A Skeptical Seeker visits the Biocybernaut Institute for Alpha Brainwave EEG BioFeedback
At BioCybernaut, they do
alpha brainwave biofeedback, also known as neurofeedback. Alpha is associated with a
relaxed, unfocused awareness. It is present in everyday activities,
but often at a lower level than the faster Beta waves of normal "monkey mind" consciousness.
In the 1990's I subscribed to a magazine called the MegaBrain Report that followed up on the topics of the book MegaBrain by Michael Hutchinson (1986). An article in the report piqued my interest, apparently, A Tale of Self Discovery, by Dr. Jim Hardt, founder of BioCybernaut, describing a profound experience he had while doing alpha brainwave biofeedback back in the sixties. As I recall, the original article had a few more details, one of which was the price Hardt was charging for his current version of the training - $18,000!
At the time, the price was simply too much to imagine, but as time went on, the price came down ever so slightly and I had accumulated enough money that I decided to go for it and take the Alpha 1 training.
As a skeptic, my doubts were great, and were greatly magnified by the price I was paying. But the way I set it up, I paid their down payment of about 2 days worth of training, and if I wanted I could bail after that, although Hardt told me that no one who had paid for the 2 day training had not gone on to finish the whole 7 days. [But that would appear to be a lie.]
It was a long, strange, and grueling experience. At the end of the first day, I discovered that my alpha scores were good to begin with, higher than the two people taking "Alpha 2" who had already taken the Alpha 1 training. And in many ways, my untrained first morning baseline scores were some of my best scores, so I began to question the value of the training. There were many things there to provoke my skepticism, and I considered quitting at the end of day 2. In fact, a young, successful guy in my group of 4 actually did quit, probably for a number of reasons. I think he was maybe doing it just to be more effective in business and make more money, he was definitely put off that his scores weren't as high as he'd like, he seemed to have very little interest in spirituality, he was put off by the intense intimacy of the group therapy situation, and he might well have been freaked out by some of the far out mysticism of the Alpha 2's in the group (hell, I was).
But, at the end of day 2, I weighed the options as I was getting out of the chamber, and as it happened, I had a good experience in the group therapy part, ending up touching on some childhood issues and basically having one of those days in therapy which only come along once in a while. So I decided to stick it out (as it would turn out, pretty much every day was like one of the better days in therapy that you ever have).
On day 3, I began with a large amount of skepticism. In the chamber, I resolved to take some of the time to just have more fun with it and let it happen. So I was not so focused on the scores anymore, I was just letting the feedback tones "play," and letting go of anything I could, whether it was physical tension, or emotional tensions like my doubt or boredom. And something happened ...
Equally strong were feelings of love, so much love, that I was bursting with it and it felt like I was "beaming" out this love to everyone I knew. And intense gratitude - I was so thankful for this experience, this very special experience, I felt so lucky, so fortunate. I felt so much empathy. I was so calm, so relaxed, so adventurous in my exploration of consciousness, so carefree, so full of energy. I felt so much forgiveness to myself, for putting up the "walls," for denying myself this experience of joy all my life, and a similar forgiveness to all humans, forgiveness to my parents, everyone. The experience of forgiveness, of letting go, was in itself a joyful release.
So I had an experience of intense ecstatic joy for what felt like perhaps 20 minutes. And I was weeping with ecstasy the whole time, tears of joy. So many things made sense. The Hindu saints like Ramakrishna who you read about walking around weeping in ecstasy - I got that. The talk of "energy" or prana or chakras, or phrases like "sending love" or "sending energy" or "opening your heart," I may still consider these as metaphors as opposed to a concrete reality in some other plane of existence, but these feelings or these descriptions of feelings, rang true. Even the "releasing" methods like Avatar and the Sedona Method that I had been exposed to before and had been disappointed with, made some kind of sense, as all things were released. My experience was that I was opening my heart and sending this joyful love energy out to everyone, and connecting with this loving joy and it felt very good, so very good.
[One thing I didn't communicate was the sense of clarity or knowingness that permeated the experience. It was like "yes, THIS - of course." In other words, it did not feel strange or otherworldly, it felt natural, it felt familiar, like I had been there before. Also, and perhaps most important of all, was the point of view in which it could be seen that there were no problems whatsoever. This was known with a much higher degree of certainty than normal, the kind of certainty you would have about the solidness of material objects (or maybe even moreso).
Further, it could be seen that there never were any problems nor could there ever be, that these were artifacts of conditioning and belief. (In Buddhist terms, this might be thought of as penetrating suffering, one of the three characteristics, the others being impermanence and no-self). Normally I would say that even if relaxed and free of worry, with a relatively quiet mind, there would still be some kind of access, even if just on a subconscious level, to various thoughts of conflict, psychological issues, problems, or whatever. In this experience, there was no background like that, there was no access to that stuff because there was nothing else. I was totally free.
I often describe the joy (others use the word bliss or rapture) by relating that before the experience, joy was in a "normal" range of 1 to 10. And in the normal range, if I was lucky enough to hit 10, it was only for a moment. But in this experience it was like the joy hit 100, or 1000 ... and just stayed there, solid as a rock. It was totally unprecedented.]
The universe and my body certainly existed, so it was not the void that some reach. My ego, "I," certainly still existed at some level, so it did not seem to be enlightenment. Reading some Buddhist and Hindu sites on the web, it would be categorized as something beyond the so-called "access state," probably 2nd Jhana, a type of Samadhi, or possibly (getting geeky here) something that some refer to as the 1st Pure Land Jhana. The Jhanas are typically referred to as a result of concentration, but mine seemed to come from mindfulness. A euphoric altered state, nonetheless, and clearly rare among the general population. When I asked about it, my trainer said about one out of 10 or 15 people who go through the training at the Biocybernaut Institute have an experience like this, but this is certainly a more mystical population than most. Way more mystical than me.
