brain tv

Brain TV - ON AIR TONIGHT!

Ok, so theres a picture of a pink creature with a gigantic TV on his head.I bet your now real curious about what this post might be all about.

Thats what I love about pictures, they draw you in and make you wonder & think about whats going on.This is active viewing, where your not just seeing but processing information and internally talking about the scene too.

But what if you were in a place where every thought that came into your mind caused a change in what you see. Sort of like a remote control in your head, that kept flicking channels the moment you thought of a number.

Sounds neat right.

The only problem with this is that the human brain is so whimsical and unchained that it can bounce around to a hundered thoughts in span of a few minutes.So imagine the psychedelic onslaught of images flashing from these 100 channels changed by your trigger happy brain.If you imagined that correctly then you probably had an eplileptic fit from all that flashing and your lying on the floor flopping and frothing, if not, then *whew..* call yourself blessed and lets move on.

Get to the point Already! What is this Brain TV :

All that rambling was just to warm me up, so now to the meat and potatoes of what im talking about.

Hypnagogic Imagery: Yep.That is a complicated word, and using it just made me smarter in your eyes, didnt it? :)

Basically it refers to the images that one sees as he falls asleep. These images range from random flashes of light and colours to scenes of places and objects.You also hear sounds, either random ones or as part of the scenes your watching. Eventually you'll slip into a dream and step into the movie screen altogether.

So by Brain TV I mean the zone that were in when were inbetween sleep and wakefullness

During the times that I had started with my dream research I never really understood this phenomena, I would sit every night and look for these flashes of light and Id just end up falling asleep and hitting my head in despair later when I awoke.

It was only recently that I realized how to observe this phenomena.

The Brain TV guide:

1) Go to bed when quite sleepy and just close your eyes and relax.

2) Empty out the thoughts in your head and try not to let your mind wander away from your goal of wanting to see images.

3) Dont try and stare at the blackness in front of you. (Example: Suppose your staring at a bright light and you close your eyelids.Then in the visual field in front of you, their would be a bright spot at the place where the light had been. Thats what I mean by the blackness in front of you & this is not what your supposed to be looking at)

4) Instead look at the blankness inwards (This make me sound like Yoda doesnt it?Im not doing this on purpose, but let me try to be clearer) Ok when you close your eyes and think something your not focussing your eyes at any point ahead, your just thinking inside your head (hmm is this any clearer?) and theres black around you. This is also like day dreaming, imagine that your day dreaming, but not thinking about any topic specifically.

5) Now just sit quiet and wait.

Wow! What a great guide! Just Dripping with information and technique!

Aaah Sarcasm...Yes I know. Doesnt seem like much does it. But just hang on for a couple of minutes.

6) Now as your waiting, thoughts will pop into your head, Ignore them, soon you'll see a flash or blur of an image which will be gone before you know it.Then just identify the image you saw. (example: Ok that was a monkey flying at me with a samurai sword. I really did see this btw. some Kung Fu Panda memories probably).

7) Afer identifying it just keep still and wait for the next image to finish and then make a mental note about it.

This is now the time when your brain is capable of moulding the next image into anything you want. So if you see a car and then think of a bus, your next image will be a bus and this is quite an interesting stage where your an active creator whose slightest movement of mind paints images and scenes in an instant. But the thing is if you try and involve yourself in the images then you end up spiralling into the dreamstate.

Ive noticed that the falling asleep process goes somthing like this.

Ok thats a bus, hmm must be some school children somewhere, Ok there they are playing on a swing, it must be fun to swing in the playground,hey now this looks like my school playground,but no ones here , I guess the exams are going on, shit I havent studied, damnnit im going to fail, ok the teachers handing out papers , blah blah notice that every time a scene was thought it played out in the next line and until your memories switch off and you think your part of the scene.

8) Soon the images will stay longer and will progress into scenes. Like a broad sweeping shot of a train station or a scenery.Slowly as you observe these scenes without trying to analyze them too much, the level of detail will increase, and youd be amazed and the kind of visual shots your brain is capable of. Its like we all have this Cinematographer in our heads, but we dont know it yet. Time to bow once again to the great subconsious mind.

