Donna Quesada: It’s like a near-death experience. Something that you mentioned reminds me of people who have near-death experiences and are never the same again.

It’s something like a catalyst and they see themselves… That was very interesting what you said about objectifying the self in order to want to kill it… And the near-death experience seems to me one of those examples where you break through that idea of what you are as a “self.”

Dr. Jeffery Martin: Totally. Yeah. Peter Fenwick, a friend of mine who is a well-regarded neuropsychiatrist in the UK, is one of the major researchers of what happens around death and beyond. He believes that everybody, as they’re in the process of, literally, the moment of death, transitions to fundamental well-being. He’s really, really adamant about that. I can’t ever stay at his house without a conversation about that at night before I go to bed… The first night, I’m like, “I don’t know, Peter. I don’t research the people who are dying… like maybe it’s the evidence,” and he’s like, “No”… he’s always kind of trying to talk me into it. Maybe that’s true.

Donna: Yeah. Well, this stuff is very fascinating coming from a Zen background… there’s a lot of talk about killing the ego, which in itself is a kind of death, a living death of the Self as you knew it, and because the ego is such a source of our suffering… Do you agree with that?

Jeffery: Sure. Ego is a tough term. It’s defined in a lot of different ways. The way it sort of just generically is, sure, I’d agree with it. Although I don’t know that it’s necessarily killed. I do think that it can be sort of bypassed or looked away from, quieted, and improved upon. That would be hours of conversation we could have separately on that type of data. But what is, I think, kind of being gotten at there is, most people are addicted to the mind and they’re addicted to the normal person’s mind, which most people generically are kind of calling “the ego.” In fact, they’re a bit… kind of, living in an abstraction layer of reality. I can remember when I was doing these interviews very, very early on with people. I had no frame of reference for this stuff, right?

I would listen to them talk about how after the transition to fundamental well-being, it was like… finally they could see reality for the first time and there was this direct seeing. And they’re like, it’s right here, right now, you’re just not seeing it. And I remember, I would sit in my hotel room or something, it was like one person a day, right? And so, I go home at night and usually sleep and sometimes I’d stay with them, but usually, I’d stay in a hotel. If they were really out in the boonies, I’d have to stay with them, but otherwise, I prefer to just go back to the hotel somewhere and check email and chill out, right?

I remember I’ll usually be sitting in a hotel room at the end of the night and just sort of be looking around, thinking, Okay, there’s something here… it’s right here, but I’m not seeing it. What is it? Of course, on the other side of it, you understand totally what they were trying to convey. And I think the best way of thinking about it is that humanity is primarily living in a mental abstraction layer. About age two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half, a whole chunk of our brain kicks in, and things like episodic memory, meaning story-based, life story-based memory, and stuff comes online. It wasn’t turned on before that. So, that comes online. You have the ego, the nascent ego, starts to form all of those types of things.

One of the things that happens once you start to have that type of memory come online is you start to have the ability for historical base problem solving and fixing. And so, in a way, time starts to enter the picture in a much more usable way. You are able to remember, Oh, geez, I remember if I turn the knob to the left in a certain way, the cabinet will open but there were these times when the cabinet opened and things fall out of it on my head, and other times, when it didn’t fall out on my head… I should probably open that door more slowly just to be sure.

Whereas probably, just the behaviorism side of things didn’t… when that part of the system was online from earlier in life, it just didn’t necessarily program you to do things the same way. As you start to build up this story-based history, you start to construct the story of yourself. Basically, you start to try to enhance the story of yourself. Well, I’m section, section, this is blah blah blah, and here are all my titles. And you ask somebody who are they and they are like, Well, I am such and such and blah blah blah. We all have these stories that we’ve built up in fundamental being, all about your “story.”

Donna: And that’s what you mean about living in an abstraction? It’s just to tell about what happened, which may not even be accurate at all?

