Probing Consciousness · Essay 03
We feel that someone is inside looking out. But what happens when we actually look for that someone?
By
Dharmendra Singh
· September 8, 2026
Most of us live with a remarkably persistent feeling.
I am here.
The world is there.
And somehow I am looking out at it.
We rarely investigate this feeling because it seems too obvious
to require investigation.
If someone asks where you are, you may point toward your chest,
your face, or your body.
But if the question becomes more precise —
where is the one who is actually experiencing this moment? —
the answer becomes less obvious.
Can the knower be found?
Not imagined.
Not defined.
Not named.
Somewhere behind the eyes
There is a familiar sense that the person we call
me is somewhere inside the head.
Perhaps just behind the eyes.
The eyes face outward.
The world appears in front.
Thoughts seem private and internal.
Our voice seems to speak from somewhere within.
It is understandable that experience can begin to feel
as though there is a small centre inside the body
receiving information from everything around it.
A world outside.
An observer inside.
But this picture is already an interpretation.
Can we discover whether experience itself actually contains
the observer we assume is there?
What do we actually find?
Bring attention toward the place where you feel yourself to be.
Perhaps there are sensations around the eyes.
Pressure in the forehead.
Movement in the face.
Sensations in the skull.
Perhaps there is an image of your own face,
even though you cannot presently see it.
Perhaps there is an inner voice quietly commenting:
I am sitting here.
I am reading.
I am the one experiencing this.
Each of these can be noticed.
A sensation is noticed.
An image is noticed.
A thought is noticed.
The inner voice is noticed.
If something can be noticed, is it the knower —
or is it something being known?
Is the voice in the head the knower?
The inner voice has an unusual intimacy.
Because nobody else hears it in the way we do,
it can easily feel like the innermost person.
It says:
I should do this.
I shouldn’t have said that.
What will happen tomorrow?
What does this essay mean?
But notice that the voice changes.
Sometimes it is anxious.
Sometimes confident.
Sometimes contradictory.
Sometimes repetitive.
Sometimes absent altogether.
And whatever it says is known.
If the voice is known, can the voice itself be the Knowing?
The face we cannot presently see
There is another curious feature of human experience.
You probably have a fairly clear sense of what you look like.
Yet unless you are standing before a mirror,
your own face is not part of your present visual field.
The face you imagine yourself to have is largely remembered.
Photographs.
Mirrors.
Other people’s descriptions.
Years of familiarity.
Thought quietly supplies a picture of the person
who seems to be looking through the eyes.
But the picture is itself appearing now.
The imagined observer is another thing being observed.
That does not tell us what the knower is.
But it may tell us something about what it is not.
Point to yourself
Try something very ordinary.
Point toward yourself.
Where did your finger go?
Perhaps toward your chest.
Perhaps your face.
Perhaps the centre of your body.
There is nothing wrong with this.
In ordinary language, the body is naturally what we indicate
when somebody asks where we are.
But inquiry can become more precise.
Your finger can point toward the body.
Can it point toward the one to whom the body appears?
Look before answering.
Look for the one who is looking
Here is today’s experiment.
Direct inquiry
Where do you feel yourself to be?
Do not answer from habit.
Investigate the place itself.
If you feel located behind the eyes,
notice exactly what is there.
Sensation?
Pressure?
An image?
A thought saying,
I am here?
A sense of visual perspective?
Whatever you find, ask:
Is this the knower?
Or is this known?
Do not rush to remove the observer.
Do not tell yourself that there is no self.
Do not replace the person with a new idea called Awareness.
Keep looking.
The value of the experiment lies in what can actually be found,
not in arriving at the approved answer.
A subtler observer
Inquiry sometimes reaches an interesting difficulty.
We notice that thoughts are known.
Sensations are known.
Emotions are known.
The body’s position is known.
So we say:
Then I must be the witness watching all of this.
This can be a useful distinction.
But it can also become another hiding place.
The ordinary person may disappear from the centre,
only to be replaced by a more spiritual observer:
silent, invisible, perhaps imagined somewhere deeper inside.
If that witness can be pictured,
felt or conceived, then the same question returns.
What knows the witness?
This is not wordplay.
It is a safeguard against turning inquiry into another belief.
Do not hurry toward “there is no self”
One conclusion sometimes appears at this point:
I looked for myself and could not find an object,
therefore there is no self.
But that conclusion may move faster than the investigation.
Failing to find the knower as an object
does not by itself establish that Knowing is absent.
In fact, the entire investigation is already known.
The uncertainty is known.
The search is known.
Even the thought
I cannot find myself
is known.
Perhaps the difficulty is not that Knowing is absent.
Perhaps we are trying to find it in the same way
we find something known.
Can Knowing be placed in front of itself?
A cup can be examined because the cup appears.
A thought can be examined because the thought appears.
A sensation can be examined because the sensation appears.
Even an image of an observer can be examined
because the image appears.
But perhaps we should be careful about demanding
that the Knowing of appearances must itself appear
as one more thing among them.
That may be like looking through a window
and insisting that the capacity to see must be another object
sitting somewhere in the landscape.
The comparison is imperfect.
But it may reveal the assumption hidden inside the search.
Try it in ordinary life
This investigation does not require a quiet room.
Try it while walking.
A street appears.
Sounds appear.
The body moves.
Does experience contain a little person walking inside the head?
Try it while speaking with someone.
Their face appears.
Their voice is heard.
Your response forms.
Where exactly is the hearer?
Try it when a difficult emotion appears.
There may be a strong feeling of:
This is happening to me.
Without denying the emotion, can the
me to whom it seems to be happening be located?
Nothing needs to disappear
The purpose of this inquiry is not to make the world vanish.
Your body remains.
Your name remains useful.
Memory continues.
Thought continues.
Responsibilities remain.
Even the ordinary feeling of being a person
may continue appearing.
What may begin to change is something quieter.
We become less certain that the one who knows experience
is identical to any particular object appearing within experience.
That is not yet an answer.
But it is not a trivial discovery.
Leave the knower unpictured
We began with a familiar assumption.
Somewhere inside this body is the one who is looking.
We looked for it.
We found sensations.
Thoughts.
Images.
An inner voice.
A sense of location.
Perhaps even an imagined witness.
And each was itself known.
Perhaps the next movement in inquiry
is not to invent something more subtle.
Perhaps it is to remain for a moment without a picture
of the knower.
Whatever you find is known.
What is the Knowing by which it is known?
Do not hurry to answer.
See what the question does when it is allowed to remain alive.
Explore by theme
Consciousness · Self-Inquiry · Awareness · Mind & Thought
Working principle
No authority. No required belief. No promised destination.
Look. Question. Explore.
About the author
Dharmendra Singh
Dharmendra Singh is a writer, independent inquirer and creator
of Probing Consciousness, a social innovation project exploring
Consciousness, Being, self-understanding and human experience
through direct inquiry and engagement with science, philosophy
and contemplative traditions.
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