Man's first (not unreasonable) conclusion from introspection was that heap powerful and very big, all-knowing people must be behind this amazing system. The Sun flew round the Earth with no visible strings, food grew on trees, sex was pretty damn good and mountains were absolutely enormous. Clearly this hadn't been done by the tribe down the road: something supernatural was at work. And people called it God.

Well, they actually called it lots of Gods at first: multitheism was the norm until such time as somebody suggested there might be one coordinator of Works. This, of course, was blasphemy, and so such free thinkers were burned. It took a lot of bonfires before an influential leader finally made Big God more convincing that the wooden statues - or 'craven images' of the pagans.

Moses wasn't the first to do this, but he was the first one to really make it stick. Considering his early weeks were spent as a foundling, floating aimlessly down a river and getting stuck in bullrushes, this was an amazing achievement. The turning point (once he had led his pack The Israelites away from the Egyptians) was parting the Red Sea. People couldn't fail to be impressed by that. The clincher was bringing down Ten Commandments and telling the folks that God had given them to him - free. Oddly enough, he also let slip that God looked just like him.

This was the problem with 'organised religion' right from the kick-off: a Divine idea was quickly spoilt by human ego. 'Look, my God is the real one and he's more peaceful and miraculous than yours and if you don't shut up we may have to kill you on this issue'. Moses was followed by Pharisees, and then Christ got the wrong side of them and wound up nailed to wood for his trouble. Christ was in turn followed by disciples and they all said my version is right, and if you don't etc etc.

In the middle of this ruck, some others wandered off to listen to Mohammed, who said always be non-violent and worship your women. And then pretty soon, fundamentalists were gently screaming 'Look, our wholly non-violent stonings and worship of women via genital mutilation are more right than yours, and if you don't' etc etc.

By the 11th century, there were crusades to wipe out heathens who had tried to wipe out infidels. Within another few hundred years, there were Inquisitions to torture incorrect believers. Not much later, Irish and Scottish people slaughtered each other to find out whether Luther was more peaceful than the Pope. Today Islamics are split into five schisms, all killing each other and - when they're not busy at that - bombing everyone else. They also want to wipe out (there's that peace-loving phrase again) all of Moses' descendants.

The one and only exception to all this marathon genocide is Buddhism - which, as it happens, doesn't have a God.

PHILOSOPHY

Lord Buddha didn't invent philosophy, but he was the first of the 'freak thinkers' to leave out the Holy part, and stick to Noble Behaviour. He was also, I'd argue, the first to focus on Time as an issue, and finger it as something of a bad thing. Further, he made clear his belief that the human mind is often dysfunctional, and recommended An End to Suffering. This will always be a sure-fire vote-winner: look, you're suffering, here's how to stop.

To be a little more serious here, Buddha made a link between invented time pressures, the human instinct for acquisitiveness, and the unhealthy social consequences of material greed and impatience. His other innovation was to say that Alfie was nothing more than an improvement process: the better you did in this life, the higher up the tree from pond life you'd be in the next attempt. Thus, everyone got reincarnated again and again, until they reached Divinity - after which they could move on to The Unmanifested Realm, where there was an Eternity of Now.

(From this, it's worth noting, has come the mistaken idea that The Afterlife consists of an eternity of Time. But if you read what such prophets say, once again they all agree that this is not the case: rather, there is no Time at all - and so it's always Now, but as there's no Time, you don't notice. Also you're not physical, and thus have nothing to notice with. This doesn't get any easier, I'm afraid).

BUT....

This is a key link in 'spiritual philosophy' that I'd like you all to clock. I don't call it confluence, because the process took place over thousands of years. Only later - as we shall see - do the time periods get shorter and the multidisciplinary overlaps more obvious. Why in particular I want you to note this one, is that over two millennia later (and I know people say the plural is millenniums, but it doesn't look right) physics and psychiatry are saying almost exactly the same thing - about Time in general, and stopping it in particular.

