Hey there Dho’ers.
More out of irritation that nobody seems to get what is going on than because of anything else, I’ve decided to type out three or four pages from AH Amaas’ book The Point of Existance and give you all a glimpse of what AF is about and what it’s relation to arhatship is. Yes I’m being cocky, but I’m a simple anigami who is still allowed his precious defilements. My comments in brackets {} Please skip down to the bold text if you don’t need convincing that he is actually talking about AF. That’s where he discusses the relationship of AF to Arhatship. I've tried to make this as easy to read as possible.
[quoted from The Point of Existance, page 405-408, ending of Chapter 39]
{the author has just finished describing a case study with a student of his regarding what he calls “Pure Being”...}
Here we know ourselves as a presence totally pure and completely real. It is so pure it has no qualities; it is just the fact of beingness experienced as an ontological presence. This presence is clarity, lightness, transparency, all ineffable and precious in an indefinable way. It is so ineffable that it feels both empty and full simultaneously. There is the sense of being wide aware, with a fresh awareness and lucid perception.
In this manifestation of Being, we know Being in its purity, before differentiation and discrimination, before labeling and reaction. There are no differentiated qualities, but nothing is missing. We experience a completeness. It is as if all the qualities are present before differentiation. This is one of the first things we discover as we go through this level of narcissism {the author is referring to the subject of the book, which is transforming narcissism (a.k.a. ego) into self-realization}. Before this discovery, our experience of Being takes the form of one of its differentiated manifestations – like love, intelligence, or even identity – but now we know ourselves purely, before recognizable and conceptualizable qualities.
The other important discover we make at this point is the one that Anna had {from the case study described a few paragraphs ago}, which is that Being is inherently boundless. We experience this purity of presence as pervasive and infinite, and see, also, that it underlies everything. We come to see that pure Being is the essence and true nature of all manifestation, not only of the self. Further, we experience Being not only as the essence of everything, but as everything. It constitutes not only the core of everything, but the very substance and fabric of everything. It is a medium inside every object, outside it, and in between the outside and inside. It makes up the very substance of all physical objects, all mental objects, and all experienceable manifestations. It is the body, the feelings, the thoughts, the actions, the sounds, the sights, and the meanings, Being is everything.
At this level of realization, we come also to perceive the unity of all manifestation. Since Being is an indivisible medium (not composed of parts), it follows that everything makes up a unity, a oneness. There is one existence, as opposed to two, or many. It is merely an infinite presence that possesses a pattern. This pattern is everything we perceive, including all persons and objects. So everything is connected to everything; there exist no separate and autonomous objects or persons.
Another discovery is that we see this unity and oneness as our very self and identity. We experience: “I am everything. I am everyone, the bodies, thoughts and feelings of everybody, inseparable from all objects. I am the ground, essence, and source of everything.”
No wonder we have been longing for the dissolution of the separating boundaries {as in the case studys he provides}; the self intuited that the arising manifestation of Being is boundless and infinite. And no wonder we need to be seen as the most special. Pure Being is the most precious thing in reality because it is the preciousness of everything in reality. It is most special because it is the precious ground of everything that is special. In fact, it is what ascribes specialness to anything. This is the reason some students experience the narcissistic need as to be seen as the most special person.
The self knows unconsciously, or we could say intuitively, that its identity is the boundless pure Being, but it is still consciously identified with a separate entity. So even at this level of work, there are often big issues. For example, when this manifestation is arising and the student is feeling that she is the “most special” {here AH Almaas is referring to what happens BEFORE the experience, not afterwards. This is important, because feeling “most special” is what gets in the way of the real experience.}, when anyone else is treated in a special way, she feels hurt and wounded. So she knows she is the most special because she is the purity of Being, but becomes grandiose when she attributes this specialness to her conscious identification of herself as a separate individual {ego}. Clearly, the way to work with the situation effectively is not to judge her narcissistic need as grandiose and unrealistic, but to discover in that need information about the true self from which she feels alienated.
The narcissistic wound that arises here is for not being seen as the source of everything, of all knowledge, understanding, love value, preciousness, meaning, and existence. We are hurt about not being recognized as this supreme manifestation of Being, the one most worthy of love and admiration. It also reflects our own incapacity to see our true pure nature, as we are not yet realized at this level.
At this juncture, we understand that believing that we are separate individuals, or autonomous entities, rather than recognizing ourselves as the oneness of all existence, creates alienation from pure Being. To take oneself as ultimately a separate and autonomous person creates the supreme wound, which appears as an abyss, an abysmal chasm, that alienates us not only from our true nature, but also from everybody and everything. This is the supreme betrayal, and the beginning of endless suffering.
We also understand, here, the cosmic shell as the experience of the world devoid of its true nature, the infinite pure Being {once again, referring to case studies mentioned earlier}. Looking through the representational world, we see only a world devoid of Being.
The quality of infinity and omnipresence of identity at this level of experience eliminates duality. We experience Being not only as our true nature, but as the nature of everything. This means it is also the true nature of the ego-self. The pure presence of Being is the underlying ground both for aspects of Essence, and for structures of the self-ego. Both become seen as particular formations within the presence of pure Being.
{Okay, now here is where he touches upon Arhatship. Make your own call if he is talking about your own impressions of Arhatship. He has over 200 pages of this book dedicated to it in previous chapters, these quoted pages are part of the Actual Freedom chapters instead of Arhat since that’s the big topic on the forums nowadays…}
At this level, the movement from duality between Essence and personality is different from that involved in realizing the Essential Identity. In the realization of the Essential Identity, the student experiences the personality in the third person, as if from the outside, as the totality of the suffering individual. She experiences herself as a center of an awareness and presence separate from the individual person, relating to that person with compassion, love, and understanding. Or she experiences herself as a personality aware of the Essential Identity as an essential presence, characterized by the feeling of identity. There is duality in this experience.
In the process of realization of pure Being, the alternation is not between personality and presence, but rather between duality and unity. In duality, the student experiences herself as the totality of the ego-self, the personality, separate from the presence and resistant to it. She also experiences and understands it by being it. She experiences the movement of her ego-self directly, in all its details. She experiences it from within, in its totality, with a specific understanding of the nature of its functioning. This is in contrast to the experience of the personality in the dimension of the Essential Identity, where she experiences it from the outside, as the other who is struggling and suffering. In the dimension of pure Being, her understanding of the nature of suffering becomes more specific and complete.
The result is that the personality is not necessarily transformed in the self-realization of the Essential Identity; there is only the shift of its identity. The complete realization of pure Being involves a process of purification and clarification of the personality, until there is no difference between it and the purity of Being. The final outcome is the condition of unity in which we experience the personality (the ego-self) as inseparable manifestation of pure Being.
{END}
So what do you think? Does this seem reasonable? Answer any questions you have? Destroy the foolish notation that Richard is the first to discover PCEs and so on (this book was published 10+ years ago)?
Granted that Almaas goes about realization in a different, yet surprizingly simmilar, way to AF, it makes sense that he describes it differently. One side effect of this map is that Arhatship is completely required before AF. All AF people here have claimed Arhatship before AF, so it sould be easy to accept. AF is not just disidentifying from ego (a.k.a. Arhatship), but is in fact disolveing it completely. Like I said, over 500 pages of details and case studies from the thousands (yes thousands) of practicioners of the Ridhwan Foundation in this book, if you only just bother to go out and read it, which I highly recomend.
