Schumann Resonance Revisited

In another post, a while back, I said that I had failed to note anything significant about any particular frequency, mentioning the generally cited Schumann Resonance frequency of 7.83Hz specifically. My comment was that I found it undistinguishable from adjacent frequencies in the alpha band. I was wrong.

Last night I ran a session that remained fixed on 7.83Hz, sound and light (red/green) for an extended period. Intent was meditative.

Meditation is a concept I struggle with. A common statement of the goal of meditation is 'to completely clear the mnd'. It would appear that my ego has had a problem with that. I have argued that a mind unoccupied with something would be unconscious. I was wrong.

After a period of considerable effort to divorce my perception from my eyes, ears and body, and to perceive 'within my skull' without judgement or question, I briefly glimpsed through a doorway I had thought to be a myth. So shocking was the experience that my mind promptly grabbed it and started analysing it, and the spell was broken. What I feel I perceived is my brain's perception of sense data without naming or opinion imposed. Vision was no longer forward facing, auditory perception was no longer attributed to the ears.

Why, given my initial scepticism did I decide to do a Schumann session? I had a thought as to why it might be significant - I gave the concept 'intellectual credibility' which lowered my resistance to achieving a result. The idea that I had is that if the Schumann Frequencies truly represent the ambient electrical environment in which we live, then bringing the brain into this state will establish an equilibrium between the electrical potential within and without the skull, eliminating spurious neuron triggering.

This gives two reasons why previous experiments with 7.83Hz have been uninspiring. First, I have resisted it through scepticism. Second, as the frequency is an average, atmospherics on any given day, in any given location, may result in a different local ambient frequency, so on any given day a slightly different frequency may lead to equilibrium.

Today I feel calm and confident, and as though the universe has shared something rather special.

Pure conjecture and the account of a strange experience I may never be able to repeat and which may be entirely meaningless.

Comments and discussion please!

Cheers,
Craig

Hi Craig,

Thanks for posting your experience with the Schumann frequency.

From what I've read, the SR does fluctuate slightly and is dependent on atmospheric conditions. In case you haven't come across this article, here's a link: http://www.luxevivant.com/index.asp?...n=Custom&ID=68

The relevant quote from the article is: "These resonances consist of a base frequency of around 7.83 Hertz and ten overtones; the main ones being 14, 20, 26, 33, 39, and 45 Hertz with a daily variation of plus/minus 0.5 Hertz. The frequency fluctuates depending on atmospheric factors such as tides, magnetosphere, and day time versus night time. This gets complicated, but if you want to research it; look on the web for Martin Fullekrug at the Institut fur Meteorologie and Geophysik, University Of Frankfurt."


On another subject ... What I wonder is if your experience had more to do with being in a really good Alpha state or if your experience was directly related to that particular frequency?

One thing that you said that is really significant to the experience that is important to point out is that you were able to let go and just experience the state, without thinking about it and once you did that, your experience became more intense. So one of the keys that we can get from this is how important it is to leave the analyzing of the experience until after the session is over.

Great stuff! Thanks.



M.

Thanks for that extra info, Marisa.

I've read quite a lot about this group of frequencies, and I had consigned much of it to the new-age mumbo-jumbo box.

It was the idea of electrical equilibrium that gave my ego something to play with while I let go and went for the ride - intellectual opposition was briefly suppressed.

There were some mumbo-jumbo elements to what I experienced, quite probably wishful thinking, that made the Earth connection with the frequency seem significant. You are very probably right that it was just a very good alpha session.

There's a lot in what happened that may never be explained, however I will be less quick to write off accounts of some phenomena than I have tended to be. Whether the causes are correctly attributed, I have now experienced something that others have attempted to describe, that had not previously been open to me. This means I must accept that there are other experiences that have been related, that I have not experienced, that may indeed be 'real' and may become so for me at a later date.

Cheers,
Craig

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Originally Posted by CraigT

There's a lot in what happened that may never be explained, however I will be less quick to write off accounts of some phenomena than I have tended to be. Whether the causes are correctly attributed, I have now experienced something that others have attempted to describe, that had not previously been open to me. This means I must accept that there are other experiences that have been related, that I have not experienced, that may indeed be 'real' and may become so for me at a later date.

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Okay ... let's take a philosophical detour ... maybe I'm still demented from being sick or maybe I've figured something out ....

I think there is a whole lot of territory to explore in the "inner universe". Because of where it takes place, "reality" is irrelevant - which is actually kind of cool - because the focus then can be on the experience itself.

Perhaps this is where "New Age" went/goes wrong - people mistook an "inner" experience for an "outer" one. Perhaps these are two separate planes of existence per se' and they do not mix well with each other. It would be like confusing a dream with lets call it "physical reality".

I want to emphasize that our physical reality, while consistent, is not necessarily more important or relevant that what we discover on the inner side - it's just different.

What are your thoughts on this?

M.

Yes, I'm certainly with you on the matter of new-age confusion, and it was my intent to divorce the experience from the purely metaphysical, but it was something outside my prior experience and I'm still deciding what to do with it.

As the Buddhist Master was heard to say when his Student told him of the mystical experience he had during his meditation, "Did I tell you to have a mystical experience? No. I did not. I told you to maintain focus on the fly-spot on the wall." I ascribe nothing mystical to what happened.

My brain did something it hasn't done before, and I have documented the event as well as my language permits.

The underlying nature of reality does not permit escape from a simple fact... if my perceived body is run over by a perceived bus, I will (possibly for a very short time) perceive pain and suffering.

Whether these constructs are in my mind or have external substance, there are grounds for consensus acceptance of certain rules that make certain things so.

Confusing the inner with the outer is a sure definition of insanity and likely to bring about very real harm in the outer.

The only thing I really know after the event is that I know a little less than I thought I did.

Cheers,
Craig

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Originally Posted by CraigT

Yes, I'm certainly with you on the matter of new-age confusion, and it was my intent to divorce the experience from the purely metaphysical, but it was something outside my prior experience and I'm still deciding what to do with it.

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Ya but the metaphysical experience - metaphysical being a discription of the inner experience - shouldn't be discounted. I think it's important and valid.

The point that I did want to make but can't really find the adequate words to put it into was something like ... because it was an inner experience, it can not be judged by physical world standards. It's not enough to say it was a hallucination because something more happened in that journey. It's like taking a deep sea dive. You can't compare the landscape of the sea, or the creatures, to that of "on-land". Nor would it do the experience justice to say you went deep sea diving and saw some fish and stuff. It's a whole different world under the sea and just because it's not a part of our land life, doesn't mean that what happens under the sea isn't important.

I wonder if this made sense? :eusa_think:

I think you should go there again and see what happens.

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As the Buddhist Master was heard to say when his Student told him of the mystical experience he had during his meditation, "Did I tell you to have a mystical experience? No. I did not. I told you to maintain focus on the fly-spot on the wall."

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I like this.

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I ascribe nothing mystical to what happened.
My brain did something it hasn't done before, and I have documented the event as well as my language permits.

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Hey ... define mystical. :D

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The underlying nature of reality does not permit escape from a simple fact... if my perceived body is run over by a perceived bus, I will (possibly for a very short time) perceive pain and suffering.

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True on both planes of existence except your physical body would probably survive your perceived body's demise. It doesn't take away from the experience though of getting hit by the bus. It may give you another way to look at getting hit by buses. Everything can be useful.

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Whether these constructs are in my mind or have external substance, there are grounds for consensus acceptance of certain rules that make certain things so.

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I wonder why so many people need something such of this to be "real" in order to be more valid. "Real" referring to that which exists in the physical world and can be seen and experienced by others such as trees, cars, chocolate etc.

