[NOTE: Thank you to Rajeev and Mac for your support.]
FROM A SITE VISITOR: No prior Me-ness? Surely there was something?
F.: In order for the ultimate understanding to happen, however, it is not only necessary to understand that there was no "you" or "You" prior to manifestation and that there will be no "you" or "You" post-manifestation;
it is also necessary to know that there is no "you" or "You" now. The composite unity involves no "Me-ness," no "You-ness," no "Them-ness." Such personalized, individualized identities - no matter how noble they seem - would have to be dualistic by their very subject-object nature, the belief in those concepts allowing only lip service to be given to the unicity ... to truly understanding the Oneness.
Yes, the Direct Path pointers that guide seekers along the later steps of the seven-step "journey" from identification with the false "I" to abidance as the Absolute most assuredly discuss "You-ness" / the True Self / the Pure Witnessing Consciousness.
Thorns all, however, to be discarded at the level of the final understanding. So many take their favorite teaching method and its teachings as the final step, adopting a religious or spiritual persona and fixating in that role for the remainder of the manifestation ... doing spiritual stuff and eating spiritual stuff and wearing spiritual stuff and - in all of their spiritual doingness - living in what they take to be a most non-natural, supernatural, "elevated," "higher" (and, yes, "separate and different") manner.
Here, the Direct Path Method can be considered the vehicle by which the "journey" happens along the "path" and the Nisarga Yoga can be considered the map; however, neither is the destination. The destination is nisarga (natural) living.
It has been witnessed that far too often, "The Spiritual Ones" (who are full of Self) feel separate and different from "the non-spiritual ones" who are full of self (or selves). Yet the ego-state of "The Spiritual One Full of Self" exhibits as much arrogance - and often more - than those persons who are trapped in their own assumed ego-states and who are embroiled in self.
How to be free of the persona that is Full of Self as well as the personas that are full of self? How to be free of belief in a "Prior Me," a "Present Me," and a "post-manifestation Me"? Simple: understand the stages that are involved.
Though the stages have been discussed time and again on this site, many in recently-received e-mails have requested that the series of shifts be delineated exactly because some seem contradictory to others. At some point, they are. They have been offered in the step-wise fashion required for the shifts to occur (each movement to the next understanding predicated on previous shifts that must happen in as exact an order as the seven steps to Realization).
Thus, the stages of the shifts shall be delineated exactly in order as requested.
Understand first that these stages lay out the shifts involved in the movement from the no perception, no you, no-perceiver state to the misperceiving state to the perception state to the clarity and understanding state to the Final understanding state. The stages - and the ever-continuing cycles - unfold in this manner:
I.
The no-you state, the you-are-not state, the no-beingness and no non-beingness state
II.
The manifested consciousness state, the "I am" state
III.
The "I am this" and "I am that" state
IV.
The "I am present but no longer believe that I am limited to the formerly-assumed 'this' or a 'that' " state
V.
Though I do not believe that I am "this" or "that," I do believe that I am Something - and even "Something Special" - that shall be forever
(So all beliefs have not yet been discarded)
VI.
"I am Presence"
(That understanding allows for at least some distance to manifest between the "I" and the notions of "materiality and physicality")
VII.
"Presence is"
(That understanding takes the "I" out of the picture completely)
VIII.
"No presence is"
(That removes from the picture the concepts of the limited "Is-ness," the "Am-ness," the "Beingness," and even the "Non-Beingness")
IX.
"I am nothing"
(The "wisdom manifested" state as the pointer "Wisdom is knowing that I am nothing" is understood)
X.
"There is no one to be wise, to know, to understand" state
XI.
The "Neti-neti" state
XII.
The "I am the Absolute Awareness with no aware-of-ness" state
XIII.
The "Rather than, 'I am nothing,' the Nothingness is" state
XIV.
Then, the "nothing is" state, including nothing and no one to believe, conceptualize, learn, perceive, know, understand, do, or assume anything
XV.
The Unmanifestation stage
XVI.
The cycle is complete with there once again being the no-you state, the you-are-not state, the no-beingness state, the no non-beingness state
The I Am-ness allowed for only the most limited degrees of understanding, necessarily based as the beingness is in a sense of something existing that could have multiple identities (or one "Super Identity"). Because of programming, conditioning, acculturation and domestication, it is not possible to leap from "I am" to "Void-ness." Shifting by stages is required until the limited knows that which is limitless.
