that comes in front of you is reflected totally. Then you see the same rose flower with a totally different vision: then it becomes radiant, then it radiates not only color but rays. Then it becomes not only just matter but an energy phenomenon
In the Soviet Union one scientist photographer, Kirlian, has been taking photographs of the energy that surrounds everything. He has developed such sensitive plates that when you take the photograph of a rose flower you also find in the photograph an aura of light surrounding it. It is the same with photographs of man, and every man has a different color aura. So the ancient idea of auras is now finding a scientific support. The enlightened man will have a white aura. A man like Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin will have a black aura, and between these two — black and white auras — will be the whole humanity. Different colors, sometimes mixed colors, and all those colors show where you are, where you are inside.
When you become a witness you become a sensitive mirror, more sensitive than Kirlian’s photoplates. You will see things in a totally new light — the same things, the same world, but in a totally different light. Ordinary things start having extraordinary beauty. Just pebbles on the shore become more valuable, more charming, than any Kohinoor — because it all depends how you see them. If you can see their aura, their light, their color, their beauty, then they are no more just stones — they have become flowers.
And as you become more and more sensitive you will have an understanding of people which you never had before. Just seeing the face of a man you will be seeing much more than the man himself knows about. Just holding the hand of a man you will know much more of his energy than he has ever known. Being with someone you will find that your energy is being sucked and you feel tired — just being with him. And with somebody else you feel you are nourished, you feel healthier, you feel more well-being. Different people will give you different experiences, and different people will become attracted to you as your awareness grows. Then only the better quality people will be coming closer to you.
It is true that a man can be known by his friends, by the company he keeps. It is absolutely true, because you cannot keep company which is not in tune with your inner being.
With your witnessing there will be a few difficulties: your old friends may not remain your friends any more, not that you have done any harm to them but simply you have changed and now you no longer fit with their state, with their consciousness. So don’t be worried about that. If you are married and you find that your wife is falling far away from you then it is better to tell her what you are doing: that if she wants to be with you, if she loves you the way you love her, you would like her also to be a companion on the path of meditation. Otherwise, soon you will be so far away from each other that everything will be misunderstood.
Your children will find that you are a different person — you are no more the same old papa. It is better to help your children to learn a little bit of witnessing. And don’t think that they cannot learn; they can learn better than grown up people because they are fresh, they are not loaded with any past. Just you have to be more friendly with them than fatherly. And before the rift happens it is better to make it clear to them, “It will not be my fault if the family falls apart. I have chosen a path which is going to give me something and I would like it to be shared by you all.”
I don’t want any family to be disturbed by anybody in the name of spirituality, and if we can be a little more loving and compassionate and make them understand — and they will be able to see that you are less angry, you are less tired, you are less frustrated, you are more loving, more compassionate — they will surely come with you.
The old religions have been teaching `renounce the family.’ This was one of the reasons — because there is going to be difficulty sooner or later — but I don’t think that even giving it a try, you renounce the family.
I say to you it is a good training school — the family — and if you cannot change your children and your wife who love you, then whom are you going to change in this world? You will find more and more strangers everywhere. Start wherever you are. And if you are finding something of tremendous value, share it with everybody. None of my sannyasins has renounced the family. And every sannyasin has found a tremendous support by the family. They have become closer, they have become friends, they have become fellow travelers.