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Confusing the inner with the outer is a sure definition of insanity and likely to bring about very real harm in the outer.

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And yet people like Sylvia Browne are not in asylums.

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The only thing I really know after the event is that I know a little less than I thought I did.

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Isn't that always the way it goes. lol

Cheers,

M.

Hi Craig,

Once again, you raise another interesting topic.:hello2:
( I must admit I've been quite impressed at how unbelievably prolific & clear minded you seem to be ! )

I have not yet read your threads with Marisa :icon_redface: , and I do not know if I can add anything significant to your search, but I'll give it a try, sharing some of my understanding & experience, & add momentum to the ball you just started rolling, so to speak.

First of all, when I hear someone say "I meditate", I feel compelled to ask for clarification...
So, what do you mean by "meditate" as your "intent" ? Don't get me wrong, I may have a clear sense of what "meditate" & "intent" would mean for me... and yet, you could have a totally different "intent" than mine in your use of the word. So, it makes a difference to me (can't speak for others), as I have been toying with the concept of "meditation" for over 30 years ( with most of those years poking in the dark ! ! ! )

Secondly, since, I cannot really bypass the reality of having a body, (even if I realize that most people live without sensation of theirs), then, is that body moving or is it still ? ( I guess in your present context it was probably still. )
In any case, if it were moving, would it be involved in T'aiChi as a "meditation" rather than a martial art per se; or Gurdjieff's Sacred Dances & Movements; or maybe Yoga... or whatever?
If the body is still, is the position sitting, reclining or standing ?
Then comes the question of attention - ( where is my attention & what am I doing with it; is it stable or drifting ? ) - Is the intent "passive" or "directional"? Passive as in "wait & see" what happens next, follow the breath, etc; or is it directional as in visualization, or self-guided sensory awareness, or whatever ?

You probably know that Anna Wise defines meditation as the state where the brain generates a clear pattern of Alpha & Theta on the MindMirror EEG. I understand this to mean little to no Beta, depending on the quality of the state of consciousness attained at that moment. In my empirical evidence & understanding, this means that I am then "out of my head" & "in my bodily-sensations"; or possibly in an "out-of-body" experience... could there be something else ?

So then, how do I practically reduce Beta ? Since "meditation" also requires a relaxed body, then from my own experience, I know that my body is relaxed to the extent that I have a clear sensation of it being so, thus confirming my intent ! And so, developing this sensation leads me automatically out of my head (Beta)... since when I intentionally direct my attention to developing a clear & strong sensation of my body, it seems to consume enough attention/energy to keep me out of that chattering part of my mind... and if need be, I keep returning back to it, should I drift-off (BTW, this is possible only once I've noticed thoughts are back... it is not possible when day-dreaming or ramblings are going on, or if "I'm pulled by the interest", with no one "awake" at the helm ! ).

In my own peculiar case, over the years, I've come to devise an "elaborate-circuit" around my body, that harnesses my attention... actually, part of my "Body-Mind-Spirit-Routine", BMSR as I call it, which keeps evolving, & I adapt as I go along. In order to keep boredom & distractions away (ADD? or TMUA as in Too Much Unruly Attention), I often direct my attention from body-part to body-part along that circuit, & breathe "coherently", a set numbers of breaths at each "station", in effect, it is as if I were visiting and "waking-up" all the nooks & crannies of my anatomy, to say "hi" to them, one by one.

Could you elaborate on "After a period of considerable effort to divorce my perception from my eyes, ears and body, and to perceive 'within my skull' without judgment or question..." as it may tie-in with my ever evolving BMSR ?

For the past 9 months or so, along with BWE, I've been experimenting with BioFeedback (emWave PSR & emWave PC from HeartMath), along with Coherent Breathing (see Stephen Elliott's book "The New Science of Breath - Coherent Breathing for Autonomic Nervous System Balance, Health, & Well-being"; and the use of a breathing metronome, set at the Fundamental Quiescent Rhythm of 0.085Hz ), and have had remarquable results, in both the quality of "meditation", as well as regarding health issues, as mentionned in another thread of yours !

( So, yes, I must look like a madman to the untrained eye, hooked up, with cable-spaghetti, by Procyon, goggles & earphones, and sensors on earlobe & fingers... but then again, I see scientific confirmation of my felt experience... & I appreciate that.... WhouaaHahahahaaaa )

Now, more specifically, I have briefly experimented with Schumann's Frequency of 7.83Hz, and once entered a very-deep-&-vast-space within... definitely an altered state of consciousness... with strong & clear presence of both "within" & "without"... as if I could "see" a vast space, deep within myself, and at the same time, as if I could "see" all around me... (OOB? with bodily sensation sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it? )( Yin & Yang combined = T'aiChi,... or a "whole...something" )

I do not yet have enough data (& probbly never will) to comment on whether 7.83Hz, (or 7.86 or 10Hz, or whatever is "better or not"), on any specific day of the year, for a specific purpose, especially if the external "environment" I exist in also changes. However, as I find my "system/internal environment" to be in a constant flux, I have presently abandoned the "scientific idea" of "repeatable" results when it comes to consciousness & awareness. I find my state of consciousness shifts from day to day, not to mention from moment to moment... Is it because of "me" only, or because the "external-to-me, where I must live in" changes, or both? BTW, the major reason I stay away from mind alterring substances (from alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, cannabis, etc... including legal drugs, to date) is to keep the yo-yo effect on my consciousness at bay ( I have experimented with interested/empirical curiosity with some stuff though, & had great mystical experiences... )

What I am really interested in though, is Balance & Harmony, and cultivating a strong & constant sense of presence in the "here & now", aware simultaneously of both what is "within me" & what is "without/ not me" (Focusing/Felt-sense, & Self-Remembering) ... and a clear perception of the "passage" when the inevitable moment comes and "I" leaves, and this body returns to dust.

I find it interesting to notice how an experience like the one you describe leaves us with a strong impression (in your case, calm, confident, the Universe can be a benevolent place for sharing something with you). So, in my view, whether you can repeat that experience or not doesn't make it meaningless... in the sense that it can be seen as a stepping-stone "taking you from here to there"... in which case you wouldn't necessarily want to back track... just to make sure you did get from here to there & back again - I believe that requires loosening up the "left brain" a bit ! As you seem to have noticed, to remain open-minded, without pre-judgments, without conditions & without expectations does prepare us better for ever new & fresh experiences.

:cheers: from a non-boozer :icon_wink:

(I'll read the rest of your chats later on... :icon_redface: )

Wow! Thanks for your input, Ben.

Mostly what I have to say is, "Yes." You clearly have had many of the 'insights' and have asked the same questions as I have, and remain pretty much as baffled as I do.

The only part I can really answer a little better is what I meant by meditative intent.

I lay down on my bed and began the session with no specific goal. I was not trying to deal with any particular disturbance, such as stress, anxiety or depression. I was not suffering from any particular pain or discomfort that I wished eased. I had no burning questions or issues that I wished to contemplate in the clear light of alpha. It was the end of a working day that had gone rather well and I was generally calm and relaxed.

So, I say meditative in contrast to any of the other intents I might have had.

"Considerable effort to divorce my perception from my eyes, ears and body, and to perceive 'within my skull' without judgment or question" is a practice I've been doing under a range of circumstances for some years. I look at what thoughts and awareness are in mind. If, for example, I know there is another sound in the room, then that is a thought I wish to discard. If I know that my head is on a pillow, then that is a thought I wish to discard. At the time of 'peak experience' last night, the only things I knew were that my heart was beating and that I was breathing. I'm too afraid to disavow that knowledge it seems. My ego doesn't fully trust my autonomous systems.

