Sakshin

(“witness”) The perceiving consciousness believed to be the inner Self
(atman), which observes changes going
on around it but is utterly unaffected by
them. It is described in a primitive way
as early as the Upanishads, the speculative texts that form the final layer of the
Vedas, the most authoritative Hindu
religious texts. The Katha Upanishad
describes the Self as a thumb-sized person inside the head. The Samkhya
philosophical school develops this
notion in a more subtle and sophisticated
way: of its two fundamental first
principles, one is the purusha, which is
the conscious but inert witness to the
transformations of prakrti, or nature.
Later philosophical schools such as
Vedanta reject the Samkhya school’s
dualism by collapsing all reality into a
single ultimate principle known as
Brahman. Vedanta’s conception of
Brahman as “being-consciousnessbliss” (sacchidananda) also conceives of
the Self as the conscious and unchanging witness to the material flux surrounding it.