S01E29 – “I Am Nothing” – The Disappearance of Even the Witness

Take a moment right now, and simply notice what is here.

These words are being heard. But who is hearing them?

Is there someone behind the eyes? In the chest? Somewhere in the breath?

Gently look, without rushing past. Stay honest. Let the question echo.

Hearing is happening. Awareness is present. Experience continues.

And still, no one can be found who is doing it.

There is no one home. There never was.

Just life unfolding. Just this moment… aware of itself.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome back to Martfotai, a direct path to wholeness, inner freedom, and becoming.

In our recent episodes, we’ve explored Post-Martfotai disciplines. Episode 26: listening deepened reception. Episode 27: looking refined perception. Episode 28: everything revealed recognition of unity.

Today we explore the fourth Post-Martfotai discipline: disappearance of even the witness. This is shattering of every foundation upon which personal existence has been built. Recognition that there is nothing here that could be called ‘I’ and never was.

Beyond even the unity of “I am everything” lies dissolution of the one who claims to be everything. Even the observer position dissolves. Even “I am” is seen through.

First you learned you are not your thoughts. Then you became the observer, watching thoughts arise and pass. Then you recognised yourself as everything. Now even the observer dissolves.

Before we can approach this dissolution, we must first be utterly horrified at what we discover about our supposed capacity for action. As Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way teachings express with devastating clarity: man cannot do. Recognition of complete helplessness must come first, with all its terror, before anything real can begin.

SECTION 1: THE BEDROCK OF HORROR – MAN CANNOT DO

There’s a fundamental recognition upon which all Work rests. Man cannot do. Most action, decisions, and choices arise mechanically, until one begins to see through the one who takes credit for it all. What feels personal is, in truth, a pattern of reaction arising from forces playing through an organism that believes it is in control.

As Gurdjieff writes, “To awaken means to realise one’s nothingness, that is to realise one’s complete and absolute mechanicalness and one’s complete and absolute helplessness. And it is not sufficient to realise it philosophically in words. It is necessary to realise it in clear, simple, and concrete facts, in one’s own facts.”

Consider your day yesterday and look with sincerity. Moments you believed you were “doing” something were already unfolding. Waking happened because the body’s chemistry required it. Breakfast was chosen through conditioning older than memory. Words were spoken through associations you did not create. Emotions were triggered by stimuli you did not select. Thoughts followed rails laid down by forces beyond your choosing.

Where, in any of this, was there a “you” who did anything?

This recognition can be confronting. The personality believed to be “you” is a cluster of mechanical responses. It is no more capable of conscious action than a music box is capable of writing melody.

“When a man begins to know himself a little he will see in himself many things that are bound to horrify him. So long as a man is not horrified at himself he knows nothing about himself.” This horror is not a mistake. It is part of the Work.

You can verify this directly. Spend one day attempting to do a single thing that is not mechanical reaction. Try to speak one word that does not arise from association. The recognition of helplessness is a necessary shock. It opens the possibility for something real to begin.

SECTION 2: WHY THE WITNESS MUST DISSOLVE

Episode 10 established the observer. Watching thoughts, emotions, sensations without identifying with them. This brought a liberation from unconscious reaction into conscious observation.

Yet even this observer position can be seen as another form of identity. Subtle and refined, yes, but still a place from which to view. Still something claiming to be the watcher. The sense of “I am the witness” creates its own separation between what observes and what is observed.

When the witness watches life, there appears to be a watcher and a watched. The split remains. Consciousness seems divided into subject and object. This is a more conscious version of the original fragmentation, but division persists.

Any position requires energy to maintain. Even the witness position must be held and defended. This creates a subtle tension. A quiet insistence that you must remain aware, must not lose presence.

Through direct observation, you may notice that self-remembering is not the final state but a way station. It develops a quality of permanent presence, which then naturally dissolves into what it always was. What remains when everything false falls away.

Here is what can be recognised directly. The witness appears within awareness. Awareness does not appear within the witness. The witness is an object arising in something that cannot itself be objectified. When this is seen clearly, the witness dissolves into what witnesses it. And that witnessing cannot be witnessed because it is witnessing itself.

Try to witness awareness itself. The attempt fails because awareness is already engaged in witnessing. There is no separate witness to be found anywhere. Just awareness being aware.

SECTION 3: TWO TYPES OF NOTHING

When the illusion of personal agency begins to weaken, a strange emptiness can appear. It often feels like a kind of arrival. But this moment brings a real risk. The emptiness that shows up may not be what it seems. Two kinds of nothingness exist, and mistaking one for the other creates deep confusion. It leads many into spiritual territory that looks clear but is still covered by clouds.