A key point in the whole thing, to me, is loss of the sense of forward vision. I might believe that what I am perceiving as vision is what is the 'projection' on the visual cortex, which is, of course at the back of the brain and highly convoluted. I might believe I'm conscious of the visual data as it is being manipulated somewhere in the brain, far away from the retina, optic nerve, etc.

Have I clarified or further befuddled? I don't even know if it's possible to communicate this sort of stuff using ordinary language.

My head hurts. I'm going to have dinner.

Craig

Thanks for the clarifications, Craig, it's helpful to me.

So, I'd like to recap. If I understand correctly, it sounds like you experienced a state of presence, almost "pure" consciousness, "being-in-the-moment", with almost no bodily awareness, and that you got there by subtracting all sensory input (apart from heartbeat & breathing) in order to keep awareness on whatever else might have been happening "within/without" as you tried to harmonize, or establish equilibrium, with a part of the Earth's electromagnetic field known as Schumann's resonance, at 7.83Hz, in order to see if could eliminate spurious neuron triggering within the skull in the process.

If I got that right, (even if you were in "pure alpha", as you suggested previously) what is your verdict?

And if positive, then the $ million $ question becomes: Is it necessary to use 7.83Hz +/- 0.5Hz to get there (i.e. "eliminate spurious neuron triggering")? Does it facilitate the process, versus any other frequencies, even a random set of frequencies between 7.83 =/- 0.5Hz (i.e. random set between 7.33 & 8.33Hz), while you are doing the same "inner-preparation-work"? Or even a session with Red at 7.83Hz, Green at 14.1Hz & Blue at 20.3Hz, in order to cover more of the Schumann resonance frequencies?

My intuition/guess is to say no, but then I don't really know for sure, and will keep open minded; and will give it a try when I get a chance.

As I mentioned before, my state of consciousness & awareness seems to fluctuate, as if I were a speck of super-light dust floating in the air, and I don't know how to resolve that variable in the experiment; Even food, sleep/tiredness level, fasting; also seems to have some subtle to not so subtle effect on my consciousness - like air movements over an otherwise quiet pond. Is this also a concern of yours?

How much does one's intent account for the experience we "get", versus the "input" provided by the Universe we live in, or even the chosen input we wish to experiment with ? T'aiChi theory says that the intent leads the vital energy; "Yi leads Chi" is a true enough fact in my life experience.

Having said this, there seems to be a lot of similarities between our experiences, even though, we seem to have approached it from diametrically opposite directions; i.e. "incarnating" as much as possible, in my case, and "dissociating" as much as possible from the body, in your case. But to once more paraphrase T'aiChi theory/principle, when either Yin or Yang reaches its maximum intensity, they start transforming into their opposite/complementary mode i.e. Yin into Yang & Yang into Yin; food for thought!

{BTW, I use the terms T'aiChi, Yin, & Yang in the following context: T'aiChi is a philosophical principle that expresses the relationship of balance & harmony that manifests between the two fundamental universal principles which exist everywhere in the Universe, & that the ancient Chinese sages referred to as Yin & Yang. These appear simultaneously as opposite, yet complementary; Yin & Yang combine to form T'aiChi, a whole.}

If you don't mind, I'd like further clarification on your use of the term "forward vision". Are you referring to the experience of seeing, with eyes open, what is in front of you in the material world, versus what you might perceive with eyes either open or closed, in your "mind's eye", and where & how do those "visions" occur, or something else ?

BTW, how long was your session & how soon did you enter your peak experience, and how long did it last, before Beta took over? I believe mine was 24 minutes long, and I seem to remember entering it rather quickly (for some reason), & it lasted to the end; leaving me with a strange but pleasant grogginess; as I had to attend to outside stuff more abruptly than I would have liked to; and felt in a quite fine mood after.

:cheers:

Ben,

To answer further without becoming deceptive is going to require a bit of disclosure.

I spent a decent number of years studying and practising Magick. My mentor was a strong advocate of the virtues of psychedelics. During that time I learned to use a number of naturally occurring substances to achieve a wide range of mental states. Needless to say, there are problems with this strategy, and I have spent some years trying to recapture those mental states by other means.

It is the fact that I not only got close to the "state of presence, almost ?pure? consciousness, ?being-in-the-moment?, with almost no bodily awareness" (I like your words) with which I was familiar, but beyond, using only entrainment, a familiarity with the precursor states, and the technique of progressive detachment.

What I'm saying is that by various means, including substances and some pretty heavy duty mumbo-jumbo trance induction techniques, I have become familiar with a wide range of altered states. This Schumann Resonance session has shown me that the brain is perfectly capable of arriving at those states without the use of substances or mumbo-jumbo.

I make no judgement on the usefulness of getting to those states, but I will be entering Schumann and general alpha sessions with the 'intent' to repeat the experience. So far I have done a general alpha and another Schumann without getting there. A key difference in the practice is that now I've been there once, so I know it is possible for me.

Loss of forward vision - when I close my eyes and visualise, or when I dream, or even under the influence of typical hallucenogenics, the imagery is just where I expect it to be - right in front of me. In the state I described it is, for want of a better word, 'encompassing'.

Electrical equilibrium is a hypothesis that allowed me to revisit 7.83Hz with my scepticism temporarily suspended, nothing more - I have no data to support it whatsoever. Hopefully I'll have an EEG fairly soon and will be able to add some quantitative data.

In terms of time (sloppy scientific method) about 20 minutes at 7.83Hz, well under a minute at peak experience, conscious awareness of the experience (spontaneous beta I would assume) followed by a fairly gentle return (still 7.83Hz) to 'normality' during which I was able to maintain a reasonably coherent recollection of the peak experience (not that you'd know from the trouble I'm having describing it).

All the things you talk about in your experiences - the situational variability, the significance of belief in the technique, the validity of ancient wisdom... yes, all concerns, they all seem to matter. But maybe they only matter because my ego does not yet sufficiently trust my 'instinctual animal' to look after my body properly while I'm 'away' in my cranium.

I look forward to reading the results of your experiments, especially the use of harmonics and colors/

Cheers,
Craig

Craig,
I hope you didn't feel put too much on the spot - it wasn't my intention...

I have a much better understanding of the nature of your search & why you are exploring this avenue & the pertinence of your question, & what is guiding it, & why you to want to "repeat".

BTW, I'm curious to know if you were you ever able to repeat an "artificially-induced" state before? {even though I realize it implies nothing for certain about BWE being able to or not (since the variables are different)}

When I read your emphasis on "the fact that I not only got close to "...states..." with which I was familiar, but beyond, using only entrainment...", I find it inspiring... that's really great confirmation for a useful & "clean" technology for explorers of states of consciousness!

I have added the sessions I mentioned earlier, on my already long & growing list of experiments... will keep you posted if/when I discover/experience unusual states... you may flag me, please, should I miss reading one of your posts on the subject.

Thanks for sharing...your honesty is really appreciated!

Ben,

There is a substance, that is completely legal to grow and use in New Zealand, that has delivered a consistant set of images over an extended period of time. Every time I worked with this substance, I have trusted it to leave me unharmed a little more, and let go a little more. To this day I have remained unharmed, and there is more to see in that realm.

The arrangement I have come to with this substance, is that for everything it shows me, I will find my own way as well. It provides inspiration, I then put in the work. The teacher plant shows me, I then learn how to do it myself.

Brainwave entrainment is the next helper tool in this process. Brainwave entrainment allows me to achieve repeatable states of mind, once in those states I can resume my progressive detachment, ever more trusting, relaxed and inspired.

A very innocuous little plant, that we grow on our front doorstep, and an easily overlooked little machine have done really nice work in getting me past my prejudices and preconceptions.

