The Manifestee

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Starting in my early 20s, I began to wonder about the source of perception and sensation. Why, if neurologically the brain handles everything itself, would a seer behind that brain be necessary? I had difficulty describing this, however, and I tried talking with others about it, to ask them what they thought about it. Unfortunately, everything they said seemed to pollute the concept I was trying to convey. They talked about reincarnation, but in reincarnation other stuff like karma is supposed to go with you (the other stuff polluting it). They mentioned the soul, but the soul contains the basic identity of the person, who they are, what they've done, etc; that concept also polluted what I was trying to describe. I was interested in something absolutely minimal, with all those incidental aspects stripped off, that stands apart from all those things.

I think I better understand how to describe it now. I am talking about the entity to which the contents of consciousness manifest, the core of all experiencing, the manifestee. Without the manifestee, the brain and body would just be a bunch of functions, no matter how elaborate, no matter how much they imitate a person, no matter if even they manifest consciousness. If they do not manifest to a manifestee, then that person is a philosophical zombie. At times, I have wondered about the nature of the manifestee, and how it exists, and what the conditions are for its existence and its becoming attached to a person. How many manifestees are there? Is there only one manifestee, which will eventually experience everything? If so, does the manifestee exist outside of time? If it experiences everything right now, then how is it that this manifestee, that is attached to the person of Erika Butler, is limited to just one person? Are there many manifestees, so that they do not exist outside of time? If that is the case, then where do they come from and can they be destroyed? What can a manifestee attach to other than persons? Can it attach to lower animals? Can it attach to computers? Is the term "contents of conciousness" not minimal enough? How about then we replace that with "things"? Are there some people to whom no manifestee attaches, actual philosophical zombies?

If no manifestees exist and manifestation is all an illusion, then how does the universe exist? How, then, would anything exist if it does not manifest?

As this questioning progresses, the thought that the universe may exist without manifestees terrifies me. I then think about this manifestee. After death, what will happen to this manifestee? There is sheer terror and everything begins to feel woozy and unstable, and my field of vision becomes 2-dimensional, as well as warped and distorted, and there is a wave moving across it causing things to enlarge and then become smaller as it passes through it from left to right; the rectangular boundary of the field of vision becomes distorted, in the same manner as the things inside the visual field become distorted. After a short time, I recover and the terror passes. Things go back to normal.

Has anyone else had experiences thinking of the manifestee?

I don't see how the atoms in the brain can escape the predicable laws of science.

So I've come to the distressful conclusion of "determinism"; humans are just machines.

I never said that they could.

Some of the philosophy of India says we are just observers on a predetermined path
Indian astrology is part of this, if it can predict your future then everything is predetermined.


I dont really believe in karma because bad people often get away with being mean and swindling others etc.

"Determinism is merely a claim that there is no such thing as consciousness".
http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/I ... inism.html

So, I am agreeing with "philosophical zombies".

I think that thinking and then that weird experience were related to the concept of the minimal self:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4219858/

Earlier that day, I had become very irritated with people, with noise, having to hold it until I could go to the bathroom (because I took the wrong train and had to backtrack), etc. On the way home, I began focusing on this manifestee, and it seems to become an urgent matter.

The way the minimal self is supposed to work is that it is supposed to stay in the background of awareness (i.e. it is supposed to stay implicit) and it will organize the field of awareness from your point of view, your perspective, your way of understanding things. Your perception and sensation are organized implicitly by your subjectivity, which lets you know that these are your perceptions, your sensations. The minimal self, this act of organizing perception and sensation and imbuing with "mine-ness" your perception and sensation, is extremely difficult to take as an object of one's focus, as long as it's intact.

In my case, however, the minimal self appears to be unstable. (My concept of the "manifestee" aligns very closely with the concept of the minimal self, except that the concept of the minimal self does not presuppose anything supernatural and does not view the mind as being of a special substance.) This instability causes me to take the minimal self as an object of focus, bringing it to the foreground. Because it's not in the background anymore, it can't work the way it should, which causes it to temporarily collapse. The instability of everything (with no distinction among self, other, and world) and the warping of the visual field (which became like a warping movie screen) suggest that that was happening. This is raw perception and raw sensation with no subjectivity organizing it. There was no self, there was no body, only free-floating perceptions and sensations.

Soon after, "I" came back online and things returned to normal, and I was much less fixated on the "manifestee".