The Process of Reification in Deep Awakening

By Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
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The Enlightenment Map > Stage 4 > Reification​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

We rarely question the solidity of our world. We assume there are objects “out there,” senses “in here,” and a stable observer connecting the two. Yet from the perspective of Buddhist psychology and contemplative inquiry, this solidity is constructed. The mind performs subtle but powerful operations that turn mental processes into apparently real things. This operation is known as reification.

Understanding the process of reification is not a purely philosophical exercise. It directly affects how we experience our reality, including identity, perception, logic, time, and suffering. When mental processes are mistaken for objective truth, we relate to them as fixed realities rather than mentally constructed experiences. The world feels solid. The self feels solid. Cause and effect feel solid. And with that solidity comes attachment and distress.

In this article, we will explore what reification is, how it unfolds through the stages (nidanas) of dependent origination, and how moving backward through those stages reveals the constructed nature of all experience.

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What Is Reification?

Reification refers to the mental processes that make experience seem real, solid, and permanent. The word comes from the Latin res, meaning “thing.” To reify is to “thingify” what is not inherently a thing.

In ordinary perception (pre-awakening), reification happens automatically. A stream of color and light appears as a “tree.” A sound becomes “voice.” A cluster of sensations becomes “my body.” A flow of thoughts becomes “me.” The mind takes continuous appearance and overlays it with many conceptual layers.

This conceptualization is useful. It allows navigation, communication, and survival. But it also creates distortions. The mental overlays are mistaken for reality itself. 

Importantly, reification is not a single act. It is a layered process. It unfolds through several stages (nidanas) of dependent origination. The stages related to clinging, craving, desire, and reactivity are fairly well understood, and many resources are available to learn more about them.

So, we will explore the deeper stages: Saḷāyatana, Nāmarūpa, Viññāṇa, Saṅkhāra, and Avijjā. These stages are often ignored and/or misunderstood, at least in Western awakening communities. When we don't understand how these nidanas create experience, awakening remains incomplete. By being willing to explore these more subtle features of experience, we open ourselves up to even deeper understanding and freedom.

Overview of The Entire Awakening Process

From the perspective of Buddhist dependent origination, the nidanas are alive in each moment of experience. They are the mental process and structures, layered on top of each other that create what appears to be a real, solid reality. In normal experience (pre-awakening), all of the mental layers are dependently arising in every moment. As we awaken more and more deeply, we strip off the later layers and eventually get back to to raw experience.

The mental layers arise in the following order:

• Avijjā: (1) Consciousness arises; this is the 'knowing' mechanism. Without it, nothing can be observed or known. 
• Saṅkhāra: Once awareness is present (2), mental mechanisms can arise that create, build, link, and put together forms (or concepts) into structures like time, cause & effect, duality, sense perception, and more.
• Viññāṇa: Once mental structures are present (3), they can be divided into separate things, and thus it is possible to discern—to make distinctions between 'this' and 'that'.
• Nāmarūpa: Once there is distinction between 'this' and 'that' (4), mental things (concepts) can appear to be real, separate things with their own identity. (this doesn't just apply to 'self'; this is for every concept).
• Saḷāyatana: Once concepts appear to be real (5), the 5 senses can appear to be real, separate things (because they are concepts).
• Phassa: Once the 5 senses seem real (6), the sense that there is a subject (me) interacting with mental and physical objects can seem real. 
• Vedanā: Once there is a sense of subject/object or self/other (7), the experience of these objects as good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant can seem real. 
• Taṇhā: Once objects are seen as good or bad (8), we can crave, want, or desire some objects and dislike or resist other objects.
• Upādāna: Once we crave objects (9), we can cling to the ones we want and avoid the ones we don't want. This is suffering in full effect.

Stages of Reification in Dependent Origination

Nidana (Stage)	What It Constructs	How Reification Appears	What Is Seen Through
Avijjā (1)	Existence / Knowing	Existence, itself, appears stable and continuous	The permanace of existence
Saṅkhāra (2)	Time, causation, narrative stitching	Events seem linked as “A caused B”	Causal arrows and temporal continuity are mental overlays
Viññāṇa (3)	Distinctions and discernment	This appears different from that	Boundaries between concepts dissolve
Nāmarūpa (4)	Concepts and defined forms	Names seem to refer to real, solid things	Concepts are seen as constructed, not inherent
Saḷāyatana (5)	Separate sense doors	“I” perceive objects through distinct senses	Senses merge into a single field without owner

Moving Beyond The Fetters

There are now some great resources for helping you move through what are referred to as the fetters into Saḷāyatana (step 5). Awakening curriculum and simply the seen are two great resources for this. 

