Mind is the Framework for Perception
Subjectivity is often defined as a state of awareness. But subjectivity is not a state of mind.
Mental states appear within subjectivity, and subjectivity, used here synonymously with consciousness and awareness, is that which knows mental states. In other words, subjectivity is not an experience but the potential for experience. This distinction is important to understand. As the fundamental reality, subjectivity is that by which everything is known.
However, in order to know the world, subjectivity requires a perceptual faculty through which to perceive. Subjectivity without perception is like an empty mirror, capable of reflecting anything but having no perceptual content of its own. So from the vantage point of subjectivity, prior to the mind, there are no perceptions, no objects in awareness, no representations. Therefore, there is no experience.* There is only subjectivity’s infinite potential, the unmanifest ground of being.
The representations within the mind, the “this” and “that,” come into being through the processes of thinking and perceiving. When we look at a tree, light waves interact with our sensory apparatus. This raw sensory data is then filtered through the mind, which creates an image of the tree. The tree seems to be separate from ourselves and from other objects, but the tree itself is not the fundamental reality. The fundamental reality is the subjectivity in which it appears. This is a key step in understanding.
(The next step in understanding is to allow for the possibility that subjectivity is universal, that your consciousness and my consciousness are not two separate consciousness. Rather, private inner experiences are an activity of the mind, a localized limitation within pure subjectivity. So while I may not have access to your mental state, and you may not have access to mine, that which knows mental states is the source of both. Subjectivity is the substance, so to speak, from which all perceptions are made.)
By recognizing the mind’s role in perception, we have the opportunity to see beyond surface appearances to the infinite source of all that is. ⬚