Originally posted by simpo_:

Hi Beautiful951,
Firstly, I will like to state that I am still learning so can only share from my own opinion. Please read with a pint of salt.
Emptiness is not a belief but an insight that can be borne from experience. It is better to experience it for oneself as before and after the insight, it can still be 'unbelievable' for the mind. Emptiness is quite hard to experience and usually the realisation of no-self comes before emptiness.
As mentioned, no-self will be easier to realise. I will describe the insight of  no-self/egolessness generally here. When doing insight meditation one may realise that the sensory experiences (including mental formation/thinking) are arising and passing away independently of one another. That is, seeing is seeing, hearing is hearing, thinking is thinking and they are all flowing independently. With that observation, one will realise that there is no self holding all these sensory experiences together.  Self that we originally assumed, is just these sensory experiences arising and passing away and the attention focusing on them.
As for emptiness, it requires a deeper penetration into consciousness. Emptiness reveals that everything is not physical and solid at all... but are 'holographically united'. There is no way to accurately describe it as it is not the way a mind unaware to it will think. Like the first insight of no-self, emptiness is a paradigm shift... towards ever clearer seeing of the truth of Reality.
Please understand that seeing emptiness is not end of story. At least, not for my case. I am currently working on the remaining defilements. This doesn't meant that i will need to forcefully remove them. Forceful willing will only result in suppression. Rather, the 'method' is to be aware of and be equanimous to whatever that is arising in order for them to pass away naturally. This 'aware of' is not as easy as it sounds.
Regards

Note by Soh:

The article above was written by me shortly after my initial realization of Anatta/Anatman (No Self) in October 2010. Below are some additional insights from Thusness/John Tan that can further enrich the experiential insight presented above:

(Taken from Thusness's Conversations Between 2004 to 2012 https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2019/01/thusnesss-conversation-between-2004-to.html)

Thusness

541 posts since Dec '04

17 Oct `10, 12:42PM

Hi AEN,

Just managed to scan through the past few posts you wrote. They are quite insightful. In summary you are beginning to experience the ‘taste’ you described in the “certainty of being” of the formless presence in transient phenomena. That is what I meant by bringing ‘this’ from the background (formlessness) to the foreground (forms). It is also what I meant by the ‘fabric and texture of Awareness’ in forms. Below are some of the points that came to mind after reading them. I will just jot down some of them for sharing purposes.

1. One Taste

2. You mentioned about ‘one taste’ but do take note that what you are experiencing is just the ‘same taste’ of luminous essence, not the ‘same taste’ in Emptiness nature. I use the term ‘essence’ differently from Dzogchen. In Dzogchen, luminosity is the ‘nature’ and Emptiness is the ‘essence’. As I see Emptiness as the absence of an essence in whatever arises, I do not feel appropriate expressing the Dzogchen way.

3. “Obvious and direct…yet always missed!”

4. I like how you expressed it, it is quite apt. However I sense that you may have underestimated the power and full meaning of ‘deeply rooted in consciousness’. If we are unaware of the impact, we will not realize what is meant by ‘latent tendencies’. Try imagining ‘someone’ standing right in front of you yet you are unable to see him because you are under a magical spell that is planted in the deep most of your consciousness. If you are unaware of the latent deep, whatever realized is merely a surface understanding. Day in day out, these tendencies are always in action. You may want to ask yourself will the latent deep find its way up even in a PCE mode?

5. Feels Universe, Pure Consciousness, Pure Aggregates

“You are not just the formless presence/knower/consciousness... you are all forms, you are the universe univers-ing, you are whatever is arising moment to moment as a complete non-dual experience in itself... There is no background awareness and foreground phenomena happening in awareness... there is simply foreground pure consciousness always, be it the pure existence experienced in a formless mode (e.g. I AM, aka the 'thought realm' as Thusness puts it), or in all forms... the making of a non-dual experience into a background is simply trying to capture and reify a moment of pure consciousness.”

I remember writing this to Simpo few years ago in his forum. It is related to his experience of ‘feeling light and weightless’. This also relates to mind-body drop and your dream about ‘transparency’. Being ‘light, weightless and transparent’ is the result of dissolving the body-construct. It is quite an obvious contrast moving from ‘Self/self’ to no-self. Prior to what you have written you should also experience this, otherwise you are being too focused on being ‘brilliance and luminous’ of the 'actuality'.

On the othe hand, feeling ‘universe’ has to do with the deconstruction of ‘identity’ and ‘personality’. You have to have clearer insight of what ‘deconstructions’ leads to what experience.

The text in bold is quite well expressed but knows the dependent originated nature of consciousness. There is the experience of primordial purity of the aggregates and 18 dhatus but there is no 'a substratum background' that is called 'pure consciousness'. The sense of self is dissolved and is replaced by a sense of inter-penertration.

. 4. No agent and the intensity of luminosity

In the seen, there is just the seen! It is completely non-dual... there is no 'the seen + a perceiver here seeing the seen'.... The seen is precisely the seeing! There is not two or three things: seer, seeing, and the seen. That split is entirely conceptual (though taken to be reality)...

Well expressed! But in the subsequent paragraph, you said,

“All the bullshit concepts, constructs and images of an 'aliveness', a 'hearing', a 'seeing', an 'awareness' simply dissolves in the direct experiencing of whatever arises... just 'seeing is seeing, hearing is hearing, thinking is thinking and they are all flowing independently', with 'no self holding all these sensory experiences together'”

In the article on http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2009/03/on-anatta-emptiness-and-spontaneous.html, I mentioned about the 2 stanza. There is the no-agent aspect and there is the intensity of luminosity aspect. I find that your present experience is still centered on the luminosity aspect. You are directly experiencing seamlessness of any happening where no clear line of demarcation can be drawn between the subject-object split. You realized the boundary is purely illusionary and is clear about the cause that resulted in such division but still, that is not the ‘essence’ of an experiential insight of anatta in my opinion. There is a difference in saying "there is no split between thinking and thinker, the thinking itself is 'me'" and "there is thinking, no thinker". You must be aware that having immediate and direct experience but with dualistic framework intact and complete replacement of the dualistic framework entirely with DO (dependent origination) yields very different experiential insight; you may want to investigate further and move from "they are all flowing independently" to "manifesting in seamless inter-dependencies."

1. "How am I experiencing the moment of being alive?" (HAIETMOBA)

But.... if you contemplate on "How am I experiencing the moment of being alive?", or, "How am I experiencing the moment of hearing?", or "How am I experiencing the moment of seeing?" or "How am I experiencing the moment of being aware?"

"How am I experiencing the moment of being alive?" (HAIETMOBA) is the key question of the AF. I will not comment on it but how does it differ from the question “Without using any symbols of ‘I’, how is ‘I’ experienced?” Also how it differs from the question “Who am I?” -- the question that led you to the realization of “I AM”.

As you get clearer and clearer where exactly are all these questions leading you and the mode of perception that are involved in I AM realization and PCEs, you will have to asked yourself sincerely is this the ultimate mode of perception that will lead you towards genuine freedom. Is being lockup permanently in PCE the way towards liberation and how it differs from seeking permanent uninterrupted abiding in “I AMness”.

Edited by Thusness 17 Oct `10, 4:35PM