How can I express my gratitude and appreciation for being cast in the shadow of your consciousness so that I might have my own little niche of existence?  I bow down and am not worthy.
 
Perhaps I can offer up this, a bit of information.  I tend to think of it as a gift, and I hope that you lean toward this tendency as well.  So here we go.
 
Binaural beats.  Brainwave entrainment.

Yes, imagine a train resting on its rails, a long train, a long time ago, smoke from its engine billowing up overhead.  You are sitting on this train, in a train car coupled at its fore and aft couplings between other cars in this long train once upon a time in the world.
 
Presently that old engine ebbs forward, and its one coupling clanks against the coupling of the car behind it which resists the tug to go ahead.  There is a long line of weight strung out in the other direction, a stretch of cars all connected at their couplings.  But resistance is futile and time is on the engine’s side.

You sit and wait until the growing weight of the now surging forward movement catches up with you and you suddenly feel the tug, you sense if not hear the clank, and your car lurches with a slight press against your back from the seat you sit back on.  You join the team of traveling train cars and roll off toward the future, eventually catching up to now.  Or maybe you stay in the past, I don't know, that's up to you.  Anyway, I digress.  Sorry.  Bear with me.
 
Where was I?  Right.  Okay.  Brainwave entrainment.

There is I suppose some controversy regarding brainwave entrainment, but as far as I am concerned, I'm sold on it.  I do not believe the experience I encountered with binaural beats and brainwave manipulation was merely imagined.  I trust this stuff, but there is subtlety involved with the effect of the beats, that's for sure.
 
So, I am going to forego with any hesitation in what I tell you about it.

You need a pair of comfortable, convenient, good-quality stereo head/earphones.  Computer or CD player, why bother with cassettes.
 
You will also need the CDs or sound files that hold the requisite pair of binaural beat instigating sound pulses, but more on that later.  First, this is what you do and what happens.

Put on your headphones.  Play the sound file or CD or whatever source you use to make the sound pulses enter your head independently of one another.  There is one sound wave entering one ear and another one entering the ear that is left.  Right?  Still with me?  This is assuming you have two ears located on opposite sides of your head, or heads as the case may be, and if you only have one ear, or head, I am sorry for your loss, and also happy you are not some mutant alien monster harboring evil designs against our planet.  But I apologize for getting off track again.  It won't happen anymore.  Well, at least not very much.

So, getting back to binaural beats.  A binaural beat is initiated once the effect of brainwave entrainment kicks in due to the influence of the two different sound pulses or waves bumping gently against the left hemisphere of your brain from your right ear and so on and so forth et cetera et cetera et cetera ad infinitum ad nauseum and I think you get the picture.  But just to go over that again . . .

Those times when you slip into dreamless slumber when the old soul vehicle is at its most relaxed, it's even better for you with more Delta and Theta waves taking over and your skull software generates programs full of, for example, melatonin.  This is just a part of what the binaural beat aural technology used to entrain brainwaves is all about, replicating the effects of various forms of sleep on the mind and body.  If you wanted to, you could, I suppose, drive your dominant brainwave pattern way up high into Beta and get all anxious and upset and maybe feeling kinda speedy, if you are into that.

In fact, when I was first looking into brainwave entrainment it eventually dawned on my horizon that binaural beat practitioners seem to fall into two distinct categories, experimental and developmental.

Those who use it to experiment with altered states of consciousness might have “presets” entitled “UFO contact”, “Crazydreams”, “Astral Projection Without Fail” and “Double Helixed Pyramid Travel to the Stars”, all of which can be found in the online archive after upgrading the shareware program BrainWave Generator.  (My favourite is “Psychic Lucid Dreams”.)  BWGers create their own binaural beat presets and then upload them into the BWG online library for all members to share.  The blog comments on that site can be pretty interesting as well as diverse.

But the granddaddy of binaural beat brainwave entrainment research and experimentation was the founder of the Monroe Institute, some guy named Monroe, go figure.

The Monroe Institute (http://www.monroeinstitute.com) headquarters at 365 Roberts Mountain Road in the burg of Faber in the state of Virginia, and I know even less about this guy named Roberts and his mountain than that guy named Monroe who must have been from Faber or something, but that doesn’t really matter, so try to stay focused here, okay.

In fact, read between the lines to find out what Wikipedia says about TMI as of this writing; and remember, concentrating does not mean furrowing your brow.

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The Monroe Institute (TMI) is a nonprofit education and research organization devoted to the exploration of human consciousness.  Over the last 3 decades, many people have attended TMI’s residential programs, and/or used their trademark Hemi-Sync audio technology for various purposes, including meditation and lucid dreaming.  TMI’s methodology does not contain bias towards any particular belief system, religion, or political or social stance.

TMI was founded by Robert Monroe after he started having what he called “out of body experiences.”  It is comprised of several buildings on land owned by the Monroe famliy in Virginia, USA.  One of its activities includes teaching various techniques, based on Hemi-Sync, in order to expand consciousness and explore areas of consciousness not normally available in the waking state.

A weekly newspaper reporter who visited the Monroe Institute said, “ . . . with a few exceptions, the only “normal” people with whom I could fully identify were the trainers, who seemed remarkably well-grounded for people whose day-to-day experiences include astral projection and disembodied spirits.”

After the first few days, the reporter wrote, “There is something significant being developed at the Institute.  Whether it’s just a brilliant guided meditation (complete with trance-inducing stereoscopic sound) or a doorway to a world of spirit entities, I cannot say.”

(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monroe_Institute)

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