[After I had a chance to sit with my experience a couple of days, my trainer mentioned that she had had this experience several times and that to her (with a Christian background) this experience was God. It was very interesting to me, because that thought had never occurred to me. I saw no separation between myself and the experience. Her comment has helped me to understand religion better, however. It's easy to see how someone might label it as something outside oneself.]
The real truth is that this training is not for everyone. It is an exceedingly expensive and somewhat grueling experience of a full 7 days, 12-15 hours a day at the center, and would be more accurately described as a combination of meditation retreat and pseudo group therapy, something like a spiritual and psychological "boot camp," a sesshin of sorts. My understanding is that they do not use the term "therapy" for liability reasons (but in fact my trainer had I believe a Masters in Psychology and many years of counseling experience), but it does seem a more accurate description would not be that difficult, and considering the money that people are spending on this, this information should be provided. So here goes. [These comments are from 2006 and refer to the old California location]
Go over the psychological mood scale results from the previous
day. This could be done at the end of the day as well, but my group did
them first thing in the morning. This consists of some overall
results, plus a list of "denied" items, things which statistically you
should be feeling based on your other answers but did not report. These
often point towards an issue you may be having. The trainer goes over
these with you and tries to elicit the source of these feelings and
often helps you relate these back to your childhood issues. These are
done in a group, one at a time, perhaps a half hour or more for each
person, and sometimes these can go quite long. At some point during
this period the technicians come in and put your electrodes on, which
takes about a half hour. For Alpha 1 you get direct feedback on 4
electrodes, but they have 8 electrodes on you plus 3 grounds (forehead
and earclips). For EEG folk, the electrodes are at
O1,O2,C3,C4,T3,T4,F3,F4, although the occipitals might be more like what
would be O3,O4. Alpha 1 gets feedback on occipitals and centrals,
Alpha 2 gets it all.
Watch a meditative video, or listen to a sometimes very long
reading or "propaganda" for global consciousness and environmentalism.
This is probably supposed to set the mood for biofeedback, but if the
boredom of listening to someone read something for 10 minutes or
whatever doesn't get to you, by the time you've gone to the bathroom,
gotten ready to get in the chamber, taken the psychological tests, done
the baseline training and done the suppression training, then you will
have surely lost whatever mood was there. So to me a bit pointless.
Pre-training mood scale, approximately 15 minutes. These
mood scales get quite old. They seem quite long, yet they are talking
about adding even more items. Admittedly, they are effective at getting
psychological material to work on. But you have to take them twice a
day for 7 days!
Eyes Open Baseline, 2 minutes but varies
(chamber closed)
Eyes Closed Baseline, 2 minutes
White Noise Baseline, 2 minutes
Volume Test somewhere in here
Alpha Suppression, about 17 minutes
(Finally!) Alpha Enhancement, probably just under 2 hours is my guess. This is what you've been waiting for.
The feedback tones can get very loud at their loudest, perhaps 100
decibels, probably more. They start out softly, sounding like flutes,
then with more alpha they sound like trumpets maybe, and at their
highest level it's something like a car horn. And you have 4 to 6
tones, so it can sound like you're in the middle of a traffic accident.
The idea is supposedly to get you to where you can produce alpha in the
midst of heavy distraction, but I am not sure this actually works. The
tendency is for the startle response to shy away the alpha with some of
the louder tones, and everyone experienced this.
White Noise Baseline, 2 minutes
Eyes Closed Baseline, 2 minutes
(chamber opened)
Eyes Open Baseline, 2 minutes but varies
Post-training mood scale, approximately 15 minutes
Electrodes removed
Post chamber depth interviews. This is a very long group
therapy-ish situation where each person, one at a time, relates their
experiences in the chamber and the trainer tries to elicit issues of
importance. It takes about 45 minutes to an hour for each person, so it
could theoretically take as long as 5 hours if you had a full group of
5. In the neurofeedback world, some talk therapy or discussion of
imagery is not uncommon for so-called "deep state" training such as
alpha-theta training. But not 5 hours worth.
They like to keep it cool in the building, supposedly for the equipment
(I'm not sure what an extra 10 degrees really does for the equipment,
though), and it was extra cool in the "canopy" room (filled with 5 twin
sized metal canopy beds) where you do this part of the work. I would
wear 4 layers of clothing on my upper body for this (I froze to death
the first day, believe me, even with the blanket they provided).
Dinner - catered from a healthy salad bar and soup place.
There is no lunch break, but there are opportunities for snacks. I lost
3 pounds during the 7 days (and I wasn't trying to lose weight).
Going over scores, graphs, and EEG polygraph tracings. It
depends, but maybe another 2-3 hours here. Once you understand how to
read the polygraph tracings, you can flip through them pretty quickly. Again, the trainer tries to reinforce good things and suggests how to
correct others. I would rank looking over the EEG printouts as virtually worthless.
End of the day, 12-15 hours.
