Jeffrey Martin - Locations of Enlightenment

Part of Jeffrey Martin's research on persistent non-symbolic experience (enlightenment) was finding that individuals tended to land in one of several locations.  All of these reflect some degree of loss of a narrative, discursive, language-based sense of self and might, um, speculatively be thought of as analogous to Buddhist paths.  I nabbed these from a powerpoint presentation on the site.

Location 1
- Expansion of sense of self, connection to divine
- Much less affected by ‘self’ thoughts
- Distance from but still have positive and negative emotions
- Deep peace but can be suppressed by triggered conditioning
- Effects from perceptual triggers fall off quickly
- Deep peace and beingness feels more real than anything previous
- Trust in ‘how things are’
- Personal history less relevant, memories less

Location 2
- ‘Self’ thoughts continue to fade
- Peace increasingly harder to suppress/conditioning fades
- Shift towards increasingly positive emotions, until only very positive emotions remain
- Intermediate levels of perceptual triggers increasingly fade
- More likely to feel that there is a correct decision or path to take when presented with choices
- Higher well-being than location one

Location 3
- Only single positive emotion remains
- Feels like a combination of universal compassion, love, joy, …
- Higher well-being than location 2

Location 4
- No sense of agency
- No emotions
- No ‘self’ thoughts
- Perceptual triggers at their bare minimum
- No sense of divine or universal consciousness
- life was simply unfolding and they were watching the process happen
- Memory deficits/scheduled appointments, etc.
- Highest well-being reported