' Projected Identity '...

Nagarjuna wrote:

"The one who experiences perceptions does not exist before, during, or after the experiences of seeing and so forth. Knowing this, all thoughts of an "experiencer"
(perceiver) of perceptions either existing or not existing are over-turned."

Cutting deeper into the illusion of a separate individual self, it can be discovered that the awareness or consciousness that seems to be a valid "perceiver" is not a person or a sentient "being" at all. It’s just an after-thought inferred to be the owner of “just previous” perceptual, emotional and mental events..

When asleep having a dream at night, the self we seem to be, seems to be perceiving people , objects and landscapes. But since "you" have no functional eyes or ears in your dream body, the "perceiving" as seeing and hearing are imaginary projections of colors, shapes and sounds. And those colors, shapes and sounds are occurring in an imaginary, projected identity (self) that seems to exist as a functional witnessing consciousness or person.

Likewise, our daytime consciousness as a self-existing entity and perceiver, is only a projection of subconscious conditioning. There is no actual "person" present having perceptions, anymore than the self in your dreams at night is a real person who can perceive.

Notice when fear or other negative emotions arise, how it’s tacitly assumed that an actual “perceiver” and “experiencer” of those emotional states, exists. But there isn’t one. This is usually the biggest “blind spot” in consciousness; the invisible elephant occupying the middle of the room.

Our eyes can't see and our ears can't hear. Our eyes are passive receivers of photons; the images are "generated" in the occipital cortex and mind from electro-chemical neural signals. Our ears are passive receivers of soundless vibrations. The sounds are generated in the brain and mind. There are no sounds in the universe, only vibrations.

Likewise there is no little independent person in the brain and mind that sits in an inner movie theater and watches the pictures and hears the sounds. Rather the "witness" is an artificial projection of subconscious conditioning that seems to be perceiving the pictures and sounds; the imaginary "me" or "I" that is sensed as “you". That's the "me" that seeks enlightenment because it's generated as a "seeker". The "me" as "you" is an imaginary puppet of subconscious forces with no freedom, no autonomy, no ability to choose or decide; and has no existence except as being imagined. In other words, it’s empty of being itself.

The “perceiver” is projected in one piece combined with “its” mind-generated perceptions perceived. It doesn't pre-exist a perceptual event. Just like your dream character at night doesn't pre-exist it's dream landscapes.

This means there is no hope for redemption, enlightenment or freedom from suffering for the person your mind believes yourself to actually be and for who "you" sense you normally are. How could there be? The one thought, believed and felt as "you", is merely a momentary subconscious mental construction based on past memories and conditioning. The illusion of duality arises as a “perceiver” perceiving that which is perceived. There is only a perceptual event, but with no actual perceiver; the sense of there being a “perceiver” is only the next mental event. There is no one “in there” inhabiting the karmic flow or perceptual show.

The empty, aware space as the knowing context in which the content as the movie, and its imaginary observer as the audience is appearing; is something else again... but it’s not “perceiving” the show, rather it IS the show and the knowing that it’s just an empty, uninhabited show.


-Jackson Peterson