The Quickening. Gregg Unterberger

it’s seven thirty at night and your jerkwagon manic boss calls, but you are in such a Zen state, you don’t panic: “You don’t mind what happens.” As it turns out, it’s all good. “I love the work you’re doing!” he screams into the phone. “The specs for the dog polisher are perfect. And I love the idea of running it with solar panels attached to the canine’s haunches and taking advantage of the tail wagging to store kinetic energy. Genius! We’re gonna kill in the green market with this! I’m giving you a raise and moving you to the corner office!” You smile broadly as excitement courses through your body. But as the evening wears on you wonder if you can get some sleep after all this drama. Your mind is racing. How will your life be different if the Electric Dog Polisher gets picked up and marketed by the As Seen on TV folks?

      You reach for your ever present iPod and put on a Delta track with night crickets and slow tempo music that catalyzes long, low delta waves in your brain. You have learned to wear ear buds while you listen to the sleep tracks so that you can roll over on your right or left side without shoving a whole headset up your Eustachian tubes. You sleep soundly, dreaming of all the money you saved on Ambien and thinking that no matter what Big Pharma says about safety, people are sleep-driving on that stuff, and it really might be a “benzo in a chicken suit.” You awake feeling rested, refreshed, and excited to blow your new paycheck and see your corner office overlooking the parking lot and the decrepit air conditioner on the roof of the nearby Dollar General: The Good Life is yours.

      All thanks to BBF, your new BFF.

      I am, of course, allowing for some hyperbole here. Thanks for coming along for the ride. I don’t think that there is any guarantee that BBF audios will get you a corner office or help you to invent a Solar-Powered Electric Dog Polisher (although the one I bought on TV has some serious design flaws and somebody really needs to address this, and soon). But there are decades of research into BBF that suggest it actually does catalyze these states for people and can be used to deepen meditation, sharpen focus, boost creativity, and help people sleep. Is this all exaggeration? Here is UCLA neurophysiologist John Liebeskind talking about BBF research:

      “It’s difficult to try to responsibly convey some sense of excitement about what’s going on . . . You find yourself sounding like people you don’t respect. You try to be more conservative and not say such wild and intriguing things, but damn! The field is wild and intriguing. It’s hard to avoid talking that way . . . We are at a frontier, and it’s a terribly exciting time to be in this line of work.”⁴

      New brain scans are showing us just how powerful these states of mind are, and the incredible potential that resides in all us, if we can but catalyze these states.

      Functional MRI and advanced EEG research have been conducted into different forms of meditation with the assistance of the Dalai Lama at the W.M. Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior at the University of Wisconsin.⁵ A lifelong meditator, who studied various forms of contemplation in the tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, demonstrated some startling results. (See, Star Trek or not, I told you I wasn’t making this stuff up.) Not only did the meditator show lots of slower brainwave activity during certain forms of meditation, there was also a striking increase in a higher vibrational electrical activity above Beta: the newly-christened gamma and hyper-gamma waves, also seen in research at University of Birmingham. Current findings suggests that when there is a lot of gamma activity in the left prefrontal cortex of the brain, subjects report feeling energetic, joyful, bright, alert, and yes, exceedingly happy. This pattern was specifically linked to the kind of meditation he was doing, a technique to awaken compassion.

      I can’t help but wonder if this new kind of state of being that is both bright and alert and also deeply connected spiritually is somehow related to the optimal state of “flow” that star athletes, artists, dancers, and yes, witty therapists, experience when they are completely in the moment.

      In addition, in a series of tests, the Buddhist meditator earned the highest recorded scores in his ability to recognize the emotional states of individuals in photographs flashed for one fifth of a second or less. Talk about theta states being able to improve empathy! And amazingly, our monk demonstrated something researchers had never seen before: the almost complete absence of a startle response in his facial muscles while in a meditative state when exposed to the sound of a gunshot at close range. In these tests, not even police marksmen with years of experience with firearms could suppress this startle response.

      Wow, when a gunshot can go off next to your head, and you don’t flinch, I guess you really “don’t mind what happens.” Truly, this is the peace that passeth all understanding.

      Interestingly, newer iterations of BBF technology, such as Dr. Jeffery Thompson’s Gamma Meditation System, capitalize on this recent research and entrain gamma and hyper-gamma waves. Imagine a mental workout that gets our mind in shape to think happy, compassionate thoughts, with no monthly gym charges, just a one-time CD or download charge. Plus, just think, you won’t freak out so much when the next drive-by shooting happens in the neighborhood.

      My experience with BBF has been quite positive. When I first heard of these audio recordings, I was so excited that I told myself I was going to listen every day. Well, that turned out to be three or four times a week in reality. But within a week, I noticed that I could stay more focused on my clients during sessions, my meditations deepened, and I experienced more intuitive flashes. Additionally, I found that my meditations were deeper, even without the headphones. Although I am new to the gamma and hyper-gamma audios, the first time I used them, I experienced a number of head rushes, similar to Kundalini-type experiences that I had had in other settings.

      At times when I have had difficulty sleeping, I have found delta sleep audios a godsend, although I don’t always stay asleep with them, they almost always get me to sleep.

      Where to start?

      A good introduction to this work is a beautiful CD by Dr. Andrew Weil, called Sound Body, Sound Mind. It has an almost hour-long track that starts in Beta, meeting you in regular waking state, gradually taking you down to Alpha and Theta, with thirty minutes in “the deep,” a lovely little sonic tonic, that helps you relax, regroup, and may well boost your immune system. Then it gently returns you to your regularly scheduled program of waking consciousness in Beta. Whenever I feel myself getting sick, I use Sound Body, Sound Mind to head off colds and flus, and it usually does the trick. It’s also helpful when I have grief I need to attend to. Yes, I know that is not the same as a randomized double-blind placebo controlled study that might constitute a bit more proof, but since we are getting so close, I thought you might like to know if it was good for me.

      Dr. Jeffrey Thompson’s Brainwave music system offers the listener journeys into alpha, theta, and delta states in a setting of tranquil tones and the sounds of nature. Let’s not forget Hemi-Sync, the company that pioneered the technology. Go to their website and you can peruse BBF CDs and downloads that offer everything from focus and concentration to (theoretically) astral travel. Sorry, but my out-of-body travel is limited to brief excursions catalyzed by listening to political pundits on TV.

      But . . .

      For more than twenty years, our government pumped millions of dollars into a remote viewing program in which trained soldiers, who had demonstrated potential intuitive skills, were to become so-called “psychic spies.” After some preliminary preparation, the first place they sent trainees was the Monroe Institute, to listen to—you guessed it—Hemi-Sync audios to boost their psychic abilities. Legion of Merit award-winner Joseph McMoneagle, widely regarded as the most accurate of the military’s remote viewers, also worked with Monroe audios using Hemi-Sync to both improve his abilities and also better control his spontaneous out-of-body experiences. After all, Cayce said that everyone “has clairvoyant, mystic, psychic powers” (Edgar Cayce reading 1500-4), but they had to be developed. Why not put the very best training tools in your corner?

      Welcome to the future of your mind.