The egoic "I" is a construct of mental objects, self-reflections, ideas, frameworks, etc. It is the "idea" me.
But you are aware that you can see that as an observer, correct? And if you are seeing this egoic "I", the mental construct "I", then you are not that "I" because who is it seeing it then? "You" exist outside of it, and are looking at it and saying "this is not me". Yet you are. Yet you exist and observe and see. Who is that "I" seeing then, if it's not the "I" we have in mind when we think "this is me"?
In other words, you are not who you think you are. You still exist and know and see, even when you do not identify with that bundle that serves as the set of eyes you normally see through, the filters or lens our social and cultural contextual world.
I very much disagree we get lost in mystical states. We are more present and self-aware than at any other time. What happens is we drop off the false self, the identification with our thoughts and ideas. We awaken. It is a state of the superconscious mind, not a stupor or delirium. You are there the entire time, fully there, fully awake, but the I that is there is the Seer, not the false self, the small self of mental ideas of self. It is stripping off that cloak as it were, and there is no exclusive identification with those as the true I, anymore than awareness of your body is an exclusive identification. The center of gravity shifts above the ego self, just as the ego self shifts the center of gravity above exclusive body self identification.
I would agree the mind the seat of Awareness, but a prisoner to subjectivity? No. At the point of pure Awareness, divisions of subject and object do not exist.
