Neutral Awareness and the Non-Division of Observer and Observed: A Phenomenological Inquiry into Seeing “As It Is”

This paper investigates the possibility of perceiving reality without psychological distortion and examines the claim that, in awareness, the observer and the observed are not fundamentally different. Distinguishing between structural cognition and conditioned interpretation, it argues that perception is inherently shaped by necessary cognitive processes, yet distorted by identity-based psychological movement. Through phenomenological inquiry grounded in direct experience, the study reveals that the observer is not an independent center but arises within the same field as what is observed. When this division is seen as constructed rather than actual, it dissolves, giving way to a state of neutral awareness—an undivided mode of perception free from conflict, ownership, and distortion. This condition is neither mystical nor theoretical, but an immediate clarity in which reality is encountered without separation.