Naturally, these latter callings haven't as yet taken on reincarnation, and to be honest, I haven't either. However, no less a rocket scientist than Werner Von Braun said, on scientific bases, he did think it entirely likely. And you know what they say about rocket science. Which brings us back to science.

SCIENCE

Returning briefly to the closing question of the previous chapter, a big Light Bulb for me at this point in The Quest was 'maybe a thought has no mass or energy'. Ergo, perhaps the only way to escape our Universe and reach Eternal Now, Heaven, The Unmanifested Realm, The Infinite Chocolate factory etc is to focus thought on something spiritual - ie, not material. Buddhist monks, of course, had the lightbulb long before I did: they call it meditation. For Jesus, it was self-starvation in a hot desert with no sun-hat on. For some Caribbean peoples it is dancing into a frenzy of exhaustion, after which only the basic senses are still working.

Perhaps a few of you remember force, work, effort, and Ergs from school physics. Since then, neuroscience has come along quite a bit: today, brain researchers can watch 'live' as the cerebrum sends minute electrical impulses to various parts of the body. So, although the energy is minute, one can't have energy without mass. A thought may seem ethereal to us, but it does have mass - it is material.

However, both CBT and Buddhism stress the importance of 'No Mind', a state in which the eternal chatter is almost entirely switched off. There are various ways to get near to (or into) such a state: focus on an object or a sound, for example. Or focus on breathing and bodily sensations. This is, literally, 'straining the senses' - but its power to remove anxiety states is now widely accepted in the medical profession. It is, in some ways, 'leaving this world behind' in order to achieve a degree of calm: reducing 'thought energy' to zero - and thus (perhaps) leaving the physical life - albeit briefly.

It seems to me quite possible that 'taking time out' in this way may - literally - be taking Time out. In No Mind, say the Buddhists, there is No Time.

Hold that thought, ho-ho, while we continue with the history.

Renaissance was followed by Enlightenment, and Christianity (especially non-Catholic sects) began to realise the necessity of working with science. By this point, most religious leaders also accepted that you couldn't kill somebody for peaceful purposes: the idea was flawed, and also Church attendances were down. Even the Inquisition was wound up. Gradually, the enlightened but devout scientists like Bacon, Boyle, Newton and Faraday came up with a view that stated 'Science helps us appreciate the Wonders of God more'. (The bloke who thought that one up must've been the first Spin doctor.)

Further, with more free thinking in the Church, a branch of philosophy appeared and morphed into Divinity. However, it's still fair to say that from the 18th century onwards, mainstream philosophers like Hegel, Marx and Sartre are increasingly material and atheist in their outlook. These men call religion 'an opiate for the masses' and 'mumbo-jumbo'.

Yet the truth is that during this period, science becomes increasingly concerned with big life issues (biochemistry, medicine, pshychiatry, neuroscience, genetics) and the Universe (Astronomy, nuclear physics) such that all roads lead to Alfie. Vague creationist Seven-Day wonders to explain life's origins and purpose are replaced by Darwinism, paeleontology, natural selection, and - above all - the genius of Albert Einstein.

It is an odd anomaly that today - when we inhabit an almost entirely Godless culture in 'organised' worshipping terms - physics has reached the stage of becoming philosophy (but with more data) and spiritual enquiry (but with no Deity). Scratch a contemporary physicist, and you'll quickly notice that underneath a wafer-thin veneer, he or she is in awe of what the Universe might be about. The discipline as whole might stick with coincidental chaos theory, but some of those working in space exploration, DNA genetics and sub-atomic exprimentation feel that it's wrong. They don't read the Bible, but they don't buy the anarchy hypothesis either.

As it happens, neither did Einstein. While soi-disant New Physicists after 1925 increasingly believed that things 'just are', the sage old German suggested in many of his writings that there was much more to it. His famous utterance "The more I learn, the more I realise how little I know" was in part a statement of belief in the unexpected. Having seen both spooky electrons and misbehaving atoms, I think Albert secretly thought that somebody Up There was constantly moving the goalposts: allegedly, he once described sub-atomic physics (and matter's influencable yet unpredictable behaviour within it) to a friend as "like playing chess, but the other player keeps moving his pieces when you're back's turned".

