Hi John Kelly, welcome. I very much wanted Thusness to reply you
but unfortunately he seldom reads or replies messages nowadays and
does not want to give the impression of being a teacher.
I will try to reply... with my limited knowledge and
experience.
Stage 1 is the experience of I AM, When one realizes I AM,
one feels an incredible certainty of Being. Being in this case
refers to Awareness, and the practitioner is certain of Awareness.
Things are happening and there is awareness of these things.
Awareness is a constant. It underlies experience. It is with the
person throughout all experiences, and it is the source from which
phenomena arise. A person at I AM identifies themselves as
awareness.
Yes. It is just Awareness in one of the eighteen dhatus - pure
mind realm. As Thusness pointed out,
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.sg/2007/03/mistaken-reality-of-amness.html
When consciousness experiences the pure sense
of “I AM”, overwhelmed by the transcendental thoughtless moment of
Beingness, consciousness clings to that experience as its purest
identity. By doing so, it subtly creates a ‘watcher’ and fails to
see that the ‘Pure Sense of Existence’ is nothing but an aspect of
pure consciousness relating to the thought realm. This in turn
serves as the karmic condition that prevents the experience of pure
consciousness that arises from other sense-objects. Extending it to
the other senses, there is hearing without a hearer and seeing
without a seer -- the experience of Pure Sound-Consciousness is
radically different from Pure Sight-Consciousness. Sincerely, if we
are able to give up ‘I’ and replaces it with “Emptiness Nature”,
Consciousness is experienced as non-local. No one state is purer
than the other. All is just One Taste, the manifold of
Presence.
Questions about Stage 1+2: Does the experience of I AM
(Stage 1 or 2) impact how one perceives non-mental phenomena? For
example, are objects brighter, clearer or more luminous? Does the
mind feel clearer or more spacious?
Yes, intense luminosity is experienced. Space-like pure presence
is experienced. In Stage 2, there can be passing glimpses of
non-dual experience (with everything) but one returns to the
Subject, the background, the pure identity. There is no insight
into non-dual or anatta. There is also the experience of
impersonality, so the Self becomes infinite and impersonal,
conceived as a universal source even. One feels like one is being
lived or expressed by this common source. Despite having such
experiences, the view one holds is still dualistic (subject/object
duality) and inherent (an inherently existing Self)
As Thusness wrote in March 2005:
Hi LongChen,
The blankness is a form of absorption where the knowing faculty of
consciousness is temporarily suspended. Complete clarity and
Presence without a 'Self' is more crucial. 
The 'Self' that is created over countless lives of attachment
cannot be underestimated.
We are in almost helpless bondage that our perceptions are shaped
and held in a sort
of hypnosis that we feel, think, experience and deduced our
understandings from the
perspective of an 'I'. Thus analytical understanding derived from
the glimpse of
the Pure Presence Reality will very quickly get distorted.
When Presence is experienced with the six sense doors shut,
Presence is experienced as a form of "I AMness".
When Presence is experience with six sense doors widely open,
Presence is experienced as a form of "I AM All".
However neither experience tells us the TRUE NATURE of Pure
Presence.
Even the very sense of Realness, of Existence, of Life and
Vividness is so strong,
due to the sense of 'I' there will be a sense of location
somewhere,
and the true face of Pure Presence remains hidden.
The mind is just not used to knowing the absolutely nothing,
non-local,
nowhere to be found yet pure, brillance bright and ever
luminious.
It will locate, it will find, it will grasp.
There must come a time for the mind to let go of itself
completely.
If we are bold enough to let go and enter into the world that is
wordless,
labelless and thoughtless, and if this is substained, wisdom and
insight will arise.
This wisdom is the extraordinary Clarity, Vividness and Realness,
wholeness whole.
It is crystal clear filling all spaces and places.
Both in silence and in noise, in blankness and somethingness.
Those that experience the Pure Presence will appreciate this
crystal clear reality.
This re-visting of Pure Presence will be thorough and entire.
There will be no doubt.
Buddhism Emptiness is deep and profound. Do go into it.
Happy Journey
Unclear about this stage. If I understand correctly, it is also
more of a state than a stage. It seems that one moves beyond the
state of I AM and moves to a point of identification with not the I
AM itself, but the knower of the I AM, or the nothingness, that
precedes the I AM. It is that which is not contingent on
manifestation. Awareness and Manifestation rely on one another, but
nothingness doesn't rely on anything.
