Acharya Prashant addresses the question, "Who am I?" by using a series of analogies. He explains that just as the tip of a finger can touch anything but cannot touch itself, and the eye can see the entire world but cannot see itself, the self cannot be an object of its own perception. Even when looking in a mirror, one only sees the outer form of the eye, not the faculty of seeing itself. This illustrates a fundamental principle: whatever you can see, hear, touch, or even think about, is not you. The seer (drashta) and the seen (drishya) must be separate entities; they can never be one. Applying this principle, he systematically negates common identifications. You are not the external world, your clothes, your body, or even your mind, because you can observe all of these. You can witness the events happening in your body, like anger or blushing, which proves you are separate from the body. Similarly, you can observe your own thoughts, which means you are the observer of the mind, not the mind itself. This process of elimination leads to the conclusion that you are not any of the things you perceive or conceive. When all these identifications are removed, what remains is a void, an emptiness, which the mind finds difficult to accept. Acharya Prashant then offers a positive definition: you are the seer itself, the power of knowing, the intelligence or consciousness that understands everything else. However, he points out that our lives are a contradiction. We live based on false identities derived from the body and mind, giving no space to our true nature as consciousness. Our lives are spent being influenced by things we are not, which is a futile existence. The real 'I'—the intelligence—is suppressed, while the false identities are given prominence. Fundamentally, you are an intelligent being, and if you do not live in that intelligence, life is wasted, no different from that of an animal.