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Innovative? Certrainly - in the eghties

Posted May 23rd, 2010 by Frands Frydendal

In Reference to:

About the presentation "An Integral Look on Holosync": I very nice presentation, that even supports a mild note on the limitations of the technique. I'd like to be able so save this documentation, as I do with much of the valuable and inspiring material om Integral Life, either as the written text or the mp3 files. But this presentation does not make it at easy as most of Integral Life's content. Please, Clint Fuhs: Is it possible that a later version vil allow that?

About Holosync itself: I have used Holosync for 5 months now - and I think that's how far I will go with Centerpointe. I have done Transcendental Meditation many years ago, and I learned Annapana, Vipassana end Metta (the Goenka way) last year.

Then I found Holosync. It has been a very great help in my meditation, not only through the actual soundtracks but also through the fact that I found it through a coincidence, in which Bill Harris's marketing helped me also discover Integral Life and Big Mind and the enormous sources of inspiring material around here.

Internet search also led me to free soundtracks, and information, methods and software (eg "Gnaural") to create your own soundtracks. I have investigated the combinations of practices, and as I said, Holosync has been a great help.

But.

Holosync is not what Bill Harris promises, guarantees etc. it to be.

The soundtracks with the binaural beats may be a good stand-alone practice for people who are unable to do anything else and as I found a good way of getting something else to work greater.

After 5 months the effect on me of the first set of Holosync-CD's is not so strong, and I am moving on.

Right now I meditate wit Big Mind without the sound-support. I find that the months where I combined Holosync and Big Mind has helped get to a point where I can control the states of my mind to a completely new degree, and that doing Big Mind is even better now without Holosync - which I relate to the comments of Sally Kempton in the presentation above.

I think that if get to want sound-support again, I will make soundtracks myself in "Gnaural" - a brainwave soundtrack design tool, you can download for free.

Now, when I know of alternatives, I find Holosync is much too expensive considering the technology involved.

And I don't think that Centerpointe "Research" has many expenses on research. Even in Bill Harris' material, there are no scientific results of their own making, the references on scientific data are few, from other sources and besides rather old news.

Finally, I don't like the style of Bill Harris's marketing. Some statements are so exaggerated that I have felt like claiming my "money back-no questions asked-guarantee". Some statements seems he's is simply not serious about certain renowned spiritual values such as truth, respect, objectivity and humility. I have written to Centerpointe about this but they haven't answered.

However, it has been an inspiration and at challenge for me to notice how politely and respectfully Ken Wilber and Genpo Roshi talks of him. I believe it says something important about tolerance and the appreciation of what is valuable in spite of what you may find less valuable. So I expect to let Centerpointe keep my money for the first set of CD's for the good help it has been; and I will go on to other practises from here.

Thanks.

Frands Frydendal, Denmark.

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I second that

Posted May 23rd, 2010 by jonas pils

And as I see that you are from Denmark, I might recommend visiting the integral group in Malmö, Sweden, if you're passing by.

http://malmointegral.blogspot.com/

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Supposed to Happen

Posted May 23rd, 2010 by Jennifer Grove

The brain normalizes the signal after a while, much like receptors down-regulate in the presence of an increase in certain neurotransmiters which cause overwhelm of the system. Anytime the system is overwhelmed by something, the brain will compensate. This is how the brain works, and they have taken that into account by "increasing the dosage" so as to maintain the effect. This is talked about in the interview with KW.

This can also be interpreted as the cycle of addiction. And while that may be true, it is only partially true.

The signal works. Just like good cocaine. But unlike cocaine it gives a lasting benefit which can be used even after the signal has been removed. You've experienced this, as have I, as the ability to manipulate the State changes on your own even when the signal is no longer present. If you can design signals using the free software that increase in strength in graduated degrees in order to compensate for the brain's normalizing process, please let us know and post the formulas. I, for one, would be VERY GRATEFUL! as I have no extra money to throw into Bill's marketing machine and need the signal in order to overwhelm my brain's attempts to normalize it.

My brain normalizes the signal way too fast as I have PTSD and it is trying to protect me from being too vulnerable. It interprets the State change as a threat because I am no longer hyper-vigilant. I have tried to contact Centerpointe and ask them for some special help, but have only received letters informing me (and jillions of other users) of "discounts" for the next levels. Special help is not what they do.

For just $14.95 a month, YOU TOO can offset your Karma Footprint by becoming a Member of Integral Life!

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Again, where's the evidence for this?

Posted May 24th, 2010 by jonas pils in response to Supposed to Happen

I have also listened to Bill's conversation with KW. But where is the evidence that the brain gets used to the signal? Do the binaural beats not help produce the brainwaves like before? Can you see this experienced lack of effect in an EEG machine, or does it just show up in our experience?

I don't doubt the experience, but I won't leave the interpretation to Bill. He himself even claims that even though you don't feel a thing (you can even sleep while using holosync) you will get the effect.

