You see yourself as having states - states of the soul, states of mind, states of consciousness, and others of the same kind which you think you can distinguish. A state is not the content of a here and now, it is no simple object, but it is something about the subject that you can know by monitoring your own pattern of inner and outer responses. There is the object you intend, and then there is your knowing that you are intending the object, and then there is objectifying of that intention as a point in a space of intentions, and then there is you making an object of the space of your intentions, as if there are many different such spaces, a space of spaces of intentions. This is the level of abstraction at which these subjectively delineated states seem to live. To be aware of your own state is a differential operation, you need to simulate a small variation and see, by imagination, what it does. This gives you a clue to your current state, but to complete the insight, to give meaning to the identification of state, you need to imagine the ways in which the response could have been different and so place this response in its context. The differential operation is the creation of a mental model in the form of a little story that explains the pattern of your responses, as for example to say "I'm angry" is to tell a story about yourself. To be a description of a state you need to go a bit further. In saying "I'm angry" you can avoid any awareness of state by meaning to say that "state-free-I is subjected to certain emotional conditions while remaining state free", as if to say "I have anger." A state is a disposition to a certain pattern which entirely pervades the subject, so to be aware of it is to be aware of yourself as a variant form of the function of constituting the reality which happens to be yours. The logical structure of this is complicated, too complicated for this sketch perhaps, but awareness of state is not universal. It is acquired through experience of the succession of contradictory, often mutually exclusive, dispositions. What is it that we acquire in this way? The ability to monitor ourselves in new ways. Does this mean that we gain greater access to the witness function? Is this the essence of disidentification? The self is a story that minimises the number states, while witness is the awareness that corresponds to more distinctions of states.