It's also worth saying that you can only take so much time in the chamber, as it can be exhausting physically, mentally and emotionally. Although they claim to have done tests that actually show hearing improvements, my ears were ringing days later (although you can set the volume, and move the speakers, they encourage you to make it loud). Who knows, maybe my hearing is better, but I think I'd rather err towards not having ringing ears. On the final days with extra enhancement periods, you get a chance to get out of the chamber, take a break and go to the bathroom between enhancements, and that goes a long way to recharging your batteries for more biofeedback. Speaking of money, which is in many ways the main issue, it's hard to say where it all goes. It's so expensive. Jim spun it as $145 an hour for the whole experience, but for the overwhelming majority of the whole experience you are in a group therapy type situation, and generally what is paid for group therapy is something on the order of say $25 an hour, because you are splitting that fee among a number of clients. Still, this was often good therapy. It may be that there is truly a great expense involved, or they may not be good with money, or it may be that Jim has a bit of a monopoly and a reputation for this kind of training.
Still, for the money, I don't think you would be out of line expecting a modern facility in a Marin county mansion complete with daily massages, but it's somewhat more of an "I built a rocket ship in my nice garage" kind of feel. Which is okay, but worth noting. Then there are figures bandied about, such as $7,000,000 of software, $5,000,000 of equipment, and 30,000 people trained, but I find myself being skeptical. I mean, maybe he has spent that much on software programming, but even over 30 years I'm afraid this would easily pay for 2 damn good programmers full time (I have this horrible habit of doing the math). Maybe he's spent $5 million on equipment during his lifetime, but all I saw was a bunch of PC's, a couple of polygraph machines, and a couple of racks of cards that were built, I was told, back in the 1970's. I also have to compare that to another figure that was bandied about - a mere $300,000 to pay for the equipment to fund a new BioCybernaut franchise (not in existence yet, but who knows, maybe coming soon to a neighborhood near you). As to the 30,000 people trained, again, maybe, but that's an awful lot of people. In their current configuration, which admittedly has changed over the years, they train an absolute maximum of 30 people a month. And again, even if you go back 30 years, it just doesn't come close to adding up.
As a point of comparison, currently you could get top of the line EEG equipment and software for a 4 to 8 channel setup for certainly no more than $10,000 or so. More to the point, a very good, but perhaps not top of the line, 2 channel with software can be had for about $1,000.
I think the basic question is whether Jim has some secret life as a multimillionaire playboy or something. I don't get that impression at all, but, he is trying to run a business. Overall, in my brief initial conversation with him, he seemed (in retrospect) to be more about spin as opposed to total disclosure. I get the sense that perhaps he feels like this is vital, important work and whatever he needs to say to get someone to come is okay. But it doesn't feel right to me. People have the right to full disclosure. I will add that Jim and the other trainers have an amazing level of dedication, both in terms of the long hours they put in as well as the time of day (the second shift can go past midnight).
The PC my chamber was associated with crashed once during suppression or thereabouts, and another person had a couple of similar crashes. They were okay during enhancement, though. The PC we used to view certain graphs of feedback data on at night crashed about 10 times every night.
Additionally on the tech front, while they brag about their certifications, one day my electrodes were not wired correctly, so that instead of getting feedback on my left occipital, I was getting feedback on my right frontal, which I wasn't even supposed to be getting feedback on. Their "certification" apparently consists of a brief, on the job, "here's how you do it, now do it." On that particular day, an old woman who could barely speak english and who was working in other capacities was recruited to connect up the electrodes. She was clearly uncomfortable with the task, clearly uncertified, and clearly screwed up. Also, in getting me set up one day they put on and then took off my earclip electrodes 5 times. I don't know, it seems like there is some kind of competency breakdown there. Essentially, the process worked, but when you're paying that much money, I think you rightfully expect top-notch.
It is a little sad that the things they say don't always seem to add up. Jim mentioned that no one had quit after two days and not finished, but besides the guy who quit in my group, there are at least one or two other people who also quit (link gone). I think for people that have paid for the whole 7 days up front, with Jim not giving a refund, they probably have a strong incentive to come back and finish, which is what Jim wants. But based on what my trainer said about yet more quitters, I think Jim did me a great disservice by not being more open, if not actually lying, about people quitting the training.
My trainer, based on her actual experience, said 1 out of 10 or 15 has a spiritual experience such as mine. Jim has put it as 10-15% (Art Bell interview), a similar but more optimistic number, but unfortunately, he has also been quoted as saying 3 out of 5 (A Symphony in the Brain, page 229). That would be a large discrepancy. But it should be said, however, to produce even a single experience such as this is pretty amazing.
Based on my small sample, the groups are a pretty mystical bunch in general. The people I was with, including my trainer, believed in all manner of things, including astrology, muscle testing, homeopathy, auras. All those things and more, are unproven. Scientifically speaking, few seem to realize the importance of things like validation by multiple double-blind studies published in peer reviewed journals. I think most people hear that a study of any type was done and automatically think that means we know something (Hardt himself seems to believe this way). As I like to say, there are a lot of bad studies out there. The trainer and people I was with would basically get a good feeling about something and assume it was fact, a misunderstanding between correlation (coincidence) and causation.
Jim does seem to collect a lot of data, which might make one think it is about science, but then again it seems a lot about control. The polygraph tracings would make kind of a cool memento, but you don't even get to keep a single page out of the hundreds of yards you produce during the week. That is ridiculous, pointless. Bizarre, actually.
All of the one-at-a-time group therapy on both the mood scales and the post chamber experiences are videotaped (how weird is that?), but you can't have any of it. And they don't use any of it. It just goes into storage somewhere. Admittedly, transferring the videotapes possibly opens up all kinds of problems, but I was particularly saddened to learn that my firsthand report of that wonderful experience of mine, caught on video, will simply rot in a warehouse. There are so many people I would like to show that to. It's like a friend capturing some special moment on camera but refusing to give you a copy.
