by John Wheeler
On May 16, 1991, John Wheeler of Ready Systems posted this short, careful argument to soc.religion.eastern — the first moderated religious discussion group on the internet. Wheeler was a practitioner of Advaita Vedanta, studying under what he described as a fully awakened teacher in California. His post arrived in the middle of an ongoing discussion about consciousness, Buddhism, and the nature of the self.
The method is Socratic and experiential: Wheeler invites the reader to sit quietly, watch thoughts arise and pass, and then ask — who is watching? His four-point conclusion is that the knower of thoughts cannot itself be a thought, because thoughts are many while the knower is singular; thoughts are objects while the knower is the subject; thoughts are not conscious while the knower is; and even in the absence of thought, the knower persists. This is the classical Advaita pointer toward the witness-consciousness — pure awareness, irreducible to any content of experience.
The post sparked one of soc.religion.eastern's richest exchanges. Tom Simmonds of Siemens Research replied with an extended Zen critique, using the metaphor of a stream and its ripples to argue that the "knower" is a convenient conceptual fiction with no identifiable reality — a post preserved elsewhere in this archive as "The Stream and the Ripples."
Hi, let us get to the heart of the matter. Let us say you are sitting quietly in your room, at ease, meditating. Your eyes are closed. Occasionally, you hear a distant sound, maybe a bird, a car horn, whatever. You also sometimes feel your senses registering the chair or floor on which you are sitting. Then you notice your thoughts. They arise and pass away. All kinds of thoughts may arise. Some are linked and manifest in what seems to be chains or links, i.e. one thought leads to the next, and to another, and so on. Sometimes you have thoughts which you call memories, but still these too are thoughts. So memory itself is thought. There is no memory apart from thought. (Incidentally, if there is no memory apart from thought, then it is illogical to say thought arises from memory.)
So, as you sit there you are aware of various sensations and thoughts that arise in your experience. Are you with me so far? Let us say for the sake of argument that it is very quiet and your senses become very still, perhaps you are deeply absorbed in your contemplation. This can happen. You decide to become curious about your thoughts, how they function, etc. Again, you notice that they arise and pass; they constantly change. You are quite aware of all this. You even notice that some are linked, etc. as I said above. But also some are not linked.
Let us say, as you are watching your thoughts, for some reason they slow down. It happens sometimes. You may even see a thought begin and end, and another begin and end etc. Now, for the purpose of analysis let us look, as though through a microscope, at one brief span of time, say one or two seconds. Perhaps in those two seconds four or five thoughts arise (I am just picking a number). Are you still with me? This is not far-fetched; I am talking of something we all experience, right?
Now, in that interval with the four or five thoughts going by, I would like to ask you: "Who are you?" In other words, who are you that is aware of those thoughts? If you say that you are those thoughts, that would be silly, since they all pass away in the next second (you obviously don't pass away when the thoughts pass away).
So there are the thoughts of which you are aware and there is you, who are aware of the thoughts. This is logical, right? Let us forget about the thoughts themselves. They are transient, fleeting, etc., perhaps even conditioned to some extent by memory etc.
What I am interested to know is what is the nature of the one in you who knows the thoughts? If you say that he is himself just thought, I say, how can one thought be aware of another? Thoughts are objects perceived. How can one object perceive another? I say that what you are is not a thought at all. It is of an entirely different nature.
Why do I say this?:
1. Thoughts are many; you are singular.
2. Thoughts are objects; you are the knower of the objects — the subject.
3. Thoughts are not conscious, but you are conscious.
4. Even when all thoughts subside (strange as it may seem), you are still conscious of the absence of thoughts.
Does this interest you? Are you with me? So I ask: what is the nature of the one in you that knows thought? What can you tell me about him — about you? I am not so interested in thoughts as I am in you who knows thought.
What can you tell me about him?
P.S. — I am studying under a fully enlightened sage in California. He is a fully awakened master, who is in the state of Buddha himself. I say this sincerely, from my own experience of studying with him for several years. His life and realization accords with the enlightened masters of ancient times. Other students of his have awakened to the truth; many more are doing so. This is a sign of the genuineness of his realization. Only a realized being can lead others to freedom. Whatever I may have learned and expressed in these messages is just an infinitesimal drop I have gleaned from the ocean of his wisdom.
Colophon
Posted to soc.religion.eastern on May 16, 1991, by John Wheeler of Ready Systems, Mountain View, California. Message-ID: [email protected]. The group was moderated by Dinesh K. Prabhu of NASA Ames Research Center.
Wheeler's post generated one of soc.religion.eastern's most sustained philosophical exchanges. Tom Simmonds of Siemens Corporate Research replied with a Zen critique, arguing that the "knower" is a conceptual invention — a response preserved in this archive. The exchange illustrates the cross-traditional philosophical depth that made soc.religion.eastern remarkable in the early internet era.
Preserved from the UTZOO Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Sourced from batch b220 of the University of Toronto Usenet archive (utzoo).
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