The first is mechanical nothing. It arrives when the system quiets down after running hard. Maybe you’ve had weeks of inner effort and suddenly everything becomes still. Maybe a long period of stress has exhausted your reactions and left you in silence. Sometimes this stillness comes through repetition, through meditation, or through the burnout of emotion. It can feel peaceful. Even blissful. But something crucial is missing.

In this mechanical nothing, reactions have paused. The machinery has gone quiet. But nothing essential has changed. The witness is still present, intact but inactive. Associations remain just beneath the surface, and if provoked, they return in full force. The stillness feels like peace because friction has stopped, but presence has not deepened. Nothing has been transformed. This is the quiet of an inert system, not a conscious one. Stillness wearing a mask.

The second type is very different. It is conscious nothing. This is a silence reached through friction, through inner effort, through a kind of death by fire. It does not come from exhaustion, but from awareness. It unfolds slowly, as each identification is dissolved. Every habit of claiming, every subtle thread of “I” is met, observed, and allowed to release.

This conscious nothing builds something real. It builds being. It creates structure within the subtle body that can remain present in turbulence and still remain free. Practices such as Walking the Pendulum Swing support this. Each reaction is met with its opposite until the swing gradually settles into stillness. Listening inwardly opens a posture of offering, where will begins to surrender itself to something greater. Even the sense of ownership over the body begins to dissolve, as identity gently loosens from sensation.

Through such practices, transformation becomes possible. Reactions are not merely paused. They are seen, met, and metabolised. In the space where identity once stood, something permanent remains. That is the difference.

Direct experience reveals the contrast. Quiet weeks without friction may seem peaceful, yet bring little change. Intense weeks, full of confrontation and honest effort, may feel turbulent but carry the seed of lasting presence. Both have value. But only one builds the capacity to remain free within the fire.

Verification Practice
True nothing allows space for choice. Mechanical nothing removes it. Conscious nothing keeps every response available, yet none of them possess the power to compel. Test this. In a moment of deep quiet, let something unexpected arise. Watch carefully. Did your response come from habit, or from presence?

When it does come from presence, you may notice a change in texture. The body stays soft. The breath remains open. No clenching, no rush, no scramble to explain or defend. The moment flows through you without interruption, and something remains quietly aware through it all. That something doesn’t comment. It doesn’t seek. It simply sees.

This quiet seer is not a position. It’s not a watcher behind the eyes. It’s not the mind paying attention. It’s awareness itself, aware of itself. And if you stay with it, something begins to fall away. Even the observer.

SECTION 4: WHAT REMAINS WHEN OBSERVER GOES

There is something you can notice right now. Awareness is here. Not your awareness. Just awareness. Already present. Already seeing.

You might try to witness awareness itself. But there is no technique for this. No way to stand apart and watch it. Because awareness is already watching. There is no separate observer to be found. Just awareness, simply aware of itself.

This has always been here. Long before the witness developed. Long before any observer role was imagined. Long before any spiritual practice began. It was already here. Hearing these words now. Feeling this moment. Not arriving. Not being summoned. Just here.

You may begin to notice how states come and go. Thoughts arise and pass like clouds. Sensations appear, shift, and fade. Even the sense of being a witness can appear and disappear. Consciousness itself feels like a state. But this does not.

What remains when all of that fades is not another state. It doesn’t begin. It doesn’t end. It can’t be reached because it was never away. It can’t be lost because it was never possessed.

And the most profound part of this may be how ordinary it feels. Nothing extraordinary happens. No cosmic fireworks. No mystical light show. Just this. What has always been here. What never left.

No effort brought it closer. No mistake pushed it away. Nothing needed to be added. Nothing ever needed to be removed.

Even the word “nothing” can confuse. It sounds like emptiness. But what is pointed to is not absence. This is presence itself. Not the presence of any particular thing. Just presence. Showing up. Being here. Without needing to become something.

This is what the ancient teachings called the state of Nothing. It is not an achievement. It is not a state of mind. It is not consciousness with a subject. It is simply awareness without content. Spacious and clear. A groundless ground. Consciousness without an object.

When this is recognised, it happens all at once. Like seeing something that had always been in plain sight. yet never really noticed. And the simplicity of it can be shocking. How could something this essential have been overlooked for so long?

But even that was part of it. The forgetting. The search. The longing. All of it shaped the conditions for this quiet seeing.

And what becomes clear is this: there was never a personal journey. There was no path being walked by someone. What looked like progress was simply the gentle unravelling of false ideas. A soft melting of the need to be anything at all.

What remains has always remained.