One person seemed to regard Jim as some kind of enlightened master or guru. I personally find it dangerous to put someone on so high a pedestal. Trust can be important, but that can be difficult in a situation where someone has fed me spin instead of being completely forthcoming. I imagine that there might have been attempts to logically optimize some of the training, but I would be equally willing to bet that most of it just kind of evolved and is completely untested, particularly in relation to the therapy setup. But it is what it is.
Another story: the trainer provided us with the option of having an "aspirin cocktail" before training, and I suppose aspirin might? increase the blood flow to the brain, which might? help increase alpha (I wonder if that's been tested?). In relating this, she referred to Jim as a "scientist" who had "invented" this cocktail, which was aspirin in water with a little baking soda to kill the acid. I don't know. He "invented" um, Bufferin?
The therapy often involved trying to relate things back to childhood issues. Sometimes this may make sense, but I believe this may have been done excessively. If someone mugged you and you're angry about it, I don't think you really need to relate that to childhood to understand or get at the source of the emotion. The more I think about it, the more I wonder about the therapy aspect. It's an intense situation, made moreso with the long days, and you don't really have a chance to get to know someone deeply over a period of time. I think there is a tendency to leap to facile conclusions and enable some belief systems that may not be effective in the long run. Kind of an incentive for the recovery of false memories thing. There is some good stuff going on, but even here Jim has to hype it as equivalent to 20 years of therapy. I would describe it as getting some of the better therapy days out of say, 2 years of therapy, in one week. But a few good days is just that.
A strong focus of the work is "forgiveness" work. Apparently many years ago someone was doing the suppression training (going for low scores), and suddenly the scores did the opposite, they shot up. When asked what they did, they said they had been going over angry thoughts to suppress alpha, but then forgave the person they were thinking about. But in my experience, any "release" of emotions (sexual fantasies work great) or emotional tension will work to increase alpha, and frankly, if you are as they sometimes put it "stating your truth" and expressing anger in the calmness of the alpha state, you can generate extremely high alpha without forgiveness. Additionally, I generated some of my highest scores while simply meditating in the chamber, letting go of thought as it were (another form of release). For me in general the alpha biofeedback was a kind of emotional Geiger counter - it would reveal the strength of your feelings about a given person/place/situation. In that way it makes a lot of sense to combine it with some kind of therapy. But forgiveness as the sole focus? I think it just fits with Jim's personal agenda, as do the pre-feedback readings, etc. I think it's more about letting go of stuff, period. Forgiveness is merely a subset of letting go. This could also be framed as acceptance.
And the benefits that are touted are not unique to Biocybernaut - these are simply the published results of alpha training. As to the testimonials, well, they are testimonials. They should be thought of as the subjective experiences of the very luckiest of the supposed 30,000 who have gone through the program as opposed to typical results. One of those testimonials was written by a person that I trained with. It was written in the pumped up aftermath of the training, and basically became inaccurate not long after writing it. It's still on the website, though.
So there is an awful lot to be skeptical about. While there are quite a few warts, I guess the positive spin I would put on it is that pretty much every day has the potential to be a really productive day in therapy. And, although the actual amount of EEG feedback is maybe not as much as you might think, as one fellow traveler observed, you could think of all the psychological mood scales and therapy and going over the scores as another form of feedback. I did come to the training with many years of background in individual and group therapy, and a history that included at least some meditation and other spiritual or spiritual-like interests. I also came with an attitude to be fearless in my exploration of consciousness, and once I learned the nature of the therapy aspect, I took the attitude of being similarly fearless in revealing myself in front of the therapist and the group. If that is your attitude, I think you can get a lot from the process. There is certainly at least some value there, overpriced as it may be. And, ultimately, if you are looking to have a chance at a transcendental experience, I will have to say this is certainly one of the very best places in the world to go for it.
For me, given the peak experience I had, it was certainly worth it. If I didn't have that experience, I suspect I would feel like I had been severely ripped off, but again, it depends on the person. Would I do it again? I doubt it. It is so expensive, so long and grueling, and you have to jump through so many hoops, that it's hard to imagine. And I have to compare that to the fact that I could easily get 5 times as much one-on-one neurofeedback, targeted precisely to my individual needs, from a local practitioner at the same price. Based on what I've learned, I would suggest that before you do BioCybernaut you consider seeking out a competent local practitioner and take the time and relatively little money to resolve any issues and maybe experiment a bit with alpha training before you go.
[The people I was with were what I would categorize as troubled people (not that I'm not but people do tell me I at least appear quite normal and well-grounded). They were very aware of some of their brain abnormalities and in fact were hoping to remedy them through the training. However, this is a misconception on their part as the BioCybernaut training is not oriented towards any kind of "treatment." My gripe here would be that Hardt did not see fit to spend any time correcting these misperceptions.]
Also of interest, Hardt's patent describing much of the way things are done at BioCybernaut.
I have received comments thanking me for this page, but some of those people seemed to think of this as a completely negative review. I don't look at it that way. I just tried to be very thorough and accurate. I think it provides good balance to the hype on their website. If you have a ton of spare cash you won't miss, maybe go for it. I suspect it would be an interesting, albeit extremely expensive week. I think that if you are looking for some kind of life changing thing, well, I mean this could possibly end up being one little piece of the overall process of change, but this one little thing isn't going to fix your life. It didn't fix mine. Essentially BioCybernaut is a form of meditation, in that they are getting you to pay a lot of attention to your moment to moment sensate experience. And you could go on a traditional meditation retreat and do that, in some cases, for absolutely nothing.
For me, the journey led me to meditation, which finally led me to what I was looking for. The background mind of the temporary experience I stumbled into, still, open, aware, relaxed, spacious, quiet, neither grasping nor resisting, that mind eventually became permanent.
