No Self

The state of no self is actually a pure manifestation of inner spacious reality, Being in its openness, we experience it as empty space, immaculate and pure, light and clean, empty of everything structured by the mind. However the self reacts to the sense of no self in many ways -- as a loss, as a deficiency, and so on, plus the associations, memories, and feelings that go with these interpretations. All this psychic content pervades the inner spaciousness so that we lose sight of its lightness, purity, immaculateness, and freedom. Instead, we feel it as deficient emptiness, dull and flat, heavy and dark. Only when we allow this emptiness to be, without judgment or rejection, without reaction or opinion, does it shed its obscurations and reveal its inherent truth: the state of no self, the freedom and openness of our Being. (The Point of Existence, pg 337)

There is consciousness and a kind of emptiness, a void that has no sense of self and no need for a sense of self. The step after that is the loss of consciousness of no-self, and when that consciousness is gone, there is no consciousness of self, or no-self and no knowing that there is no consciousness of self or no-self. This is the absence of mind, consciousness, and sensation. When that happens, it is then possible to be truly spontaneous because there is no self there to reflect on. If you reflect on yourself in this state, the only thing that happens is that you realize your head is turned around and that you are looking outside. There is nothing else to look into; you can only look outward. The main barrier to all these transitions is the belief that you are the person that is connected to the body. You’re taking what we call the shell (because it functions as a defensive shell) to be you. Identifying with the shell brings the terror that you are going to lose the sense of being a person. But what you actually are is not a person; you are a window to the universe. (Diamond Heart Book 4, pg 131)