Perhaps it is an error on the part of those who seek to propound and to follow the Negative Way to place so much emphasis on the pronoun 'I', which in its accepted sense, to which we are all conditioned, initially implies an objective 'self'? Does it not too readily allow the mere transference of personal identity from phenomenality to noumenality - even though we know intellectually that such is neither intended nor possible? After all, or before all, it is the notion of identity which constitutes the notion of 'bondage'!
What noumenally we are is basically a 'background', the screen on to which phenomenality is projected, which is an image suggested, I think, by Maharshi. The background is essential, for without it there could be no appearance at all, though where manifestation is concerned the 'background' itself is responsible for the appearance and is what that is.
But it is the sense of 'withdrawal' which is needed, the cutting out of all suggestion that the 'projected' appearance is responsible for anything whatever. It is the 'background' which 'withdraws' by taking back into itself the notion that the manifestation it reveals has an identity of its own. No one withdraws, and nothing is withdrawn: there is just a withdrawal. The disappearance of an illusory notion leaves things as they are, as they always were and as they always will be, in the total absence of the notion of 'time'. Action can only appear to occur in a time-sequence, and where there is none there can be no action. That is why the 'withdrawal' or the 'awakening' or whatever you may choose to call it involves no action, since all action is phenomenal and temporal.
The image is sound also because 'mind' is the background of what we appear to be; as a concept it represents that on which, or in which, we appear - perhaps better in the Vedantic sense of 'Consciousness', other than which there is nothing, though 'itself' is not anything objective. Therefore 'background' implies foreground and indeed all 'ground' - although there is none. This also accords with the famous 'mirror' metaphor for 'Mind': that which reflects everything, retains nothing, and has no perceptible existence in itself.
The positive Way of Vedanta is essentially the proposition that 'I am I', whereas that of the Negative Way is 'I am not-I'. Both, of course, are equally true and equally false in themselves, but this 'withdrawal' into impersonality may lead more directly into the mutual annihilation of both truth and falsehood.
That back of beyond is in front of ahead, and each is in front of and behind both itself and the other. What we are, therefore, is in another dimension altogether.
