Jeffery Martin, stages of enlightenment, questions

[Elisabeth]

Hello,

so I came across this guy who's doing research into various kinds of "persistent non-symbolic experience". That means he has investigated 50 people who were enlightened to various degrees, i 8 hours long in-depth interviews, and found out how their experience is to them. Watch one of the videos linked from http://nonsymbolic.org/publications/ and especially read http://nonsymbolic.org/PNSE-Article.pdf . Now I'm both much more clear on enlightenment and much more confused.

In his article, he seems to stay firmly rooted in the materialist paradigm and describe the 'locations' as very different and purely subjective perceptions of reality.  He claims people's personalities don't change, that people living the "persistent non-symbolic experience" tend to be dogmatic about it, even that their subjective perception of increased body awareness are inaccurate.

This sure makes enlightenment seem like a delusion, although a very pleasant one. How does all that go together with what @Leo Gura teaches about enlightenment being the absolute truth?  How does that fit with deconstruction of your web of beliefs? It does fit with recontextualisation, except, these recontextualizations seem to be different for people at different 'locations'.

Please help me understand.

P.S. He claims to not have been enlightened when doing the interviews, but reaching that state now. And he has created a course for seekers where he has 70% success in creating PNSE (with committed, advanced people, I assume) within just months. He sais positive psychology exercises can prevent the dark nigh of the soul. All of this seems quite contrary to how the process usually looks like... yet if he's right it's huge.

From the article:

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As the overall picture was examined what emerged was a continuum that seemed to progress from ‘normal’ waking consciousness toward a distant location where participants reported no individualized sense of self, no self-related thoughts,no emotion, and no apparent sense of agency or ability to make a choice.

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In Location 3, participants’ experience of inner peace and beingness continued to deepen. So too had their feelings of connectedness and union/unity. If they were Christian, they felt strongly merged with Jesus, the Holy Spirit, or God depending upon their sect. If they /were ‘spiritual’ they may have felt this same sense of connectedness mapped onto the experience of an all -pervasive consciousnes.

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Research showed that the initial PNSE experience brought with it such a deep sense of truth and certainty that it was hard for participants to imagine it as anything but the ‘correct’ version of the experience. (...) Participants had difficulty accepting that individuals who described their experiences differently were actually experiencing PNSE

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Over the course of a week, his father died followed very rapidly by his sister. He was also going through a significant issue with one of his children. Over dinner I asked him about his internal state, which he reported as deeply peaceful and positive despite everything that was happening.(...) While the participant reported no stress, his partner had been observing many telltale signs: he wasn’t sleeping well, his appetite was off, his mood was noticeably different, his muscles were much tenser than normal, his sex drive was reduced, his health was suffering, and so forth.

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I arranged and observed private yoga sessions with a series of participants as part of a larger inquiry into their bodily awareness. During these sessionsit became clear that participants believed they were far more aware of their body than they actually were. For example, the instructor would often put her hand on part of the body asking the participant to relax the tense muscles there, only to have the participant insist that s/he was totally relaxed in that area and did not feel any muscle tension.

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Despite an overwhelming change in how it felt to experience both themselves and the world after the onset of PNSE, the outward appearance of the participants changed very little.

 

Edited September 10, 2018 by Elisabeth

[Enlightenment]

Your personality does change, but it unfolds in 2 and 7 year cycles after the initial experience, when I first had that no sense of agency experience, nobody noticed any difference in me, but now after almost 2 years I can tell you that some of my behaviors have changed. 

Why does it make enlightenment a delusion?

[Leo Gura]

@Elisabeth No-self is a relatively weak version of enlightenment.

There are deeper stages of which few people are aware.

Martin's work is good (for an academic), but it's certainly not fathoming the full depth of nonduality.

I posted about Martin on my blog some years ago.

Martin's problem is that he's still not really understanding what science is and its limitations. He's still trying to demystify and rationalize everything -- as scientists are trained to do.

[Forestluv]

Sometimes I see elaborate theories and just shake my head. We know virtually nothing about reality, yet people walk around and give talks as if they are making sense of the world based on 0.00000000001% understanding. In 500 years, perhaps humanity will have a 0.000001% level of understanding and laugh about how stupid we are. Things that none of us can imagine will be discovered. Stuff that would look like magic. Seriously radical stuff that would freak us out now. Stuff that we have no concepts for and are unable to conceptualize now.

Once I started having mystical experiences, it was a complete game-changer. The world looks completely different. It's like humans are in the Dark Ages trying to figure out how a mechanical pencil works. Now, there is nothing wrong with trying to figure out how a mechanical pencil works - ya gotta start somewhere. Yet, let's not kid ourselves into thinking we've made substantial progress figuring out the nature of reality.

Leo commented in a video that 99% of the growth is at Turquoise and I totally agree. Once you get some Turquoise glimpses it's like peeking into another world. Imagine a world in which intellect is a stage grey, archaic ability. Intellect is something poorly-evolved humanoid brains used thousands of years ago. 

[Nahm]

@Elisabeth Thinking. 

 

[Faceless]

12 hours ago, Serotoninluv said:

Leo commented in a video that 99% of the growth is at Turquoise and I totally agree. Once you get some Turquoise glimpses it's like peeking into another world.

I Don’t see it as growth, and wouldn’t call a glimpse of anything that significant. What’s special-sacred is the continuous (daily) harmony of infinite intelligence(headlessness).

I’m not sure about the color schemes of S. dynamics though. But turquoise is a  beautiful color indeed. 

Edited September 11, 2018 by Faceless

[Forestluv]

1 hour ago, Faceless said:

I Don’t see it as growth, and wouldn’t call a glimpse of anything that significant. What’s special-sacred is the continuous (daily) harmony of infinite intelligence(headlessness).

I’m not sure about the color schemes of S. dynamics though. But turquoise is a  beautiful color indeed. 

Cool. That is another way of looking at it

[Elisabeth]

Jeffery Martin may be a scam

https://www.reddit.com/r/streamentry/comments/98e7gd/practice_my_review_of_finders_course_exposing_the/

[Leo Gura]

I highly doubt it's a scam, but Jeffery Matrin is certainly not Awake and has no clue what Awakening is.

[Elisabeth]

10 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

I highly doubt it's a scam, but Jeffery Matrin is certainly not Awake and has no clue what Awakening is.

Ok, thanks.