Tattva 12 — The Bound Self (Puruṣa)

Once the five cloaks have done their work, what emerges is the puruṣa — the individual self, the limited 'I' that experiences the world as a separate person. This is the same puruṣa, the witnessing subject, that Sāṃkhya places near the top of its scheme; but Kashmir Shaivism sees it as only a contracted, veiled form of the universal Śiva-consciousness, not an independent ultimate. With puruṣa, the long descent reaches the ordinary individual experiencer.