9) You will also hear sounds. But you will first think that you thought the sound, but if you dwell on the sound then you realize that you actually heard it ( loopy jargon revisited: The difference is, If I ask you to imagine a bang sound, you simulate the thought in your head, but its not the same as when you hear a bang sound from something that fell down in front of you.Hope thats clear)

10) Now at some point you'll get lost in the image and it will, like a 3 dimensional hungry Dinasaour, devour you whole, and you'll fall into the dreamstate.

Great! So you have now sucessfully tuned into your head. Thanks to the 10 point Guide to Brain TV!

So this was a pretty fun exercise, that you can use to kill time before you fall asleep.Its also a great way to improve your visualization skills by getting used to seeing detailed images in your mind.You could also use it to get ideas and think laterally, people say that these hypnagogic images sometimes contains scenes of the future or warnings about dangers ahead.Cant say that ive experienced those things though.

Going Deeper into the Rabbit Hole:

I was curious about this state and the possibilites it held, because if you could keep consious long enough then you could directly step into the images and scenes with full consiciousness.I.e Enter directly into a lucid Dream.

So I did some research online and found that these hypnagogic Images are used in a techniue called "Phasing" to transport yourself into different states of mind. This state was researched by one of the pioneers of dreaming .Robert A Monroe, and his experience with this state formulated an alternate view of reality.

Theres no point getting into the depths of this, but it is quite interesintg to read. Do visit these links below to get into the details of it.

http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/welcome_to_the_astral_faq/what_is_phasing_and_how_can_i_do_it-t17413.0.html

http://www.astralpulse.com/frankkepple.html

Also the Monroe Institute has published a series of CD's which utilize the Phasing techniques to bring you to altered states of consiousness. I have tried these briefly but havent really given it enought time and effort to validate how well it works.

Click here to read about The Gateway Experience:

Maybe someday I'll try it out enought to put up a post.

Until then..

Keep tuning into Brain TV!

Are You the master of Reality?

"Could you say with confidence that this is true reality and not the dream world"

Well lets not get into a debate about what true reality really is, but rather lets take it for granted that our living waking state is concrete and unchangable and what we call "Real". So usually there are 2 states in existence, one is the reality of the waking state and the other the unreality that is the dream state.

So getting back to the question, How do you know that right now you arent dreaming, that your not just asleep in your bed, dreaming about reading a post on this website?
If I asked you this question you would confidently tell me that there no way that you could be dreaming right now, and that you just know that this is reality and it cant be disputed.

Good Point.

But what if someone asked you this same question inside your dream?

Even then you would give him that exact same answer!

Ok, so now I hope I've got you doubting your state of reality, but however much I try and convince you Im pretty sure that your not gonna believe that this is a dream.We Humans have some sort of gut feel encoded into our minds that convince us that this is true reality, and this, I believe keeps us alive, prevents us from going insane and creates order in the world.

So what happens if this switch that keeps you believing in reality is switched off, what then?

Do you go insane?

Do you gain Englightenment?

Have insane people actually gained enlightenment?

Let me tell you about an experience I had which seemed to override the reality switch and leave me in doubt.

I got up one morning and meditated to try for a lucid dream.I went off to sleep and woke up with the vibes.I went through them and then my dream body dropped through my bunk bed onto the floor and I was fully consious and inside the dream state. This wasnt an out of body experience because there were some inconsistancies with the arrangement of my room.

Now before I went to sleep, I told myslef that today If I had a lucid dream, I wanted to jump out of my six floor apartment to see how it felt. So once I got lucid I immediately went to my balcony to take my death defying jump.

This dream was one of the clearest dreams I've had and I was completely lucid and enjoying the experience of being inside my head. I stood on the balcony and took in the sights that my brain was simulating.Closing my dream eyes I breathed in the cool morning air, feeling the thinness and temperature of it, listening to the sound of birds chirping, feeling the coldness of the tiled floor under the soles of my feet.