There are many techniques, but I did this style of meditation. It's neurological training, and it's just a matter of getting the training intense enough, long enough, and regular enough to allow that original mind to shine through and take hold. For me, once I committed to a daily practice, it took about an hour a day for 3 years.
An additional odd fact, and perhaps just a bit of strange bad luck, is that for some reason, Biocybernaut Institute received a $500,000 donation from the perpetrator of a massive real estate fraud, causing Biocybernaut to be listed as relief defendants in the fraud case due to being recipients of ill gotten gains.
In the 1990's I subscribed to a magazine called the MegaBrain Report that followed up on the topics of the book MegaBrain by Michael Hutchinson (1986). An article in the report piqued my interest, apparently, A Tale of Self Discovery, by Dr. Jim Hardt, founder of BioCybernaut, describing a profound experience he had while doing alpha brainwave biofeedback back in the sixties. As I recall, the original article had a few more details, one of which was the price Hardt was charging for his current version of the training - $18,000!
At the time, the price was simply too much to imagine, but as time went on, the price came down ever so slightly and I had accumulated enough money that I decided to go for it and take the Alpha 1 training.
As a skeptic, my doubts were great, and were greatly magnified by the price I was paying. But the way I set it up, I paid their down payment of about 2 days worth of training, and if I wanted I could bail after that, although Hardt told me that no one who had paid for the 2 day training had not gone on to finish the whole 7 days. [But that would appear to be a lie.]
It was a long, strange, and grueling experience. At the end of the first day, I discovered that my alpha scores were good to begin with, higher than the two people taking "Alpha 2" who had already taken the Alpha 1 training. And in many ways, my untrained first morning baseline scores were some of my best scores, so I began to question the value of the training. There were many things there to provoke my skepticism, and I considered quitting at the end of day 2. In fact, a young, successful guy in my group of 4 actually did quit, probably for a number of reasons. I think he was maybe doing it just to be more effective in business and make more money, he was definitely put off that his scores weren't as high as he'd like, he seemed to have very little interest in spirituality, he was put off by the intense intimacy of the group therapy situation, and he might well have been freaked out by some of the far out mysticism of the Alpha 2's in the group (hell, I was).
But, at the end of day 2, I weighed the options as I was getting out of the chamber, and as it happened, I had a good experience in the group therapy part, ending up touching on some childhood issues and basically having one of those days in therapy which only come along once in a while. So I decided to stick it out (as it would turn out, pretty much every day was like one of the better days in therapy that you ever have).
On day 3, I began with a large amount of skepticism. In the chamber, I resolved to take some of the time to just have more fun with it and let it happen. So I was not so focused on the scores anymore, I was just letting the feedback tones "play," and letting go of anything I could, whether it was physical tension, or emotional tensions like my doubt or boredom. And something happened ...
The Good
At some point, I felt a little joy creep into my consciousness. I can't really say exactly how it progressed or what I did or didn't do, but what happened was that the joy began to expand, and it began to fill me up. It was like all my life joy had been dispensed with an eyedropper or a cup, and now the floodgates had been opened, and I was bathed in the most intense, continuous joy I had ever experienced, many times the intensity of normal joy, an ecstatic joy.Equally strong were feelings of love, so much love, that I was bursting with it and it felt like I was "beaming" out this love to everyone I knew. And intense gratitude - I was so thankful for this experience, this very special experience, I felt so lucky, so fortunate. I felt so much empathy. I was so calm, so relaxed, so adventurous in my exploration of consciousness, so carefree, so full of energy. I felt so much forgiveness to myself, for putting up the "walls," for denying myself this experience of joy all my life, and a similar forgiveness to all humans, forgiveness to my parents, everyone. The experience of forgiveness, of letting go, was in itself a joyful release.
So I had an experience of intense ecstatic joy for what felt like perhaps 20 minutes. And I was weeping with ecstasy the whole time, tears of joy. So many things made sense. The Hindu saints like Ramakrishna who you read about walking around weeping in ecstasy - I got that. The talk of "energy" or prana or chakras, or phrases like "sending love" or "sending energy" or "opening your heart," I may still consider these as metaphors as opposed to a concrete reality in some other plane of existence, but these feelings or these descriptions of feelings, rang true. Even the "releasing" methods like Avatar and the Sedona Method that I had been exposed to before and had been disappointed with, made some kind of sense, as all things were released. My experience was that I was opening my heart and sending this joyful love energy out to everyone, and connecting with this loving joy and it felt very good, so very good.
[One thing I didn't communicate was the sense of clarity or knowingness that permeated the experience. It was like "yes, THIS - of course." In other words, it did not feel strange or otherworldly, it felt natural, it felt familiar, like I had been there before. Also, and perhaps most important of all, was the point of view in which it could be seen that there were no problems whatsoever. This was known with a much higher degree of certainty than normal, the kind of certainty you would have about the solidness of material objects (or maybe even moreso).
Further, it could be seen that there never were any problems nor could there ever be, that these were artifacts of conditioning and belief. (In Buddhist terms, this might be thought of as penetrating suffering, one of the three characteristics, the others being impermanence and no-self). Normally I would say that even if relaxed and free of worry, with a relatively quiet mind, there would still be some kind of access, even if just on a subconscious level, to various thoughts of conflict, psychological issues, problems, or whatever. In this experience, there was no background like that, there was no access to that stuff because there was nothing else. I was totally free.
I often describe the joy (others use the word bliss or rapture) by relating that before the experience, joy was in a "normal" range of 1 to 10. And in the normal range, if I was lucky enough to hit 10, it was only for a moment. But in this experience it was like the joy hit 100, or 1000 ... and just stayed there, solid as a rock. It was totally unprecedented.]