Jeffery: And you’re carrying all of that into the present moment, right? And so, I’m looking at a camera right now… I’m in a studio for all intents and purposes, even though I’m in the rainforest, our studio goes with me everywhere because I’m always doing these interviews and stuff, or teaching online classes for a school or something. And so, I’m staring at a camera right now and it’s just a camera. I’m not looking through the mental abstraction layer that I would have been looking through 20 years ago, or even maybe 10 years ago, whenever, and it’s just a camera. That’s all it is. And that’s not the way most people are seeing. They can’t tell that. They never had a distinction. Sometimes they’ve had a peak experience, and they get a little glimpse of what that might be like if it was the right type of peak experience, but the average person has never had any experience beyond living in that mental abstraction layer where the camera carries all kinds of stuff with it. Who knows what it would actually be carrying, right? I’m just guessing here.

I could see it carrying me, carrying what you think of me, associated with it. I might be thinking to myself, Oh, geez, am I in the right… was my head cut off? And why is that? So that you’ll look at me a certain way. So that you’ll be impressed with me or approving of me or whatever else, whereas truthfully, and I mean no offense, but I could care less if you approve of me or if somebody watching approves of me or whatever else. It’s just a camera, right? And so, I’m not bringing all of these fears, times when things didn’t work out… there’s no fear around looking into the camera and talking. I was in broadcasting for years, there’s none of that baggage that’s been dragged forward, staying at the camera. It’s just nothing. There’s no mental abstraction layer between me and the camera, right? It’s just… there’s a camera there and I’m staring into it. It’s a nice high-end 4K Cannon camera or whatever. That’s it. It’s me and the camera and nothing between us really. And that is unheard of.

Donna: It’s so true that anxieties carry stories to play with what you’re saying a little bit. So, to be able to leave that baggage as you put it behind is to liberate ourselves.

Jeffery: Yeah, and it could be positive things, right? Like, Oh, I’m so special. This is an interview and I’m being interviewed and people are going to put it online. So, I’m going to have a very positive association with the camera, right? The camera could be like, I am so special because I’m looking into a camera and talking to someone and other people are going to watch this and it’s not necessarily negative stuff. That abstraction layer runs across the whole gambit.

Donna: Well, Jeffery, is there anything that I didn’t ask that I should have? Is there anything else you’d like to share?

Jeffery: Sure. I think one thing that people find interesting is the different types… the sort of, major types of fundamental well-being, and what’s different between them. And so, maybe we could just briefly cover that before we say goodbye.

Donna: I’d love that.

Jeffery: So, we do not like the idea of hierarchies or something being further than something else or anything like that. We think that where you’re at in fundamental well-being is fine. I mean, you can be in the earliest, most simple form of fundamental well-being and that’s great, right? And so, we’re not into ladders or anything like that. As a result of that, we basically put things on what we call a “continuum of related experiences,” and rather than calling them types of fundamental well-being, we call them “locations” along this continuum of related experiences.

And so, location one is basically the place where most people that are in fundamental well-being are experiencing it from. Its hallmark is that it has that shift from fundamental discontentment to things somehow, paradoxically, being okay. Now, that doesn’t mean that if your spouse comes home and is like, “Look, I’m divorcing you and I’m taking all of the money and the kids, and I’m saying bad things about you to everyone in our world that cares about us” or whatever else, or your boss comes in, your boss is like, “You’re fired and I’m going to make sure you never work in this industry again”… It doesn’t mean that you might not feel like you’re under some serious threat and you might have a lot of negative emotion come up. You might have a lot of psychological triggering and conditioning come up, but if in the middle of that arising, you can stop and look down deep to what is at the foundation of your experience of the world, which you’ll find in fundamental well-being, and location one is a sense that somehow, despite all of that, even though it makes no logical sense, paradoxically, everything still seems fine.

And so, the nervous system is built on top of that feeling of being fine, but that doesn’t mean that you’re at peace all the time and you don’t have psychological conditioning that can be triggered by things like that. The peace is in the background… is a good way of thinking about it. Occasionally, it comes more to the foreground, but it stays lots of times in the background. You will, lots of times have to look for it, and that’s one reason why people miss it because they’re spending a lot of time with their attention at that higher level of their emotions and stuff like that, and they’re not really self-reflecting in location one on what’s going on.

