Reading through Suzanne Segal's article again today, I think
Suzanne Segal wrote a clear map in her book of her journey from I
AM, then refining that experience through the impersonality aspect
(this aspect wasn't that clear to me the last time I read her
article so didn't make as much of an impression), then moving to
the Non Dual stage. (though not yet at the Anatta stage of
realisation) What's unique (well not exactly unique, as all of us
*will* go through this to one degree or another) is her very strong
(stronger than others I believe) experience of the Dark Night of
the Soul to put it in Christian contemplative words or the Dukkha
Nanas in Buddhist terminology. Also, she seems to be mistaken that
her experience of impersonality is the same as the insight of
Anatta in Buddhism, which clearly isn't, though there are
similarities and can be mistaken as such.
Thusness told me that both impersonality and non dual are
described in her book.
For example, her initial experience of the I AM/Witness as a
result of an intense dissociative experience still has a thread of
personality at first -
http://www.nonduality.com/suzanne.htm
"I lifted my right foot to step up into the bus and
collided head-on with an invisible force that entered my awareness
like a silently exploding stick of dynamite, blowing the door of my
usual consciousness open and off its hinges, splitting me in two.
In the gaping space that appeared, what I had previously called
'me' was forcefully pushed out of its usual location inside me into
a new location that was approximately a foot behind and to the left
of my head. 'I' was now behind my body looking out at the world
without using the body's eyes."
Walking home from that bus ride, she felt like a "cloud of
awareness" following the body. The cloud was a witness located
behind and to the left of the body and completely separate from
body, mind and emotions.
But in a few months time, she starts to experience the
impersonality aspect of I AMness and the sense of a personal
Witness dissolves.
The 'benefit' of the presence of the witness was that it
retained some sense of the personal self, the 'me'. But after a few
months the witness disappeared, and with it all traces of a
personal self,of the 'me'.
...........
"In the dissolution of the witness, there was literally
no more experience of a "me" at all. The experience of personal
identity switched off and was never to appear
again.
The personal self was gone, yet here was a
body and a mind that still existed empty of anyone who occupied
them. The experience of living without a personal identity, without
an experience of being somebody, an "I" or a "me," is exceedingly
difficult to describe, but it is absolutely unmistakable. It can't
be confused with having a bad day or coming down with the flu or
feeling upset or angry or spaced out. When the personal self
disappears, there is no one inside who can be located as being you.
The body is only an outline, empty of everything of which it had
previously felt so full.
The mind, body, and emotions no longer
referred to anyone -- there was no one who thought, no one who
felt, none who perceived. Yet the mind, body, and emotions
continued to function unimpaired; apparently they did not need an
"I" to keep doing what they always did. Thinking, feeling,
perceiving, speaking, all continued as before, functioning with a
smoothness that gave no indication of the emptiness behind
them."
...........
"What had vanished was the reference point of a personal
self that felt the feelings personally. Emptiness was consistently
co-present with all emotional or mental states, and this
co-presence precluded any personal quality from existing. No
thoughts, feelings, or actions arose for any personal purpose
anymore."
...........
"My life was filled with seeing no-self, and raising
questions about no-self. Even in sleep the emptiness of personal
identity continued unperturbed. No mental activity ever changed the
experience of no-self in any manner, and none of the attempts to
figure out, organize, or evaluate it ever brought back a sense of
an individual indentity."
Later on, she realised Non Dual.
http://www.nonduality.com/suzanne.htm
Still, all the reassurance was yielding no joy, until an abrupt
transition saw a change in knowledge from 'There is no personal
self', to 'There is no other'. This occurred while Segal
was driving to see some friends when
"I suddenly became aware that I was driving through
myself. For years there had been no self at all, yet here on this
road, everything was myself, and I was driving through me to arrive
where I already was. In essence, I was going nowhere because I was
everywhere already. The infinite emptiness I new myself to be was
now apparent as the infinite
substance of everything I saw."
So the emptiness she had known as a state of consciousness now
became the vastness of all existence.
Soon afterward, while spending a weekend at a Buddhist retreat
center in northern California, a new awareness arose. It was a
fluidity of perception in which entities were perceived as the
vastness itself, and all was pervaded by calm. Also she now came to
know that she was the substance of the vastness. She knew this not
through the sense organs, but through the substance that 'she was'.
She describes this as a finger drawing in the sand, where the
substance of vastness is the finger, the drawing and the sand.
And now she saw the fear for what it was. Previously she had
assigned meaning to the fear, viewing it as an indication of the
invalidity of the experience of no-self. Now she saw fear as fear
without meaning. Fear was no different than form, emptiness, pain,
enlightenment. Everything is made of the same substance as
vastness. Seeing this, knowing this, the grip of fear broke and joy
finally arose.
...............
"As I drove through the wintry landscape on my way
there, everything seemed more fluid. The mountains, trees, rocks,
birds, sky were all losing their differences. As I gazed about,
what I saw first was how they were one; then, as a second wave of
perception, I saw the distinctions. But the perception of the
substance they were all made of did not occur through the physical
body. Rather, the vastness was perceiving itself out of itself at
every point in itself. A lovely calm pervaded everything - no
ecstasy, no bliss, just calm."
"This non-localized, infinite substance can be
perceived not with the eyes or ears or nose, but by the substance
itself, out of itself. When the substance of unity encounters
itself, it knows itself through its own sense organ. Form is like a
drawing in the sand of oneness, where the drawing, the sand, and
the finger that draws it are all one."