If anyone is able to translate Thusness's Seven Stages to other languages, that will be great, do let me know. In the past I've translated it to Chinese along with a short verse from Bahiya Sutta and posted that a forum in China, and that alone resulted in a Chinese forummer coming to the realization of anatta (previously he was in the I AM stage). By translating these to other languages, more people can become awakened.

NOTE: The stages are nothing authoritative, merely for sharing purposes. The article On Anatta (No-Self), Emptiness, Maha and Ordinariness, and Spontaneous Perfection is a good reference for these 7 phases of experience. The original six stages of experience has been updated to seven stages of experience, with the addition of 'Stage 7: Presence is Spontaneously Perfected' for readers to understand that seeing the nature of reality as the ground of all experiences which is Always So, is important for effortlessness to take place.

Stage 1: The Experience of “I AM”

"Like a river flowing into the ocean, the self dissolves into nothingness. When a practitioner becomes thoroughly clear about the illusionary nature of the individuality, subject-object division does not take place. A person experiencing “AMness” will find “AMness in everything”. What is it like?



Being freed from individuality -- coming and going, life and death, all phenomenon merely pop in and out from the background of the AMness. The AMness is not experienced as an ‘entity’ residing anywhere, neither within nor without; rather it is experienced as the ground reality for all phenomenon to take place. Even in the moment of subsiding (death), the yogi is thoroughly authenticated with that reality; experiencing the ‘Real’ as clear as it can be. We cannot lose that AMness; rather all things can only dissolve and re-emerges from it. The AMness has not moved, there is no coming and going. This "AMness" is God.



Practitioners should never mistake this as the true Buddha Mind! "I AMness" is the pristine awareness. That is why it is so overwhelming. Just that there is no 'insight' into its emptiness nature." (Excerpt from Buddha Nature is NOT "I Am")

Stage 2: The Experience of “I AM Everything”



“It is bringing this I AM into everything. I AM the I in you. The I in the cat, the I in the bird. I AM the first person in everyone and Everything. I. That is my second phase. That the I is ultimate and universal.” - John Tan, 2013

Stage 3: Entering Into a State of Nothingness





"Associating 'death of I' with vivid luminosity of your experience is far too early. This will lead you into erroneous views because there is also the experience of practitioners by way of complete surrendering or elimination (dropping) like Taoist practitioners. An experience of deep bliss that is beyond that of what you experienced can occur. But the focus is not on luminosity but effortlessness, naturalness and spontaneity. In complete giving up, there is no 'I' ; it is also needless to know anything; in fact 'knowledge' is considered a stumbling block. The practitioner drops away mind, body, knowledge...everything. There is no insight, there is no luminosity there is only total allowing of whatever that happens, happen in its own accord. All senses including consciousness are shut and fully absorbed. Awareness of 'anything' is only after emerging from that state.



One is the experience of vivid luminosity while the other is a state of oblivious. It is therefore not appropriate to relate the complete dissolving of 'I' with what you experienced alone."

"...it seems that lots of effort need to be put in -- which is really not the case. The entire practice turns out to an undoing process. It is a process of gradually understanding the workings of our nature that is from beginning liberated but clouded by this sense of ‘self’ that is always trying to preserve, protect and ever attached. The entire sense of self is a ‘doing’. Whatever we do, positive or negative, is still doing. Ultimately there is not-even a letting go or let be, as there is already continuous dissolving and arising and this ever dissolving and arising turns out to be self-liberating. Without this ‘self’ or ‘Self’, there is no ‘doing’, there is only spontaneous arising. "



~ Thusness (source: Non-dual and karmic patterns)



"...When one is unable to see the truth of our nature, all letting go is nothing more than another from of holding in disguise. Therefore without the 'insight', there is no releasing.... it is a gradual process of deeper seeing. when it is seen, the letting go is natural. You cannot force yourself into giving up the self... purification to me is always these insights... non-dual and emptiness nature...."

