1600- 'Sakshi Bhav’

(Witness consciousness / clinical,objective, detached, impersonal, dispassionate, Disinterested,impartial, unemotional watching)
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Sakshi Bhav is relating to the ‘environment’, our current situation, condition, position, however good or bad they may be, from a stand of a third party, that is suppose I am talking to a friend, then as I am talking, I see the ‘video’ of my talk with a friend, both happening parallelly, multi or rather dual tasking one may say. There I am an third party observer, seeing my reactions to the ‘stimulus’ from environment. Everything that happens, good, bad, not so good, not so bad, is received by our brain as a signal, which is called stimulus in brain language. As I watch my reactions, they start getting modified and turn to responses, that very presence of a watcher is sakshi bhav, third party perspective who is not attached to either.

Once Ram Lal and Shyam Kumar were enjoying their morning cup of tea watching the queue of woman folk filling their vessels from a public tap.
Suddenly, to their amusement, they found some of the woman quarreling over a petty matter. Ram Lal started making fun of their nature but soon turned serious when he found his own wife also getting involved in the matter.

As long as Ram Lal was just a witness to the whole affair uninvolved, he was happy. The moment his wife came to the scene, he got involved and his miseries started. Same is true in all the situations of life. Can we become a witness and look at our problems objectively, look at the whole world as a sakshi, a witness? Then we will be free from many of our difficulties. According to a great philosopher, if one can 'watch' one's anger with awareness it disappears.

Sakshi Bhava is an age old way of witnessing one's own mind and, thus slowly transcending it. As it is our mind in a very tricky fellow. So, to begin with, we can watch something gross, say, our breathing. Just sitting quite, comfortably, and being a Sakshi to the air that goes in and comes out of our system.

An anecdote by Osho, which can help one gauge how sakshi bhav can help is that of Swami Ram’s(or Ramteertha who was M.A. in math & Persian , author of 7 volumes of " in the woods of Adwitha Wedanta ") visit to America. He was guest to some hosts and went out for a walk. After some time came back looking a little disheveled, yet smiling. When hosts asked what happened. He replied, today it was great fun. What fun u had. He said, some youth surrounded raam ( he used to always address himself in third person like children do, this was his trick of keeping himself reminded of raam and sakshi bhav ), and started making fun of him, his dress, etc. later they started slapping him, and only after he pleaded with them, did they leave him alone. Seeing ram receive that thrashing was so hilarious.
I don’t wish for any one to be I such situation, but look at the kind of control over oneself it gives, one can choose to react / respond.
-Aditya Choudhary and Yoga Sudha,May1996
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