The Finders

Achievement Unlocked!

Jesus was "born this way" (Son of God) but the Buddha had to earn it. At least that's one way the story goes though some (mainly in the East) think any seeker can potentially upgrade their state of consciousness to "enlightened" though vanishingly few manage to actually do so. In the old days, it was not uncommon for Americans to travel to the East seeking spiritual achievement just like foreigners came to the USA looking for material achievement. The Beatles traveled to India and came back with Maharishi. Was he a finder? Several gurus soon came to America to save us the trip and teach us how to transform our consciousnesses, though many suspected these spiritual teachers really came here for material achievement.

What does the technology of the East offer us that we couldn't, with our American know how, figure out how to do even better? We've turned mindfulness into a way to reduce stress, getting rid of those pesky religious trappings. Couldn't science engineer a superior spiritual path? The goal would need a more sciency name though. How about "fundamental wellbeing"?

When Dr. Martin began his research in 2006, he wanted to study those who had succeeded at reaching a superior consciousness in hopes of doing so himself and though it doesn't become clear until the last chapter, "A Personal Note," he was successful. He designed a protocol so that others could do so too (for $2997 according to a recent marketing email).

The Tao that can be written about in a book isn't the real one and non-symbolic consciousness, which is what Dr. Martin originally called his goal, by its very nature resists being symbolized. But that never stops folks from trying. Still, we symbolizers must always keep in mind that what we end up with will be a very different animal than what we set out to trap in our cages.

Take, for example [b:Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha: An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book|4129848|Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book|Daniel M. Ingram|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348837009l/4129848.SY75.jpg|4177039]. This is a how-to book for specific goals ("The Finders" does not say much about technique)--a sort of walk-through for the video game of Buddhism. Enlightenment in this context means the ability to do the tricks Gautama could do.

"The Finders" characterizes enlightenment (now called "Fundamental Wellbeing") by its cognitive, emotional, sense-of-self, memory, and perceptive effects. One wants to achieve this because one's life becomes subjectively better. The proof of betterness is that hardly any finders report a wish to return to their previous unenlightened condition. Yet, some do! Jed McKenna in his [b:Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing|149961|Spiritual Enlightenment The Damnedest Thing|Jed McKenna|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348316611l/149961.SY75.jpg|144743] warns that enlightenment isn't what you should seek as it will ruin your life. [a:Eckhart Tolle|4493|Eckhart Tolle|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1505974741p2/4493.jpg] (is he a finder?) doesn't indicate that there are any downsides to his teachings. Are these people all talking about the same thing? If we are being "non-symbolic", does it even make sense to ask that question?

You have to wonder to what extent those who "mastered the core techniques" would qualify as finders. It's obvious, however that few who complete the finders course are skilled in those core techniques. So, destinations differ. At the same time, there are those who will tell you there is no destination, or, worse perhaps, that you are already "there" if you only realized it. Even this book distinguishes between different flavors of finder--that there are perhaps as many as 20 separate "locations" along a continuum where one could end up (though hardly anything is said about any of those other than the first four.)

How then can we characterize a finder? Dr. Martin says it is the absence of a narative self. Becoming a finder, known in this book as "transitioning" (it was written before the gender revolution), is then often experienced as the extinguishing of this self. What is a "narative self?" Early on, Dr. Martin claims that the vast majority of people have this internal construct that keeps a running commentary, often critically, on their life. (Do you have one, dear reader?) Why call that absence "non-symbolic?"

Another reviewer, rating the book one star says it was "not what I was seeking" adding that it "sounded like someone who just doesn't care!" Indeed, some of Jeffery's finders don't seem to care about all that much. Jeffery considers that a problem and specifically warns his students about how bad it will turn out if they lose all their motivation. [a:Jed McKenna|86669|Jed McKenna|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] seems to be a non-carer and makes fun of those on the path who make a big deal about compassion. "I don't do heart," he says, but he also says ""I don't eat human eyeballs or shoot Disney characters. I'm a nice guy." So he does care--it's just not part of his enlightenment. Contrast this with [a:Daniel Ingram|1438812|Daniel Ingram|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] (who wrote Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha) who makes a point of teaching Buddhist ethics as an essential part of the enlightenment process. Compassion is by no means optional for him.

I actually finished this book (the audiobook--which goodreads doesn't list among editions) almost two months ago and started my review then but it's taken until now to figure out what I wanted to say. In the sense of being "food for thought," this was an excellent book for me, but I think that's actually more of an accident so I can't really give the book credit, but let me explain what I've figured out.

The term "enlightenment" seen as the end of a journey is misleading. It is a feeling one has after certain realizations. There are many such realization experiences and the order one has these differs for each person "on the path." I never felt enlightened because I lacked a "narrative self." I could qualify as a "finder" in Dr. Martin's sense but that wasn't what I'd been seeking. I'd been seeking something I called "understanding"--I wanted life to make sense to me-- and when I had the clear realization that there could be no such actual understanding outside of the subjective feeling of it, that's when I felt enlightened. I stopped seeking because I now knew that what I was looking for didn't exist in the form I required. It was like looking for a rational number whose square is two and then understanding the proof that the square root of two is irrational. There were many other realizations I still needed, perhaps an infinite number of them.

Dr. Martin's finders aren't all enlightened. They have (at best) just had some basic realizations which they now understand intellectually. Many have incorporated their realizations into their (still mostly intact) egos. Instead of "enlightened" we'd be better calling these people "awakened" though many have likely fallen back asleep and merely remember having been awake.

Still, having 70% of your students reach an awakening experience is impressive. But perhaps that figure, based on what students have reported, isn't all that accurate. I had an intellectual understanding of a lot of these concepts before I had enough experiences to integrate any of it into who I was. It makes sense that many spiritual traditions discourage people from comparing their experiences and understandings with each other because it is the opposite of helpful.

If you do koan study as a zen practitioner, after solving a koan, you get another one to work with. You don't graduate--it's not an "achievement unlocked" situation. The sound of one hand clapping, the non-duality koan, teaches you something different than "If you say this is not a stick, I will hit you with it" which basically teaches the limits of language and conceptual understanding and how it can trap you. These are separate experiences and not things that you can get from their intellectual discussion.

Dr. Martin thinks like an academic psychologist and does his research accordingly. It's interesting research and I'm glad to have read this summary of some of it's results, but I also think it's basically wrongheaded, even just as research, and I don't trust his conclusions. For that reason, I'm giving it 2 stars because the reader should be warned it can be misleading.