WAR OF WORDS

Almost as if it might be a religion itself, science (especially physics) has split into numerous squabbling breakaways, sects, unbelievers and fundamentalists. And here again, there is much evidence of gigantic egos in play.

At one end of the spectrum is the indefatigable Stephen Hawking - a man who himself is an inexplicable medical phenomenon, in that motor neurone disease should have killed him years ago. Ten years back, he was confident of cracking the whole Alfie shooting match single handed; now he says he won't. Most others agree with him, and in truth the Establishment is becoming increasingly convinced that his Black Hole Rim theories smack of showboating. (This probably means he's entirely correct).

As we are dealing with 'new' physics here, it's impossible to see where the other end of the spectrum is - or indeed, if it's a spectrum, and not a particle wave after all. However - and stand by for another Sun-reader level of simplification here -

1. One school of thought believes that Time can be reversed by using gravity to bend light. They're working hard on it, probably because Einstein also thought this was possible, and he was nearly always right.

2. A large school of thought concludes that all outcomes in the quantum field can be changed by harnessing the electro-magnetic field energy and rearranging it. (A minority of this lot think, for instance, that brilliant soccer strikers do it unconsciously every time they score a goal).

3. A smallish minority no longer accept the chaotic coincidence and spontaneity of everything; their view is that some things were planned, and some accidents. (I'm probably in that camp this week - the idea of an incompetent Creator appeals to me hugely.)

4. A few diehards think Black Holes are the route to an alternative Time Universe; most people today don't.

5. A growing number of Young Turks believe that there are infinite quantum outcomes and infinite levels of different future, going both backwards and forwards. And some of these in turn believe we can't change each one, but we can skip from one to another - or even choose our own domain and start from scratch.

It's all kind of terrifyingly tedious isn't it? Nailing physics down in the 21st century is like lassooing ether while listening for the noise of one hand clapping - on ice, but in reverse.

Except that - and here we stop meandering and get back to the point again - despite this internal cacophony of debate, the confluence of findings is there for all with a helicopter view to see.

I'm off for a cup of tea - see you in the next episode, assuming nothing changes the outcome before then.

Assuming you haven't already decided I'm a flakey fruit-cake, it's possible you accept at least some of my earlier point about the relationship between zero mass, 'no Time', and lowered anxiety. This in turn chimes with the religious emphasis on rejecting things material and physical. In short, there appears to be an agreement across five spiritual and scientific disciplines that becoming as 'un-physical' and Time-unaware as possible is both a good thing, and something that works in equations rather than just in circus side-shows. Time itself, in fact, is one of the Great Illusions.

In addition to this conclusion is the physicists' finding that all may not be as we once thought - that is, 'nothing is real'. My view (as we'll see) is that John Lennon was right, and yet wrong. Stick with me on this one, we're heading for sound sense, not Wacky-Wacky Island.

What I want to do is present three further forms of 'illusion', and then draw some points from them.

THE ILLUSION OF DISTANCE

Our brains can only cope with the constant rush of electromagnetic data by putting things in various pigeon holes - me here, you there, head here, bum there and so forth. Nearly 3000 years ago Buddha said 'separation is an illusion'. Today we can be reasonably certain that:

* Mind/Body separation is pretty meaningless - most medical authoriies accept that there is no such thing as a purely physcial or mental illness: they are so interdepenent as to suggest separation of the two is artificial.

* Geneticists find - the more they exmine the DNA of cell structure - that there is no difference between a cell from the left brain cortex and another from your right ankle: every human cell contains exactly the same astonishing amount of information, and they're all capable of discerning differences in diet, environment, state of mind and so forth. While we pinpoint the brain as the centre of cerebral activity, the cell evidence suggests (again) that this is merely a convenient 'sorting' of the physicality data we perform in our minds.

* The whole New Physics wave/particle/spooky distance action is so inexplicable in terms of any physical 3-D distance, sub-atomic physicists have been forced to admit in recent years that some electrons appear to be in two places at once.

