isn't perception still conceptual?

​Question:  There feels to me something still subtly conceptual about perceiving.  As if, perceiving is still governed by background concepts of, for instance, senses, shapes, stimuli and so forth.  Perhaps I’m referring to the deeply held, invisible beliefs and assumptions about perception and a self that perceives.  I wonder if a further distinction can be made between perceiving and Knowing—the Knowing of the immediate “clear-as-day-right-in-front-of-you-ness.”  Could we say, perhaps, that Knowing is even more bare of conceptualization than perceiving?  (I understand this is all language so it’s more what I’m trying to point to than the words themselves).  

If I may go on a little, is it the case that what we are really engaged in here, is the clarification and unknotting of concepts?  It feels as I spend more time in Knowing, and more time in daily meditation, my conceptualizing is being simplified and slightly adjusted to be less at odds with perceiving, while still being seen as conceptualizing nevertheless.  In this sense, Knowing is left to carry on Knowing as it always has done, perhaps shining through a little more often because of the tidier, le[ss] conflicted mindscape.  So, Enlightenment never happens as an event because it really is the same thing as this Knowing that is already here.  And this Knowing is one in the same as Reality and Mind. 
 
Response to ¶1:  Yes, what you’re referring to as “perceiving” still feels conceptual to you because you’re caught in thinking—invisible beliefs and assumptions, as you put it.  It is best not to try to make further distinctions between perceiving and knowing since this is to continue to rely on the conceptual.  In other words, to say “that [knowing] is even more bare of conceptualization than perceiving” is further conceptualization.  If you do that, you won’t want to stop there.  Sooner or later you’ll want to make an even finer distinction.  There is no end to this unless you just stop and wake up to what you’re doing—or even desiring to do.  You seem to sense this yourself in your parenthetical phrase at the end of your first paragraph.
 
Response to ¶2:  No.  We’re not “really engaged in the clarification and unknotting of concepts” in The Grand Delusion.  That might very well occur if one reads the book, but it was not my main concern while writing the book.  My concern is that we find it exceedingly difficult to relinquish our beliefs.  I’m just trying to help you, the reader, to loosen your grip on what you think—which is imperative if you want to wake up.