The wonderful thing about not using teacher plants, is that all of the fear of harm and the attendant anxiety is eliminated. BWE is so equisitely safe that you can go under knowing you be right back as soon as the track ends.

Any question asked with sincerity, will be answered with the honesty it deserves. Thank you for becoming a friend.

Craig

Craig,

You've peeked my curiosity... were you referring to S.D., by any chance?

Also, am I to understand that you have identified frequencies that are conducive to repeatable results which correspond to states of mind that you had previously experienced under different conditions than BWE?

Thanks for your feedback... I never knew I had such an interesting friend in New Zealand :headbang: ... I'm in frozen, snowed-in Quebec, Canada, near Montreal.

:cheers:

p.s. I will also be experimenting with what you call "progressive detachment", versus what I've been cultivating for decades, which might be called "progressive incarnation", I guess... and see how that feels.

On the matter of which substance, the one you mention has a strong history in such applications, but is seriously misunderstood and, with the garbage being posted on utube and appearing in the media and the responses of several unenlightened 'authorities' around the world, any publicity has the potential to be bad publicity.

No, I haven't identified any particular frequencies. Schumann was startlingly effective, but unrepeated at this stage. Anything in the high theta to mid alpha seems to have a very good chance of leading somewhere. Not surprising - that's the range associated with strongly aware meditation.

Awww, crikey mate, stone the crows, not another blimey Canadian. (I'm actually an Australian, deposited in NZ at the age of 12, and smart enough to have stayed put). My wife, Lori, is Canadian, born and raised in the logging camps of Vancouver Island and thereabouts and who I stumbled on here in Petone some 20 years or so ago.

I'll be thinking of you in the cold and snow, as I enjoy another balmy 20 degrees celsius, not forgetting my Australian friends who will be sweltering in 35-40 degrees celsius. New Zealand's just not a bad place to be!!!

Cheers,
Craig

Thanks Craig?,

? I was actually born in the southern part of French-speaking Belgium, and came to Canada in 1955 at age 5 ?, & my wife was born in Tangiers, Morocco & came over in 1958? Oh boy, what a mixed world we live in? and even if Vancouver Island is a beautiful & warmer place than Quebec, 22*C well, hummm, my parents sure made a mistake... smart wife you have :cool: hahaha.

I am trying to send a .PRW & an mp3 file your way.

When I try to upload the PRW file on this thread, it gets attached... however, when I attempt to upload the other one, a ZIP folder containing the 21MB mp3 file, I always get a message saying "Invalid Post Specified. If you followed a valid link (which is this one in fact), please notify the administrator". :dontknow:

Suggestions?

Ben,

Wow, that's some wild and interesting path and partnership you've pulled together there. Your wife must find the Morocco to Canada climate change a bit of a strain! One side of wife's family a couple of generations back were of the French persuasion, living in Montreal. Some stories of some male ancestor plying the waterways in a canoe, trading for the Hudson Company.

Feel free to just send an email - 20Mb is the size limit per email, I think.

Cheers,
Craig

I've just been reading back over this thread, and so engrossed in one thing I became, that I had forgotten the most important point in the initial post.

In answer to the question, 'have I identified specific frequencies', I have said no, but the fact is that by suggestion I created a 'powerful' frequency.

I had imbued the Schumann Frequency with power, by believing my hypothesis that the human brain established electrical equilibrium with our planet, suppressing sprious neuron interference.

My experiment did nothing to disprove the hypothesis. No one has yet disputed the hypothesis.

I can now sit down for a Schumann Frequency session with the full expectation of a mystical experience, because I know, on the basis of one successful experiment, and public acceptance of the hypothesis, that the Schumann Frequency works.

It would be interesting to see what else one could convince oneself of.

Cheers,
Craig

Craig:

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There is a substance, that is completely legal to grow and use in New Zealand

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Are you referring to "ayahuasca" , I would love to hear more about this, although I believe it is not obtainable in the US.

I'm thinking of designing a session that matches up with my hypnosis tape,
and Marisa thought I should ask you for tips about designing it.
(please see her reply in the "achieving a hypnotic state" post)

Kind regards,

Dave

Dave,

I'm sorry, but I totally don't want to discuss substances in detail on this forum.

No, it's not, but ayahuasca contains DMT which would be a candidate substance for this type of work. Ayahuasca is pretty much illegal everywhere unless you happen to be of a religion that has fought for exemption.

Any more discussion of this should be via PM or email, please.

Cheers,
Craig

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Originally Posted by EvilDave

Craig:

I'm thinking of designing a session that matches up with my hypnosis tape,
and Marisa thought I should ask you for tips about designing it.
(please see her reply in the "achieving a hypnotic state" post)

Kind regards,

Dave

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I don't have much more to offer than what I posted in the other message on the how. I could offer suggestions on what frequencies to use or offer to help you with the script. As for matching the two ... like I said, I don't really think it's necessary. The third and forth component to match, if you are so inclined, would be rate of speech and music. You may want to focus more on matching the rate of speech to the music and not to the lights.

Just my opinion.

M.

Dave,

I'm so sorry I managed to completely ignore half your post! Thank you, Marisa for drawing my oversight to my attention.

Marisa is the resident expert on frequencies, sessions, hypnotismand more - I have already pleaded defeat on successful session design and conceded to those who wrote the preset sessions. I limit my 'session creativity' to minor tweaks, altering backgrounds and placement of suggestions, etc.

The actual session that I used for this Schumann experiment is the default Schumann session in MWS, using the Procyon to do the Audiostrobe bit.

In principle, a lot of standard alpha/theta sessions will already do what you require - lead you down, hold you in a suggestible state, and then bring you up again. The NP2 Super Learning Tool would be a good candidate in conjunction with the Procyon for AS. Marisa would be able to tell you which Procyon session most closely matches it, and then it could just be tweaked for length.

It's really exciting seeing all these cool projects underway!!!

Cheers,
Craig

Craig,

Bingo !

I believe you have also stumbled upon a very useful...attitude...

Behind the words 'suggestion' & 'intent', is an attitude-of-unbiased-openness, with no pre-judgements, no pre-conditions, and no forced expectations (other than an open/soft positive-expectation...) to seek the 'truth' !

In my experience, great expectations can lead to great frustration & disappointments... but just doing the inner-preparations to be receptive to the state I am seeking... open minded-ly... works better for me!

This also ties-in to why I also believe that hypnosis or BWE won't work on someone who is unwilling to be 'entrained' (resisting :mad: to be lead by...).

I was wondering how long it would be until you found the formatting controls, Ben...
:eusa_doh:

Andy, good job... you caught me!
My apologies for drifting into temptation, over conformity.:icon_redface:

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Originally Posted by Andy

I was wondering how long it would be until you found the formatting controls, Ben...
:eusa_doh:

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LOL :laughing7:

Since my response was addressing half a dozen posts it was way too long for one. So this is technically in three. (I wax on, apparently.)


I found this thread very interesting, thanks for sharing you guys. I still have much to learn about brainwave technologies, though I've decades of experience with mental stuff of varying types (which really means absolutely nothing except in the context of me-personally, for the most part). There is so much of interest in the thread that I hope you don't mind, I'm just going through the thread at large and quoting bits from various people for my thoughts in response.

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Meditation is a concept I struggle with. A common statement of the goal of meditation is 'to completely clear the mnd'.

