Back in the 1970s, I was running a hypnosis school and therapy center in Marina del Rey, California, when we began to hear about a new machine in Russia called a "brainwave biofeedback" device. The idea behind brainwave biofeedback was that one could learn how to create perfect meditative states "through the wonders of modern science."[1]

Wow! No more lotus postures, no more arduous self-discipline, no more "just sitting." Instead, you could simply hook yourself up to a machine that would report, with a sound or color display, when your brainwaves were in the proper meditative range. After a few sessions on this device, the theory went, you would learn how to purposefully "make" the sound or the color at a more-or-less constant rate - and in so doing, voila, you would be in deep meditation.

You could be an instant Yogi.

It was not long before these devices became available in this country, and we purchased a research-quality model for the school.

In working with this device, we did not attempt to formally memorialize our experiments. We were simply interested in finding out what use - if any - this new technology might have for our work in helping people to live happier lives. But we did take into account the normal experimental controls, and I feel that our results may be of interest to many.

So in this article, I will discuss what we found out at Marina HypnoSciences about the uses of biofeedback for learning how to meditate. And I will advance an analysis as to what conclusions you might be able to draw from such a limited sample.

First, we need to talk briefly about the brainwaves themselves, and how their configurations are reflected in human consciousness.

In measuring brainwaves, there are two main factors involved: speed, and amplitude. To understand these factors, simply think of ocean waves coming in on the shore. How many waves break on the shore each minute? That's the speed. And how big are these waves? That's the amplitude.

Most brainwave biofeedback devices report only on speed, and it is speed that we are talking about when we mention the well-known Alpha state. Alpha, or meditative, states exist within the range of about 8 to about 12 "cycles per second," or Herz (it's written Hz). But the amplitude of Alpha brainwaves can be extremely shallow or extremely deep, and this aspect is not reported on very much. More about that later.

Above the Alpha state, from 12-plus Hz on up, brainwaves are said to be in Beta. The Beta range represents, for most people, ordinary consciousness.

Below the Alpha state, at roughly 4 to 8 Hz, lies the Theta range. Here is where our brainwaves are when we are asleep and dreaming. This is also the range of people on LSD, and of people who suffer from schizophrenia.

Beyond Theta, from 0-plus to 4 Hz, lies the Delta range of deep, dreamless sleep.

Most meditators create brainwaves that are solidly within the Alpha range, whereas measurements of true Yogis and adepts usually show them to be on the Alpha/Theta borderline.

When the Brainwave "Surf Is Up"

Now, all of what I've said so far has to do with speed. And I haven't been able to find anything reported in the literature about brainwave amplitude, so I'll just tell you what we learned at MHS.

Most people were in Beta before meditating or using the biofeedback devices, but the amplitude of their brainwaves could be compared to gentle waves lapping the shore. With obsessive compulsives and manic depressives, on the other hand, not only were the Beta waves faster than normal, but the brainwaves were of extremely high amplitude compared to normal subjects. As far as we could tell, with these people the "surf" is always up.

On the other side of Alpha, in the Theta range, people who are dreaming reportedly show relatively low to moderate amplitude, whereas we found that the brainwave amplitudes of our schizophrenic patients, also in the Theta range, were practically off the chart (interestingly enough, it also is well established that people on LSD are in extremely high-amplitude Theta[2]).

After working with hundreds of people and looking at the biofeedback, we came away with a kind of feeling about all of this, which I will share with you.

In Beta, it seems, attention is turned to physical reality. The conscious mind is closed to the "inner realms." Beta seems to be a scientific measurement of the state of separation from God and Self. And when the brainwaves are of high amplitude, reality looks super-good or super-bad, depending on your evaluation of the information you are receiving.

In Theta, attentions seems to be on "inner reality" - and, again, how "real" this seems depends upon the amplitude, while the question of having a "bad trip" or a "good trip" depends upon the individual's attitude toward what appears to be happening.

Alpha, then, seems like a gateway between the two, where attention flows back and forth from one to the other. Information from both the inner world and the outer world is available to the consciousness.

Gracefully poised in the Alpha state, it seems, we are fully functioning in physical reality and yet fully "hooked up" to who we are and where we come from, and to so-called "higher" sources of information.

To carry this idea further, a Yogi, meditating on the Alpha/Theta borderline, is thus more fully attuned to the "inner realms." But such a one remains close enough to the Alpha state to assess what is happening in physical reality - although this reality is seen (and rightly so, we believe) as the product of what is happening on the inner planes.

And someone who has difficulty seeing physical reality as a projection can still, with meditation, go far enough into Alpha to receive information from these inner planes - even though this information seems to "rise into" consciousness rather than being directly accessible.

It is the Alpha Gateway, I believe - where both inner and outer reality simply flow - that gives birth to the Witness.

Learning to Meditate with Biofeedback

We were teaching meditation to many people in those days, most of whom had come to us through medical referrals from Granville Knight, M.D., co-founder of the American Metabolic Association and a doctor of world repute.

With his concurrence, we decided to use biofeedback as a learning-device for some patients, and biofeedback monitoring for others (to measure the effects of "straight meditation").

To begin with, we taught mantra-based meditation to each person who wanted to learn it and who had agreed to participate.

With half the people, the "Feedback Group," we then explained how brainwave biofeedback would help them to create the Alpha state we were looking for, put them on the brainwave biofeedback device, and let them work with it for 20 minutes, letting them choose whether they wanted sound or color as feedback. Meanwhile, from another room, we looked at the readouts ourselves to see how they were doing.