The universe and my body certainly existed, so it was not the void that some reach. My ego, "I," certainly still existed at some level, so it did not seem to be enlightenment. Reading some Buddhist and Hindu sites on the web, it would be categorized as something beyond the so-called "access state," probably 2nd Jhana, a type of Samadhi, or possibly (getting geeky here) something that some refer to as the 1st Pure Land Jhana. The Jhanas are typically referred to as a result of concentration, but mine seemed to come from mindfulness. A euphoric altered state, nonetheless, and clearly rare among the general population. When I asked about it, my trainer said about one out of 10 or 15 people who go through the training at the Biocybernaut Institute have an experience like this, but this is certainly a more mystical population than most. Way more mystical than me.
[After I had a chance to sit with my experience a couple of days, my trainer mentioned that she had had this experience several times and that to her (with a Christian background) this experience was God. It was very interesting to me, because that thought had never occurred to me. I saw no separation between myself and the experience. Her comment has helped me to understand religion better, however. It's easy to see how someone might label it as something outside oneself.]
The Real Story
One reason I wrote this was to share my beautiful peak experience. But another reason is that a true, warts-and-all description of the process does not exist. Obviously, it was worth it for me. As they say, though, your mileage may vary.The real truth is that this training is not for everyone. It is an exceedingly expensive and somewhat grueling experience of a full 7 days, 12-15 hours a day at the center, and would be more accurately described as a combination of meditation retreat and pseudo group therapy, something like a spiritual and psychological "boot camp," a sesshin of sorts. My understanding is that they do not use the term "therapy" for liability reasons (but in fact my trainer had I believe a Masters in Psychology and many years of counseling experience), but it does seem a more accurate description would not be that difficult, and considering the money that people are spending on this, this information should be provided. So here goes. [These comments are from 2006 and refer to the old California location]
A Typical Day of Training:
You work with a trainer in a group of up to 5 people, and they can currently do 2 groups a day if the demand is there.Enter chamber
The 5 chambers are like boxes the size of little rooms. Mine was about a 7 foot cube, some are a little bigger. They are acoustic enclosures, virtually soundproof and lightproof, about 4 inches thick, with a door that closes like a walk in freezer (I wonder how air gets in there?). You have a chair, speakers, and a desk with a monitor and keyboard. It is very nice to have a place for this kind of training that is virtually free of any distraction.Exit chamber
The Bad and the Ugly
So it's worth saying that very little of the roughly 90 hours of time over 7 days is spent doing actual biofeedback enhancement. I would say perhaps 2 hours a day for the first four days, and 3 hours a day on the last three. Maybe 17 hours total. Actually, you get to do as much as you want on the last three days, but everyone in your group must agree to the additional time. Frankly, I think whoever wants to bail should just go into their post chamber depth interview, but I suppose the trainer needs to be on hand in case somebody freaks out or something. They do the depth interviews in a group so that others can benefit from your experiences, but this is fairly minimal, particularly at the end of the week when the experience is not quite as novel. Given the money, you could have an extra trainer on hand, it would seem.It's also worth saying that you can only take so much time in the chamber, as it can be exhausting physically, mentally and emotionally. Although they claim to have done tests that actually show hearing improvements, my ears were ringing days later (although you can set the volume, and move the speakers, they encourage you to make it loud). Who knows, maybe my hearing is better, but I think I'd rather err towards not having ringing ears. On the final days with extra enhancement periods, you get a chance to get out of the chamber, take a break and go to the bathroom between enhancements, and that goes a long way to recharging your batteries for more biofeedback. Speaking of money, which is in many ways the main issue, it's hard to say where it all goes. It's so expensive. Jim spun it as $145 an hour for the whole experience, but for the overwhelming majority of the whole experience you are in a group therapy type situation, and generally what is paid for group therapy is something on the order of say $25 an hour, because you are splitting that fee among a number of clients. Still, this was often good therapy. It may be that there is truly a great expense involved, or they may not be good with money, or it may be that Jim has a bit of a monopoly and a reputation for this kind of training.
Still, for the money, I don't think you would be out of line expecting a modern facility in a Marin county mansion complete with daily massages, but it's somewhat more of an "I built a rocket ship in my nice garage" kind of feel. Which is okay, but worth noting. Then there are figures bandied about, such as $7,000,000 of software, $5,000,000 of equipment, and 30,000 people trained, but I find myself being skeptical. I mean, maybe he has spent that much on software programming, but even over 30 years I'm afraid this would easily pay for 2 damn good programmers full time (I have this horrible habit of doing the math). Maybe he's spent $5 million on equipment during his lifetime, but all I saw was a bunch of PC's, a couple of polygraph machines, and a couple of racks of cards that were built, I was told, back in the 1970's. I also have to compare that to another figure that was bandied about - a mere $300,000 to pay for the equipment to fund a new BioCybernaut franchise (not in existence yet, but who knows, maybe coming soon to a neighborhood near you). As to the 30,000 people trained, again, maybe, but that's an awful lot of people. In their current configuration, which admittedly has changed over the years, they train an absolute maximum of 30 people a month. And again, even if you go back 30 years, it just doesn't come close to adding up.
As a point of comparison, currently you could get top of the line EEG equipment and software for a 4 to 8 channel setup for certainly no more than $10,000 or so. More to the point, a very good, but perhaps not top of the line, 2 channel with software can be had for about $1,000.
