Hi DreamWalker,
Thanx for the list. I guess by "ownership" you mean a sense that there is some agency there responsible for the doing? Makes sense that the different stages would result in increasing relinquisment of ownership as the self begins to dissolve.
It is interesting what you say about the A&P, that it results in the elimination of ownership for external reality. From my experience in 1989 (if it was indeed an A&P event as seems likely), it was rather the opposite. I ended up taking responsibility for external reality. Part of the DN period that followed resulted in my imagining that there was some kind of "other world" and that the A&P event had given me a portal into it. That "other world" was responsible in some fashion for events in this world. In the immediate aftermath, as I mentioned, it was as if my mind and external reality were one and I could influence events, but afterward, when that deteriorated, I still felt an obligation to find the portal again so I could influence events for the better. I guess you can use the analogy of an operating system in a computer. If you can get at the operating system code and modify it, you can make life much better for your users. I tried for many years to get access to that code because I wanted to make it better, of course without success because it doesn't exist. My practice was really twisted by this belief for many years.
I think this might be due to the difference between Theravada practice and a Mahayana practice like Zen. In Zen, there is a lot of emphasis on the Bodhisattva Vow: to save all beings. You chant it every week at the weekly sittings and once a day during retreats so it kind of works its way deeply into your unconsciousness mind. If you really take this literally, and in particular during an A&P event when your mind is really in a somewhat strange state anyway I think you can, it can result in very strange experiences.
I'm also wondering about something Mahsi Saydaw says in his book "The Seven Stages of Purification and The Insight Knowledges". This book goes through a traditional treatment of the stages of insight, which Daniel updates with a more modern treatment in MCTB. On pg. 52 he says:
Some meditators are unable to go beyond the Knowledge of Equanimity about Formations due to some powerful aspirations they have made in the past, such as for Buddhahood, or Paccekabuddhahood, Chief Discipleship, etc. In fact, it is at this stage that one can ascertain whether one has made any such aspiration in the past. Sometimes when he has reached this stage the meditator himself comes to feel that he is cherishing a powerful aspiration. However, even for an aspirant to Buddhahood or Paccekabuddahood, the Knowledge of Equanimity about Formations will be an asset towards his fulfilment of the perfection of wisdom (panna-parami). This Equanimity of Formations is of no small significance when one takes into account the high degree of development in knowledge at this stage
Have you heard any cases where this has happened to someone? Or is this a set of beliefs, like the traditional "elimination of defilements" at each path which Daniel indicates from his experience and that of lots of others is more a kind of wishful thinking? I guess in the absence of a belief in the rebirth, whether or not one made an aspiration for Buddhahood and the rest is kind of moot. Maybe like Brahmavihara practice, just a technique to improve one's character/psychological state? Within the logic/context/belief structure of rebirth over a hundred thousand lifetimes, stopping short of elimination of the self sort of makes sense. If you are trying to save all beings, a sense of agency might come in handy. But, on the other hand, it also might get in the way if it gets too strong.