When you cannot find anything, when all is silent, then there is only the witness. It is a very strange situation. When there is nothing to witness, you come to experience the witness in its purity. When there is something to witness, the witness is involved with some object.
It is like the mirror. If you want to know the purity of the mirror, then the mirror should be empty; nobody should be standing in front of the mirror. If somebody is standing in front of the mirror, then the mirror is polluted by the reflection.
Your witness is the ultimate mirror.
Anything that passes pollutes your witness. But if you go on struggling, remembering that whatever you see is not you — just a simple exam: "the object of my knowing is not me" — soon the objects will disappear, because you have broken the identity. And any moment, suddenly out of nowhere, you find yourself absolutely alone without any object. The seer is there, but there is nothing to be seen. Awareness is there, at its very peak, but there is nothing to be aware of. The witness is there, but there is nothing to be a witness of.
So this should be the criterion of whether your witness is a reality or just a projection, just imagination or an authentic reality.
And it is a very simple process, just like swimming. Once you know swimming, you will be surprised that there was nothing to learn. Before knowing swimming, it seems dangerous, difficult — you cannot believe how people are swimming. But have you seen a dead body? The dead body automatically comes up and starts swimming — not even swimming, it simply floats. The dead body knows something which you don't know. If the dead body can float, why can't you float? It is so simple that even dead bodies are doing it.
One Japanese scientist has been trying with small children, because his hypothesis is that the child in the mother's womb remains in liquid, in water for nine months, so swimming must be something very natural. It need not be learned.
The hypothesis seems to be correct. If the child manages in the mother's womb…. In the mother's womb there is exactly the same kind of water as in the ocean, with the same constituents. That's why, when a woman is pregnant, she starts eating salty things, because the water needs more and more salt. The child is already swimming from the very first day. And in the very beginning the child is just like a fish. Scientists think that man began life as a fish in the ocean. Now, to teach a fish how to swim would be just utter stupidity.
This Japanese scientist started working on six-month-old babies. He would leave them in water in tubs, and he was surprised that they were not afraid — not only that, but they started floating. Then he went down to three-month-old babies. They were even more expert. Then he did his experiment with the newly-born baby: he was the perfect master as far as swimming is concerned — nine months' training!
That's why, once you know swimming, you cannot forget it. Everything that you learn you can forget, but something in swimming is so natural, that once you know it you cannot forget it. The same is true about witnessing.
Every child is born a witness.
OSHO