Donna: Like the fish doesn’t know it’s in water… it’s just there.

Jeffery: Exactly.

Donna: Or the blue sky behind the clouds… passing by.

Jeffery: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, looking at the clouds, right?

Donna: But I love that there’s no hierarchy about it. I think that part of our aversion to talking about mental challenges is that there’s an assumed hierarchy there… Oh, happy people are more valuable or That’s a more valuable state, it’s a more important state, it’s a higher-value state, and I love that you’re breaking that down and saying… “No, they’re just different locations.” Where you are is where you are.

Jeffery: Yeah, exactly. Where you are is where you are. And so, location one is actually dual perception-wise for the people that I’m sure in awakening.com… people are familiar with a term like that. I don’t need to explain it. And then location two, the primary hallmark is, it is a non-dual location. It’s the first non-dual type of this. It’s non-duality. It’s what most of the non-dual community is in.

Donna: And maybe we shouldn’t assume that it’s known, this kind of enlightened state of not seeing a difference between you and me. This is a kind of talk that almost sounds cliché… that somehow enlightenment is supposed to bring us into that non-dual state, or another state where we’re just connected and there’s no real separation between us. So that’s what you mean by non-dual, I suppose?

Jeffery: Yeah. And people often have a sense that it’s a lot more full, or a lot more intensive in experience necessarily than it is and they do it because they’ll go out and these are the people who know about non-duality, or people who are going watching videos and stuff about non-duality, right? And so, I like to say to people, Okay, let’s say that, what are you an expert in? Oh, I’m really good at fixing bikes. Okay. So, let’s say that I asked you to make a video for me about how to change a flat tire on a bike. What’s that video going to look like? It’s going to look like you focused on describing and may be demonstrating how to change a flat tire on a bike. Now, is the only thing that’s happening for you at that moment, changing the flat tire on the bike? No. Is the only that’s going to happen for you that day, changing the flat tire on the bike? No.

I mean, you might have had a very crappy day and while you’re changing the tire on the bike, explaining how to change the tire on the bike, you might be in huge emotional turmoil and angst, and whatever else, right? You might be having a great day and you might be having a wonderful experience sharing about how to change the tire on the bike. Or, you might have a dog that’s just outside of the camera frame that’s constantly driving you nuts and you’re just trying to shoo it away and keep it out there… you have your hand shooing it away, while on camera. Any number of things could be happening. When somebody watches that video later, what are they going to see? They’re not going to see any of that. They’re going to see you demonstrating how to change the tire on the bike.

And so, what happens with a lot of teachers that are out there in like the non-dual space or spiritual space, in general, or whatever, is they might make a video on awareness or they might make a video on spaciousness or they might make a video on this or that or whatever else. And people will listen to that and they’ll listen to the way they’re describing that, and they’ll be like, Oh, wow, that’s how they experience everything. But it’s not. They can’t see the dog they’re shooing away. They can’t see they had a crappy day and that they’re having a negative day. They’re focused on that video and describing that thing as deeply and as thoroughly as they can. But it doesn’t mean that’s like the sum total of their experience at the moment.

So, what people often think is, Oh, these experiences, when I have them, they will be so overwhelming and all-encompassing just like I heard described on this or that video or whatever else, and that’s just not true. Non-duality is primarily perceptual… it’s easiest to detect perceptually. And so, in location two, we have a test that we do. Also for location four, which is another non-dual location. Location three isn’t non-dual. It’s dual.

This is when you can follow along with… there are spoilers with this one. And so, people can do it either way. We can do a visual test first. You can look at me. I hope you will find something better to look at in your immediate surroundings than me. So just whatever you want to look at. I could look out at the windows and the rainforest.

Donna: Just find something to look at.

Jeffery: Yeah, just look. Just look. Just look. All you have to do is just look.

Donna: Okay.

Jeffery: Now, ask yourself… what is this experience of looking like? Is it all just kind of showing up? And by showing up, I don’t mean it’s going from nothing to something. It’s all just here, right?

Donna: You’re breaking up just a little right there.

