Awareness is not an object

A common assumption is that the observer must be some kind of inner thing hidden inside us. Perhaps a subtle witness sitting in the mind, watching everything else.

But if something can be experienced, noticed, pictured, or described, then it is an object of experience. A sensation is an object. A thought is an object. An inner image is an object. Even the feeling of being a watcher can appear as an object.

So a more careful question is needed: can the true observer be observed in that way? Can awareness itself be placed in front of you and known as one more thing?

The answer is no. Whatever you can notice is already appearing in awareness. It belongs to the known side of experience.

Awareness is different. It is not an object among other objects. It is that because of which all objects are known. When you see a tree, the tree is known. When you notice a thought, the thought is known. In both cases, awareness is present, but not as a thing being looked at.

This is why awareness is easy to miss. We keep trying to find it the same way we find everything else. But it is never an object to be found. It is the ever-present fact because of which finding is possible at all.

Vedanta points here with great precision. What you are is not a hidden object waiting to be discovered. What you are is the awareness in whose presence body, mind, and world are known.

If that is true, a new question begins to matter. Can awareness, which is not an object, really be limited in the way we usually imagine ourselves to be?