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

‘universe,’ or the ‘natural world’ is also a matter of personal choice. But the essential insight is the same: consciousness gives meaning to existence.” By extension, the more alert and awake, flexible, and penetrating one’s consciousness is, the richer and fuller will be one’s existence. If we are able to accept the primacy of consciousness, we may also be able to accept that there is greater potential in Hemi-Sync than has so far been revealed or discovered. Instead of a theory or an attempted explanation, Monroe gives us the tools that we can use to make our own explorations and discoveries. He gives us also a map—but it is not like a road map. It resembles more one of those early maps of North America, quite accurate on the states of the eastern seaboard but becoming less detailed, more open, the further west you go. And especially for those of us who are not, by birth, nature, or practice, mystics or visionaries, who are not gifted with the old Highlanders’ second sight, who are not, for example, instinctive remote viewers or healers, this gift of Bob Monroe’s provides the opportunity, if we wish to take it, to move into that open country to the west, to break through our limitations, to become free. When we attend programs at TMI, we move away from our everyday existence into a sort of magical realm-a realm that we can explore and enjoy while knowing that on our return we don’t have to catch and cook our food or sling our hammocks inexpertly between trees. It’s a realm where linear time becomes irrelevant, where space expands and contracts as it happens, and where (I trust) mobile phones and e-mail are banned. This realm is not in any way a “never- never land.” It carries its own reality. Looking over some TMI material after my GATEWAY VOYAGE® course seventeen years ago, I noted that TMI is described as an educational and research establishment. I wondered at that—peducational? What was taught? It was the wrong question. It should be, “What was learned?” Not all of us will answer the same—but all the answers will certainly relate to the unlimited power of consciousness. There is another realm that some of us have visited in the LIFELINE® course and the other courses that take you to Focus 27 and beyond. I would describe it as the imaginal realm, a term coined by Henry Corbin, the great Sufi scholar. Robert Monroe’s Park in Focus 27 is, to use his own words: “an artificial synthesis created by human minds…. It takes on the form of various earth environments in order to be acceptable to the enormously wide variety of newcomers.” In ordinary consciousness (C-1) some of us may have problems with this, but in that phase or state of consciousness labeled Focus 27 such problems disappear. There seems little or no purpose in seeking to explain or analyze Focus 27 experiences in terms of C-1. You can, if you wish, seek to establish the actual identity of the Bill Brown you found in Focus 23 and conducted to the Park in Focus 27. But if you accept that consciousness is nonlocal or nonlocated, and therefore is independent of time and space, then there should be no problem. Just take the experience on board and go on to the next thing. I’d like now to move to those phases of consciousness labeled Focus 10 and 12. Thanks to Bob Monroe, his coworkers, and his successors, Hemi-Sync now addresses almost all the concerns of human existence: birth, life and death, health (including surgery), education, intellect, emotion, behavior, dreams, and so on. In our sixteen years’ work with Hemi-Sync, Jill and I have discovered that if you know your tapes well enough you can find something appropriate to almost any situation. When we presented workshops in Slovakia, using both English and Slovak, we found that the responses of the participants paralleled typical responses of participants in the United States or United Kingdom. There are members of TMI in nearly fifty countries to date. In many of these countries, English is not the native language and in some it is not the second language either. There are many more countries into which Hemi-Sync may well penetrate in the next few years. It is feasible to translate the GATEWAY texts into French and Spanish, but taking translation further will become a major, if not insuperable, problem. However, there does exist an international language—the language of music. We know when Hemi-Sync is combined with music (a) it performs as advertised, and (b) it does not interfere with the pleasure of listening. Let’s look at just one aspect—healing—the focus of this conference. In his book The Mozart Effect, Don Campbell gives examples of forty-eight illnesses and conditions for which music, either compositions or toning, has proved helpful and often curative. To take one example close to home—which Campbell himself mentions—there is the wonderful work of speech- language pathologist Suzanne Morris, who uses METAMUSIC® with young children with cerebral palsy and similar conditions. Embedding Hemi-Sync in the type of music that Campbell describes could intensify the healing effect. Is there a way forward here? Would it be possible, or desirable, to blend Hemi-Sync with music to help those making the transition from this life—to wherever? No words would be needed. And what about blending Hemi-Sync with music from the ‘40s and ‘50s for those in residential homes, geriatric wards, hospices, and similar places? This would be much more stimulating than the all-day exposure to random channels of television that so many old people must endure. Some years ago a music scholar worked with us using Hemi-Sync for several months. She was an expert on J. S. Bach. One day, quite excited, she declared that there was Hemi-Sync in some of Bach’s cantatas. Technically speaking there isn’t. I guess she was saying that certain passages produced a similar effect to binaural beat signals for Focus 10 and 12. Jill and I had noticed the same type of effect at the