Jeffery: Sorry. Does it feel like everything is just here? You open your eyes and it’s all just here.

Donna: Yeah.

Jeffery: Or does it feel like there’s something in your head? I don’t care where. It can be behind the eyes, back of the head, top of the head, near the head, it doesn’t matter where. Something in your head looking out your eyes and very clearly, this something is here, it’s looking out there. What you’re looking at, it’s out there but there’s a looker essentially here, somewhere in your head, and it’s looking out there, or does it seem like when you open your eyes, everything is just there? If it’s the latter, if everything is just there, chances are, you’re experiencing some form of non-dual perception. If there’s a looker in here looking out there, then you’re probably experiencing dual perception or you might have a hybrid there. Let’s say, Okay, great, I have opened my eyes. Everything is just there. I don’t sense a looker here. The next question is, when you look out there, does it kind of seem like everything is showing up? Everything is just there but it’s there and you’re still somehow here separate from it. And so, it’s not a looker here but you are not included in everything that is just there.

If that’s the case, then, probably you’re moving in the direction of non-duality or you’re close, you are on the cusp of non-duality, but you’re not quite fully there yet. Another way to do this is with hearing. You close your eyes and you just listen. How is sound present for you? Is it all just there? Is it just like this field of sound? Don’t get hung up on words like feel. Are the sounds just all there? Or does it feel like somewhere in your head there’s a listener? Again, I don’t care where, and it’s listening out to the sounds and the listener is here in your head and the sounds are out there. It’s the same type of thing.

And so, those perceptual tests allow us very rapidly to determine whether someone is experiencing non-duality or not. Many times people miss that they’re experiencing non-duality because they’re not thinking of it perceptually, they’re thinking of it like… they watch these videos and it sounds like it’s this overwhelming experience and whatever else. They don’t get that it’s a bicycle tire analogy and all that. And so, in location one, you’ve got that shift to everything feeling like it’s fundamentally fine. You also have, generally speaking, some sort of reduction and self-reflective thought. Thoughts about you. Like, Oh, my God, should I have worn the blue jacket today or What if she doesn’t like blue? Or whatever. Well, it’s a white shirt and white background… maybe I should make it a grey background. Maybe they don’t like gray. What if they don’t like gray? What if gray makes me seem dark? No, no, I better go with white.

All these torturous self-thoughts, right? So, those quiet down. Negative emotions fall off more rapidly. If somebody cuts you off in traffic, you’re no longer following them for six miles on their bumper, trying to scare them into like, You better not do that to anybody ever again… you’re a horrible person… Or anything like that. It doesn’t mean you don’t flip them off. Maybe you flip them off, maybe have a choice word for them, but then it’s gone as quickly as it came, with the trigger or whatever, right? Those things continue to deepen in location two and so, you have a further reduction and self-related thought. More rapidity of negative emotion falling away. The deeper you are in location two, more or less, the more your emotional balance goes to happiness. If you’re very deep in it, it’s kind of almost an emotionless space, but very few people will reach that. And so, as you deepen in, ordinarily, it’s like your emotionality just continues to get more and more positive. But the hallmark is that non-dual versus not non-dual types of things.

Each one of these also has a series of layers of depth and so, the first layer of depth is really sort of like the mind and it really is thoughts, and thinking is an emotion. And even in location two, even though it’s a non-dual place, you can still have identification with thoughts and the mind and habit patterns, and stuff in there. When you shift to layer two, as we call the layers, we call it the “depth layers” and types of locations. So, as you shift to layer two, that’s the classic spaciousness or emptiness that you hear people talking about. It can be spacious emptiness together. For some people, it’s just spaciousness. For some people, it’s just emptiness.

Initially, as you’re moving through layers of depth, you get a sense that, first, there’s a sense you might be in layer one, for instance, and still pretty much in your mind and emotions, even though you can pass the non-dual perception test thing, but then you’re starting to sort of sense a spaciousness or starting to sort of sense an emptiness. It’s not very concrete and then you’re experiencing it as kind of the next phase of that and then your identity shifts into it and somebody says, What are you? And you’re like, I’m the spaciousness or I’m the emptiness. That’s my true being and whatever else, right? And most people, when they get to location two or layer two and are identifying a spaciousness or emptiness or spacious emptiness, I mean, that’s a lifetime achievement in most systems.