The fetters involve deconstructing all the objects within experience. Before seeing through Saḷāyatana, you believe, "I have an eye, and there is an object out there." As Saḷāyatana dissolves, the senses merge into one sense field with no owner. I call this perceptual nonduality. Your perception, the 5 senses (+ mind), becomes one integrated process that happens on its own.

Pure Awareness
When you see through Saḷāyatana, you have successfully dissolved the "solid" sense organs. You no longer feel like a "subject" in a body that is interacting with the world through 5 separate senses (+ mind). The world is just a luminous, flickering field of sensory data (the Saḷāyatana as a pure field). It may now feel like the “ground” (or ultimate reality) is one interpenetrating sense field.

​This is what most people are referring to when they say pure awareness, presence, or liberation. It is living directly from the sense field rather than from thoughts. And this is where most people stop, because they think it's the end. There are still several more stages (which are also self-constructed by the mind).

• The Experience: It feels like liberation. The world is seen as "just seeing, just hearing." The 10 Fetters seem to have vanished because there is no "self" in the sense field to hold onto them.
• The Problem: You haven't yet seen the Nāma (the mental naming) that is constructing the Rūpa (forms) you are experiencing. You are seeing the movie screen and that the actor (you) are not separate from the screen. However, you are not seeing the projector (or any of its mechanisms) that created the screen in the first place.
• Why it's a trap: Now you genuinely believe that you are the screen, the awareness or oneness that everything else arises in. The self may not seem real, but the 'field of experience' still seems real because it is still being projected in the same way as before awakening. 

You are "liberated" from objects within the field, but you aren't liberated from the field, itself.

Saḷāyatana (5) to Nāmarūpa (4)

Saḷāyatana sees the impermanence, no-self, and suffering inherent in the content of experience. The thoughts, emotions, and even sensations are no longer identified with. In other words, it sees how the senses (+ mind) arise and fall, move around, and create suffering when they are grasped.

However, saḷāyatana does not see how concepts (definitions) create these experiences. 
To move from 5 back to 4, involves:

• The Practice: You stop looking at the objects or content of experience, and start looking at what creates the objects. This is what developmental researchers call Construct-Awareness.
• The Hurdle: Up to this point, using neti-neti (I am not this; I am not that) was an extremely useful tool. You backed up and saw that the self was none of the content.
  • This is like the in-breath, or backward movement. 
• The Switch: Now, you do the opposite. You go directly into the content with your mind. You’re like an investigator or researcher—you’re trying to figure out what ‘this’ and ‘that’ actually are. You may do this by going into one concept at a time to really get to know it.
  • This is like the out-breath, or forward movement.
• The Insight: You realize that your definitions (concepts) are not solid. Definitions are constantly changing, and thus concepts don't point to anything stable.
  • But don't let your mind convince you that "You've seen through self; you have nothing left to learn." 'Self' is just ONE concept. Go into the concepts of “the sense field", or "spirituality", or "ultimate reality", or even "no-self". Discover, experientially, that concepts aren't what you think they are. No concepts are real until we define them. 
• The Realization: You realize that even the sense field and pure awareness aren't "just happening"; they are being constructed by the subtle movements of naming and form-making within your mind.
• The Nondual Shift: Once you see this clearly, you experience the collapse of the structure that makes concepts like the sense field, no-self, spirituality, mediation, meaning, and even truth seem real. I call this conceptual nonduality, because no concept actually points to anything anymore. You can still use words, but they no longer have any meaning.
• Spiritual Teaching: Spiritual teachers at this stage can no longer believe in any concept and might refer to the 'apparent self' or 'apparent truth' in an effort not to reify concepts that don't actually point to anything real/solid.

Why most 'liberated' people stay in Saḷāyatana
People stay there because it is relatively peaceful—more peaceful than anything they've ever known. But... it's still illusion. You are free from the content of experience but not free from experience itself. As long as Nāmarūpa, and the the 3 more steps before it, are "in place", suffering remains. And because one thinks this is the end, suffering often gets repressed.

Nāmarūpa (4) to Viññāṇa (3)

Once you see that no concepts (or definitions) are real or permanent, it's now clear that meaning is made up—nothing means anything. The mind then begins to wonder, "What made concepts seem separate in the first place? How does the mind create these meaning units (i.e., concepts)?" Now, you begin tracing the "meaning-making" process back to its inception. 