I think the basic question is whether Jim has some secret life as a multimillionaire playboy or something. I don't get that impression at all, but, he is trying to run a business. Overall, in my brief initial conversation with him, he seemed (in retrospect) to be more about spin as opposed to total disclosure. I get the sense that perhaps he feels like this is vital, important work and whatever he needs to say to get someone to come is okay. But it doesn't feel right to me. People have the right to full disclosure. I will add that Jim and the other trainers have an amazing level of dedication, both in terms of the long hours they put in as well as the time of day (the second shift can go past midnight).
The PC my chamber was associated with crashed once during suppression or thereabouts, and another person had a couple of similar crashes. They were okay during enhancement, though. The PC we used to view certain graphs of feedback data on at night crashed about 10 times every night.
Additionally on the tech front, while they brag about their certifications, one day my electrodes were not wired correctly, so that instead of getting feedback on my left occipital, I was getting feedback on my right frontal, which I wasn't even supposed to be getting feedback on. Their "certification" apparently consists of a brief, on the job, "here's how you do it, now do it." On that particular day, an old woman who could barely speak english and who was working in other capacities was recruited to connect up the electrodes. She was clearly uncomfortable with the task, clearly uncertified, and clearly screwed up. Also, in getting me set up one day they put on and then took off my earclip electrodes 5 times. I don't know, it seems like there is some kind of competency breakdown there. Essentially, the process worked, but when you're paying that much money, I think you rightfully expect top-notch.
It is a little sad that the things they say don't always seem to add up. Jim mentioned that no one had quit after two days and not finished, but besides the guy who quit in my group, there are at least one or two other people who also quit (link gone). I think for people that have paid for the whole 7 days up front, with Jim not giving a refund, they probably have a strong incentive to come back and finish, which is what Jim wants. But based on what my trainer said about yet more quitters, I think Jim did me a great disservice by not being more open, if not actually lying, about people quitting the training.
My trainer, based on her actual experience, said 1 out of 10 or 15 has a spiritual experience such as mine. Jim has put it as 10-15% (Art Bell interview), a similar but more optimistic number, but unfortunately, he has also been quoted as saying 3 out of 5 (A Symphony in the Brain, page 229). That would be a large discrepancy. But it should be said, however, to produce even a single experience such as this is pretty amazing.
Based on my small sample, the groups are a pretty mystical bunch in general. The people I was with, including my trainer, believed in all manner of things, including astrology, muscle testing, homeopathy, auras. All those things and more, are unproven. Scientifically speaking, few seem to realize the importance of things like validation by multiple double-blind studies published in peer reviewed journals. I think most people hear that a study of any type was done and automatically think that means we know something (Hardt himself seems to believe this way). As I like to say, there are a lot of bad studies out there. The trainer and people I was with would basically get a good feeling about something and assume it was fact, a misunderstanding between correlation (coincidence) and causation.
Jim does seem to collect a lot of data, which might make one think it is about science, but then again it seems a lot about control. The polygraph tracings would make kind of a cool memento, but you don't even get to keep a single page out of the hundreds of yards you produce during the week. That is ridiculous, pointless. Bizarre, actually.
All of the one-at-a-time group therapy on both the mood scales and the post chamber experiences are videotaped (how weird is that?), but you can't have any of it. And they don't use any of it. It just goes into storage somewhere. Admittedly, transferring the videotapes possibly opens up all kinds of problems, but I was particularly saddened to learn that my firsthand report of that wonderful experience of mine, caught on video, will simply rot in a warehouse. There are so many people I would like to show that to. It's like a friend capturing some special moment on camera but refusing to give you a copy.
One person seemed to regard Jim as some kind of enlightened master or guru. I personally find it dangerous to put someone on so high a pedestal. Trust can be important, but that can be difficult in a situation where someone has fed me spin instead of being completely forthcoming. I imagine that there might have been attempts to logically optimize some of the training, but I would be equally willing to bet that most of it just kind of evolved and is completely untested, particularly in relation to the therapy setup. But it is what it is.
Another story: the trainer provided us with the option of having an "aspirin cocktail" before training, and I suppose aspirin might? increase the blood flow to the brain, which might? help increase alpha (I wonder if that's been tested?). In relating this, she referred to Jim as a "scientist" who had "invented" this cocktail, which was aspirin in water with a little baking soda to kill the acid. I don't know. He "invented" um, Bufferin?
The therapy often involved trying to relate things back to childhood issues. Sometimes this may make sense, but I believe this may have been done excessively. If someone mugged you and you're angry about it, I don't think you really need to relate that to childhood to understand or get at the source of the emotion. The more I think about it, the more I wonder about the therapy aspect. It's an intense situation, made moreso with the long days, and you don't really have a chance to get to know someone deeply over a period of time. I think there is a tendency to leap to facile conclusions and enable some belief systems that may not be effective in the long run. Kind of an incentive for the recovery of false memories thing. There is some good stuff going on, but even here Jim has to hype it as equivalent to 20 years of therapy. I would describe it as getting some of the better therapy days out of say, 2 years of therapy, in one week. But a few good days is just that.
A strong focus of the work is "forgiveness" work. Apparently many years ago someone was doing the suppression training (going for low scores), and suddenly the scores did the opposite, they shot up. When asked what they did, they said they had been going over angry thoughts to suppress alpha, but then forgave the person they were thinking about. But in my experience, any "release" of emotions (sexual fantasies work great) or emotional tension will work to increase alpha, and frankly, if you are as they sometimes put it "stating your truth" and expressing anger in the calmness of the alpha state, you can generate extremely high alpha without forgiveness. Additionally, I generated some of my highest scores while simply meditating in the chamber, letting go of thought as it were (another form of release). For me in general the alpha biofeedback was a kind of emotional Geiger counter - it would reveal the strength of your feelings about a given person/place/situation. In that way it makes a lot of sense to combine it with some kind of therapy. But forgiveness as the sole focus? I think it just fits with Jim's personal agenda, as do the pre-feedback readings, etc. I think it's more about letting go of stuff, period. Forgiveness is merely a subset of letting go. This could also be framed as acceptance.