It is a samadhi state. There are clearer descriptions in
https://www.box.com/s/f86a921dfa62ccd0ca7b
In stage 4, one realizes that things do not arise out of
some Absolute Source. In the absence of an absolute, the
subject-object split starts to crumble, and one's sense of identity
and sense of self changes as well. Selfing type phenomena still
arise, however, they are not relegated a higher status relative to
other phenomena.
In Stage 4, one still has not overcome the idea of a Source, but
it is now seen that consciousness/source is non-dual - without
subject/object division, so completely inseparable from all
manifestation. But it is not the realization of no agent or no
subject.
It is the 'substantial nonduality' of
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.sg/2011/08/substantial-and-insubstantial-non.html
Is MCTB 4th path equivalent to Stage 4? Are there other
practices besides noting that lead directly to Stage 4? What is the
experience of stage 4 characterized by: sensory clarity,
brightness, a feeling of spaciousness?
MCTB 4th path is beyond stage 4, it is one aspect of Stage 5 but
not its entirety. For example, it is skewed to Thusness's first
stanza of anatta, but missing the second stanza. While AF (also
beyond stage 4) is about the second stanza of anatta, but
overlooking the first stanza. (Stanzas:
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2009/03/on-anatta-emptiness-and-spontaneous.html)
My comments on AF: http://www.box.net/shared/sbyi64jrms
Practices that lead to Stage 4 include contemplating on the 2nd
stanza, Advaita contemplations like Greg Goode's 'Direct Path',
challenging the sense of inside/outside, subject/object,
objectivity, investigating the seamlessness of awareness and
manifestation (where does awareness end and manifestation begin)
etc.
Stage 4 is characterized by the dissolution of subject/object
division into an undivided luminosity by the realization of no
subject/object division, there is total intimacy, sensory clarity,
brightness, feeling of spaciousnessness altogether but most
important factor is there is no more observer-observed dichotomy -
that dichotomy is seen through to be delusional. No longer is
Awareness seen as an eternal Witness behind thoughts and phenomena,
but the Witness-witnessed has collapsed into one seeing, one
awareness.
Questions about Stage 5: If one has realized
stage 4, what is the best method for proceeding onto the
realization of Anatta? Is how one proceeds affected by whether one
has also had I AM realizations?
Contemplating on bahiya sutta, contemplating on Thusness's
stanza, etc.
One who realizes anatta will have accessed both stanzas of
anatta somewhat but there is a skewing depending on his conditions.
One who had I AM realization previously, the second stanza becomes
very apparent while one progresses by looking into first stanza and
then emptiness. One who does not have I AM realization and realizes
anatta through vipassana/etc, the first stanza becomes very
apparent first while the second stanza becomes more apparent as a
later progression.
Questions about Stage 6: Is the realization of emptiness the
same as the realization of dependent origination?
Yes, but there are two aspects. Realizing d.o./emptiness as the
empty, illusory nature of all appearances, and having realized D.O.
leading to the experience of total exertion (Maha). Both are
important.
This issue is discussed in
http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.sg/2011/03/realization-experience-and-right-view.html
Questions about Stage 7: Is this the point when maha is
realized?
Maha is related to stage 6.
Thusness: "Exertion
is after the realization of seamless interdependence, the
practitioner feels the universe giving its best to make this moment
possible. Read the dogen of rolling the boat."
Dogen: "Birth is just like riding in a boat. You raise the sails,
row with the oar, and steer. Although you row, the boat gives you a
ride, and without the boat you couldn't ride. But you ride in the
boat and your riding makes the boat what it is… When you ride in a
boat, your body and mind and the environs together are the
undivided activity of the boat. The entire earth and the entire sky
are both the undivided activity of the boat."
"With going the boundless sky goes, with coming the entire earth
comes. This is everyday mind."
Thomas Cleary: "The passage from the Blue Cliff Record alludes to
the Kegon doctrine that phenomena do not exist individually but
interdependently, that the manifold depends on the unit and the
unit on the manifold. A refinement of this principle in Kegon
philosophy is called the mystery of principal and satellites: this
means that every element in a conditional nexus can be looked upon
as the hub, or "principal," whereupon all the other elements become
the cooperative conditions, or "satellites"-hence all elements are
at once "principal" and "satellite" to all other elements. It is
the mutuality, the complementarity, of the elements which makes
them functionally what they are. Dogen presents this idea by
likening life to riding in a boat-one is naught without the boat,
yet it is one's riding in it that makes it in effect a "boat."
Furthermore, "the boat is the world-even the sky, the water, and
the shore are circumstances of the boat. . . . The whole earth and
all of space are workings of the boat." "