Self is not a thing unknown to anyone at any time.

Self is not a thing unknown to anyone at any time. Let a man think. As soon as waking experience comes, there must be a knower there before in order to know that he is in waking experience. 

The formless witness exists before the waking appears or the thing is seen; otherwise neither knowledge nor sensation could happen. The formless witness is always there. Even if one say it can be reached only at the end of a long path, it is impossible for it to be ever absent even while he says this.

The knower alone makes it possible for one to know anything at all. “Though, thus quite self-evident, easily known, quite near, forming the self, Ataman appears, to the unenlightened mind as unknown, very remote, as though he were a separate thing. Those who do not look at the seer, the witness, and perceive it is the only thing that neither comes nor goes, are deluded, and turn outward towards things objectively, which run away. – FORMLESS PATH