Hemi-Sync® Journal 2003-1&2 (Winter/Spring)

--- PAGE 1 (OCR) --- Vol. XXI Winter/Spring 2003 A Research and Educational Publication of The Monroe Institute Nos. 1 & 2 IN THIS ISSUE A SYMPATHY WITH SOUNDS: HEMI- SYNC®, CONSCIOUSNESS, AND CATS Ronald Russell’ long association with The Monroe Institute makes him especially qualified to analyze Hemi- Sync’s expansion into mainstream culture—and its place in the current understanding of the nature of consciousness. Along the way, he calls attention to possible innovative applications for binaural beat technology. PREPARING TO USE BINAURAL BEAT SOUND WITH DEAF CLIENTS ....... v In this intriguing pilot project, Helene N. Guttman, PhD, explores the ways and means of providing the benefits of Hemi-Sync to deaf clients. ‘ied A SYMPATHY WITH SOUNDS: HEMI- SYNC®, CONSCIOUSNESS, AND CATS by Ronald Russell, MA Ronald Russell lives in Scotland. He has written fifteen books and currently lectures for Glasgow University. He is codirector, with his wife, Jill, of the Russell Centre, presenting Hemi-Sync workshops in the United Kingdom, Slovakia, and Cyprus. They are both emeritus directors of the Santa Fe Forum in New Mexico and advisors to the Annwin Institute, Slovakia, as well as members of The Monroe Institute Board of Advisors. Ronald Russell's recent book, The Vast Enquiring Soul, explores the further reaches of consciousness. This article is based on his pre- sentation at the 2002 Monroe Institute Professional Seminar. He believes that changes in approaches to the understanding of consciousness can illuminate the value of Hemi-Sync and reveal more of its potential. As The Monroe Institute's membership becomes more global, it is worthwhile to examine ways in which Hemi-Sync can be allied with the international language of music, and with other healing sounds, to the best possible effect Every other year in the early spring I receive an invitation to “Toward a Science of Consciousness,” a conference held in Tucson, Arizona. The invitation is for representatives from psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, philosophy, com- puter science, physics, mathematics, medicine, physiology, bio chemistry, anthropology, art, and other fields. I can never decide which field fits me and feel a bit like a Christian in ancient Rome asked to play with the lions in the colosseum. This year, however, the summaries of the preconference work- shops listed—amid such topics as “Imitation, Language, Intentionality and Intersubjectivity Studied with TMS and fMRI” and “Introduction to Mimetics’—a workshop on “Parapsychology: State of the Art and Implications for Consciousness Studies” by Charles Tart and Marilyn Schlitz. Well, I thought, that’s a breath of fresh air. Does it mean that—at last—there is a dawning recognition in Tucson that consciousness is rather more than a function of the brain? That subjective experience is essential to any understanding of con sciousness? There certainly is a shift. After Jill and I first visited The Monroe Institute (TMI) in 1986, I searched the literature, books, and learned papers, for references to Bob Monroe, Hemi-Sync, TMI, and so on. I found very little. Most of the few papers available were produced by people with TMI con- © 2003 The Monroe Institute 62 Roberts Mountain Road, Faber, VA 22938 434/361-1252 --- PAGE 2 (OCR) --- HEMI-SYNC® JOURNAL nections and published by TMI. Journeys Out of the Body, of course, was very well known, and an article on Monroe's out- of-body experiences (OBEs) had appeared in the American Journal of Psychology in 1982. 1 came across J. H. M. Whiteman’s Old and New Evidence on the Meaning of Life, which included a somewhat suspicious account of Monroe's OBEs. The first serious published assessment of Monroe's work that I found, however, was in Charles Tart’s Open Mind, Discriminating Mind. This was before the days of the Internet and all I had to use were the massive resources of the Cambridge University Library. There must have been material that I didn't know about available in the United States. But Monroe certainly did not go out to seek publicity. Now things are different. There are references to Monroe's work in Michael Talbot’s The Holographic Universe, Christopher Bache’s recent Dark Night, Early Dawn, Susan Blackmore’s Beyond the Body, further books by Charles Tart, the work of Russell Targ and Jane Katra, the recently published ref- erence study Varieties of Anomalous Experience, and many more. There are also Monroe-focused books by Joe McMoneagle, Skip Atwater, Gari Carter, Frank DeMarco, Joe Gallenberger, Rosie McKnight, and Bruce Moen; the groundbreaking work of Suzanne Morris; many research projects, studies, degree the- ses, and articles in journals and periodicals such as Larry Dossey’s Alternative Therapies, Anaesthesia, The Journal of Scientific Exploration, Network, and The Wall Street Journal. Laurie, Skip and others are frequently invited to speak at con- ferences and symposia. In Slovakia, the Annwin Institute uses Hemi-Sync as a component of its training programs, and there are flourishing Monroe outposts in Spain, Cyprus, Germany, and other countries. Bob Monroe did not set out to devise a theory of con- sciousness, but he was fully aware of its prime importance. He was an explorer of consciousness—involuntarily to begin with—and he sought to create maps of the territories he per- sonally explored, referred to as Locales 2 and 3. He was con- vinced that “focused consciousness contains definitive solutions to the questions of human experience,” and he used neuromap- ping and biomonitoring to ensure that the Institute operated as far as possible within scientific parameters. But he was aware that measurement, so vital to orthodox science, was not an appropriate method. Measurement applied to thought would be like measuring the smoke instead of the fire. “The best that can be done,” says a TMI leaflet published in 1989, “is to estab- lish physiological corollaries to support the mass of anecdotal information brought forth by the reporting human mind.” At the same time, this leaflet admits, “our research has not been designed to conduct studies in form and protocol that will insure acceptance by orthodox segments of our culture.” Research, of course, there has been. Interestingly, when I looked a few months ago at what was described as the scientif- ic background to the products of a recently formed organiza- tion claiming to use binaural beats to effect changes in con- sciousness, more than half the quoted materials were papers issued by TMI. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Skip Atwater’s recent work has illuminated the response of the brain to the various frequencies embedded in TMI's exercises— maybe it is now possible to measure the fire instead of the smoke. But what seems especially significant is the indication of a shift in the way that the problem of human consciousness— what it is and how it works—is approached. That 1989 leaflet was entitled “Are Thoughts Really ‘Things’?” Perhaps the next leaflet will be titled “Are Things Really ‘Thoughts’?” There is a growing body of evidence iridicating that consciousness can function independently of the brain, that it is not dependent upon time and space, and that it is ultimately indestructible. Evidence for that viewpoint comes from such diverse sources as near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, remote view- ing, remote healing, telepathy, psychokinesis, and precognition, as well as from the thousands of experiments conducted by Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne at Princeton University, Dean Radin at the University of Nevada, and Robert Morris at Edinburgh, and it is supported by the conclusions of Amit Goswami, Edgar Mitchell, Peter Russell, and many others. The way in which the physicist Amit Goswami made his shift in understanding is especially noteworthy. He was trying to sort out in conversation with a friend what he saw as inconsistencies in the material for his forthcoming book, The Se/f-Aware Universe. Goswami sought to express the idea of consciousness that he had gained from his study of quantum theory. His friend interrupted him. “You're wearing scientific blinkers that keep you from understanding,” he said. “Underneath, you have a belief that consciousness can be understood by science, that consciousness emerges in the brain, that it is an epiphenome- non. Comprehend what the mystics are saying. Consciousness is prior and unconditioned. It is all there is. There is nothing but God.” In the published book Goswami points out that we miss the truth because “We are so enamoured of our attempts to predict and control, to understand and manipulate every- thing rationally. In our efforts we miss the simple thing—the truth that it is all God, which is the mystic’s way of saying that it is all consciousness. Physics explains phenomena, but con- sciousness is not a phenomenon; instead all else are phenome- na in consciousness. I had vainly been seeking a description of consciousness within science; instead, what I and others have to look for is a description of science within consciousness. We must develop a science compatible with consciousness, our pri- mary experience.” Experience with Hemi-Sync has shown many of us that this is so. Aristotle and Spinoza came to similar conclusions before us. And now Goswami’s conclusion is supported by more and more research. But the work—the attempt to reach a full understanding—has a long way to go. Only ten years ago physicist Richard Feynmann remarked, “I think I can safely say that no one understands human consciousness.” And seven years ago Stuart Sutherland wrote: “Consciousness is a fasci- nating but elusive phenomenon; it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written about it.” All the same, we try. --- PAGE 3 (OCR) --- Winter/Spring 2003 At the end of his recent study, Understanding Consciousness, Max Velmans quotes a passage by Carl Jung. Jung was travel- ing in Africa in 1925 and came to the Athi Plains, a game reserve near Nairobi. “To the very brink of the horizon we saw gigantic herds of animals: gazelle, antelope, gnu, zebra, warthog and so on. Grazing, heads nodding, the herds moved forward like slow rivers. There was scarcely any sound save the melan- choly cry of a bird of prey. This was the stillness of the eternal beginning, the world as it had always been, in the state of non- being; for until then no one had been present to know that it was this world.” Jung walked away from his companions to savour the feeling of being entirely alone. He saw himself as if he was the first human being to recognize that this was the world, but who did not know that in this moment he had first really created it. He continued: “There the cosmic meaning of consciousness became overwhelmingly clear tome. . . . Man, I, in an invisible act of creation put the stamp of perfection on the world by giving it objective existence. This act we usually ascribe to the Creator alone, without considering that in doing so we view life as a machine calculated down to the last detail, which, along with the human psyche, runs on senselessly, obey- ing foreknown and predetermined rules. In such a cheerless clockwork fantasy there is no drama of man, world and god: there is no ‘new day’ leading to ‘new shores’ but only the dreariness of cal- culated processes.” Jung recalled an old Pueblo Indian friend of his who thought that the raison d’étre of his pueblo had been to help their father, the sun, to cross the sky each day—and I know that the boys of the Indian School at Santa Fe run every morning to help the sun to rise. Jung had envied his friend for the fullness of meaning in that belief and had been searching, with little hope, for a myth of his own. “Now I knew what it was,” he continues, “and even more: that man is indispensable for the completion of creation; that, in