Stage 4: Presence as Mirror Bright Clarity

Comments:



This is the beginning of seeing through no-self. Insight into no-self has arisen but non-dual experience is still very much 'Brahman' rather than 'Sunyata'; in fact it is more Brahman than ever. Now "I AMness" is experienced in All.



Nevertheless it is a very important key phase where the practitioner experiences a quantum leap in perception untying the dualistic knot. This is also the key insight leading to the realization that "All is Mind", all is just this One Reality.



The tendency to extrapolate an Ultimate Reality or Universal Consciousness where we are part of this Reality remains surprisingly strong. Effectively the dualistic knot is gone but the bond of seeing things inherently isn't. 'Dualistic' and 'inherent' knots that prevent the full experiencing of our Maha, empty and non-dual nature of pristine awareness are two very different 'perceptual spells' that blind.



The subsection "On Second Stanza" of the post "On Anatta (No-Self), Emptiness, Maha and Ordinariness, and Spontaneous Perfection" further elaborates this insight.



Thusness wrote in 2005:



"Without 'self' oneness is immediately attained. There is only and always this Isness. Subject has always been the Object of observation. This is true samadhi without entering trance. Completely understanding this truth. It is the true way towards liberation. Every sound, sensation, arising of consciousness is so clear, real and vivid. Every moment is samadhi. The tip of the fingers in contact with the keyboard, mysteriously created the contact consciousness, what is it? Feel the entirety of beingness and realness. There is no subject... just Isness. No thought, there really is no thought and no 'self'. Only Pure Awareness.", "How could anyone understand? The crying, the sound, the noise is buddha. It is all the experience of Thusness. To know the true meaning of this, Hold not even the slightest trace of 'I'. In the most natural state of ILessNess, All Is. Even if one said the same statement, the depth of experience differs. The is no point convincing anyone. Can anyone understand? Any form of rejection, Any sort of division Is to reject buddhahood. If there is a slightest sense of a subject, an experiencer, we miss the point. Natural Awareness is subjectless. The vividness and clarity. Feel, taste, see and hear with totality. There is always no 'I'. Thank you Buddha, You truly know. :)"

Stage 5: No Mirror Reflecting

There is no mirror reflecting

All along manifestation alone is.

The one hand claps

Everything IS!



Yes Simpo,



Non-dual is ordinary as there is no 'beyond' stage to arrive at. It appears to be extraordinary and grandeur only as an afterthought due to comparison.



That said, the maha experience appearing as "universe chewing" and the spontaneity of pristine happening must still remain maha, free, boundless and clear. For that is what it is and cannot be otherwise. The "extraordinariness and grandeur" that result from comparison must also be correctly discerned from the 'what is' of non-dual.



Whenever contraction steps in, it is already a manifestation of 'experiencer-experience split'. Conventionally speaking, that being the cause, that is the effect. Whatever the condition is, be it the result of unfavorable situations or subtle recalling to arrive at a certain good sensation or attempting to fix an imaginary split, we have to treat it that the 'non-dual' insight has not pervaded into our entire being like the way 'karmic tendency to divide' does. We have not fearlessly, openly and unreservedly welcomed whatever is. :-)



Just my view, a casual sharing.

Comments:



The drop is thorough, the center is gone. The center is nothing more than a subtle karmic tendency to divide. A more poetic expression would be “sound hears, scenery sees, the dust is the mirror.” Transient phenomena themselves have always been the mirror; only a strong dualistic view prevents the seeing.



Very often cycles after cycles of refining our insights are needed to make the non-dual less 'concentrative' and more 'effortless'. This relates to experiencing the non-solidity and spontaneity of experience. The subsection "On First Stanza" of the post "On Anatta (No-Self), Emptiness, Maha and Ordinariness, and Spontaneous Perfection" further elaborates this phase of insight.



At this phase, we must be clear that emptying the subject will only result in non-duality and there is a need to further empty the aggregates, 18 dhatus. This means one must further penetrate the emptiness nature of the 5 aggregates, 18 dhatus with dependent origination and emptiness. The need to reify a Universal Brahman is understood as the karmic tendency to 'solidify' experiences. This leads to the understanding of the empty nature of non-dual presence.

Stage 6: The Nature of Presence is Empty





• Emptiness is not a substance

• Emptiness is not a substratum or background

• Emptiness is not light

• Emptiness is not consciousness or awareness

• Emptiness is not the Absolute

• Emptiness does not exist on its own

• Objects do not consist of emptiness

• Objects do not arise from emptiness

• Emptiness of the "I" does not negate the "I"

• Emptiness is not the feeling that results when no objects are appearing to the mind

• Meditating on emptiness does not consist of quieting the mind



Source: Non-Dual Emptiness Teaching

When there is this, that is.

With the arising of this, that arises.

When this is not, neither is that.

With the cessation of this, that ceases.

Comments:



Here practice is clearly understood as neither going after the mirror nor escaping from the maya reflection; it is to thoroughly 'see' the 'nature' of reflection. To see that there is really no mirror other than the on-going reflection due to our emptiness nature. Neither is there a mirror to cling to as the background reality nor a maya to escape from. Beyond these two extreme lies the middle path -- the prajna wisdom of seeing that the maya is our Buddha nature.



Recently An Eternal Now has updated some very high quality articles that better described the maha experience of suchness. Do read the following articles:



- Emancipation of Suchness

- Buddha-Dharma: A Dream in a Dream



The last 3 subsections ("On Emptiness", "On Maha in Ordinariness", "Spontaneous Perfection") of the post "On Anatta (No-Self), Emptiness, Maha and Ordinariness, and Spontaneous Perfection" elaborates this phase of emptiness insight and the gradual progress of maturing the experience into the effortless mode of practice. It is important to know that in addition to the experience of the unfindability and ungraspability of emptiness, the interconnectedness of everything creating the Maha experience is equally precious.

Stage 7: Presence is Spontaneously Perfected

Anatta is a seal, not a stage.

Awareness has always been non-dual.

Appearances have always been Non-arising.

All phenomena are ‘interconnected’ and by nature Maha.

Comments:



The entire article of On Anatta (No-Self), Emptiness, Maha and Ordinariness, and Spontaneous Perfection can be seen as the different approaches toward the eventual realization of this already perfect and uncontrived nature of awareness.

(Soh: This article was written by my teacher who goes by the online moniker "Thusness"/"PasserBy". I have personally gone through these phases of realizations myself since then.)Based on: http://buddhism.sgforums.com/?action=thread_display&thread_id=210722&page=3 Comments below are by Thusness unless explicitly stated to be from Soh.(First written: 20th September 2006, Last Updated by Thusness: 27th August 2012, Last Updated by Soh: 22nd January 2019)It was about 20 years back and it all started with the question of “Before birth, who am I?” I do not know why but this question seemed to capture my entire being. I could spend days and nights just sitting focusing, pondering over this question; till one day, everything seemed to come to a complete standstill, not even a single thread of thought arose. There was merely nothing and completely void, only this pure sense of existence. This mere sense of I, this Presence, what was it? It was not the body, not thought as there was no thought, nothing at all, just Existence itself. There was no need for anyone to authenticate this understanding.At that moment of realization, I experienced a tremendous flow of energy being released. It was as if life was expressing itself through my body and I was nothing but this expression. However at that point in time, I was still unable to fully understand what this experience was and how I had misunderstood its nature.or these youtube videos:It seemed that my experience was supported by many Advaita and Hindu teachings. But the biggest mistake I made was when I spoke to a Buddhist friend. He told me about the doctrine of no-self, about no ‘I’. I rejected such doctrine outright as it was in direct contradiction with what I had experienced. I was deeply confused for some time and could not appreciate why Buddha had taught this doctrine and worse still, make it a Dharma Seal. Until one day, I experienced the fusing of everything into ‘Me’ but somehow there was no ‘me’. It was like an “I-less I’. I somehow accepted the 'no I' idea but then I still insisted that Buddha shouldn't have put it that way...The experience was wonderful, it was as if I was totally emancipated, a complete release without boundary. I told myself, “I am totally convinced that I am no longer confused”, so I wrote a poem (something like the below),I am the rainI am the skyI am the ‘blueness’The color of the skyNothing is more real than the ITherefore Buddha, I am I.There is a phrase for this experience -- Whenever and wherever there IS, the IS is Me. This phrase was like a mantra to me. I often used this to lead me back into the experience of Presence.The rest of the journey was the unfolding and further refining of this experience of Total Presence, but somehow there was always this blockage, this ‘something’ preventing me from recapturing the experience. It was the inability to fully ‘die’ into total Presence..Somehow something was blocking the natural flow of my innermost essence and preventing me from re-living the experience. Presence was still there but there was no sense of ‘totality’. It was both logically and intuitively clear that ‘I’ was the problem. It was the ‘I’ that was blocking; it was the ‘I’ that was the limit; it was the ‘I’ that was the boundary but why couldn’t I do away with it? At that point in time it didn’t occur to me that I should look into the nature of awareness and what awareness is all about. Instead, I was too occupied with the art of entering into a state of oblivion to get rid of the ‘I’... This continued for the next 13+ years (in between of course there were many other minor events and the experience of total presence did occur many times, but with gaps a few months long)…However I came to one important understanding –The ‘I’ is the root cause of all artificialities, true freedom is in spontaneity. Surrender into complete nothingness and everything is simply Self So.I got in touch with Buddhism in 1997. Not because I wanted to find out more about the experience of ‘Presence’ but rather the teaching of impermanence synced deeply with what I was experiencing in life. I was faced with the possibility of losing all my wealth and more by financial crisis. At that point in time I had no idea that Buddhism is so profoundly rich on the aspect of ‘Presence’. The mystery of life cannot be understood, I sought for a refuge in Buddhism to alleviate my sorrows caused by the financial crisis, but it turned out to be the missing key towards experiencing total presence.I wasn’t that resistant then to the doctrine of ‘no-self’ but the idea that all phenomenal existence is empty of an inherent ‘self’ or ‘Self’ did not quite get into me. Were they talking about the ‘self’ as a personality or ‘Self’ as ‘Eternal Witness’? Must we do away even with the ‘Witness’? Was the Witness itself another illusion?There is thinking, no thinkerThere is sound, no hearerSuffering exists, no suffererDeeds there are, no doerI was meditating on the meaning of the above stanza deeply until one day, suddenly I heard ‘tongss…’, it was so clear, there was nothing else, just the sound and nothing else! And ‘tongs…’ resounding… It was so clear, so vivid!That experience was so familiar, so real and so clear. It was the same experience of “I AM”… it was without thought, without concepts, without intermediary, without anyone there, without any in-between… What was it? IT was Presence! But this time it was not ‘I AM’, it was not asking ‘who am I’, it was not the pure sense of “I AM”, it was ‘TONGSss….’, the pure Sound…Then came Taste, just the Taste and nothing else….The heart beats…The Scenery…There was no gap in between, no longer a few months gap for it to arise…There never was a stage to enter, no I to cease and never had it existedThere is no entry and exit point…There is no Sound out there or in here…There is no ‘I’ apart from the arising and ceasing…The manifold of Presence…Moment to moment Presence unfolds…Effectively Phase 4 is merely the experience of non-division between subject/object. The initial insight glimpsed from the anatta stanza is without self but in the later phase of my progress it appeared more like subject/object as an inseparable union, rather than absolutely no-subject. This is precisely the 2nd case of the Three levels of understanding Non-Dual . I was still awed by the pristineness and vividness of phenomena in phase 4.Phase 5 is quite thorough in being no one and I would call this anatta in all 3 aspects -- no subject/object division, no doer-ship and absence of agent.The trigger point here is the direct and thorough seeing that 'the mirror is nothing more than an arising thought'. With this, the solidity and all the grandeur of 'Brahman' goes down the drain. Yet it feels perfectly right and liberating without the agent and being simply as an arising thought or as a vivid moment of a bell resounding. All the vividness and presence remains, with an additional sense of freedom. Here a mirror/reflection union is clearly understood as flawed, there is only vivid reflection. There cannot be a 'union' if there isn't a subject to begin with. It is only in subtle recalling, that is in a thought recalling a previous moment of thought, that the watcher seems to exist. From here, I moved towards the 3rd degree of non-dual. The Stanza One complements and refines Stanza Two to make the experience of no-self thorough and effortless into just only chirping birds, drum beats, footsteps, sky, mountain, walking, chewing and tasting; no witness whatsoever hiding anywhere! 'Everything' is a process, event, manifestation and phenomenon, nothing ontological or having an essence.This phase is a very thorough non-dual experience; there is effortlessness in the non-dual and one realizes that in seeing there is always just scenery and in hearing, always just sounds. We find true delights in naturalness and ordinariness as commonly expressed in Zen as 'chop wood, carry water; spring comes, grass grows'. With regards to ordinariness (see "On Maha in Ordinariness" ), this must also be correctly understood. A recent conversation with Simpo summarizes what I am trying to convey with regards to ordinariness. Simpo (Longchen) is a very insightful and sincere practitioner, there are some very good quality articles written by him regarding non-duality in his website Dreamdatum. Practitioners up to this level often get over excited believing that this phase is final; in fact it does appear to be a sort of pseudo finality. But this is a misunderstanding. Nothing much can be said. The practitioner will also be naturally led into spontaneous perfection without going further in emptying the aggregates. :-)For further comments: http://buddhism.sgforums.com/forums/1728/topics/210722?page=6 Phase 4 and 5 are the grayscale of seeing through the subject that it does not exist in actuality (anatta), there are only the aggregates. However even the aggregates are empty ( Heart Sutra ). It may sound obvious but more often than not, even a practitioner who has matured the anatta experience (as in phase 5) will miss the essence of it.As I have said earlier, phase 5 does appear to be final and it is pointless to emphasize anything. Whether one proceeds further to explore this empty nature of Presence and move into the Maha world of suchness will depend on our conditions.At this juncture, it is necessary to have clarity on what Emptiness is not to prevent misunderstandings:And I would like to add,Emptiness is not a path of practiceEmptiness is not a form of fruitionEmptiness is the 'nature' of all experiences. There is nothing to attain or practice. What we have to realize is this empty nature, this ‘ungraspability’, ‘unlocatability ’ and ‘interconnectedness’ nature of all vivid arising. Emptiness will reveal that not only is there no ‘who’ in pristine awareness, there is no ‘where’ and ‘when’. Be it ‘I’, ‘Here’ or ’Now’, all are simply impressions that dependently originate in accordance with the principle of conditionality.The profundity of this four-liner principle of conditionality is not in words. For a more theoretical exposition, see Non-Dual Emptiness Teachings by Dr. Greg Goode; for a more experiential narration, see the subsection "On Emptiness" and "On Maha" of the post "On Anatta (No-Self), Emptiness, Maha and Ordinariness, and Spontaneous Perfection".After cycles and cycles of refining our practice and insights, we will come to this realization:All are always and already so. Only dualistic and inherent views are obscuring these experiential facts and therefore what is really needed is simply to experience whatever arises openly and unreservedly (See section " On Spontaneous Perfection "). However this does not denote the end of practice; practice simply moves to become dynamic and conditions-manifestation based. The ground and the path of practice become indistinguishable.