The Quickening. Gregg Unterberger

alpha state is not too deep, maybe doing some really effective studying.

      Legend has it that Thomas Edison so valued this creative twilight arena just before deep sleep that he would nap in an armchair with metal ball-bearings in each hand, positioned over steel bowls. As he dozed, his hands would relax slowly until, eventually, he dropped the ball bearings into the bowls. Their clatter awakened him in the middle of what was very likely an Alpha state or light Theta state. Judging by the, oh, one or two productive ideas that came out of his head, I would say it worked for him.

      Edgar Cayce had a name for this zone between wakefulness and slumber; he called it “pre-sleep.” He said that the mind was very amenable to instructions in this state, and he helped a young mother successfully cure her child of bed-wetting by having her make audible suggestions as he drifted off to slumber land.

      The next level “down,” Theta states (4-7 Hz), involving long, slow brainwaves, are associated with deeper, visionary states of meditation, spontaneous problem solving, and psychic experiences, including out-of-body experiences.

      Delta states (.5 to 4 Hz) are associated with sleep, but also shamanic or mystical experiences—important to know if you want to do some shape-shifting or soul retrieval. (Where the hell is that thing? I swear I put it my jacket pocket when I left the house. God, I hope nobody stole it! Talk about identity theft! Jeez.)

      So now that we know where we “need to be,” (neurologically speaking) to access mystical experiences, greater intuition, and deep meditation, how do we flip the switch?

      Well, first we have to climb into our time machine, fire up the flux capacitor, and go back a few years. Relax and get in. The leather bucket seats have bun warmers so you won’t get cold. I bought it used with all the options. As you can see, there is a lot more legroom in here than in the Back to the Future car. Bear with me while we leap backward on our spiritual journey.

      The year is 1839, and the handsome Prussian gentleman before you with the moustache and graying temples is one Heinrich Wilhelm Dove, known as Hiney to his friends, I am sure. If he were from Texas, like me, where everybody has two names, they would probably just call him Richey Bill.

      But I digress.

      Perhaps you noticed.

      Richey Bill, er, Heinrich was quite the man of letters, now regarded by some as a pioneer in the field of meteorology, early experimental physics, and natural sciences. There is even a crater on the moon named for him, the Richey Bill Crater.

      Just kidding, it’s called the Hiney Hole.

      Okay, so it’s called the Dove Crater; it’s just north of the crater Pitiscus. Inquiring minds want to know.

      For those of you not laughing, I am aghast, aghast, I tell you, at this brief detour into scatological humor. How this escaped my editor is completely beyond me. Spirituality is very serious business. Shame, shame on me.

      For those of you smiling, thank you for remembering that we take all this enlightenment stuff too seriously sometimes. Come and see me at my next workshop. We will laugh our butts off and leap forward.

      So, before you are gone too long from the present and your jerkwagon of a boss thinks you are on an extended Red Bull break, here is what is important about Heinrich. He noted that if you sent a musical tone to one ear of, say, 200 Hz, and then another slightly higher tone of, say 210Hz, to the other ear that this confused the brain, which then manufactured an experience of a “phantom tone” which was the difference between two frequencies, 10 Hz. You might remember from high school biology that the nerve endings in the right ear connect up with the left part of the brain and the nerve endings in the left ear go to the right part of your brain. Apparently, Mother Nature, in her infinite wisdom, decided it was a good idea for us to be born with our wires crossed. In any case, since both hemispheres of the brain were involved in the experience, your entire meat computer begins to attune or entrain to this frequency and starts buzzing along at 10 Hz. Hiney called the phenomena binaural beat frequencies, now often abbreviated BBF. It sounds like something nightclub disc jockeys with too many pierced body parts generate on weekends. But, stay with me. Binaural simply means “two ears hearing,” like you ladies always wish your husband would do.

      But, what Richey Bill did not and could not grasp at that point is the application of this technology. Class, do you remember what state you are in when you have lots of 10 Hz activity crackling in your noggin? (You can check the chart. It’s okay; I only give open-book tests.) That’s right, alpha state. Send two detuned tones to two ears and in a matter of minutes, whaddya got? Instant meditation!

      Now, hang on while the g-force pulls the corners of your mouth towards your ears as we leap ahead on our spiritual journey to 1973. “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree” by Tony Orlando and Dawn is at the top of the pop charts and it’s a dark, dark day for rock ‘n’ roll. But on balance, this year marks the publication of “Auditory Beats and the Brain” in Scientific American by Dr. Gerald Oster of the Mt. Sinai Medical Center. The article puts together current research and historical findings about BBFs. Suddenly, BBFs become more than just an interesting anomaly and transform into something more credible and useful in the eyes of the academic community.

      Around the same time, sound pioneer Robert Monroe was researching BBF. Monroe, an engineer who spontaneously began having out-of-body experiences in the 1950s, believed that BBF technology might be able to help people relax, accelerate learning, and even facilitate astral projection. He manufactured the technology under the brand name, Hemi-Sync®, short for hemispheric synchronization, since he noted that when using BBF, there was a more balanced, coherent neural firing of both the creative/artistic right hemisphere of the brain and the linear/rational left hemisphere. Voila! “Whole-brain thinking” on demand!

       Zip!

      And now we are back in the twenty-first century . . . and my fly is closed. You are saying, the little BBF history lesson was fascinating, Gregg, and thank you for closing the barn door, I was beginning to worry about you. But what’s in it for me?

      Let’s say you wake up in the morning at eight o’clock, only to discover that the coffee pot’s broken. Damn, you say to yourself, how will I find my way to work without my java? Thinking quickly, you toss on your headphones and start to listen to a Beta audio recording on your iPod. The BBF tones feed into each ear, resonating underneath a bed of lively up-tempo music. Sure enough, within just a few minutes, your brain is chugging along at about 20 Hz, solidly in the range of Beta waves, and you feel bright and alert, without the cost of a $15.56 cup of mocha latté soy Frappuccino extra grande venti with a shot in the dark from Starbucks.

      You go percolating through the day, energetic, alert and feeling pretty good, until your jerkwagon boss (the one who got pissed off at you for being gone too long in my time machine) reminds you about a project that is due. And he doesn’t want it right, he wants it right now. Whipping out your iPod from your purse (okay, it’s not a purse, it’s a satchel like Indiana Jones carries), you turn down the lights in your crappy vestibule that passes for an office, close your eyes, and breathe like your favorite yoga instructor, while jacking into an alpha state BBF audio track with haunting minor key music and groovy ocean sounds for fifteen minutes, catalyzing an Edison-like state of mind sans ball-bearings. After reinventing the light bulb and the telephone, you remember that what your boss wanted was the specs for the new electric dog polisher. In the alpha state, you can hear every word of your muses and spontaneously solve the problem and buy small, inexpensive gift certificates for them as tokens of your gratitude.

      After a tough day at the office channeling Tommy Edison, you decide it’s time for some spiritual sustenance. You put on a Theta track with low harmonic musical tones and in fifteen or twenty minutes, you find yourself meditating at a depth something akin to Tibetan monks with twenty years of training. The more you listen to the Theta tracks, the easier it becomes to catalyze this deep meditative state, whether you are listening to an audio or not. With repeated listening, perhaps you find yourself calmer in stressful situations, more empathic with others, experiencing more intuitive flashes, and