I took my hands and placed them on the iron grill of my balcony, everything was right about it! Right from the temperature of the steel, the texture of metal, the frictional force while sliding my hands on it. I was simply blow away by my minds ability to simulate even the smallest details to perfection. Every bit of reality was exactly rendered to provide me with this 3 dimensional experience.

WOW! I LOVE MY BRAIN!

Now when I thought this I opened my dream eyes and looked around, Hmm... Everything was pretty real, the plants looked real, the world looked real, the rest of the world in front of me seemed concrete and stable.Why wasnt this reality then? Was I really in my dream, like I thought I was? Or did I just wake up and climb out of my bed in a groggy state and land up in the balcony?

This might seem like a trivial thought, but considereing that I was planning to jump off the balcony in the next couple of minutes, this debate was a matter of life and death for me. I paced around the balcony nervously debating my state of reality.

If I decided to jump, I would probaly be the dumbest human alive and someone who killed himself thinking that it was a dream. But then jumping seemed to be the only way to test whether it was a dream or not, but I couldnt take the risk. So I decided to spend some more time thinking about it.

"I had never in my experience of true reality ever doubted whether it was real", I thought to myself. But now since I have a seed of doubt about reality, maybe it was a dream and that the dream brain was not as confident about the state of reality as my real world brain was. So if im ever in a situation where I doubt reality, then it has to be the dream world, was the conclusion that I came too.

This thought calmed me down a bit, but I was still a little doubtful.So I took this doubt as further proof that I was thinking with my dream brain.I shakily grabbed the railing of the balcony and climbed over, leaning forward and looking down at the ground far below.

"6 floors down .6 feet under..
Nope Im not gonna die..
this has to be a dream! "

And I jumped.

I was falling fast, feeling the air rushing by and it felt great!, but It was the landing that I was worried about. When I slammed into the ground, suprisingly i felt pain. But it was more of a dull sort of pain, like a slap in the face or a punch in the arm. The ground then went inwards like a canvas sheet and I sunk into it like an acrobat at a cirus. It then stretched back to normal and I got up feeling exhilirated ,like an astronaut who just went throught the a dangerous descent and landed sucessfully on Mars.

Thank God for the Reality Switch!

I ran around doing fun stuff for a bit and then later the world faded to black and I woke up in my bed.

I made it Back to reality and I was pretty relieved and happy that I had made the right decision to trust my judgement.

But let me give you a little disclaimer in case you want to take these rules and make it your own. The statement that "You can never doubt reality in real life,and if you do doubt then its probably is a dream" is applicable to you only if your in a completely drug / alcohol / Intoxicant free state.

Dont go and smoke a couple of joints and then decide that the world is pretty freaky or might be a dream and end up jumping in front of a herd of elephants! (Drug use is in a wildlife sanctuary is probably a really bad idea for just this reason!)
So dont do something that might reset your reality swithch and make you do something crazy that your going to regret later, if you live through it that is, instead try wild stuff out from the saftey of your home, the comfort of your bed, and the security of the inside of your head.

Btw my next crazy lucid dream wish is to be eaten by a T-Rex!
So wish me LUCK on this next adventure!

The Third Eye -The Weird Eye?

If you watch any sort of anime or paranormal /Sci-Fi movies then you would’ve definitely heard of "The Third Eye".Infact its become such a popular notion that people probably take it for granted that there is one, and kudos to Hollywood and Paranormal Fiction for promoting the concept.Thanks to it I would probably conjure up images of a Sadhu shooting laser beams out of the centre of his head if someone mentioned the term "third eye opening"! . So lets look at a more down to earth picture of what this third eye might really be.

Eastern schools of thought believe that besides your regular 2 eyes that see outwards, we have a third eye, an eye that opens the gates to inner worlds.This third eye is associated with psychic and telepathic phenomena like clarivision, astral projection, etc. and indeed in most occult philosophy, spiritual development is achieved through the opening of this eye, leading to states of enlightenment and higher awareness.

