This article by Kenneth Folk is outdated and no longer
represents his current insight and realization. In one of his
recent post, he stated blantly that he was wrong, his model and
teaching was incomplete, and that he wanted to present his new
understanding (in his Kenneth Folk 7 Stages of Enlightenment)
In fact, most of Kenneth Folk's articles are outdated, as he
hasn't written any articles since he realized Anatta (but there are
recent forum discussions about it). Well, not exactly 'out-dated',
but those articles only present the path from I AM (aka Thusness
Stage 1/2) to the Substantialist Non Dual phase (aka Thusness Stage
4) but not his recent insight of Anatta (aka Thusness Stage 5).
During late 2010, probably around the same time as me, Kenneth
realized Anatta. The realization of Anatta dissolves the construct
of an inherent Awareness.
There is only ever this stream, process of experiencing, there
is no subject whatsoever. Scenery sees, sound hears, the process
flows and knows without a knower.
Here is what Kenneth wrote about his recent realization (read
whole thing but especially see the underlined):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqYUNHrLFq0
Transcription:
... You do this kind of "looping thing where mind tries to be
subject and object at the same time or oscillates between them. And
it says "No ... no "I" here.
So that's the test for the 7th stage. You can no longer find
anything that you would recongnize as "I". So what you are left
with is objects. There are simply these phenomena and these
phenomena can be broken down into seeing, hearing, tasting,
touching smelling and thinking - the 6 sense doors according to
Buddhism.
Sof if you think about that, you are nothing other than a sense
organ. I am nothing other than a sense organ. There's no agency
here. There's no doer. There are just these 6 sensory inputs
including thinking.
That is an extraordinary recognition. And the freedom that comes
from that recognition is the happiness that is independent of
conditions, AKA Enlightenment.
And notice it's in the seeing is only the "seen" ... that is
exactly the experience - in the seeing is only the "seen" ... it's
not the seeing ... it's not seeing as the seer, there is no seer.
We don't have a subject receptor. There isn't anything in this mind
that can pick up a subject.
Now what that means is that, although
we can logically infer that there must be a subject, we can not
experience that. The subject is always inferred. So even the
practices that involve Awareness, practices that involve letting
Awareness be aware of Awareness et cetera, those are practices -
transitional modalities or transitional phases which eventually
have to be let go of. Because we can not perceive Awareness, we can
only infer Awareness.
So we could talk about this in terms of 1st and 2nd order
phenomena. 1st order phenomena are the six sense doors: seeing,
hearing, tasting, touching, smelling and thinking. 2nd order
phenomena would be things like "I know there's Awareness because
there has to be." Fine, I don't disagree with the logic, but "you"
don't know that. That is an inference.
So subject is always inferred. And as long as we don't feel
obligated to take that step or make that leap into inference, we
don't create self. [JG: ... there's the object but not the inferred
subject] Yes. And as long as we stick with that we're golden. There
is the object and the hearing is just the heard. That's it. And
although we might like to make it more complicated, it doesn't have
to be, and it turns out we're much better off when we don't
complicate it. ...
