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Thank you for your comments.
Michael Beloved, the proof of any teaching must be directly experienced and realized. If you want to declare that form is self , your followers may believe it or not, pursue it or not, experience it or not. The proof will be had in the experience or lack of. Buddhist monks and lay people over the centuries have experienced the insights of impermanence, suffering (stressfulness) and not self (insubstantiality) in such a way that the teachings and lineages lasting long. That speaks for itself. It could not be so if students were not directly experiencing the teachings.
Erinn Earth, if material nature is indeed the actor, which the Bhagavad Gita asserts as well, then the sense of identity is likely the last adjunct to fall away as liberation or enlightenment is attained. One will know for sure at that point what liberation, spiritual destiny or enlightenment is.
All of the varying views on self are worthless if they do not lead to direct experience either way. I have had enough experiences in meditation that tally with the Buddhist teachings such as given in Buddhadasa's talk that my confidence is solid and the practice develops with a natural momentum.
Who is to say that students of various spiritual paths are not having different mystic experiences. Who is declaring which is the most high? Please post on the realization of the spiritual core self! I am eager to hear of it! I cannot report much myself, because in the experience of energetic emptiness, I have very little to express, as materiality is fading and I have not yet come to experience a core form within it.