Dr. James Hardt on Training Brain Waves Toward Transcendent States
There was a man I worked with once, a former San Francisco 49er. Famous guy. He'd played in two Super Bowls and wore those enormous gold rings crusted with diamonds. When he started, the brain wave pattern I look for simply wasn't there. Then on the fifth day it appeared. The moment he stepped out of the chamber, he looked terrified. I spent something like half an hour coaxing him, very gently, before he'd say a word about what had happened. Three angels had come to him inside the chamber and told him he hadn't been living a very good life. He quit everything after that, coffee included.
That case taught me something I've seen repeat since. Even in people who show no sign of the pattern at the outset, once it takes hold they begin to perceive, and sometimes to speak with, beings they describe as belonging to the astral plane. I don't frame this as a mystical claim. It's an observation that holds up on repetition, which makes it science.
At Biocybernaut I describe the work as spiritual science. We've recorded the brain waves tied to kundalini. We know the signature of a person who reports a halo, and the signature of someone who sees angels. Each of these is a pattern, and each can be trained. A few are harder to reach than others, but none of them lies outside what the brain can learn to produce.
Erik: It's a fascinating area, and I'd guess many people listening are carrying some skepticism along with it, maybe a little apprehension too. At minimum I'd hope for curiosity and an open mind, since we're speaking to people at the conference who care about personal growth and meditation. There's related work out there. The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies is presenting on post-traumatic stress disorder and MDMA research. Stanislav Grof gave this general territory a name, transpersonal psychology, and it's gained a degree of acceptance.
James: That's exactly our field. We get there through brain wave training rather than drugs. The reason both roads can reach transpersonal states comes down to the same mechanism: the brain waves shift. Change them in the right way and transcendent experience follows. There's more than one route to the same place.