Inquiry · “You Are Not Your Thoughts”
Where Is the Presence Located?
To verify in direct experience whether the awareness that knows your thoughts and sensations is itself a localized object — and to discover experientially that it cannot be found as a thing in a location.
Sky of Presence in 5 lines: Sit. Turn attention from your thoughts to the awareness that knows them. Ask: where is this Presence located? When an answer comes (“head,” “chest”), notice that answer is itself a sensation — an object. Then ask: where is the awareness to which even that appears? Keep checking your direct experience until you see, not believe, that the knowing cannot be found as a located thing. Rest there.
What it is
Francis Lucille — a French former physicist (École Polytechnique), close disciple of Jean Klein, and a teacher in the Atmananda Krishna Menon direct-path stream of Advaita — teaches a precise self-inquiry that turns attention away from the contents of experience and back toward the awareness that knows them, then asks, with the rigour of a physicist checking a measurement, where that awareness is located.
The practice does not aim at belief; it aims at direct verification. You repeatedly examine your own experience to see whether the “Presence” that is aware of your thoughts can be found as a localized object — and Lucille’s claim is that, checked honestly, it never can. He calls one form of it the “Sky of Presence.”
The Method
From Lucille’s guided “Sky of Presence” meditation and his dialogue method, the steps run:
- Settle and turn attention toward the knower. Sit quietly. Then, as Lucille instructs: “Turn your attention towards the Presence in you, which is aware of these words.” Instead of attending to thoughts, sounds, or sensations, attend to that which is aware of them.
- Ask the locating question. Pose it precisely: “Where is this Presence, which is aware of these words and these thoughts, located?” Hold the question open — do not answer from memory or theory.
- Catch the first answer — and notice it is itself an object. A felt answer usually arises (“in my head,” “behind my eyes,” “in my chest”). Lucille has you notice that this answer is itself a feeling, a sensation — an object appearing to awareness, located somewhere in the body-image.
- Step back one level. Now ask the deeper question: “Where is the Presence, to which that localized sensation appears, located?” The sensation of location is a known thing; the knowing of it is not the same as the thing known. Does a localized sensation prove that the awareness it appears to is localized?
- Verify repeatedly — don’t conclude, look. Lucille stresses checking direct experience again and again until the answer is a conviction born of seeing, not a borrowed idea. Each time the mind offers a location, examine whether that location is the awareness itself or merely another object appearing within it.
- Rest as the finding. Practitioners typically arrive at the experiential recognition that the Presence cannot be located as a thing — it has no edge, no place, no inside or outside. Lucille points to this as awareness being “non-local,” like a sky in which thoughts and sensations appear and pass. Rest there, as that open knowing, without grasping it as one more object. (Sourcing note: the quoted instructions are from Lucille’s transcribed “Sky of Presence” guided meditation; the multi-level “where is the Presence to which this appears located?” move is his characteristic dialogue method. Faithful paraphrase; short quotes only.)
Source & Lineage
Francis Lucille (b. 1944) studied mathematics and physics at the École Polytechnique and worked on missile testing before Krishnamurti’s writings launched his search.
For over twenty years he was a friend and disciple of Jean Klein, who carried the lineage of Atmananda Krishna Menon (Nantyat Krishna Menon) and his Atma Darshan / Atma Nirvriti direct-path inquiry.
Lucille’s books Eternity Now and The Perfume of Silence present this method in dialogue form; Rupert Spira is his best-known student and transmits a near-identical inquiry. → see lineage entries for Lucille, Jean Klein, Atmananda, and Spira in.
The Traditions' versions
Ramana Maharshi — atma vichara (“Who am I? / Whence does the ‘I’ arise?”) — the parent self-inquiry; Lucille’s version sharpens the locating question.
- Atmananda Krishna Menon — direct-path inquiry — the immediate source: distinguishing the witnessing consciousness from the witnessed.
- Rupert Spira — “the awareness of being aware” — the same manoeuvre, his signature phrasing.
- Douglas Harding — “Headless Way” / pointing experiments — locating the looker and finding no thing there; structurally very close.
- Dzogchen / Mahamudra — recognising rigpa / the nature of mind — pointing-out that the knowing is itself open and placeless.
- The Work of Byron Katie / general witness practices — turning to the observer rather than the observed.
Common refinements
Answering from theory. The whole value is in looking, not reciting “awareness is everywhere.” If you already “know” the answer, you’ve stopped practising.
- Trying to see awareness as an object. You will never catch the seer as a seen thing — that frustration is the lesson, not a failure.
- Forcing or straining attention. The turn is a relaxation toward the knowing, not a muscular effort. Strain reintroduces the contracted self.
- Treating the open “sky” as a new possession. The moment you grab it (“I’ve got it”), it becomes an object again. Let it be unowned.
- Rushing. Lucille’s emphasis on repeated verification matters — one glimpse rarely settles into conviction.