The teaching enquires into the confusion between atma and anatma (that which is not atma). The teaching makes clear what is atma and what is anatma so a person’s doubts are resolved. Achieving clarity is knowing the truth about what one is. One’s self-image - the accumulated colours and habits of the mind, the attitudes and characteristics a person mistakenly takes to be “I” – is composed of universal and particular attributes. Common attributes include general elements such as parents and gender. In terms of a given species, there are common attributes that include health, age, race, size of the body, colour of hair and so on. The common attributes of the mind include alert, dull, restless, calm, sad, loved, and abused. All these go to the person, are attributed to the self, as the sense, “I am (insert any of the attributes).” Attributes other than qualities of mind - such as brother, executive, neighbour, French, waitress and so on – are also superimposed on “I.” An individual attributes both universal and particular attributes to “I.” He makes conclusions with regard to “I”: “I am fat,” “I am sad,” “I am mortal.” Such conclusions are based on facts and are inferential, but an individual does not have to take them to be “I.”

The student will not know himself to be a complete person as long as he sees himself as, as long as he takes himself to be, the attributes he superimposes on “I.” Anything with attributes cannot be the whole because that thing is seen as discrete from all other things. Many of the attributes a person imputes to “I” are undesirable. The individual attempts to manipulate the attributes to make them desirable so that he may be comfortable with himself and with the world. Some of the attributes a person is stuck with he does not want, but inspite of his efforts to modify them, he still has them. Other attributes he wants, but he wants them only when they are positive. A person’s whole life is spent trying to improve and mollify one’s self-image. The individual seeks abiding satisfaction and security in the self-image, where there is none available. If the attributes are intrinsic to atma, to “I,” the individual would have no way of fixing them or getting rid of them. If the attributes are one’s nature, one cannot remove or alter them. By discriminative inquiry, the locus of an attribute comes to be known as other than atma. The inquiry shows that “I” is not the source or the location of any attribute. Atma does not have these or any attributes. If the attributes were to belong to atma, the individual would be totally bound. If they do not belong, if they are anatma, then the person is free. If “I” is not the body, if a person is not his body, then taking oneself to be the body is a mix-up. The individual has superimposed the attributes of the body on atma. This superimposition implies a certain ignorance on the individual’s part.

By his inquiry into atma and anatma, the student wants to see if the attributes are part of atma. If they are, he is stuck; if not, he is stuck with confusion. The student hears that atma is free, whole, all-pervasive, and all-knowing. His doubt about his being that whole, free self is based on his experience or on his exposure to common descriptions of the self. Other teachings and philosophies talk of a free self as does Vedanta. Mystics talk of the experience of oneness. If the student has had that mystical experience, has it left him with a sense of abiding freedom? When the student is angry or jealous or sad, does he feel whole and free? Yet, personal experience confirms the possibility of occasional, unfettered happiness, a freedom from critical self-judgment. The desire to know the nature and source of that freedom arises because happiness and self-criticism both occur. So, there is a doubt about the possibility of one’s being free.

Discriminating between the seer and the seen is a traditional vedantic technique the student can use to resolve this doubt. This is an inquiry dealing with the subject and object. A means of knowledge, a pramana, a mode of proof, a means of arriving at the correct knowledge. Certain means of knowledge have been given to the student, there is a world, bodies, and mind. There are means of knowledge and objects of knowledge. A person uses perception and inference for knowledge of the things in the world and of things in his mind. Sense perception is gained through the sense organs contacting the corresponding sense objects. Witness perception is perception without the sense organs. Emotions, recognizable mental conditions, and moods are not inferred, they are witnessed by the individual. On the other hand, inference uses memory and thinking. From the data gained by sensory and witness perception, the individual uses inference to form rational conclusions about himself and about the world - conclusions which may be right or wrong. Inference based on perception can be improved when the perception is amended by more or better data or by instruments, such as eyeglasses or a microscope, that augment the sense capacities. Psychology is a method for interpreting and intervening with inferential conclusions made as to mental conditions. Through perception and inference, the means of knowledge the individual is given, he comes to know the things that exist.

A fact, for example the sun exists, is established by a means of knowledge. Without a pramana, a means of knowledge, facts about an object cannot be established. Facts are established by means of knowledge. If a means of knowledge is not available for the object, the fact that the sun exists cannot be established. All concepts, for example black holes and quarks, have evidence that show that they are established by a pramana. Before the discovery of the microscope, hands were considered clean, and disease was not carried by microbes but by evil spirits and karma. The eyes and the microscope provided the means to know, to see otherwise invisible objects and to see their capacity to carry disease. Even something an individual presumes or believes in, for example heaven or angels, is established by a means of knowledge, because no one else has any way of dismissing the belief. If a person takes something in good faith, it is because it is established by a means of knowledge. A defective pramana produces knowledge with the same apparent validity as an orderly one. The attributes a person concludes are part of the atma by saying, "I am fat,” or “I am hungry,” or “I am sad,” and so on, are established by means of witness perception, as are memories and knowledge he has or does not have. Is there anything which becomes evident without a means of knowledge?

Only one thing is self-evident, only one fact need not be established by perception or inference, and that is ‘I am’. Whether a person says the phrase or not, ‘I am’ is self-evident. One cannot say, "I do not exist." When one says, "I am," the “I” is the locus of the image he has about himself. This is the self-image, and it is equal to “I” until the truth that is I is known. Perhaps a person says that he may exist and he may not. The one to whom that doubt belongs, the doubt that he may not exist, is the one being talked of here. A person who says that he proves he exists because he sees that he is establishes another I to whom his existence becomes evident. In that case, that other I, the one who sees, is the real meaning of I and the “I” that is addressed here. That which is self-evident is atma. All that which becomes evident to an individual is “not I” - anatma. “I” cannot be other than atma, pure consciousness, that to which all anatma becomes evident. “I,” self, atma, consciousness, is that seer by which all else is seen.

There cannot be and need not be another consciousness for “I” to become evident to. Therefore that “I,” atma, is the real meaning of “I.” That unchanging presence of atma as “I” makes the statement, “I see the flower.” In the statement, “I” is not dependent on “flower” for its existence. That which is perceived presupposes the self-existent “I.” “I” is neither perceived nor inferred. Self is not an object of perception, not a blue light glimpsed in meditation, not a hidden treasure to be gained from the heart. If self were an object of perception, who would be the perceiver? Neither does one perceive self, nor does one infer knowledge of the self, for example, a person cannot say, “I am because I am married." Between two thoughts is a space with no thought, but the individual still exists between the thoughts. The person is not the thought; if he were, he could not know the thought. The person is very much there before, during, and after any individual thought. That I am is not an inferred fact. An individual understands, rather than concludes that what is evident to his perception is not atma and that atma is self-evident. In this way, atma stands alone, and all else is dependent on atma. Only self, atma, pure consciousness, is self-evident. In that way, atma can be said to be the seer, and all else, all that becomes evident to atma, is the seen.