Power off. When those we love die.

When the Projector fades

Very recently friends and colleagues of mine suffered two significant losses within months of each other both very traumatic, through talks with them both over the last few weeks has opened me to ponder a lot about death: and indeed birth.

From the moment we take our first breath, we begin to die the body grows, cells divide, but in each passing second, we are moving closer to dissolution. In Hindu thought, the child that is born today will not exist tomorrow he will change, evolve, shed parts of himself. The innocent child dies to make way for the knowing adolescent, who in turn must dissolve to create the adult.

We live much of our lives playing roles we never consciously chose. A daughter, a son, a brother, a sister these identities are stitched onto us before we even understand what they mean. We slip into them seamlessly, like actors in a play that began long before we arrived on stage. And so, we perform, unaware that the script was written for us.

But what happens when the projector dies? When the person whose gaze defined us is gone when the mother, the father, the sibling, the lover, the one who shaped our reflection vanishes? The role dissolves. The character disappears. And suddenly, we are standing in the void of our own existence. Who are we, now that no one is watching?

We are mirrors, reflecting what others needed to see. The dutiful son, the rebellious daughter, the caretaker, the forgotten child whatever role was assigned to us, we became it, whether we wanted to or not.

But when death takes the ones who held the mirror, the reflection disappears. There is no one left to project upon us. No one left to transfer their hopes, fears, or expectations.

There comes a moment, a reckoning of sorts, when the reflections in the mirror no longer speak our name. When the projections the stories others placed upon us, the roles we unconsciously played fade like mist in the morning. No more transference, no more countertransference. The endless exchange of borrowed identities dissolves. And then, the silence. A vast emptiness where once there were echoes of expectation, duty, and past wounds bouncing endlessly off the walls of our psyche. Who am I now? When there is nothing left to react to, no external gaze shaping my form, what remains?

 Silence.

A terrifying, exhilarating silence.

No longer a daughter. No longer a son. No longer shaped by their eyes.

We were never just the daughter, the son, the sibling, the lover. These were only temporary garments draped over the unchanging self. When death takes the ones who named us, we are given a rare gift the chance to meet ourselves beyond identity.

For so long, we define ourselves through others. We are mirrors, reflecting and being reflected. A child absorbs the fears and dreams of their parents. A lover becomes both the sculptor and the sculpture in the hands of their beloved. A friend, a colleague, a rival all projections, all masks.

Hindu philosophy speaks of Moksha, liberation from the cycle of rebirth and illusion. But before liberation, there is destruction the burning of the old self, the dissolving of attachments, the painful stripping away of all that was borrowed and false.

This moment when the roles fall away is a kind of Moksha. A moment of absolute freedom. But freedom without definition can feel like being untethered in deep space, weightless, formless, lost, and meaningless

We were so used to being seen that we forgot how to simply be.

And now, in the absence of such projections, we face the raw question.

Who am I when I am not being observed?

So where do we go from here? How do we live when we are no longer playing a part?

Perhaps the answer is not to rebuild another identity not to grasp for a new label to replace the old. Perhaps the answer is to step fully into the unknown.

To live not as someone’s projection, but as pure experience.

To exist, not as a character in someone else’s film, but as the director of our own unfolding story.

The projector is gone. The screen is blank.

You are no longer bound by projection. No longer tethered to past identities. You are not required to be anyone. You are the space between words, the breath before the next thought. You are simply here. Alive. Awake. Untouched.

My question for many years is what if everything we experience is not reality itself, but a hologram a vast projection of consciousness, layered upon itself in infinite reflections? Hindu and Buddhist philosophies, along with modern theories, suggest that the world we see is an illusion (Maya), a holographic display of mind and perception. But within this greater illusion, we construct smaller, personal holograms our own self-identities, relationships, and narratives through projection, transference, and countertransference.

These psychological mechanisms don’t just shape our relationships; they build the very fabric of our personal reality. They are the architects of the illusion, coding our experiences into a self-referential loop, trapping us within the hologram of our own making.

Projection is the act of casting our inner world onto the outer world, mistaking what is within us for what is outside of us. It is like shining a film onto a screen and believing the images are real, forgetting that they originate from within the projector.

In a holographic reality, we do not see things as they are we see them as we are.

A fearful mind sees the world as threatening.

A wounded heart finds betrayal everywhere.

A hopeful soul sees possibility in every shadow.

The universe may be infinite, but we live inside our personal hologram, shaped by what we project onto it.

Projection ensures that we are always encountering ourselves in the world. The unresolved parts of us our fears, desires, and wounds take shape in the people and events around us, reflecting the lessons we have yet to learn.

Just as we project onto others, they project onto us. Countertransference is the process where another’s projections pull us into their hologram, making us act in ways that reinforce their reality.

A person who expects to be rejected may behave in ways that push others away, confirming their fear.

Someone who assumes they are unworthy may unconsciously trigger responses that affirm their belief.

A leader who believes people are incapable may attract followers who submit rather than challenge.

Countertransference locks us into feedback loops, where projection and response reinforce each other. It is two illusions interacting, sustaining each other like mirrors reflecting infinitely into themselves.

If reality itself is a hologram illusion generated by consciousness, then projection, transference, and countertransference are the sub-holograms within it, shaping our personal experience of the greater illusion.

These mechanisms create a fractal of self-referential reality, an infinite loop where we see not truth, but a reflection of our own conditioned mind.

Projection distorts the world, making us see what we expect.

Transference ensures we never leave our past behind.

Countertransference keeps us entangled in collective illusions.

This is how we construct and sustain our version of reality.

To awaken, we must step outside the projection, realizing that the images on the screen are not real, that the actors are only shadows of our own consciousness.

In Hinduism, this is the realization of Maya the grand illusion. In Vedanta, it is the call to awaken from the dream of separateness. In modern quantum theory, it is the understanding that perception shapes reality itself.

When we stop projecting, transferring, and reacting to countertransference, the hologram collapses. The illusion breaks. What remains is consciousness itself, unfiltered, unobstructed, untouched by false perception.

This is the state of Moksha liberation from illusion.

This is the moment when we no longer live inside projections, but inside truth.

And in that moment, we do not just awaken from the personal hologram.

We awaken from the grand hologram itself.