With the other half, the "Control Group," we simply hooked up the electrodes, but had them practice the meditation technique without feedback, while we monitored the results - again, from a different room.

We chose which person would use which modality by simply alternating them. The first person used feedback, the second did not, the third did, and so forth. Both the Feedback Group and the Control Group knew that we were monitoring them, but we removed ourselves from their presence so that this awareness would have as little effect as we could manage. Both groups had been taught the same, mantra-based meditation technique.

Considering how optimistic we were about this new science, how much money we had invested in this slick machine, and the known effects of such bias upon experimental outcomes, the outcome we actually achieved was totally counterintuitive. In a nutshell, except with diagnosed schizophrenics, the use of biofeedback proved to be much less effective than straight meditation in creating the Alpha state!

If you think about the design of scientific experiments involving human beings, you will realize that this one was loaded in favor of the Feedback Group. This group had been told that the brainwave biofeedback device would help them to do better, so the placebo effect should have affected their performance. And as experimenters, we had our money, literally, riding on the machine, which we had obtained at great trouble and expense. All other things being equal, the Feedback Group should have done better than the Control Group.

As we have said, quite the opposite was true. Here is what we found:

Feedback Group - Normal Amplitude: This group moved back and forth in a jittery fashion from fairly low Beta to high Alpha. Their brainwaves never settled down. Whether the subjects were using sound or color as a feedback signal made no difference. In subsequent sessions there was no detectable improvement.

Feedback Group - High Amplitude: The brainwaves of people whose normal state exhibited high amplitude actually got faster, not slower, using biofeedback. (Again, this effect obtained irrespective of the use of color or sound as the feedback modality.) Thus, obsessive compulsives and manic depressives became even more nervous, agitated, excited, depressed, or whatever was their presenting state, while attempting to use the device. Schizophrenics, on the other hand, moved up out of Theta into the more comfortable Alpha range, and continued to improve in their ability to do this with practice![3]

Control Group - Normal Amplitude: Simply following the instructions we had given them for meditation, this group all moved down toward the Alpha range almost immediately and stayed there, and on subsequent visits they continued to improve, moving more solidly and consistently into Alpha. There was no back-and-forth, jittery effect such as that which the Feedback Group demonstrated.

Control Group - High Amplitude: People in high-amplitude Beta were able to slow down their brainwaves somewhat using straight meditation, and continued to improve on subsequent visits. Straight meditation, although it worked slowly, proved itself to be an incredibly life-affirming and useful modality for these people. Those in high-amplitude Theta, however (the people in our study who exhibited this configuration were medically-diagnosed schizophrenics), exhibited no change in their brainwave patterns using straight meditation.

We soon discontinued using biofeedback training sessions for meditation, since we felt we had enough information to realize that they were not useful. But we continued to monitor meditators for several years (1974 to 1979), conclusively demonstrating, to me at least, that except for schizophrenics, straight meditation is an unsurpassed tool for altering one's brainwaves into the Alpha range.

My own personal explanation for all of this is that the use of the brainwave biofeedback device creates "performance anxiety." The effect of this anxiety is not strong enough with most people to actually prevent them from moving their brainwaves into the Alpha state, although they do better without it. But for people whose normal mode is high-level anxiety, use of the device simply exacerbates the anxiety.

The resounding success for brainwave biofeedback is in training schizophrenics to bring their brainwaves up out of Theta into the Alpha range. This makes sense, because using brainwave biofeedback offers them the very left-brain focus which is missing the rest of the time.[4]

I would like to add, for all of us who meditate: I think it's like doing any other kind of exercise. If we go to the gym and work out for an hour once or twice, we don't come home expecting a sudden shift in our ability to deal with people who kick sand in our face! And yet we may try meditation once or twice, or even for what we think is a reasonable period of time, in the belief that we are supposed to be hearing the music of the spheres - and when that doesn't happen, we may think that it's not working and give up. We think of meditation as an event, when truly, it's a lifelong process, a practice that eventually becomes part of our daily consciousness.

The Ascended Masters say, "If you knew who walks beside you, you would never feel alone." I think with regard to meditation we can say something along those same lines. No matter what our subjective experience may be at any given session:

If we knew what our brainwaves were doing when we meditate, we'd never, ever stop!

1. Interestingly enough, tranquilizers also came from Russia. While attending Stanford, I worked for a Menlo Park psychiatrist who had brought the first tranquilizers into this country from Russia back in the '50s. And now, with Bronnikov, Zolotov, and a man named Denisov, the most exciting cognitive work on developing superpsychic powers also seems to be happening in Russia.

2. Thus, presumably, someone who is having a drug-induced "bad trip" is basically having a very bad dream that seems totally real because he or she is wide awake; and for schizophrenics, the "drug" simply never wears off - life itself is a virtual nightmare.

3. Much later, in 1984, I shared this information with a psychologist who specialized in "transpersonal" approaches to healing in an institutional setting. Interestingly, she had also found, through her own investigations, that brainwave biofeedback training possessed a unique power to help her schizophrenic patients lead happier lives.

4. I will never forget watching Mr. X, a schizophrenic medical referral of ours and a long-time client, getting into the elevator and actually smiling at the other person who was there, instead of laboriously and fearfully making his way down six flights of stairs. It was worth every penny we spent on that machine!