P O V:
5) Can you say that AF is the full realization of no-self, in other words can you reach it if you are able to fully eradicate the concept of self, or is additional perception abilities(?) needed?
5) Can you say that AF is the full realization of no-self, in other words can you reach it if you are able to fully eradicate the concept of self, or is additional perception abilities (?) needed?
No-self is often described as experiencing the ground of being that everything rises and falls from (empty center), suchness or thusness. My experiences lead me to describe it as unbounded but at that stage I could not recognise that it was bounded by my internal view.
If you do a search of the web you will find similar descriptions of the No Self experience
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/likefire/1.html
No Self - From this point onward the mind experiences mental & physical phenomena with a sense of being dissociated from them. One simile for this state is that of a hide removed from the carcass of a cow: Even if the hide is then placed back on the cow, one cannot say that it is attached as before, because the connective tissues that once held the hide to the carcass — in other words, passion & desire — have all been cut (by the knife of discernment).
Again you can see that there is experience still “the mind experiences mental & physical phenomena with a sense of being dissociated from them” or that passion and desire still exists “Even if the hide is then placed back on the cow, one cannot say that it is attached as before, because the connective tissues that once held the hide to the carcass — in other words, passion & desire — have all been cut (by the knife of discernment).”
ttp://www.advaita.org.uk/discourses/teachers/nonduality_katz.htm
impact of an awakening nondual awareness is an enhanced capacity to be with what is. The living insight of nondual awareness is that everything already is accepted and embraced just as it is. As awakening deepens, the judging mind loses its grip and attention becomes increasingly innocent, intimate, and impersonally affectionate.
The mind, body, and emotions no longer referred to anyone - there was no one who thought, no one who felt, no one who perceived just an empty center.
Notice in the previous sentence there is still an empty center. This is the empty center that the swirl of passion arises and fall around without sticking. But while the empty center exits there is a response which is still a self experience
AF is more then understanding of a concept of self it is the eradictaion of the very mechanism (the source) of the self, the self is extinct, gone.