In short, everything is connected, and could - if it felt like it - be anywhere it wanted to be: the brain's interpretation of physical reality is an illusion, simple as that.

THE ILLUSION OF POWER BASED ON PHYSICALITY

Christ said (enough times to enough disciples that we can be fairly sure he really did) "Faith can move mountains". Today we are increasingly sure that:

* In the sub-atomic realm, human presence can alter the outcome of otherwise strictly controlled experiments.

* Terminal cancer patients with 'a will to live', or to survive in order to witness an important event, survive far longer than those patients who don't. (Remember Stephen Hawking, and the recent case of Jane Tomlinson: given six months to live, she vowed to raise £2 million, and lasted seven years.) To date, no other significant difference between these and normal cancer patients has been found.

* People who find themselves in life-or-death situations can perform tasks which, in theory, they lack the energy or muscle to do. This is largely explained by our fight-or-flight wiring which releases enormous amounts of adrenalin - but not totally. In 1971, I jumped two storeys out of a blazing building (this wasn't a silly stunt - I lived there) landing on a rockery. I picked myself up and walked round to the front of the building, there helping rescue workers for a further twenty minutes. I had broken an ankle, all my metatarsals and shattered-fractured a heel. Walking on those injuries without excruciating pain is impossible. I didn't feel a thing.

Somehow, it seems, the mind really can triumph over matter. But what is the mind?

THE ILLUSION OF EGOIC REALITY

For centuries, philosophers of every hue have talked about 'the mind' almost as if it did have some sort of physicality. Although shortly before the First World War Freud was formulating his theories of ego and id, long before this there existed in many cultures the idea of good and evil, of angels and devils. Christ in the desert talked of 'voices', and told Satan to 'get thee behind me'.

In modern terms, we can (again) say the following with a decent level of confidence:

* Psychiatric research suggets that the 'mind' reminding us of past guilt, regret and hatred is also the same one constantly fretting about future dangers and threats. It was developed to aid awareness of (and learning about) danger when climate change forced us to descend from the trees and become Homo erectus. Despite our vastly reduced contemporary threat from predators, the 'mind' remains unevolved and ready to imagine future threats while obsessing about past conflicts and slights. This egoic mechanism is 100% responsible for wars, genocide, bigotry and religious intolerance.

* Although the separation between left and right brain 'thinking' is often overplayed, neuroscience is able to identify that distorted past and future thinking comes almost entirely from the right cortex.

* Both meditational and CBT practitioners are adamant that this 'mind' is devoid of contributive thinking grounded in present reality. Tolle in particular emphasises that 'staying in the Now' effectively switches off dysfunctional, irrational and neurotic thought patterns. Psychiatry as a whole (especially the treatment of phobias) has shown that 'present tense' experience - if repeated regularly enough - enable left cortex learning to overrule right cortex fantasies.

* By definition, the egoic mind is self-obsessed. Behavioural fieldwork shows again and again that focussing on the problems of others and/or doing something one doesn't want to do raises self-esteem. Neuroscientists routinely measure the effect in terms of endorphin output, while geneticists argue that this too is part of our 'pack animal' wiring: the community's success is vital to contentment.

* In particular, Theta wave production increases during restful sleep, meditation, and the performance of selfless social service.

* Christ's parable of the Good Samaritan applies.

The right-cortex based egoic mind is a figment of human imagination. While physical chemicals take us into and out of this mind state, the state itself is entirely abstract: it has zero mass.

CONCLUSIONS

Time, separation/distance, power limited to physicality, and the ego: these would seem to be entirely based on the human brain's ability to 'grasp' what the contents of the universe are 'about'. They are what we 'see' - but not what they seem.

The more we reject or ignore the illusions created by the brain, the closer we seem to get to The Truth - and the closer we approach tranquility.

Set this alarming finding in the context of contemporary culture, and you can sort of see where we're going wrong.

We focus on artificial time as a measurement of efficiency and increased production capacity. Quicker solutions and contracts finished ahead of schedule are rewarded. The false setting of targets enables those in power to justify their existence and 'prove' they are doing a good job.