SECTION 5: DEATH OF COMMENTARY

“I Am Nothing” does not arrive through effort or technique. It represents what Gurdjieff described as the completion of an octave of self‑remembering. It is the point where the movement of “Do” completes itself, and the idea of a separate “I” loses its centre.

The Fourth Way understanding is that consciousness continues only while associative thinking persists. Gurdjieff noted that each person has a definite quota of associative movements in their life. As these associations are gradually reduced through inner economy, the organism shifts. This does not simply quiet the mind. It brings about the death of the inner commentator.

You can observe this in yourself. Watch the inner dialogue for one hour. Notice how every perception triggers judgements, memories, comparisons, personal stories, and commentary. This is not true seeing. It is mechanical elaboration of stimuli along grooves worn by past conditioning. This inner chatter creates the illusion that there is someone in there observing life from behind the eyes.

The voice in the head is not “you” speaking. It is mechanical forces speaking through you.

As the Work deepens, associative elaboration begins to weaken. Thoughts no longer spiral into commentary. The need to position yourself in relation to every impression falls away. In time, the inner narrator that has always accompanied experience begins to fall silent.

What remains in that silence is pure awareness. There is direct knowing without a knower. Presence without a centre claiming presence.

Some practices from the Fourth Way serve as supportive conditions for this shift. Self‑Observation creates the capacity to witness inner movement. Walking the Pendulum Swing reveals and balances polarities until they lose their charge. Conscious attention disciplines the tendency of identity to grab for ownership. Willing acceptance of friction permits transformation to occur. Each of these cultivates space, where reaction no longer dominates perception.

Each moment of real seeing creates a gap in the mechanical stream of identification. With ongoing practice, these gaps widen. Eventually, there are periods where action arises directly from awareness rather than habit. Over time, this becomes stable. There is no longer anyone who identifies with the operation of the apparatus.

These transitions do not follow a fixed ladder or sequence. Each person’s pattern of dissolving identity emerges according to their conditions and readiness. Some identifications fall away early. Others hold on until they are seen through with precision. Recognition often unfolds in waves rather than steps.

Certain shocks are needed to break mechanical habits. Some come from external life through change, loss, challenge, or disruption. Others are created deliberately through Fourth Way exercises that introduce conscious friction, allowing transformational energy to build.

Gurdjieff emphasised the role of what he called “conscious suffering.” This is not suffering in the ordinary sense. It is the willingness to meet, directly and honestly, everything one avoids. If you identify with being special, you must willingly meet ordinariness. If you identify with being wise, you must meet the experience of not knowing. If you identify with being loving, you must meet indifference within yourself. If you identify with being spiritual, you must see the parts of you that are thoroughly mundane. This is not humiliation. It is liberation through balance.

Through this, the commentary mind loses its fuel. The performer dissolves. The one who watches dissolves. The one who claims ownership dissolves. What remains is awareness, simple and unowned.

SECTION 6: TERROR AND RELIEF

When identity begins to soften, it can feel as though the familiar sense of self is dissolving. Something reaches for ground, and there is nothing to grab. That absence of footing can feel like freefall.

There can be a subtle inner vertigo. A sensation of becoming lighter inside. It may feel as though the usual sense of somebody fades, yet awareness remains. There is something still here that is able to notice.

Fear may rise during this. That is a natural response of the old structure. Thoughts may rush in. The nervous system may tighten. Questions can appear. What is happening to me. Who am I now. Where did I go. These questions are heard, yet no answer seems to appear.

Even in the middle of that intensity, there is also a deeper stillness. There is something calm that does not shake. Something that simply watches.

And then often a shift comes. Gradual or sudden. A soft relaxation through the system. A quiet realisation that there was nothing fixed to defend. Nothing held in the fist of identity. Nothing lost.

What remains feels simple. Breathing happens. Sensation happens. Perceiving happens. Thought arises and dissolves. Sitting, walking, speaking, all unfold. They do not require a centre to push them.

There can be a sense of an enormous weight being released. Almost like carrying a stone inside for years and suddenly setting it down. A lightness comes. A freshness. A relief that does not belong to anyone.

This process often unfolds over time, with periods of preparation through self-observation and conscious practice creating the necessary conditions. Then in one unexpected moment, something gives way. Like ice becoming water. Same essential substance, completely different state.

What supports this transition is simple honesty about how the organism actually functions. No romanticising what is happening. No avoiding difficult sensations when they arise. A willingness to be utterly ordinary. An acceptance that what is recognised may not match any spiritual fantasy previously entertained.