Actual Biofeedback Results
In terms of enhancement, the fact is, my initial first morning baselines were quite strong, and in many ways, never exceeded. The other people I was with made far more significant gains than I did. In many ways, I would recommend anyone taking the training not to worry so much about the scores. You might monitor them to see how your "therapy" is doing (i.e. the emotional Geiger counter), but otherwise you probably just make yourself self-conscious thinking about them, and I'm not sure they are controllable in any real direct sort of way. You're brain is just going to do what it's going to do.Conclusion
There are many ways that Biocybernaut says it is superior to other systems. If you're comparing this setup to a cheap, one-size-fits-all alpha-only home training unit with which they seem to compare themselves with on the website, yes, they win on all points. But if you're comparing them to a reputable, experienced neurofeedback professional, many of these differences fall away. Any good deep states trainer has read the same literature that Hardt has, and can train you in the same basic way. For example, I've heard of some similar experiences happening to people doing the Alpha synchrony training with Les Fehmi, another of the 1960s pioneers in EEG biofeedback. And these experiences also happen to people who simply do meditation retreats, without any expensive biofeedback at all.And the benefits that are touted are not unique to Biocybernaut - these are simply the published results of alpha training. As to the testimonials, well, they are testimonials. They should be thought of as the subjective experiences of the very luckiest of the supposed 30,000 who have gone through the program as opposed to typical results. One of those testimonials was written by a person that I trained with. It was written in the pumped up aftermath of the training, and basically became inaccurate not long after writing it. It's still on the website, though.
So there is an awful lot to be skeptical about. While there are quite a few warts, I guess the positive spin I would put on it is that pretty much every day has the potential to be a really productive day in therapy. And, although the actual amount of EEG feedback is maybe not as much as you might think, as one fellow traveler observed, you could think of all the psychological mood scales and therapy and going over the scores as another form of feedback. I did come to the training with many years of background in individual and group therapy, and a history that included at least some meditation and other spiritual or spiritual-like interests. I also came with an attitude to be fearless in my exploration of consciousness, and once I learned the nature of the therapy aspect, I took the attitude of being similarly fearless in revealing myself in front of the therapist and the group. If that is your attitude, I think you can get a lot from the process. There is certainly at least some value there, overpriced as it may be. And, ultimately, if you are looking to have a chance at a transcendental experience, I will have to say this is certainly one of the very best places in the world to go for it.
For me, given the peak experience I had, it was certainly worth it. If I didn't have that experience, I suspect I would feel like I had been severely ripped off, but again, it depends on the person. Would I do it again? I doubt it. It is so expensive, so long and grueling, and you have to jump through so many hoops, that it's hard to imagine. And I have to compare that to the fact that I could easily get 5 times as much one-on-one neurofeedback, targeted precisely to my individual needs, from a local practitioner at the same price. Based on what I've learned, I would suggest that before you do BioCybernaut you consider seeking out a competent local practitioner and take the time and relatively little money to resolve any issues and maybe experiment a bit with alpha training before you go.
[The people I was with were what I would categorize as troubled people (not that I'm not but people do tell me I at least appear quite normal and well-grounded). They were very aware of some of their brain abnormalities and in fact were hoping to remedy them through the training. However, this is a misconception on their part as the BioCybernaut training is not oriented towards any kind of "treatment." My gripe here would be that Hardt did not see fit to spend any time correcting these misperceptions.]
A Few More Tidbits
Also of interest, Hardt's patent describing much of the way things are done at BioCybernaut.
I have received comments thanking me for this page, but some of those people seemed to think of this as a completely negative review. I don't look at it that way. I just tried to be very thorough and accurate. I think it provides good balance to the hype on their website. If you have a ton of spare cash you won't miss, maybe go for it. I suspect it would be an interesting, albeit extremely expensive week. I think that if you are looking for some kind of life changing thing, well, I mean this could possibly end up being one little piece of the overall process of change, but this one little thing isn't going to fix your life. It didn't fix mine. Essentially BioCybernaut is a form of meditation, in that they are getting you to pay a lot of attention to your moment to moment sensate experience. And you could go on a traditional meditation retreat and do that, in some cases, for absolutely nothing.
postscript
Years later, I still get people asking about whether or not they should do Biocybernaut. I don't really know how to be more clear. My views are contained above.For me, the journey led me to meditation, which finally led me to what I was looking for. The background mind of the temporary experience I stumbled into, still, open, aware, relaxed, spacious, quiet, neither grasping nor resisting, that mind eventually became permanent.
There are many techniques, but I did this style of meditation. It's neurological training, and it's just a matter of getting the training intense enough, long enough, and regular enough to allow that original mind to shine through and take hold. For me, once I committed to a daily practice, it took about an hour a day for 3 years.
post postscript
This page was deleted when Comcast eliminated personal web pages and was not available for several years. After stumbling on a recent interview with Hardt, I decided it needed to be resurrected.An additional odd fact, and perhaps just a bit of strange bad luck, is that for some reason, Biocybernaut Institute received a $500,000 donation from the perpetrator of a massive real estate fraud, causing Biocybernaut to be listed as relief defendants in the fraud case due to being recipients of ill gotten gains.
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