Q: Can there be awareness without an object of awareness?
Maharaj: Awareness with an object we called witnessing. When there is also self-identification with the object, caused by desire or fear, such a state is called a person.
In reality there is only one state; when distorted by self-identification it is called a person, when coloured with the sense of being, it is the witness; when colourless and limitless, it is called the Supreme.
Chapter 79, I am that.