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It can be. The "no-mind" meditation has gotten all the press in the West for the most part. Meditation is any focus including a focus-on-no-focus. (I guess that is kind of an analogy to saying that Atheism is a religion since it's a belief about God.) Zen no-mind or Transcendental Meditation both usually operate on a single point of focus (such as a repeated sound) until the subject can essentially space out ('transcend' or insert one other more technical or glorious term for spacing-out here). I did that kind of meditation for about a year. It was good for contributing to relaxation, which of course can be credited with a variety of things. Aside from that it did not do a great deal for me. Most of the few experiences I had that I felt really moved me happened during the times I was not, actually, of no-mind (although no-mind can take you 'through' to a new place where mind is obviously involved, yet not as "consciously autonomously proactive" as we use it in our waking life; more an observer).

There are other kinds of meditation. Jungian/shamanic meditation for example is conscious work with archetypes. This is also called active imagination and conscious dreaming. Don't be fooled into thinking it's about sitting there imagining something, the name is a little misleading. 'Imaginal' is not imagination-al. When you get into the right state of mind this stuff is *totally autonomous* -- the entire landscape, the identities, everything -- novel, shocking, and profoundly powerful. (It can also cause absolutely radical changes in your immediate reality. I note you mentioned you were into magick previously. Israel Regardie wrote the foreword to Edwin Steinbrecher's book 'The Inner Guide Meditation' which is one of the best books on the subject of this kind of meditation that you can get.)

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One thing that you said that is really significant to the experience that is important to point out is that you were able to let go and just experience the state, without thinking about it and once you did that, your experience became more intense. So one of the keys that we can get from this is how important it is to leave the analyzing of the experience until after the session is over.

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That does seem to be the case for many mind-related experiences. I hadn't thought much about it, but it's a good point that it would be the same in terms of brainwave tech.

PJ (RC)

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There were some mumbo-jumbo elements to what I experienced, quite probably wishful thinking, that made the Earth connection with the frequency seem significant.

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At one time, during years of hypnosis/NLP/biofeedback focus, I was a medical-model skeptic. I got a lot of mileage out of believing things about myself and reality that related to that. (Aside from which, NewAgerbils and Alien Abductees are such fabulous warm-up joke material for public speaking!) A long period of spontaneous anomalous experience eventually cracked my rigidly exclusive belief systems (and almost seemed like the archetype of educational-karma, a metaphysical version of taming of the shrew), and those belief systems now seem a world away and unusually simplistic and pre-formed and rigid to me.

The thing to consider is that every belief about what's probably-not-valid is a belief-about-reality (as opposed to 'reality') and most of the time there are no good reasons for them, if you really look. For example, why wouldn't the earth connection with the frequency be significant? Not saying it is. Just saying there is no particular reason to think it can't be, either. If humans evolved (even partly) on this planet then there is probably more probability that it is somehow related to human consciousness and experience than not.

There is also mixing 'sound/valid' with 'objectively consensus verifiable' and those are two radically different things. I was taught to consider everything in the first group to be contingent on being in the second group. This is cultural indoctrination. It's like watching Scooby Doo, you know? It's always some faker in a costume. We are brainwashed to believe at a young age that everything without a practical physical objective answer is fake in some manner. We don't know we're indoctrinated because all that is tied up in ego and wanting to be intelligent and respected for that.

It did not help that in my own life, the people I had previously met open to 'esoteria' and such were basically idiots, and the people I'd met as skeptics were intelligent; it helped reinforce that stereotype. When I began meeting people into metaphysics who were brilliant, successful in business and science, and by no stretch could I consider them fools, it really dented my brain a little. When I further realized, after some experiences of my own and more study, that much of the skeptic perspective was even more hilariously biased and based on faith than the other side, it dented it a little further.

I have found the most effective way of gathering information for a later more informed decision about anything, is to take everything at face value; "let it be." Work to be without bias, to accept what you sense because injecting conscious judgementalism during the process skews perception, and then record afterward what you sensed. Later, after more experience, you can go through those notes, and you can more clearly see what might have been subjective bias, what is a repeating pattern, what might be a symbol, allegory or analogy for something else, etc. But if you mess up the collection process with restriction, resistance and bias up front, you mess up the scientific nature of the whole process.

It's very much for the same reasons as some magick work, actually: no matter what the real 'cause' is, if you're doing xyz in meditation or ritual and you feel like you meet a large green multifaceted monster who points at a triangle and you get the concept of the number 9, it doesn't matter how nonsensical this might seem, there is some reason for it no matter how inexplicable it is at the time. You plan a path; you accept what you experience; you document what you experience; you review that and continue planning a path as appropriate. The basic tenets of serious magick (yoga+science+drama+adventure) apply to lots of stuff. And it all seems ridiculous until one day you discover that I'll-be-damned, it turns out that these symbols are so commonly associated with experience X or entity Y or location Z that even your talking about them makes you sound embarrassingly non-original. Then it really cracks your brain and you think, "WTH?? How could totally unrelated people, separated by space and time and culture and era, have the same symbols in the same kind of experience? There must be some commonality going on here, something legit even if we are getting it symbolically/archetypally, if there is this much empirical evidence!" Then you see someone basically going, "So what, that symbol isn't present in a test tube / parked on the white house lawn / repeatable as perfectly as shooting hoops in basketball, hence can't be real." Sigh.

I figure everyone is different. But fwiw in case it helps: the best mental-model I came up with that helped me best deal with 'spontaneous experiences' despite having what I realized was a kind of 'resistant outlook', was looking at the entire subject as a psychological case study on myself. Then, if I met a large green multifaceted monster the appropriate response was {stroking chin}, "Fascinating. And then what? And how did you feel about that?" I put everything I experienced into the context of a 'case study' where my perception itself became both the point of interest, and point allowed the most flexibility. I started treating my own experiences like a fun movie. 'Ooh, aaah. Wow you wouldn't believe what happened today!' I journaled and wrote friends about it all, which I think helped emphasize the "novelty" of it and brought more of that development into my life. When I looked at the experience itself as a point of fascination -- without expecting or assuming any experience was going to be any given thing -- that helped massively. It also, it turned out later I discovered, greatly kept me from going down the rabbit hole on some given belief system. I got the whole smorgasboard of different stuff over time and because I had no expectations or bias -- I thought it was all basically crazy but fascinating -- I didn't bias that which was very helpful and educational later.

It's like watching some artsy foreign movie. You don't entirely know what is going on, but you can't really come to any clear conclusion about it either, since it's art, and since it's foreign, and since one only had half a clue through it anyway. So you have to accept it, kind of like poetry or a child's crayon picture: it is whatever it is. So what; that's what it is. It doesn't really have to "mean" anything, or you don't have to know what it means. Emotions like love are also just biochemicals but I'm willing to ignore that and accept the 'experience' I have with love as a result of my child, whatever it might be. Well an experience during meditation (whether in magick, drugs, or neurotech) is pretty much in the same boat. It is almost certainly some side effect of brain waves/chemicals/etc., but that just makes it interesting. There are certain drugs or stimulus points that give fairly repeatable experiences, even the same 'entities' encountered (ref McKenna brothers writings). If nobody had talked about that we wouldn't know it was possible which would be a big loss because that is hugely important even if we don't totally know why yet.

As a last note, IMO the biggest hindrance to interaction about offbeat stuff is vocabulary. There is no decent vocabulary for most of it! We have to either make up words, or 'stretch' the current meaning of existing words, or use words that do exist but are taken from some eastern culture which means to us they're taken from the mystical or new-age subculture of the West. It's easy to dismiss things because they come packaged in woo-woo rather than logic. You can talk about chakras and some people's eyes roll up in their head, but if they read Dr. Robert Becker's book 'The Body Electric' about his research via the Navy funded contract to study the electrical systems of the body, it all starts to become a little bit more plausible. And it only takes actually meditating on the subject regularly for a few months to become 'aware' of them so significantly that it then seems actually kinda dense that one ever doubted.