When fear arises during this process, you might stay present with it whilst asking who is afraid. Not to make the fear disappear, but to notice that even whilst fear moves through, awareness itself remains steady.

SECTION 7: FROM HELPLESSNESS TO AVAILABILITY

The paradox of Work is that you cannot “do,” yet you must choose to work.

When recognition of complete mechanical helplessness becomes absolute, something shifts. Terror that you were never in control transforms into relief. If there was never anyone here capable of conscious action, there was never anyone responsible for mechanical failures.

The Fourth Way holds that conscious faith is freedom whilst emotional faith is slavery. Recognition of nothingness opens possibility of conscious faith for the first time. Not faith held by the non-existent person, but faith that arises when resistance ceases.

To become nothing is to become available. Available as a clear vessel through which the intelligence of life moves. Presence acts without interference. Attention becomes aligned with reality.

This path unfolds through conscious discipline. You enter willingly into conditions that refine attention. Each moment becomes part of the practice. Friction is no longer something to avoid. It becomes the ground through which presence strengthens and deepens.

As Gurdjieff said: “The worse the conditions of life, the more productive the work, always provided you remember the work.”
Difficulty brings heat. That heat illuminates what was hidden. Tensions rise and patterns emerge. Each uncomfortable condition becomes a mirror. These same forces that once scattered attention now become stepping stones toward steadiness. Staying present within them deepens being and matures the inner state.

As personality softens, something reliable begins to show itself. Thought moves, emotions stir, sensation shifts, and through all of it, presence holds its footing. A clear posture remains in the centre of the movement, and in this grounded clarity, a deeper freedom reveals itself.

This is a direct meeting with life as it arrives. Emptiness reveals spaciousness. Spaciousness becomes ground. In that ground, transformation begins as lived experience.

SECTION 8: LIVING FROM NOTHING

A question inevitably arises – How does one function in daily life without any sense of separate self? The answer reveals another aspect of the initial horror. You discover that you have always been functioning without any real centre whatsoever. Personality continues its learned mechanical operations exactly as before, but there is no longer anyone there to take personal delivery of its products.

Thoughts continue to arise, emotions continue to flow through the system, actions continue to be performed seamlessly, but these are all recognised as impersonal natural phenomena, no different from weather patterns moving across the sky or wave movements on the ocean’s surface. They belong to no one, and are personally owned by no one.

What fundamentally changes is complete absence of psychological suffering. Suffering requires someone separate to suffer. When that someone is permanently absent, pain may still occur in the body, conflict may still arise in the emotional system, confusion may still appear in the mind, but these are passing phenomena with no personal centre to collect around and solidify into problems.

Professional work happens effortlessly through developed competence without professional identity. Natural skills serve without a skilled-one claiming credit. Excellence arises without a performer. Mistakes are corrected without a mistake-maker being blamed or defending. Responsibilities are met more fully because there is no claim to credit or blame. Bills paid, work done, relationships tended (just no one taking ownership.

In meetings, contributions arise naturally without internal commentary about perception. Ideas flow without concern for intellectual ownership. Criticism lands without defensive reaction because there is no one to defend. Praise passes through without inflation because there is no one to inflate. Work becomes simpler when the psychological overhead of self-concern dissolves.

In family life, something changes when presence replaces effort. Love begins to move on its own, without needing someone to be the ‘lover’. Care shows up without a carer trying to perform it. Intimacy unfolds naturally when the moment is unguarded. Connection deepens as presence stays clear. No effort is needed when nothing interrupts the meeting.

Children feel this. They feel love that doesn’t come with conditions. Partners sense when there’s no hidden agenda, no silent pressure to play a role. When the usual stories are absent, what’s left is a real meeting. And that’s where connection lives.

Transmission flows through presence itself. The depth of the field communicates directly. The held space becomes the teacher. When the moment is clear, others feel clarity. They feel included, seen in honesty, and met with ease. The nervous system relaxes. Trust appears. Connection becomes simple and natural.

SECTION 9: DAILY INTEGRATION

Throughout the day, notice when claiming happens. “I am…” “My…” “Mine…” See it. Do not fight it. Simply notice. Recognition itself releases the grip. You might count the claims in one hour. Often dozens appear. “My car,” “my thought,” “my feeling,” “my opinion,” “my day.” Each observation weakens identification without forcing anything. The pattern becomes visible, and visibility begins dissolution.

Before speaking, take a brief pause. Check whether claiming is about to happen. “I think…” “My opinion…” Notice the impulse. Speak without claiming or do not speak. Sometimes it is better to remain silent than add unnecessary “I” to conversation. The communication becomes cleaner, more direct, less burdened by position-taking. Practice talking without saying “I.” Rather than “I am hungry” how about “let’s eat.” Rather than “I would like this,” try saying “this feels right” or “this one stands out.” Let the focus stay on what is noticed, not on who is noticing.

