I understand what you mean, but I don't think this is where jeffrey martin is coming from.
I think the enlightenment / awakening transformation he's talking about is something very specific... he's saying he's found a better more effective and efficient way through. most importantly, he's waving around a bunch of social science statistics which prove what he's saying.
Here's a gross oversimplification just to make sure we're all talking about the same thing --
1. people meditate /pray / go to church / do spiritual stuff in order to feel better (i.e. greater sense of well-being)
2. this is fundamentally an addition by subtraction process. you feel better when you take away the disturbances that make you not feel good
3. there hasn't been a lot of good science re which methods / techniques / practices are best
Alex,
Well you know him better than I do and thus may have more insight into any nuances, but I kind of disagree with you. What I hear is a smart guy who recognizes that humans have vast untapped potential and that there are ways to access at least some of those potentials, but dogma isn't the way - and accessing the potentials isn't going to get most people what they think they'll get or what they think they want.
I understand what Dr. Martin says via this analogy:
You're an aspiring guitar player. You want to be better at playing. You want to be happy playing. Not playing C&W as well as you think you should makes you unhappy (as you see it at the time). You want a solution to get you out of the talent hole you're in or off the musical plateau you're stuck on. But (and this is the important part) all you know is country & western. Your radio is stuck on C&W. Your entire CD collection is C&W. Your family and friends only listen to C&W. I mean, literally, you don't know that there is any music other than C&W. Yet you've always struggled to play C&W like the guys on the radio and CDs. You kind of can, but it's not quite right. You're not happy as a musician.
Then one day something happens. It could happen by accident or, perhaps, someone like Dr. Martin - who is a radio repairman - comes along. The dial on your radio shifts. Now you hear jazz, rock n roll, blues, classical! You are taken to other regions of the country where music stores sell CDs of all genres and there are bands playing in clubs that cover all the styles. Wow! You had no idea that such music existed. Some of those "wrong" notes you were playing? Well, they actually are right notes in one of these other styles. Your musical prowess and happiness grows as you realize that you are much more free to play and make other kinds of sounds.
Of course, to Dr. Martin's point, you may not achieve your original goal of becoming a better C&W player. If that's what you wanted and are still married to that goal, you have failed. You probably won't even be motivated to keep working on C&W.
Now the guru/salesperson, s/he wants to take you from C&W and show you sitar music and tells you that is the ultimate musical truth, but what is happening there is that you're trading one limiting musical concept for another that is equally limited and rigid.
The real "enlightenment" is coming to understand that 1. The radio dial can shift and 2. when it does shift, there you are - aspects of yourself that you never knew existed. 3. That the totality of yourself is far greater than anyone ever told you; perhaps infinite.
I think Dr. Martin gets that 100%.
So the question is, how do we make the dial shift without freaking out and destroying our lives (mind/body/soul)? - because as much as leaving the familiar, no matter how miserable, can be liberating and exhilarating, it can also be terrifying, disorienting and very lonely.
If there is a scientific way to go about creating and managing these processes, then I'm all for it. I really like Dr. Martin b/c I see him going about all of this in a methodical way.