How you feel about your own experiences is hugely affected by model as well. For example with certain kinds of focus you can start getting 'overlays' as if there is more than one reality going on but we're only aware of 'this' one, but briefly when a bit spacey can become aware of others. A person can take a standard approach and go, "Oh my god. I'm schizophrenic!" and they're afraid and things get negative and weird and they go get drugged. Or you can take a Sethian outlook and go, "Hey, alternate simultaneous realities, and my consciousness is becoming more aware. Cool!" and that's that and you shrug and move on. The examples like this are endless.

It's important to have vocabulary for 'shared experience' discussion, and for ways of healthily dealing with experiences that do occur. But it's also important because what a person accepts or rejects is often based not upon the merit of the thing, but on the presentation of the person talking about it. I try to remember the sayings, "sometimes the worst people give the best advice" and "you can't judge the wine by the bottle". When you hear something that seems ridiculous, even from yourself, just ask, why? Why is it ridiculous? And I think you'll often find that you don't even REALLY think it's ridiculous so much as you think it SOUNDS ridiculous, and culturally we so learn to graft our perception-of-self based on perception-by-others and impose all of that on our perception-of-reality that we don't even notice that somehow 'objectivity' became 'peer pressure'.

PJ (RC)

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I think there is a whole lot of territory to explore in the "inner universe". Because of where it takes place, "reality" is irrelevant - which is actually kind of cool - because the focus then can be on the experience itself.

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Good point.

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Perhaps this is where "New Age" went/goes wrong - people mistook an "inner" experience for an "outer" one. Perhaps these are two separate planes of existence per se' and they do not mix well with each other. It would be like confusing a dream with lets call it "physical reality".

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Interested to hear any further thoughts on this. It relates to the topic at hand because people working out how to classify, categorize, accept or reject their own experiences is a good parallel to this subject. I think people working out how to communicate well about something without feeling like -- or frankly, looking to others like -- embarrassing numbskulls is important. ;-)

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Confusing the inner with the outer is a sure definition of insanity and likely to bring about very real harm in the outer.

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It can, yeah.

Sometimes though, I think a lot of what is on the inner is a reflection (if not the original blueprint generating the perceived outer reality) of the outer, and so has considerable meaning.

I think the biggest mistake made is that often people mistake what has meaning for them as what has meaning for everybody. If I dream something about Craig, it mostly likely says something legit about how I feel about Craig, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the dream is legit about him outside of my own symbolic and individual perspective. If he's wearing combat boots in my dream that doesn't mean he's wearing them in real life. (It CAN on rare occasion, more for some people than others, but that is a separate subject, and inconsistent enough to be subjected to serious skepticism even by the dreamer, anyway.) I think projecting inner subjective meaning on the outer subjective world is where a lot of the new-age world (so to speak, that term is actually quite old and addresses the late 1800s as much as 2009) gets lost.

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The only thing I really know after the event is that I know a little less than I thought I did.

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Great line! That really sums up most worthwhile experiences that are novel. :-)

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The point that I did want to make but can't really find the adequate words to put it into was something like ... because it was an inner experience, it can not be judged by physical world standards. It's not enough to say it was a hallucination because something more happened in that journey. It's like taking a deep sea dive. You can't compare the landscape of the sea, or the creatures, to that of "on-land". Nor would it do the experience justice to say you went deep sea diving and saw some fish and stuff. It's a whole different world under the sea and just because it's not a part of our land life, doesn't mean that what happens under the sea isn't important.

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Great point. Much more succinct than mine LOL.

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I ascribe nothing mystical to what happened. My brain did something it hasn't done before, and I have documented the event as well as my language permits.

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In theory anything that happens which is legitimate to the individual is not really mystical except in 'vocabulary' and how others judge that. If I have a scalar coil and I turn it on, I feel something. Is that mystical? No. If I have a ritual or a dream I may feel something. Is that mystical? Well it's called that because the seeming-causative-factor wasn't something we could stick in a test tube. But really, what's the difference? IMO the primary difference is that we seriously lack "vocabulary for shared experience" on the more ineffable stuff.

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I wonder why so many people need something such of this to be "real" in order to be more valid. "Real" referring to that which exists in the physical world and can be seen and experienced by others such as trees, cars, chocolate etc.

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Right, I agree. "Sound" means valid; something can be 'a sound idea' without being 'a physical thing' for example.

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And yet people like Sylvia Browne are not in asylums.

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Once upon a time she was right once in awhile which may have done her and the world more harm than help since she doesn't seem to have been much since. ;-)

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However, as I find my "system/internal environment" to be in a constant flux, I have presently abandoned the "scientific idea" of "repeatable" results when it comes to consciousness & awareness. I find my state of consciousness shifts from day to day, not to mention from moment to moment... Is it because of "me" only, or because the "external-to-me, where I must live in" changes, or both?

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This is a whole topic of its own I find fascinating. I've done a lot of work over the years with things that are literally unique at every experience point, very inconsistent, no way to predict them, and yet they work often enough to seem clearly legit, and yet they don't work often enough to make one think there must be some gigantic variable we're just totally missing.

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How much does one?s intent account for the experience we ?get?, versus the ?input? provided by the Universe we live in, or even the chosen input we wish to experiment with ? T?aiChi theory says that the intent leads the vital energy? ?Yi leads Chi? is a true enough fact in my life experience.

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There's actually a white paper in anomalous cognition research called 'Intention, Attention and Expectation' that said the researchers believed from decades of experience that these three factors in place -- as well as a solid science protocol and a talented subject -- had everything to do with success of the larger venture. (This differs from 'exploratory experience', such as brainwave stuff I imagine, in that 'expectation' may or may not be useful or even more harm than help in those cases.) There is quite a history in that field of some fascinating accidental results, such as very clear experimenter bias in effects (though not in protocol), and what they call the 'sheep and goats' effect (where some psychics will get data that others psychics they respect do--even wholly separated from any knowledge of it--and even when it's wrong!). There are very few science fields where one is actually measuring human perception of multiple people in a doubleblind environ without any physical input to the individuals, so normally fairly hidden things like rapport show up more clearly there.

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I spent a decent number of years studying and practising Magick. My mentor was a strong advocate of the virtues of psychedelics. During that time I learned to use a number of naturally occurring substances to achieve a wide range of mental states. Needless to say, there are problems with this strategy, and I have spent some years trying to recapture those mental states by other means.

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My experience with ceremonial magick didn't involve any altering-substances aside from incense and ritual (sex can also be a route though I only tried that alone alas ;-)). I had an older friend into that for awhile when younger. He told me it's like riding the bus. The sights are great but it's more look-than-touch, and you don't learn the route to get there on your own, so you have to kind of start all over again, even despite extensive experience, when one decides to do it 'naturally'. Sounds kind of frustrating to me!

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Loss of forward vision - when I close my eyes and visualise, or when I dream, or even under the influence of typical hallucenogenics, the imagery is just where I expect it to be - right in front of me. In the state I described it is, for want of a better word, 'encompassing'.

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Some psi experiences can be like that. Or you can just be in 'another' perception. Like as someone else. Or sort of existing "about where the wall is" but knowing-all like 3rd-perspective writing.

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I've just been reading back over this thread, and so engrossed in one thing I became, that I had forgotten the most important point in the initial post.

In answer to the question, 'have I identified specific frequencies', I have said no, but the fact is that by suggestion I created a 'powerful' frequency.

I had imbued the Schumann Frequency with power, by believing my hypothesis that the human brain established electrical equilibrium with our planet, suppressing sprious neuron interference.

My experiment did nothing to disprove the hypothesis. No one has yet disputed the hypothesis.