The third eye is said to be located at the point between the eye brows and when fully opened reaches upto the centre of the forehead .
(The thought just occurred to me that it would make an
excellent product design case study at Ray Ban)

Biological Basis of a third Eye.

Most occult theories claim that the Pineal gland corresponds to the
Third Eye. Read on to get a brief overview.

The Pineal Gland:


The Pineal gland (located in the geometric center of the brain) is a photosensitive gland which regulates the production of melatonin which is responsible for regulating sleep rhythms. (Coincidently; or not , Melatonin supplements are available for sale and are taken to offset the effects of jet lag, but it is also taken by lucid dreamers in order to increase the vividness and  lucidity of their dreams as it increases your REM cycles.)

The pineal gland is also said to have the highest concentration of serotonin and tryptamine(or the ability to create these) ,which are neurotransmitters that are responsible for regulating mood and promoting feelings of happiness and love.
http://www.crystalinks.com/thirdeyepineal.html

There are also certain theories that claim that the gland can excrete large quantities of the psychedelic substance DMT which some believe  plays a role in promoting the visual effects of natural dreaming, and also near-death experiences and other mystical states.
 
Pineal Gland Studies:

A study (published in Nature)
was carried out in order to determine if there was any co-relation between the
Pineal Gland and meditation. Their findings were:

"we report that, together with other brain regions, pineal body exhibit significant activation during meditation process, supporting the long lasting speculation that pineal plays an important role in the intrinsic awareness which might concern spirit or soul. Pineal is known as an endocrine organ which produces substrates including melatonin and has been ascribed numerous even mysterious functions"


Mythological Theories

I had read somewhere about the pineal gland being a leftover gland that no longer functions as it used to and that as humans evolved,  the Pineal gland became dormant. This they claimed, was because in the beginning humans were highly evolved beings capable of telepathic and psychic abilities, but gradually as they became more interested in the physical world, they lost these abilities and the Pineal Gland, which was responsible for these had ceased to function as it did.

This is pretty interesting because it seems to tie up with the theories of Atlantis, and of how the Atlanteans were greatly evolved beings, who, after the fall of Atlantis left their island and founded the great civilizations of the world. Of course since there is no proof to support any of these concepts,So lets just bury them for the time being.

My thoughts on the Third Eye:

I first came across the concept of Lucid dreaming back in 1999 and I tried a ton of methods that were supposed to induce them but never could seem to have one.
After about a year of trying without success, I came across an article on the internet about a method called the Suneye Method. 

This Technique required you to wake up a couple of hours before your normal wake time, then spend about half an hour focusing on the spot between your eyes and then going back to sleep. I tried that one morning and that was  the day I had my first Lucid Dream, and that week I had 6 more Lucid Dreams using this method.

Meditating on the third eye also gave rise to some unusual experiences. I found that sometimes when I woke up early and focused on that point, my forehead would be tingling (this is quite a normal body response as result of increased blood flow to the area which was being concentrated upon), and as I was lying down in bed and drifting off to sleep, a point would come where Im just getting into the dream but then I would suddenly be pulled back awake and feel my forehead vibrating and these vibes would move to the rest of the body and become quite intense followed by the feeling of accelerating or falling at a very high speed. (will detail this later in another post) . And the thing is; that once this forehead tingling had begun, It was impossible to go back to sleep without this same feeling repeating itself over and over again. I would finally give up going to sleep and wait until the forehead tingling was completely gone before returning to bed. 

This has happened so many times that I now label this feeling of tingling as “fuzzy head” in my journals, and I’ve found that it almost always ends in Lucid dreams , vibrations or pseudo Out of Body Experiences.

So in my personal experience, I think that there is a strong possibility that the third eye exists and that it could hold the key to psychic experiences.
I recently stumbled upon a Huge book online which covers third eye opening in depth.(Will share the link here) and I plan on trying it out and seeing what happens. Feel free to download and let me know about any experiences that you have too.

Until then, 
have a  speedy third eye awakening!