Throughout the day, when experiences arise, you might ask who. A thought appears, and you ask who is thinking. An emotion surfaces, and you inquire who is feeling. Pain arrives, and you look for who hurts. No one can be found. Just arising happening. Just experiencing occurring. This loosens the grip of the false owner through direct investigation.

Extend this inquiry into ordinary activities. “Who is walking?” whilst walking. “Who is eating?” during meals. “Who is listening?” in conversations. Each question points to the absence of a claimer. Walking happening, eating happening, listening happening. No walker, eater, or listener found anywhere in the experience.

Place attention in the heart. Ask “Who lives here?” Feel into the space. Notice that even the body sense arises in awareness. No separate inhabitant can be found anywhere in the system. The search itself reveals the absence.

Daily, spend fifteen minutes sitting quietly. Let everything be. Do not maintain anything. Do not sustain anything. Just this as it is without you improving it. No meditation technique. No goal. Just sitting without someone sitting. The practice is the absence of practice. The doing is the undoing.

Test whether life can function without a claimer. Try for periods. No “I” added. Just life happening through this form. Does it work? Often better. Start with simple tasks. Washing dishes, walking, eating. Gradually extend to complex activities. Discover that the claimer was never necessary for functioning.

When claiming returns strongly, use Walking the Pendulum Swing. Generate the opposite. Complete humility to balance pride, perfect ordinariness to balance specialness. Hold both until neutrality arrives. Do not fight claiming. Include its opposite until both dissolve naturally. The tension between opposites collapses into stillness.

SECTION 10: THE ULTIMATE VERIFICATION

How do you verify that witness dissolution has actually occurred and is not just another spiritual concept or temporary state? Verification is immediate, undeniable, and simple.

Look for the looker. Search for the searcher. Try to locate the one who is aware. When this investigation is conducted with complete sincerity and precision, what is found is nothing. No entity, no consciousness, no awareness that belongs to anyone.

Yet obviously, awareness is present. Knowing is occurring. Experience is happening. But there is no separate experiencer to be found anywhere. This absence is not a lack. It is recognition of the true nature of awareness itself. Impersonal, boundaryless, indivisible.

I Am Nothing is the final verification that I Am Everything. Not as someone who possesses everything, but as the space in which everything appears.

You may notice certain changes appearing naturally. Perhaps less need to talk about yourself. Less defensive reaction when positions are challenged. Less effort to maintain particular views. More comfort with silence. More simplicity. More ordinariness. Life functioning without a manager. Others might notice something has shifted. “You seem different. Less intense. More present.”

There is also an absence of effort. No more trying to be present, to be aware, to be enlightened. These were all activities of the non-existent someone. When that someone dissolves, effort dissolves with it. What remains is natural presence without a presenter.

The ordinariness of this may be the most shocking aspect. After all the seeking, all the practices, all the spiritual drama, what is found is ordinary. Not ordinary like boring, but ordinary like natural. Like breathing. Like being. So simple it was overlooked in the search for something special.

It doesn’t arrive at something new.
It dissolves because the one who was seeking is seen through.
The seeker was a mirage.
When that is recognised, seeking no longer continues.

And in that simplicity, everything stops.
No search.
No seeker.
Just this.

CONCLUSION

Even the witness dissolves. Even consciousness is seen as another idea. Even nothing becomes a position when someone tries to own it. When all of this releases, what remains cannot be claimed. Just this.

This is the penultimate recognition. The end of the one who seeks and the revealing of what was never absent. Beyond this, there is only the resting in being itself, without thought of arrival or attainment.

Being continues. Without an observer. Without a centre. Work unfolds. Speech arises. Connection flows. Life expresses, without effort.

There is no need to maintain presence. Presence maintains itself.

Understanding moves, but no understander holds it. Expression flows, but no speaker carries it. Teaching appears, but no teacher remains.

This is how the field transmits. In silence. In openness. In the quality of space itself.

Freedom shows itself as simplicity. No defence. No resistance. No inner holder. Just the real, as it is.

Next week: Episode 30.
Final integration.
Just walking.
Path and walker move as one.

Nothing has always held everything. Now it recognises itself in you. Let it live through your steps.

Thank you for walking this with us. This is the Martfotai podcast. I’m Gary Eggleton.
Visit martfotai.com for open classes, online tools, guided practices, and deeper teachings.

May you recognise complete nothing where you thought something was.
And may nothing recognise itself as everything.