I can now sit down for a Schumann Frequency session with the full expectation of a mystical experience, because I know, on the basis of one successful experiment, and public acceptance of the hypothesis, that the Schumann Frequency works.

It would be interesting to see what else one could convince oneself of.

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And whether convincing oneself could lead to useful and valid experience.

Nobody could dispute the hypothesis except for themselves; you have already proved that it can work for you! Like the saying about how 'one white crow' is all it takes to prove white crows exist.

Maybe a lot of "what works" is all about the individual and not as much about the technology.

Best,
PJ (RC)

Hi PJ/RC,

I am really enjoying reading your posts here and elsewhere - you're thoughts and writing style appeal to me.

Just now I haven't the time to respond to your many points of interest, and to do so would require that I go into greater detail about some things that aren't well suited to a public forum.

If you're interested in carrying this discussion off-board you're most welcome to email me.

Cheers,
Craig

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Originally Posted by RedCairo

Good point.

Interested to hear any further thoughts on this. It relates to the topic at hand because people working out how to classify, categorize, accept or reject their own experiences is a good parallel to this subject. I think people working out how to communicate well about something without feeling like -- or frankly, looking to others like -- embarrassing numbskulls is important. ;-)

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This is a numbskull safe zone. :) If it makes anyone feel better, there are many times when I'm asking Robert a question about something or making a comment ... I often wonder (to myself) if the answer is really obvious and Robert's bonking his head against the wall thinking ... I'm a total moron.:BangHead: But then I send the message anyway because sometimes you have to ask "appealingly" stupid or obvious questions in order to understand something. Sometimes you can think you understand something but be missing out on a fundamental point that will augment that understanding.

So all numbskull questions are welcome here.

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Sometimes though, I think a lot of what is on the inner is a reflection (if not the original blueprint generating the perceived outer reality) of the outer, and so has considerable meaning.

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... and sometimes a duck is just a duck. It has meaning only if you decide to give it meaning.

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I think the biggest mistake made is that often people mistake what has meaning for them as what has meaning for everybody.

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Religions and New Age concepts are built upon this foundation. What really floors me is how many others they can convince to join them in their reality, no matter how bizarre.

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If I dream something about Craig, it mostly likely says something legit about how I feel about Craig, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the dream is legit about him outside of my own symbolic and individual perspective. If he's wearing combat boots in my dream that doesn't mean he's wearing them in real life. (It CAN on rare occasion, more for some people than others, but that is a separate subject, and inconsistent enough to be subjected to serious skepticism even by the dreamer, anyway.) I think projecting inner subjective meaning on the outer subjective world is where a lot of the new-age world (so to speak, that term is actually quite old and addresses the late 1800s as much as 2009) gets lost.

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Sometimes a dream is just mind poop. Sometimes dreams can reflect our deeper feelings on a subject or some unresolved feeling or issue. I've had some very weird dreams that I couldn't fathom a meaning from other than I have a very strange (but entertaining) imagination.

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In theory anything that happens which is legitimate to the individual is not really mystical except in 'vocabulary' and how others judge that. If I have a scalar coil and I turn it on, I feel something. Is that mystical?

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I think it gives people a feeling of importance, of feeling special if it is "mystical". It's also the "ego" side of things that an adept is suppose to be aware of.

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No. If I have a ritual or a dream I may feel something. Is that mystical? Well it's called that because the seeming-causative-factor wasn't something we could stick in a test tube. But really, what's the difference? IMO the primary difference is that we seriously lack "vocabulary for shared experience" on the more ineffable stuff.

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"Mystical" is one of those words that means something different to each person. What is a mystical experience to one person is a hallucination to another. What is consistent is that the person did enter an altered state of consciousness (ASC) ... which is another one of those "nominalization" words. (A word that is treated like a noun but it has no physical substance to it and therefore it's meaning is dependent on the individual's perception).

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There's actually a white paper in anomalous cognition research called 'Intention, Attention and Expectation' that said the researchers believed from decades of experience that these three factors in place -- as well as a solid science protocol and a talented subject -- had everything to do with success of the larger venture. (This differs from 'exploratory experience', such as brainwave stuff I imagine, in that 'expectation' may or may not be useful or even more harm than help in those cases.) There is quite a history in that field of some fascinating accidental results, such as very clear experimenter bias in effects (though not in protocol), and what they call the 'sheep and goats' effect (where some psychics will get data that others psychics they respect do--even wholly separated from any knowledge of it--and even when it's wrong!). There are very few science fields where one is actually measuring human perception of multiple people in a doubleblind environ without any physical input to the individuals, so normally fairly hidden things like rapport show up more clearly there.

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I'm not sure I quite follow what you are saying in the above paragraph. :confused:

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My experience with ceremonial magick didn't involve any altering-substances aside from incense and ritual (sex can also be a route though I only tried that alone alas ;-)). I had an older friend into that for awhile when younger. He told me it's like riding the bus. The sights are great but it's more look-than-touch, and you don't learn the route to get there on your own, so you have to kind of start all over again, even despite extensive experience, when one decides to do it 'naturally'. Sounds kind of frustrating to me!

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I see ceremonial magick as another method of hypnosis with the intent to induce an Altered State of Consciousness. Because the act of the CM is hypnotic, the suggestion, which is the purpose of the ritual would manifest for those who have been successfully hypnotized. It's still a valid experience, though when you look at through a hypnotist's eyes, it does take the sparkle away.

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Maybe a lot of "what works" is all about the individual and not as much about the technology.

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I think about this a lot and have not yet formed a conclusion as to whether this is a good or bad thing. On the one hand, placebo is 50% successful (which is a higher percent than many drug tests). On the other hand, you get some outlandish claims that form harmful beliefs. For example, karma, which is all fine until something bad or tragic happens and the belief is transformed into something silly like that person is paying for a previous "bad" or that they made a spiritual agreement with the perpetrator or wanted to learn a lesson and therefore asked for the incident. This kind of thinking leaves people who have cancer or other terminal illnesses thinking that they somehow caused the illness - which is ridiculous and not helpful to the healing process.

I'm finding that a lot of metaphysical beliefs are formed on the basis of a bit of science though I'm also finding that the science gets skewed to make the belief more workable. i.e. The Secret. It contains some science, though misquoted and misunderstood and some knowledge of the brain/mind but taken to the extreme. While it's true that our brain works to create that which we think about, the process does not occur by any form of magic. It occurs because of "Magick" (Will being directed) and when our will is directed and we are focused on an outcome, we become aware of the opportunities to make it happen and follow. ... If we were able to manifest things just by will alone ... there would be more spontaneous deaths etc. Ooops tangent .

M.

I've read this thread with interest, thanks to all who have written!

In regards to -- aha, vocabulary problem already! -- shall we call it "paranormal consciousness"? -- it is true that there are few systems and fewer vocabulary terms that the individual experiencer can use to make sense of their time away from "reality" or normal consciousness.

I studied such a system during my time with Siddha Yoga(TM) in the early 80s (such study was deemphasized later, but that's a whole 'nother soap opera.) In any case, the system we studied was Kashmir Shaivism, which is a system of philosophy regarding consciousness.

Disclaimer: Before I get to talking a little about it, though, please know that I am NOT a Shaivism scholar -- I have no idea if Shaivism answers the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, and if it does, I don't care. What I care about, what I learned, was a useful vocabulary and a useful scaffolding/framework/matrix for describing and understanding my experiences of paranormal consciousness. I find it's helpful to have a place to "hang" an experience and say, "Yup, that makes sense now." What I know about Shaivism is a little, but that little has been of powerful help to me when seeking to understand these experiences, so that's what I'll share with you here.