Donna: What’s interesting is that you’re coming from a scientific background, but this talk of non-duality is where we meet with spirituality and that I find very fascinating as a kind of culmination of growth if you will.

Jeffery: Yeah, for us, it’s just things that we can measure perceptually. Layer three, if you go from layer two to layer three, layer three is kind of about an all-pervasive fullness or presence. So, on the cusp between layer two and layer three, you start to get the emptiness as full, that kind of idea, and they transition over into layer three, and eventually, you are the all-pervasive fullness presence kind of thing. And that can have a very strong, like… love, joy, powerful sort of emotional component. If you go deep enough, it will become center-less and really almost emotionless. Very still. And then layer four is very hard to actually describe, especially in a short interview, but j. When you hear people say “I am this” or “I am that” because “I am” implies something to reflect on this or that. And so, when somebody is saying, “I am this” or “I am that” they’re not in life duality.

Donna: That’s an object differentiation.

Jeffery: Yeah. If it’s just this, if you’re like, Well, what are you or what’s present? You’re just like this. That’s really about as much as you can explain… People often will say that and then you’re like, Is it really that? Then you think about it and you’re like, I guess it’s really this. I don’t know why I would say that. But everybody says that, right? So, if you think about those layers of depth and you think about them in location two, they are mostly available in location two. And so, the further reaches of layer four are not really that accessible in location two, you can’t really necessarily root into layer four very easily, and you can’t really become layer four very easily. It’s very rare for that to happen in location two but that is the classic sort of non-dual spiritual path. It’s the spaciousness and emptiness and fullness and the presence and then whatever else, right?

And so, most people, when they get exposed to those types of teachings, they don’t realize this is just one type of deepening into one spot out of many different types of fundamental well-being. So, past that, and location three is very different than location two. Location three is suddenly dual again and the reason for that is because this is kind of the classic end of the Christian, Abrahamic, more generally Sufi, Christian… that type of thing, religious experiences. This is where you’re trying to get to, if you’re like a Christian monastic or something like that. It’s also used in some of the Eastern religions, depending upon the sect, but it’s very prevalent in the west and that is a sense of being in union with the Divine. Not everyone gets a Divine version of it. Some of them get a pan-psychic version of it. Pan-psyche is just a term from philosophy, which means everything is conscious. It feels like everything is conscious.

So, there’s a sense that you’re separate from it because you’re in union with it… you’re increasingly in union with it, you’re increasingly dissolving into it, so to speak. But you’re never fully dissolved. If you go back a step or forward a step, location two and location four are both non-dual. You are it. The idea that you could be in union with something or dissolving into something or merging with something is ludicrous because you’re just it. There’s just this one thing and that’s it. But in location three, you do have that sense of the union… of dissolving. You have no more personal emotion. You have one dominant emotion left and it’s an impersonal combination of love and joy and compassion. Sometimes some other ones are put in there from a cultural programming or belief system programming standpoint, but always that foundation of love and joy and compassion.

At any given point, one of those is more forward so you can be feeling more love or you’ll be feeling more joy or something like that. Often, it’s like a divine love or a divine joy.

Donna: Does that merging engender that feeling of joy?

Jeffery: No, you can also have that at location two or in layer three. So you can have a very similar experience of that but still have some experience of personal emotions in there. It’s not a pure version of it like it is in location three. Generally speaking, each one of these locations has preferred layers of depth. So, location one, more or less, the layer of depth people land in is layer one. Location two, you can land into either layer one or layer two. Mostly, I mean, there are always exceptions, right? But just speaking of the vast average. In location three, generally speaking, you’re landing into layer three.

Donna: How many locations in total are in your program?

Jeffery: Well, they’re not in our program, they’re just in our research.

Donna: Oh, I see.

