When the quality of seeing of the seer dissolves in the seen

This formulation inverts the classic mirror metaphor. Ordinarily, it is said that the mind is a mirror that reflects objects: the draṣṭṛ (witness) remains pure while the dṛśya (objects) pass by. But Vasiṣṭha proposes something more radical: the very quality of “seeing” —draṣṭṛtva— does not belong to a separate subject but is a function of the totality. When this attribution dissolves (vilīyate), what remains is not a subjectless or objectless “seeing”: what remains is what always was, prior to duality.

The Yoga Sūtra (III.3) defines samādhi as deśa-bandhaḥ cittasya dārṣṭyohya ekātmatā — when the mind merges into a focal point, the oneness of the seer and the seen. But Vasiṣṭha requires no deśa — no focal point — nor a process of merging. The dissolution is recognition, not transformation. They do not become one because they always were one; only the erroneous attribution of draṣṭṛtva to an imagined subject maintained the appearance of separation.

In nistaraṅga stillness, objects continue to be seen — perception functions — but there is no longer one who “sees” as an act separate from “being seen.” It is the dance without a dancer, the mirror that does not reflect but simply is its own surface.