Thank you for your comment, Jack, about the posts that Peter and I made.
You ask about the idea of ‘witness’ in Turiya compared to that in Tarthang Tulku’s books. I think you are correct that there is a difference in this idea between the way it is used here and the way we use it in Turiya yoga. The Turiya approach is based on Classical yoga and its philosophy. In Classical yoga, pure consciousness is expressed through universal awareness (“aham”). Individual consciousness (“ahamkara”) taps into this and is an expression of it. In Turiya we think of this as the “I”, as distinct from the more limited little ego (“asmita”) level, which is the “me”. Awareness increases as we pass from the busy organising mind (“manus”) to the ego (me) to individual consciousness (I) to tap into universal consciousness. When we operate at the level of ahamkara, then we are simply “the witness” of all that is occurring, rather than a player in the activity – the action of the ‘little mind” and the ego are, if only very temporarily, suspended. We can be in this world without being tied up in its material activity.
Love of Knowledge (p.171) rather defines the self as witness as “validating experience and reality in validating its own identity: the self that underlies and guarantees the perceiver, interpreter and narrator.” The witness described by Tarthang Tulku in DTS p.103-114, seems very much enmeshed in the activity of our basic, material world, in contrast to the approach to “the Witness” that I am familiar with in Turiya. (However, on doing an automated search of this topic in Tarthang Tulku’s books I was interested in this phrase from DTS p.281- “It is like activating a silent witness whose steady presence we might consider ‘nowness'”. This approach to the witness seems closer to that we use in Turiya).
So I guess that the answer to your question in your post is ‘Yes’, I do find that there is some tension created when reading Tarthang Tulku’s work, as at times terms like ‘the witness’ are used quite differently from the meaning which I would normally have attached to them. I need to be very careful to pick up when this is the case, and to adjust my understanding to a different meaning.
 Gaynor
Hi Gaynor,
You’re absolutely right that it needs careful attention to make sure you are not applying your own categories of thought to a term that seems deceptively familiar. But you seem to have a good handle on this key point.
The idea of the witness is very important in TSK, and it has to do with the structure of the small self: the way it organizes, makes sense of, and affirms the validity of experience. The use of “Witness” in Turiya yoga is just something different. It reminds me of the exercise, “Awareness as a Reflective Surface.”