Jeffery: And so, these are just the types of things that we’ve uncovered in our research program. People can land in any one of the first four, and so, that’s why we usually just talk about the first four. But there are, in fact, dozens of them. I’ve personally experienced up to about 19 or so. Not or so, up to 19. And then maybe some glimpses of other ones that we don’t know how to classify or something. You can start to have very few people experiencing things that can’t get correlating data. It will probably take more decades of data curation. Most people land and stay really in location one. Some people will progress to location two or just initially land in location two. It’s the vast majority of finders that are either in location one or location two. And then it gets very rare in location three, even more rare in location four, and so on.

Donna: Yeah, I imagine.

Jeffery: So, location four is very different than location three. All emotions fall away. There’s no sense of emotion, there’s no sense of agency, there’s no sense of being able to do anything or make any decisions. Life just feels like it’s synchronous, quickly unfolding. You’re as surprised by what comes out of your mouth as anyone else.

Donna: And maybe that’s because the judgmental mind has fallen away.

Jeffery: Yeah, the mind is silent. Now, you can see thoughts, you can sort of see thoughts happening in your system. Thoughts again correspond more to layer one in the system, but you can’t interact with them. It’s not like layer one goes away. Spiritual teachers who say things like… all of these things, they’ll say, You are already this and All of this stuff is already present and all of that. That’s not true. As you’re going across the locations, those are rewiring in the brain. But that is true as you go across the layers of depth. And so, they really seem to correspond to more primitive parts of the brain. Layer one is sort of like the newest prefrontal cortex, thoughts, control, decision-making, and all of those types of things, and then it works its way back, increasingly, to older and older parts of conscious awareness into the brain stem. And by the time you’re at the four…

Donna: But so, you’re stating that it’s a rewiring?! So, it’s not true that we’re kind of already enlightened, and we just don’t realize it. It’s a rewiring?

Jeffery: Right. The locations are rewiring, but the layers are already there. They’re there for normal people, as well. They’ve just habituated, only looking at a certain layer. And so, the average person has grown up putting their attention, habituating their attention to just look at layer one to just be in the minds and emotions and that makes sense. That’s practical. That’s what the entire culture is doing. Everything is set up to teach you to do that and to reinforce you’re doing that. It’s not a surprise in any way that that’s what’s happening. In some ways, you’re having to break attentional habits as part of this process and get out of layer one, which is why if you’re building all of the stories around this and if you’re watching these videos thinking, oh, my mind will eventually figure out how to get me there. Well, that’s like layer one. It’s a very early part of this whole thing.

Donna: We need the experiential practice to get there to do the rewiring…

Jeffery: Yeah. And so you can, for instance, not have a persistent transition to fundamental well-being and still experience layer two, layer three, and layer four. That’s what happens with drug experiences, right? People have some profound psychedelic experience of what’s happening there. Their attention patterns are being disrupted and shifted and they’re experiencing different places in the nervous system, and then the drug wears off, their habitual attention is back, focused on layer one and that’s that. So, they can have these experiences of spaciousness of fullness, these very profound, emotional experiences of love and joy, and whatever else, whether having these temporary experiences… they’re just not persistent. To get the persistent version of it, that’s a rewiring. And so, location four also has no sense of divinity, no pan-psychic sense.

There’s a great mystic who is part of our research, who passed away a few years ago, named Bernadette Roberts, she’s one of the great Christian mystics, maybe of all time, and she basically lived in Los Angeles. She was a Carmelite nun when she was young and she was like maxed out when she was young. She had hit the Christian jackpot. You couldn’t have been any more in location three than she was, and then she kind of fell off the end of location three into location four. You can imagine if your entire cosmology is Christian, union with God, and all that, dying on the cross, and all these people that have been sort of your spiritual mentors… and now there’s no divinity, there’s no sense of the divine. She spent decades trying to make sense of her experience and she wrote really wonderful stuff about it. And so, she’s a great source for that type of stuff.

Donna: Thank you for that.

