Page:Analysis and Assessment of Gateway Process.pdf/6

 who have no experience in meditative techiquestechniques [sic] and whose progress in that methodology is enhanced through effective visualization and external, objective affirmation. Display of the subject's brainwave pattern on a cathode ray tube has proven to be a laboratory-validated means by which subjects may quickly learn to place themselves in profoundly relaxed states characterized by the sort of quietude and singularity of mental focus associated with advanced meditation.

5. Now that we have briefly profiled the basic mechanics of the principal techniques for altering or expanding consciousness which share some of the objectives and/or methods employed in the Gateway Experience, we may proceed to focus on what that technique actually involves. Fundamentally, the Gateway Experience is a training system designed to bring enhanced strength, focus and coherence to the amplitude and frequency of brainwave output between the left and right hemispheres so as to alter consciousness, moving it outside the physical sphere so as to ultimately escape even the restrictions of time and space. The participant then gains access to the various levels of intuitive knowledge which the universe offers. What differentiates the Gateway Experience from forms of meditation is its use of the Hemi-Sync technique which is defined in a monograph by Monroe Institute trainer Melissa Jager as, "a state of consciousness defined when the EEG patterns of both hemispheres are simultaneously equal in amplitude and frequency." Although Hemi-Sync seems to be rather rare and of only short duration in ordinary human consciousness, Melissa Jager states that: "Audio techniques developed by Bob Monroe can induce and sustain Hemi-Sync with the Institute's basic Focus 3 tapes,..." She also notes that: "Studies conducted by Elmer and Alyce Greene at the Menninger Foundation have shown that a subject with 20 years of training in Zen meditation could consistently establish Hemi-Sync at will, sustaining it for over 15 minutes." Dr. Stuart Twemlow, a psychiatrist and a research associate of the Monroe Institute, reports that: "In our studies of the effect of the Monroe tape system on brainwaves, we have found that the tapes encourage the focusing of brain energy(it can be measured as with a lightbulb, in watts) into a narrower and narrower 'frequency band'. This focusing of energy is not unlike the yoga concept of one pointedness, which we may translate in western terms as a Single-mindedness." Dr. Twemlow goes on to observe that as the individual gets into the tapes beyond Focus 3, "...there is a gradual increase in brainwave size which is a measure of brain energy or power."

6. Melissa Jager uses a metaphor to help clarify the process involved in the use of Hemi-Sync in the Gateway Experience. She points out that the human mind in its natural state may be likened to an ordinary lamp which expends energy in the form of both heat and light but in a chaotic, incoherent way which diffuses its energy over a wide area of rather limited depth. On the other hand, the human mind under the discipline of Hemi-Sync acts after the fashion of a laser beam which produces a disciplined stream of light. The stream of energy is projected with total coherence of both frequency and amplitude such that the surface area of a laser beam contains billions of times the concentrated energy found in a similar surface area on the sun. Gateway assumes that once the frequency and amplitude of the human brain are rendered coherent, it is possible to begin accelerating both so that the human mind is soon resonating at ever higher vibrational levels. The mind can then bring itself into sycronizationsynchronization [sic] with more sophisticated and rarified energy levels in the universe. The mind, when operating at these increasingly rarified levels is assumed to be capable of processing the information thus received through the same fundamental matrix by which it makes sense of ordinary physical sensory input to achieve meaning in a cognitive context. Such meaning is usually perceived visually in the form of symbols but may also be perceived as astonishing flashes of holistic intuition or even in the form