Is Awareness Same As Perception?

What I am hearing in this conversation is that you are saying that “When we use the term ‘Awareness’ and sometimes use the term ‘Perception’ you are saying that both are the same”.

So this we can explore a little bit. So perception happens when there is a sense of Being or there is a waking state. In the sleep state, there is no perception. Now what happens is that perception is dependent on the quality, on a very primal quality that we call ‘attention’ and attention operates only in the waking state. So you are hearing these words, now suppose another plane came and you are hearing the sound of the plane also and two other people started talking in the Sangha; You will run out of attention and the most people when they run out of attention they start to get a bit irritated that ‘I am not able to focus.’ So perception is a functioning of this attention. But perception is limited because attention is limited. That which is aware of the perception that is aware of the movement of attention itself is not limited in any way. We cannot ever say we ran out of Awareness. Although our perception may be limited or our attention may be limited. So, this Awareness is the constant, independent of whether there is sleep state, waking state, in fact, it is because of this Awareness we are able to report that ‘I woke up’. Because otherwise, in our attention there is only phenomenal. Even if that phenomenon is (very rightly like you said very beautifully), even that a phenomenon is like a black space but sleep is not to go into a black space. So, many have this idea that in sleep what happens is that for the six hours or eight hours ‘I am just perceiving some black empty space’ which is not true. It is because we… that could be the last phenomenal experience and the first phenomenal experience,we think that that is constant throughout. But sleep is not a dark empty space. It is empty of all phenomena. So there is no perception happening there and yet you are Aware of this non-perception.

Of attention? Yes, we can say like that. You can say switching off of Being-ness itself which gives light to this attention. And waking state and the farthest this attention can go back to is the sense of Being. I can keep my attention on my Being, on my Presence. Go prior to that which leads the dissolution or the switching off attention as you called it.