The witnessing self is never felt. We always feel some indentity, we always feel some identification. And the witnessing consciousness is the reality. ..."I am pain; I am in pain, I am aware of pain" -- these are three different, very different states. The rishi says, "I am aware of the pain". This much can be allowed, because then you transcend pain, and there is a deep separation. Really, there has never been any relation, the relation begins to appear only because of the nearness, because of the intimate nearness of your consciousness and all that happened around...To be free of pain the pain has to be accepted, inevitably and naturally. Pain is pain -- a simple painful fact -- but suffering is only and always the refusal of pain, the clame that life should not be painful. It is the rejection of a fact, the denial of life and of the nature of things. Death is the mind and mind is dying. Where there is no fear of death, who is there to die.
Osho: From meditation to meditation
