If you don't know how cognitive dissonance 'operates', if you don't know how cognitive behaviour affects your reality how do you know you are beyond it? If you don't understand the frameworks that constructs your reality - which are more than those of the mind - how can you tell if you are no longer influenced by them? Not understanding cognitive behaviour then telling yourself you are over it is destructive cognitive behaviour. It's on a par with making up a definition of the ego then tyrying to convince others you don't have one. With respect JASG, I've heard things like this before from Spiritual people who are only aware of the tip of the iceberg. Unless you are conscious of what you are not conscious of then there are things that create your reality that are beyond your ken. That much I do know because I've been there.

You are the source of your experiences, they are not apart from you. You created them so what you are witnessing are your own creations. Your experiences are a response to what's going on around you, and since you used the example of driving and music, what you're responding to there is the music, the car, the road you're driving on, the motion...... The experiencer and the experienced is the differentiated consciousness of the ego/Ahamkara, and within Ahamkara your experiences are 'invented things' because they are created by your response to outside influences. If you're going to use na-eti na-eti/neti-neti then you should take that into the equation too.

The Eightfold Path needs to come in here too, because without Right Thinking (AKA constructive cognitive behaviour) neti-neti is just the getting rid of what what doesn't suit you, the stuff that your cognitive dissonance filters through but should be a part of your thinking process anyway.

Where does your experiences come from and what creates them? What happens when there is nothing to experience?

The ego/Ahamkara is differentiated consciousness and that's what decides what is 'I' or is not 'I', it is also the ego/Ahamkara that superimposes onto the self - as both the religion/philosophy and psychology will tell you. That's how duality is created. The self is undifferentiated consciousness and in undifferentiated consciousness there is no distinction between the experiencer and the experienced - and you also make the unconscious conscious. The self doesn't superimpose on the Atman because the self IS Atman. The ego/Ahamkara is not conscious of the unconscious that the undifferentiated conscious of the self is conscious of. That's the big difference. If you are not conscious of the unconscious then you are operating in the differentiated conscious of the ego/Ahamkara - if you think that what you are conscious of is all that there is to be conscious of. neti-neti also means getting out of your own way.

There is a knowing beyond knowing that goes beyond the mind, beyond intuition and beyond conviction. There is no question of it being effable or ineffable, there is no question of it being eternal or not. It just IS, 'you' just ARE and the knowing is no longer knowing, it's the knowing of the knowing that you ARE.

Nassim Haramein said it best - "Spirituality is the "What?" and science is the "How?" but I'd add psychology as the framework for the "How?" How we 'process' is just as important as what we process - and like it or not we do process it. He also said that we are in a consciousness loop with the Universe, and that's observable and can be reproduced. I've often wondered if God was an expert in quantum mechanics but then if you're God then how could you not be? Maybe the knowing beyond knowing is the quantum tubules in our noggins chuntering away at full power.

"If you are Spiritual you are God playing at being not-God."
Alan Watts

I'm not an Alan Watts geek but that one stuck in my mind for a few reasons. Thing is, when there is nothing to be conscious of consciousness isn't very much after all. It's like being in a dark room with no floors, no ceiling, no walls and only your consciousness to be conscious of - and that's not so easy. Maybe it's what God experienced before he had the biggest bang in the Universe.