Viññāṇa (Discernment | Distinction-Making) 
Nāmarūpa sees that all concepts are constructed, conceptual illusions. It see that naming something gives it a definition and thus a form. However, nāmarūpa does not see how the mind creates each separate concept (i.e., meaning units) in the first place.

In other words, how does the mind draw the line between:

• guilt and shame
• spirituality and non-spirituality
• good and bad
• true and untrue
• ultimate reality and not-ultimate reality
• any 'this' and any 'that'

To move from step 4 back to 3, involves:

• The Practice: You stop looking into the individual concepts and start looking at what makes concepts seem separate from each other. Before, you were looking directly into concept (A) and directly into concept (B), separately. Now, because they no longer seem separate, the mind starts to look at (AB) like 2 overlapping circles. Your focus is now the line or boundary between them, not to find where the boundary actually is, but rather to figure out how the mind makes the boundary in the first place.
• The Hurdle: Up to this point, you have been deconstructing concepts one by one. Maybe you went into concepts like "love" "wisdom" and "guilt" and saw they had no permanent essence (all concepts have no-self).
• The Switch: Now, you are looking at what distinguishes (A) from (B). You can then watch how the mind chooses, arbitrarily, what is "this" and what is that "that." It categorizes one thing as "spiritual" and another thing as "non-spiritual", for example.
• The Insight: You realize that "meaning," "knowing," or "understanding" can only occur when two things have been distinguished or separated from each other. An 'understanding' can only exist when the mind has drawn a line saying "this is not that." Without that boundary, you can't separate 'known' from 'unknown'.
  • Now, 'this' = 'that'.
  • Now, when someone asks you, "Is 'this' the right practice or is 'that' the right practice to awaken?" there is no way to tell.
    • It's not that you no longer know conceptually; it's that the mind has dissolved the function that can distinguish and thus choose one thing over another. If you reach into your mind to look for an answer, it just isn't there.
• The Realization: With no way to distinguish concepts from one another, you cannot have "something known". (but at this point you still have "the knower"). It can feel quite disorienting to be a knower without anything to know.
• The Nondual Shift: Once you see this clearly, you realize that all answers are equally true (and false) because truth itself requires a boundary between true and false. I call this differential nonduality because the experience of making things different from each other stops.
  • Meditation = Flying a kit = sobbing = eating dinner = running = getting angry = drinking alcohol = spiritual teaching. No distinctions between experiences can be found anywhere. And everything is equally important/unimportant.
• Spiritual Teaching: Spiritual teachers at this stage can no longer answer spiritual questions. It no longer makes any sense to choose (A) over (B), and the mind slowly looses the mechanism that does so.

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Viññāṇa (3) to Saṅkhāra (2)

Once Nāmarūpa is seen through, the meaning units (concepts) no longer mean anything permanent. Once Viññāṇa is seen through, ​the meaning units (concepts) are no longer separated from one another. Experience is now a flow of this, then this, then this, with no meaning attached.

This is when we begin to be able to see Saṅkhāra, the experience builder. Saṅkhāra is the mental sewing machine that stitches the separate frames of the movie together. It turns this, this, this, into a cohesive, flowing "experience" that appears to be: this, then this, then this, then this. 

Saṅkhāra (Volitional Formations) 
Although we may have long ago lost our belief in time, this is where time starts to fall apart experientially. Saṅkhāra creates the mental links between moments that make them seem like they are occurring in time, one after the other. Without this, there is no volitional experience, no movement through time, just separate still frames of experience.

Saṅkhāra’s linking process is also what orients us to our reality. By linking the present moment not only to the last moment, but to all past moments, we can function. Without Saṅkhāra, we do not know who, what, where, when, and why we are, because all of this information is stored in memory. ALL knowing comes from the past. So the flickering on and off of Saṅkhāra can be very disorienting until it stabilizes.

The Illusion of Cause & Effect​
At the level of Saṅkhāra, you see that causation is not fundamental, but actually a mental "overlay." You realize that the thought, "this led to that", is a mental fabrication added to a series of distinct, independent arisings. Thus, the "X because of Y" narrative stops arising. You may act, but you no longer believe in any causal explanations, because the "links" are seen as a mental addition, not the way it actually is.

Simultaneously, you stop referring to “reasons” that you supposedly did something or that something supposedly happened. It’s now clear that 'reasons' and 'logic' are mental overlays. 

The Collapse of "If A, then B"
Conventionally, we believe that logic (A ⮕ B) describes an inherent relationship between events. But at the level of Saṅkhāra, you see that (A) and (B) are two separate arisings, and the "arrow" (⮕) is a mental fabrication. 
​
Logic as a Survival Habit
"If A, then B" is a volitional formation designed for navigation of a physical world.

