http://www.realization.org/page/doc0/doc0095.htm

Regarding the above, where is this woman on the maps? In those few pages, is she describing 'no-self'?

I've always thought that experiencing 'no-self' would be utterly terrifying. She describes it this way, so does Castaneda.

Why don't advanced meditators on here describe it that way? Put another way, who here has experienced what she has, as described on those pages?

EDIT: Reading through the Amazon reviews, it seems her symptoms were of someone with a severe dissociative disorder secondary to sexual abuse. Can anyone comment on this? Maybe her mind was forced into this state as a result of repeated denial of painful memories.

Well she didn't do any Vipassana meditation so it'd be hard to put her on the maps. The whole thing sounds like a really hellish Dark Night though. When she said the witness disappeared as well, leaving no self inside, that sounds like what we'd call 4th Path, though by saying that I don't mean she went through 4 paths (not that we do, either; Dan said he went through 37 or something). The fact that she can still be afraid indicates she isn't AF.

She is literally describing no-self: "The personal self was gone". Though I think she still has a "big Self", the one that goes away upon AF. I mean, if she is afraid, then what is feeling the fear?

That's probably why one of the Dark Night stages is called "Fear"; probably why the last emotion Stef felt before AF was fear.

I've heard it described that way too... I think Nick or Owen from KFD said something like, "there's no Nick/Owen here".

If you mean why we don't describe it as quite so terrifying - the Vipassana method, unbalanced as it is in general (Dark Night affects us a lot), is a little bit more balanced than what she went through... and we do it willingly.

Yeh I didn't even think of that. If she is in fear, who or what is experiencing that fear?

Good answers, thanks.

Though her experience has elements of what can be called the 'dark night', her path can be better mapped with the map of what I call the Direct Path rather than the map of the path of MCTB Vipassana. It is a different path and the progress of insight is not really the same, even though both paths can eventually result in some similar fundamental insights.

By 'map of the Direct Path', I mean maps such as: http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2007/03/thusnesss-six-stages-of-experience.html

The link you provided stops at the impersonality stage. Here is a more complete account of her experiences: http://www.nonduality.com/suzanne.htm

First, she experienced the Self, the Witness. There is still a tinge of personality to it. This is Thusness Stage 1. It is part 1 in the the Suzanne's link I provided.

Later the personality construct is dissolved, so there is no sense of an personal doer or experiencer. This is Thusness Stage 2. It is also the part 2 of the Suzanne's link I provided. The Absolute is still seen as the ultimate Subject, the void behind all things. This is not yet the Anatta realization (Thusness Stage 5), but is still at the I AM stage - but with the aspect of impersonality experienced.

And finally, she realized non-duality of subject and object, and sees everything as equally an expression of Mind. This is Thusness Stage 4. It is also part 4 of the Suzanne's link I provided. (Part 4: "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.")

That was her last insight, and is substantial non-dualism, aka All Is Mind/One Mind, not yet the experience of No Mind, or the realization of Anatta.

I have undergone and experienced whatever she wrote (though less of the 'dark night' elements) and documented it in my e-book/journal: http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-e-booke-journal.html

Great, thanks for those links.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Segal

I think much of the terror was caused by the fact that it happened to her out of the blue, she didn't train for, or expect it. There certainly is terror leading up to the realization of no-self, as the self face its demise - but after the fact people describe the experience in different ways. Most talk about love and peace while a few others tend to be more dramatic. The reason being that the old 'glass half-full' expression still applies: 1) The ego is gone, no own left to suffer! yay! everything is one, no seperation meaning 'I' am never alone, love everybody because 'you' are everyone and everyone is 'you', etc. 2) The ego is gone, does that imply to everyone else as well? Are we all just empty biological machines walking around going nowhere?! *gulp*. I wanted eternal bliss, not this!

Clearly both 1) and 2) are personal views laid on top of the experience. All that aside the common denominator seems to be that no one (who did it purposely) would want to 'go back'.

Heh apparently this same exchange happened on the AF site: