Right now there’s a sense you have that I am reading these words. Then there’s the sense that I am looking around. Then a sense that I am experiencing tiredness or boredom. Then a feeling that I am getting hungry.

These experiences–reading, looking, feeling tired or bored, getting hungry, and so on–come and go, come and go, yet there seems to be a limited, localized, continuous I that’s “behind” all of them. In other words, when reading stops, I don’t perish. Indeed, when any objective experience or activity ends, I don’t end.

This curious fact concerning the independence of I from all experiences is our first clue. It enables us to aside all contingent experiences–all perceptions, all sensations, all thoughts, feelings, and desires–since quite clearly none of these in any way define me. Instead, I can now start to inquire by asking myself: “All right then: who is this seemingly continuous, localized, and limited I?”

At this point, I am to closely focus on this sense of I alone. What is it, really? I must be very quiet, my attention on this feeling of I alone must be increasingly intense, and I must be extremely patient. What do I find?