• The Stitch: The mind observes "Ate 5 cookies" (A) and "Got a stomach ache" (B). Saṅkhāra creates the link "Cookies caused stomach ache."
• The Reality: Cookies get eaten, stomach ache arose. The sense (the direct feeling in experience) that A causes B is an added after the fact. That feeling of causation stops arising. 

The Process

• The Realization: Without the volitional stitching that the mind does between moments, you cannot have (A ⮕ B).
• The Nondual Shift: Once you see this clearly, you no longer operate within causal frameworks. You can no longer make yourself do (A) to cause (B) because the causal link is no longer operating. Life is more like a series of (A), (B), (C), but that's even a stretch because it's clear that the temporal organization is constructed by the mind. 
• I call this operational nonduality because you no longer operate the way you used to. The mental overlays that convinced you to do anything for any outcome fall away.
• Spiritual Teaching: Spiritual teachers at this stage can no longer reliably work, coordinate events, or show up to meetings. There is no causal mechanism that links the agreement, "Yes, I agree to come to that meeting" to the actual action of going to the meeting. So, if action (B) doesn't arise on its own, then there is nothing to make it arise.
  • This doesn't necessarily mean that (B) wont happen. You might show up exactly where you said you would, but there is no way of knowing if you actually will or not. 

Saṅkhāra (2) to Avijjā (1)

Saṅkhāra sees that the causal, temporal narrative is fabricated, that the "stitching" creates the illusion of continuity, story, and a self moving through time. However, saṅkhāra does not see what allows any experience to arise in the first place. To move from 2 back to 1, involves:

• Finding The Gaps: You'll be going about your life, and one day, experience (existence, itself) will just flicker off, like flipping a light switch. You won't even know it because there is no knowing, no awareness, or no anything in non-existence. Luckily, experience (existence or knowing) flickers back on, usually only a millisecond later (at least for me, but it seems to vary for different people). 
• The Reboot: When existence turns back on, you will reboot the nidanas (the steps described here). So you first pop back into existence with no knowing, no Saṅkhāras, and nothing else that follows. There is a moment when you do not know who, what, where, when, or why of anything. Then these 'knowings' come back online, often with a fair amount of disorientation. "Whaaaa???!! What was that?!"
• The Practice: Now that you have rebooted, you can look backwards in your mind to explore what happened. You may discover a flicker or two of light (as reality turned off and then back on again). Then you can reflect on the rebooting process to see what was there before any mental overlays were added. 
  • Although sometimes it happens so fast, you can't observe the rebooting process. 
• The Insight: You realize that in the gaps—in complete cessation—there is nothing. No peace (because no one is there to recognize peace). No awareness. No memory. Just non-existence. It is the nothing that can not even know itself. The unmanifest.
• The Realization: Here you see clearly that nothing exists—that "something (our reality) literally comes out of nothing. Perhaps there is a period of fear or craving for existence (there was for me), but then acceptance arises and you begin to loosen attachment to existence itself. It's all awe-inspiring.
• The Nondual Shift: As you repeatedly, teeter-totter back and forth between existence and non-existence, they begin to merge. An unlocatable peace (outside of time and space) begins to pervade everything. Perhaps it is the polarity of existence—if existence is suffering then non-existence is peace. They begin to merge, just as the other dualities did, and eventually, they are seen to be the same thing. This is what I refer to as existential nonduality because you see everything as both existence and non-existence, simultaneously. 

In The Law of One, this might be referred to as 'The Gateway' to intelligent infinity. As one integrates at this level, they become disidentified with existence itself. You are not the self, or awareness, or sense field, or anything else. You are all of it and none of it with no one part holding the title of "Ultimate reality". To hold 'Ultimate reality' and 'everything else' as separate is still separation. So reality can flicker on and off while one remains totally at peace.

Final Thoughts on Reification

Reification is not a action we take once. It is the ongoing activity of mind that builds the world we live in. It builds the self we defend. It builds the logic we trust. And because it is layered and subtle, it can remain active even after powerful awakenings.

Many early awakening insights dissolve identification with thoughts, emotions, and even the sense of being a separate self. This is a meaningful shift. Suffering decreases. Life becomes lighter. But unless the deeper mechanisms of Nāmarūpa, Viññāṇa, Saṅkhāra, and Avijjā are examined directly, the structure of reality remains intact.

​You may have freed yourself from the content of experience, but you have not freed yourself from experience itself.

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