Jeffery: These are very different types, as you can tell, of experiences. And so, what happens oftentimes, if someone will have a location three experience and they wind up going to a teacher who isn’t all about a location three experience… their experience will get invalidated by that teacher. Or they will have a location three experience and they’ll find a location four teacher randomly, and that teacher will be like, Oh, you still got love, something’s wrong with your fundamental well-being. Something’s wrong with your awakening. And people feel bad oftentimes about their particular experience of fundamental well-being because a teacher knows that teacher system or they know that teacher’s range within fundamental well-being or whatever, and there’s all this other stuff that they don’t know about.

Donna: Maybe it’s not finding the right teacher at the right point in your life?

Jeffery: It is. And that doesn’t seem to happen like people say it does. There are those parables about the right teacher appearing when you’re ready. We have got all kinds of trainwreck stories from people about how their teachers made them feel bad and how they pushed them away. Now they realize, they pushed away a further awakening that they wish they could get back because that teacher didn’t believe in it or whatever else. And so, people have to be really careful about this type of stuff.

Donna: That’s a good point. Yeah.

Jeffery: So, those are the four that people can land directly into in some way. Very few people make it beyond those four.

Donna: Well, I just love that idea of having multiple teachers, not necessarily so that there’s a progression there, but so that there’s the right match there at the right time. And we’re not invalidating something just because we’re not at the right place, or because the match isn’t there. Like other relationships in life, really.

Jeffery: Absolutely. You also have to match it up to your life in what’s appropriate for your life. Location four is not appropriate for the average life.

Donna: Indeed.

Jeffery: Even if I were running a business, I would not run it from location three, because you’re so loving and so generous, and you just intend to give away the store, basically, right? It’s an amazing place to experience if you’re retired or you were on a holiday and you’re not to be responsible for your profit and loss statement or something, then, yeah, location three all the way. I mean, it just feels like the pinnacle of human experience. But it’s not a place, if you’re an entrepreneur, necessarily, to hang out Monday through Friday or whatever, right? Whereas location two or location one really is appropriate.

And so, there’s also these life-match things. It’s another thing you have to be careful of, is people advocating, “Oh, no, this is the right spot. You have to come to this spot.” That may not be the right spot for your life if you’re raising a family or you’re in a certain circumstance.

Donna: Exactly. Well, Jeffrey, it’s been a pleasure to talk with you about these things. We will have your information under the interview. Is there a preferred way that you’d like people to get in touch with you if they’d like to know more about what you’re up to?

Jeffery: Sure. They can go to our research website, which is nonsymbolic.org. It’s just one word. It’s more or less got everything I said today on it, as part of our public outreach stuff.

Donna: Wonderful. Well, I wish you a wonderful time in the rainforest, and in the ocean, on your surfboard.

Jeffery:  Thanks. That’s coming up Friday, starting Friday. For the next few months I’ll be on the beach.

Donna: Nice. Nice.

Jeffery:  I’m trying to get in shape for that. And for you, a Happy New Year. And to everybody listening, I hope this is the best year yet for you. Thanks so much for having me.

Donna: I appreciate that.

Jeffery:  I appreciate everybody’s time.

Donna: Thanks again, Jeffrey.

Jeffery:  Thank you all.

Donna: Bye-bye.

Jeffery: Bye-bye.

Wellbeing Research – For over 15 years Jeffery has conducted the largest international study on persistent non-symbolic experience (PNSE), which includes the types of consciousness commonly known as: enlightenment, nonduality, the peace that passeth understanding, unitive experience, and hundreds of other terms. This resulted in the first reliable, cross-cultural and pan-tradition classification system for these types experience. It also led to the fundamental discovery that these were psychological states that had been identified and adopted for thousands of years by many cultures and belief systems. They were not inherently spiritual or religious, or limited to any given culture or population, and could be molded in many ways to shape the experience. More recently, he has used this research to make systems available to help people obtain profound psychological benefits in a rapid, secular, reliable, and safe way.

Read and Watch Part 1 Here: Awaken Interviews Jeffery Martin Pt 1 – Fundamental Well-being

Read and Watch Part 2 Here: Awaken Interviews Dr.Jeffery Martin Pt 2 – Evolution of Consciousness Beyond the Mind

Awaken Interviews

Source: AWAKEN