Where's the evidence showing that the brain "gets used" to the binaural beats? Does the brain gets used to shikantaza as well?

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Oh.

Posted May 24th, 2010 by Jennifer Grove in response to Again, where's the evidence for this?

I think you're getting confused by the "exogenous" vs. "endogenous" issue. Holosync is exogenous or working from the exterior in. Shikantaza is endogenous or working from the interior out. Either has a correlating effect on the other.

In meditation, the consciousness is moving the interior and this will have a correlating effect on the exterior which can be measured by the EEG. Holosync is moving the exterior directly by forcing the brain waves to change. It will have a correlating effect on the interior which will be measured by your consciousness. Your and my experience was that our consciousness stopped shifting after a while. That is the measuring device.

If you were to watch what is happening on an EEG machine during a Holosync FAIL you might not see the problem because the machine might be picking up the Holosync signal instead of the brain's own signal. I don't know. Only those guys who do all this research know for sure. And even tho it pains me to say it, that's what Bill dedicated so many years of his life to doing. He apparently learned by following the failure until he found what worked.

You're right in needing to see the data. We should have access to that. And I would also caution that we would need qualified people who we can trust to interpret it for us, because it takes alot of training to do that for some of this information. Remember what happened over the MDMA scandal?

So one way or another, if we haven't had all the training and we're looking at something more complex than a simple sine wave readout, we have to rely on the word of people. We can't get away from that.

When all is said and done, if I follow the instructions and have an experience, then I know something. And no one's word can undo that knowing. It may create another thing to find out in addition to the first, but it can't cause me to unknow what I did learn.

For just $14.95 a month, YOU TOO can offset your Karma Footprint by becoming a Member of Integral Life!

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Well, Bill found what sells

Posted May 24th, 2010 by jonas pils in response to Oh.

And depending on what we mean by "works" it remains an open question. Holosync is typically seen as working exogenous, but it is the brain that creates the hemispheric synchronization and the theta waves for example. The binaural beats sends out everything but the theta waves, and what is picked up by an EEG is your own brainwaves, simply because there aren't any alpha, theta or delta waves on the CD. So, a simple experiment with an EEG machine would show if you're still producing the brainwaves or not even though you don't feel the "effect". I believe you do produce them.

What I was getting at with shikantaza was that you don't get a zen teacher who says something like "if you stop getting an effect from shikantaza efter four months, switch to TM", or "if you stop getting the effect of the koan change to another one".

Another example is that when we start working out, eating better or whatever we get results immediately. In time though the effects subside. Does this mean that eating good or working out doesn't work anymore?

Other companies such as hemisync, and holosync too for that matter, sell CD's that have only theta or alpha waves on them. Do you think that they stop working after a while as well? Bill says that he uses the theta waves when he want's to be creative, and he must have used them for more than a few months. Why would he use them if they didn't have any effect?

And as I said in another post, what happens when you run out of levels? Bill must have run out of levels many years ago. Is he still using holosync?

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Holosync data

Posted May 31st, 2010 by Frands Frydendal in response to Supposed to Happen

Thanks for the comment.

I have not yet made my own next level, but I can tell you this about how you can do it.

On http://uazu.net/sbagen/ you can download an advanced brainwave generator SBAGEN, that can make combinations of brainwaves which is more than Holosync does. SBAGEN can create complex patterns like the ones they make at The Monroe Institute.

SBAGEN'S user-interface is not all that easy to go to, so I don't use that one; still - among its many download files there is a file "holosync.txt" that contains some data of the waves i the Awakening prologue and some information on what the progressions are. Centerpointe also gives some information, so for "idiots savants" like us it should be manageable to sketch the outline of program of a lowering of the carrier frequency as well as the lowering of the beat frequency in steps to for example 0.3 Hz.

I have used another brainwave generator: GNAURAL, (downloadable from http://gnaural.sourceforge.net/) with an easy user-interface. It's great if you want to design 1-channel brainwave soundtracks.

I don't like the idea of more or less hidden affirmations in the meditation, so I have no problem in giving away that part. Nor do I think I need the temple bells or any other music. If you want that, you can export the brainwave file and import it in a DAW like "Audacity" (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) and add a track with music of your own or whatever...

If you use the data from the SBAGEN textfile as a point of start, there is a nice trick you can learn from the default file in GNAURAL, that you can add : Some intermittent spikes in the beat frequency that helps you keep from nodding off.

Good luck!

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Not for me

Posted May 24th, 2010 by shamansun

I got suspicious after a few twitter friends started getting bullied by Harris. They posted a critical review of HoloSync and got flak from Bill about it.

Ever since then I've been suspicious of the stuff. Tried it myself. Effects were kinda meh. There is no cool technological fix for meditation yet. The science is going into the research (like B. Alan Wallace's Shamatha institute).

Mu!

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