by Dr. Jeffery Martin: Location 4 is a significant turning point on the continuum, where Fundamental Wellbeing begins to move increasingly in the direction

of the further reaches of transcendence. It is also where Finders begin reporting that they feel “alien” or “no longer human”.

This may be the consequence of significant human faculties falling away. For example, one considerable change in Location 4 is that emotion drops off, including the types of love that feel like they could never go away, such as love for one’s children.

Another significant change is the loss of a sense of agency, the sense that one can choose to take actions or make a decision. Instead, it just feels like everything is spontaneously unfolding and one is just watching that process happen.

Self-referential thoughts (thoughts about oneself) are gone by this point, and many Location 4 Finders experience a completely silent mind. Some exceptions to this can occur during physiological events such as intense hypoglycaemia, and when the brain is coming online in the morning immediately after waking up.

Psychological triggers are at a bare minimum.

There is no sense of the divine or panpsychist presence, which is experienced in Location 3. This can make the transition very shocking for people coming out of Location 3 into Location 4, and even more so if this runs contrary to their belief system (Christianity, for example).

Location 4 is nondual, and a much deeper and all-encompassing experience of nonduality than Location 2. Nonduality is a perceptual change that has traditionally been associated with some religious and spiritual systems. Usually this is most easily noticed through the senses, and especially vision and hearing.

So, for example, when a person in nonduality looks out at the world, instead of feeling like there’s something inside their head that is looking out their eyes, their experience when they open their eyes is that everything is just somehow there, that it is just showing up. It doesn’t feel like there is an “observer” or “looker” or “seer” in there that is looking out. Instead everything is just there as a singular expression. It’s all one thing, including them as part of it. Nondual literally means “not two”, so it refers to this kind of oneness in perception. Paradoxically, Location 4 Finders who transition there from an earlier location often describe a “return to the body”, despite being so nondual.

By this point there are usually real memory deficits. These show up mostly with non-routine events like appointments, not things someone does every day such as picking their child up from school.

There is a word that almost everyone in Location 4 uses to describe the experience, and that is “Freedom”. There is a freedom that is experienced in Location 4 that is so above and beyond anything people have experienced before that it stands out as a defining characteristic, even if someone has been in earlier forms of Fundamental Wellbeing for a long time. When we dig into this from a research standpoint this seems to relate to a change that occurs that gives someone immense freedom from what others and society thinks about them. The freedom that comes from that is absolutely unimaginable. As you might imagine, there are some issues that come along with that, like social conditioning dissolving over time, and Location 4 Finders becoming less good at relating to people and society.

Finders report higher wellbeing in Location 4 than earlier locations, but this wellbeing is more in the direction of greater degrees of stillness, peace, and freedom than what most people may think of as wellbeing in earlier locations.

Tendencies of Location 4

• Location 3 is typically described as the ultimate human experience, and Location 4 is where Fundamental Wellbeing begins to feel beyond human experience. People describe it as feeling “alien” or “not human”. So some people will pull themselves out of Location 4 for this reason. Others remain there or may go further to Location 5.
• The absence of emotion, including love, makes Location 4 less than ideal for intimate partner type relationships.
• There is a strong inclination to isolate as locations get later, beginning at Location 4, and unless a person’s life and finances were previously set up to accommodate this, it generally doesn’t lead to optimum lifestyle outcomes.
• The lack of concern for what others think, and typically limited access to the mind, often lead Location 4 Finders to decondition in ways that aren’t optimal for social and mainstream societal functioning.
• The completeness of the peace and freedom make it amazing to experience, but equally easy to let one’s life spin out because “everything is just unfolding” and it doesn’t seem to matter what happens.
• All these qualities can add up in a way that can make a lot of Location 4 Finders seem unfriendly, distant, or even callous to others.
• For Finders who have spent a lot of time in Location 3, especially those with the divine version of Location 3, the transition to Location 4 can be very disturbing, because the solace of the immense love and Divinity disappears. It can greatly disrupt people’s belief systems and take them time to reconcile internally.