Also, I'm not saying I have The Answers here, merely that I find this way of thinking about these concepts helpful. YMMV, as always. Also, I may misremember some of the details here, and if I do, I apologize to any Shaivism scholars I may offend. :D [/Disclaimer]

In Kashmir Shaivism (as I understand it), creation begins with one, undifferentiated Being (Shiva.) Thoughts, actions and things do not yet exist. All there is is the undifferentiated consciousness of Shiva.

Then, Shiva has a movement of Will -- Consciousness has a desire. It is a desire to differentiate; in effect, to create. This movement of will, this intention if you will, is the essence of thought, action and movement -- it has become Shiva's Shakti, or the power to create, who is embodied as Shiva's mate.

From Shiva and Shakti there arises a sound, which the Vedas call shabda (pronounced "shub-duh") -- it is the throb of creative consciousness, from which the universe arises. This sound is commonly called OM. I have also heard it described as the background frequency of the universe. Could this also be the Shumann resonance frequency? I dunno. It's an interesting thought, though.

Y'see, the Shaivites follow these three postulates -- the eternal Being of Shiva, the Will to Act of Shakti, and the Throb of Shabda -- through 36 processes of differentiation known as tattwas, which eventually lead to individual perception, through the senses, to what we call reality or normal consciousness. Please allow me to quote a nice Wiki passage here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tattwas), so I get it right:

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In Shaivite philosophy, the tattvas are inclusive of consciousness as well as material existence. The 36 tattvas of Shaivism are divided into three groups:

Shuddha tattvas: The first five tattvas are known as the shuddha or 'pure' tattvas. They are also known as the tattvas of universal experience.

Shuddha-ashuddha tattvas: The next seven tattvas (6?12) are known as the shuddha-ashuddha or 'pure-impure' tattvas. They are the tattvas of limited individual experience.

Ashuddha tattvas: The last twenty-four tattvas (13?36) are known as the ashuddha or 'impure' tattvas. The first of these is prakriti and they include the tattvas of mental operation, sensible experience, and materiality.

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If you're interested in more detail, this Wiki article will give you all you desire: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_36_tattvas . Here is a nice summary from that article:

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Kaśmir Śaivism describes the reflection of the top principle (Śiva tattva) right into the lowest principle (Pṛithvī tattva) - an idealist monistic world view where transcendence is present right in the middle of physical. Thus, there is no dualism between spirit and matter.

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So I'm hoping you see where I'm going with this: I find these concepts helpful because transcendence/paranormal consciousness isn't something you end up doing -- it's something you just need to get back to. You don't go there, you just remember that you're there already.

Make sense?

In the context of BWE, when I put the glasses on and queue up P11 for a hour-long meditation, I'm looking to get beyond my mind and my whirling thoughts. I want to immerse myself again in Shiva consciousness, that undifferentiated state of being where there are no thoughts or actions, but where potential for all thought and action exist. I think of it as "moving up the tattwas." I might start with an unruly mind and twitchy body, down in the 36th tattwa. The lights and tones of my Proteus send signals to my brain which encourage it to let go those thoughts and other discomforts and sink back into pure consciousness. Since my mind is derived from pure consciousness, it has a hard time understanding it. It labels the experience "paranormal", because it doesn't have a capacity to understand it as "normal". Shiva is impossible for the mind to comprehend (hence our problems talking about it.)

We used to talk about a couple of concepts which always made understanding the process of meditation and playing in other realms of consciousness easier. First, when settling down for meditation, it may be helpful to think of your thoughts as clouds in the sky -- they are there, but you cannot affect them, they move as they will. Just let them do so, remaining relaxed, and gently relax any analytical movement the mind is making.

Shaivism, through the tattwas, talks about the senses being expressed through the physical body. The sense of sight literally flows out of your eyes around the objects you are perceiving, and so returns what it perceives to the body/mind through the eyes. In a similar manner, each of the other senses "reaches out", gathers information from outside the body, and then returns that perceived info back to the body/mind through their sense organs.

So when I do a Proteus session, I allow my senses to "withdraw" from the world -- to look without seeing, to hear without hearing, etc. I establish an attitude which holds my state of mind as paramount, and not the things I'm seeing/hearing/thinking. The outside stimuli -- including my thoughts -- are just nice, big, fluffy clouds, and while it's nice to see them, they don't register as important to me. Meanwhile, the pretty lights and tones are leading my brain to experience the state of pure consciousness.

Gah, am I helping or just confusing more? I dunno. This stuff works for me, is all I do know. :D

The other thing they used to talk about which stuck with me: In India, they dye fabric to be colorfast using an ancient method. They dip the fabric in dye, then hang it in the sun to dry and fade. Then, they dip the fabric again, hang it in the sun to dry and fade, etc. Over many iterations, this process produces a dye which cannot be washed out of the fabric.

In meditation, I "dip" myself in that ineffable state of being again and again. The more I do it, the more the "color" of it stays with me through the "sunshine" of normal consciousness. My goal is to make that dye colorfast, and carry a brilliant shade of it with me wherever I go.

I think it's clear that my approach is "from the inside out," so to speak. I don't spend a lot of time trying to figure out if my experiences in altered consciousness are "real" or not. I believe that analysis paralysis is a hindrance. In fact, I don't try to relate my experiences to the "real" world at all. They just are what they are; meanwhile, I'm getting dipped again -- whee!

That's not to say that Kashmir Shaivism doesn't have philosophical tools to delve into each experience in detail -- it does, I'm sure. Other meditators I lived in the Ashram with often kept journals of their experiences, and would discuss them with others. I have things I would call "experiences" -- meeting other beings along the way, seeing things that seem significant, sights, sounds, the whole breadth of psychedelia -- I just don't keep track of them that well. They are less meaningful to me than the experience of dipping in and refreshing myself from the well of Being.

And holy cow, this ended up long-winded! Sorry if it's tl;dr ("too long; didn't read"). I hope I've added to the discussion.

Warmly,
Marcy ^_^

Great post, Marcy! Thanks.

What often strikes me is the similarity of creation myths between belief systems. The creative triad features so frequently that I find myself feeling that there has to be something very fundamental and correct about it.

As I've mentioned before, I have chosen the Qabalah as the 'structure' off which to dangle my knowledge. I think it matters little which particular one is used, but I do believe that such a structure is incredibly valuable to the individual.

I often wonder if one of the consequences of multi-ethnic society is the loss of the common language that exists between people of similar culture. The western agnostic/atheist finds itself struggling to communicate with 'proper scientific' terms that are wholly unsuited to matters of mind and spirit, and using 'emotional' words, such as love, trust, respect, etc., that have real meaning only in the context of a moral/ethical framework.

My nature is much inclined to analysis, but I have managed to grasp that analysis should follow observation, not be interwoven with it. When I'm 'in' a session I try to throw myself in unreservedly and to not interefere or direct. Developing recall is probably a bigger challenge than learning to let go, but the rewards upon 'return' are immense.

Again, thanks for a really interesting post.

Cheers,
Craig

Hi Craig. I have been meditating since a child, I am now in my 60's. in meditation like many other things in life, you hit a wall & find it difficult to break the barrier. I have been using Schumann's Resonance frequency in mp3@s & with my Procyon & Kasina I have broken the wall in so many ways, taking me to worlds & places I only dreamed of. I always say that before you start, try to still your mind, its no use jumping into anything with the pressure of bills coming in on your mind, any worries should be put to one side to get best results. Even after all my years at this, I still hit times where success is not as great as the last time but the more you persevere the stronger you make your mind. People forget that the brain is as much a muscle that needs exercise as with any other body part, in fact the brain is the most powerful muscle if you let it.