Buddhist temple at Samye Ling in Scotland. At each side of the temple a gong was being struck and the effect was a kind of glorified Focus 12. What these experience show is the power and range of Monroe’s technology—that it can be related to the most outstanding examples of composed music and to the sacred sounds of established religion. From this, I suggest, it follows that we should beware of trivializing this gift. If we are going to embed it in music, then the music we choose, classical or popular, or specially composed, should be chosen from the best of its kind and excellently performed. I came upon some interesting research recently (The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, number 94, 2001, by J. S. Jenkins, MD, FRCP) that showed that listening to Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos No. 23 (K448) resulted in significantly better spatial temporal reasoning skills in normal subjects. This effect lasted up to fifteen minutes after the music ended. Further recent research showed that frequent listening to this sonata resulted in a marked diminution and reduction of attacks of epilepsy as shown by EEG readings of epileptiform activity. This improvement was also recorded with a comatose patient, demonstrating that it was not due simply to appreciation of the music. Now it happens that this sonata was adapted and performed by J. S. Epperson for the METAMUSIC composition Einstein’s Dream, as a consequence of earlier investigation at the University of California when it was shown to have a short-term effect on the IQ of a number of students. This opens the door to interesting prospects for further research. I called this talk “A Sympathy with Sounds.” I’d like in conclusion to mention a particular sound that is not to do with music as such but which may be combined with Hemi-Sync to valuable effect. In 2001, having read a newspaper article about the beneficial effects of cats’ purring, I contacted the Fauna Communications Research Institute in North Carolina. You can reach them at http://www.animalvoice.com. Their president told me that cats’ purrs “have frequencies with strong harmonics only at the same frequencies that are the best for bone growth, muscle and tendon repair, pain relief, and the reduction of edema.” We believe a cat could have a positive effect on individuals experiencing such problems, possibly including osteoporosis. A noninvasive and very cost-effective (owning a cat) way to treat such conditions would be of great value to the world, especially for impoverished countries and those unable to afford medical insurance. The optimal frequencies are 25 and 50 Hz, the two low frequencies that best promote bone growth and fracture healing. A team headed by Dr. Clinton Rubin has found that bones of both chickens and rabbits are strengthened by daily exposure to low frequency vibration (20-50 Hz). There have been several studies in different countries showing that low frequency vibrational stimulation is effective for pain relief and repair of muscles and joints after injury. Incidentally, cats do not purr only when they are contented but also when they are injured. Their recovery rate from injury is rapid, far faster than that of dogs. Mention of dogs reminds me that Hemi-Sync is beneficial to dogs, as Suzanne Morris can testify. Suzanne’s golden retriever, Finn, took almost everything except thunderstorms in his stride. About thirty to forty- five minutes “before the skies blackened and lightening began,” he would begin to quake with fear, drool, whine, and attempt to hide. Neither Suzanne’s presence, homeopathic and herbal remedies, nor prescription medication were effective. For eight years Finn lived in fear of severe thunderstorms. “Then,” Dr. Morris told me, “during one particularly noisy storm, I noticed that my boom box was sitting on the living room floor near the table under which Finn was cowering. Without thinking, I turned it on and placed it right in front of his nose and played METAMUSIC Inner Journey. Within five minutes his body tremors had stopped. The wild look in his eyes began to recede. He placed his head down on his paws and appeared to be listening to the music. Within ten minutes his eyes closed and he slept through the remainder of the storm. At that moment thunderstorms ceased their power over Finn’s life, although he continued to be uneasy when he anticipated the approach of a storm. However, he now had a special boom box, which I placed on the floor of the downstairs bathroom, his storm retreat room. When he came into the house, he immediately headed for the bathroom and lay down with his nose against the boom box. He calmed as the METAMUSIC filled his ears. He usually slept during the storm itself and emerged as soon as it was over.” Hemi-Sync also pacifies horses. My niece is a champion rider with a large stable. She competes in horse shows and has a large van that carries five horses. She plays Hemi-Sync in the horse van on the way to a show to relax the animals. This prevents them from being disqualified because they have tensed up from the journey and consequently measure above the maximum height for their class. Returning to cats, the Fauna Communications Research Institute is currently seeking funding to study the effects that the purr might have on the human body. Meantime, of course, we can get on with our own research. But not all cats are content to sit beside their owner, or lie on their owner’s lap, for hours at a time. Many prefer the challenges of outdoor life—cats, we know, have wills of their own. So … I submitted the information from Fauna Communications to TMI and now we have the Purrfect Hemi-Sync CD, a Hemicat that is quite content to remain indoors in close proximity to its owner indefinitely and combines Hemi-Sync signals with the characteristic purring of a cat. Jill has met this creature already. In 2001 she had two “sprung ribs.” Her osteopath sent her to the local cottage hospital for an x-ray to rule out fractures.