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Welcome to Awakening to Reality. This blog is about spiritual awakening, maps and stages, the blinding effects of our strong momentum/conditioning (karmic propensities), view, realization, experience, etc. If you are new, this page is the quickest way in: three readings to begin with, the key terms, the free guides, and where to go next.
If you are new, read these first
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“Thusness/PasserBy’s Seven Stages of Enlightenment”
John Tan’s map of how insight unfolds: from I AM through non-duality to anatta, emptiness and spontaneous perfection.
Available in Languages: AR, BO, DA, DE, EN, ES, FR, HI, ID, IT, JA, KO, MS, NE, PL, PT-BR, PT-PT, RU, SR, TA, TH, VI, ZH. -
“On Anatta (No-Self), Emptiness, Maha and Ordinariness, and Spontaneous Perfection”
The core article on no-self, emptiness and spontaneous perfection.
Available in Languages: AR, BO, DA, DE, EN, ES, FR, HI, ID, IT, JA, KO, NE, PL, PT-BR, PT-PT, RU, SR, TA, TH, VI, ZH. -
The Awakening to Reality Practice Guide (free PDF)
A concise practice guide compiled and edited by Nafis Rahman. Also as EPUB and as an audiobook on SoundCloud.
Then continue with the full Must Reads list.
Key terms
As used on this site, following John Tan’s (Thusness’s) Seven Stages. These are not necessarily the same as how other traditions use the same words.
- I AM (Stage 1)
- The direct realization of “this pure sense of existence”: not the body, not thought, “just Existence itself”. On AtR this is an important first realization, not the end of the path.
- Non-duality (Stage 4)
- The dissolution of the split between perceiver and perceived: Presence is found as all appearances. At this stage the non-dual experience is still “very much ‘Brahman’ rather than ‘Sunyata’”, the sense that “All is Mind”, one Reality.
- Anatta (No-Self) (Stage 5)
- Seeing through the background itself, that “the mirror is nothing more than an arising thought”. There is no one behind thoughts, never was: “What exists is a stream, action or karma.” As John Tan puts it, “Anatta is a seal, not a stage”. See posts on anatta.
- Emptiness (Stage 6)
- Not only the self: “even the aggregates are empty”. Every experience is “vividly present yet completely un-locatable”; “Emptiness is the ‘nature’ of all experiences.” See posts on emptiness.
- Spontaneous perfection (Stage 7)
- The realization that what is sought has always been the case: “Awareness has always been non-dual”, “Appearances have always been Non-arising”, and “All phenomena are ‘interconnected’ and by nature Maha.” Practice therefore shifts from ‘concentrative’ to ‘effortless’: what is really needed is “simply to experience whatever arises openly and unreservedly”, and “the ground and the path of practice become indistinguishable”. In John Tan’s words: “Spontaneously present, naturally perfected!” Yet this “does not denote the end of practice”. See On Anatta, Emptiness … and Spontaneous Perfection.
Books & guides
- The Awakening to Reality Practice Guide — compiled and edited by Nafis Rahman: PDF · EPUB · Audiobook
- 简体中文: PDF · EPUB 繁體中文: PDF · EPUB
- The Awakening to Reality Guide — Web Abridged Version: read online
- The Awakening to Reality Guide — Original Version (compiled by Soh; the 1300+ page document the other guides are based on): PDF · EPUB
Prefer listening? See How to Make Your Phone Read PDFs Aloud — iPhone & Android Guide (2026). Full details, updates and covers: The Awakening to Reality Practice Guide page.
Watch & listen
Community & contact
You’re welcome to join our archived Facebook group: facebook.com/groups/AwakeningToReality.
Questions or corrections: Contact Us.
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