Perceiving and using physical transport to overcome distance and separation is destroying the biosphere. Accentuating tribal separation leads to racism, football crowd violence, jingoism, sexism and ageism. Desire to be seen as a separate, unique physical entity breeds fame and celebrity obsession.

The belief that Might is Right - and physical power the only type that matters - caused Imperialism, state secret police, dictatorial Communism, Nazism, endless Balkan crises, ethnic cleansing, Globalism, the motor car obsession, and hopelessly ignorant meddling in Middle East affairs by (at one time or another) most of the so-called Western Powers. Set physical power up as a moral aim in its own right, and one can persuade humans to do, literally, anything. In 2007, it dictates the foreign poicy of the USA, it forms the basis upon which control-freaks stealthily turn a democratice EC into an autocratic EU, and it ran the whole lead-up to the appalling error of the allied invasion of Iraq.

But it is identification with the ego, and contemporary Man's unconscious obedience to anything and everything this fictional character wants, that has become the single biggest driver of greed, excess, secrecy, and delusions of inequality. Above all, this invention of the brain caused wholesale perversion of religious ideas, replacing the concept of a higher intelligence and purpose with the egoistic desire of Homo sapiens to be right, to dominate and be (over and over again) The One True God's Messenger on Earth. It matters not a jot if this be the Pope, Martin Luther, Ayatollah Khomeini, fundamentalist Israelis, a TV evangelist, Haile Selassie, Ron L. Hubbard or Mahmood Ahmadinnaejad: sooner rather than later, all these people see themselves as Divine.

And if there's one thing worse than a leader who believes in the morality of Might, it's a leader who sees himself as Divine in that context. (See also under Osama Bin Laden, Joe McCarthy, Caligula, Charles I and Tony Blair).

A HYPOTHESIS

My take on all this is as follows:

1. The answer lies within - in order to interpet the physical Universe in which we find ourselves, the limited Homo sapiens brain simplifies and pigeon-holes everything into a grand illusion

2. The more emotional side of this brain - for whom defence against physical death is everything - will, if uncontrolled, cling to the illusion forever, make itself the centre of the Universe, and invent After Lives in which survival as a human entity is not only envisaged but demanded - including thirty virgins, none of whom is your sister

3. The key elements of this 'safe' Universe - Time, distance and individual item separation - are not only observed but celebrated in the form of everything from citizen surveillance to deadline-driven capitalism

4. The overwhelming majority - over 99% - of humans 'on' planet Earth live this illusion every day all day until the day they die. Only a minute number of monks, physicists, and other scientific specialists grasp what reality truly is.

The huge exception to this general rule is the 'time' we all spend asleep.

 

5. TO SLEEP, PERCHANCE TO DREAM

• Hold fast to dreams
  For if dreams die
  Life is a broken-winged bird
  That cannot fly.
  
  Hold fast to dreams
  For when dreams go
  Life is a barren field
  Frozen with snow.

Langston Hughes

 

" The cause of dream are seven. They are what you have seen, heard, experienced, wish to experience, forced to experience, imagined and by the inherent nature of the body".

We'll come back to that, but for now let's examine the more contemporary ideas available.

It came to me in a Dream

For Freud and Jung working in the early part of the last century, dreams were the business: The Interpretation of Dreams is still a best-seller, and most if not all traditional psychotherapy is based on patients endlessly recounting their dreams while the therapist gives them the benefit of his or her interpretive skills. I know this, because for two periods (each of a few months) in my life I went through this ritual a couple or more times a week. I have to state clearly here that I have grave doubts about the real importance of dreams in tackling a mental disorder. My reasons are:

1. None of this made the slightest difference to my condition

2. Insight about significance does not equal a cure: something most psychotherapists don't seem able to grasp

3. As the whole process bored me immensely, I frequently made dreams up. There was always an explanation for this fiction, and it always accorded with what the therapist had already decided. This didn't strike me as an open mind attempting a cure so much as an intellectual enjoying himself at my expense

In the 1930s, however, one Kilton Stewart found himself in an Asian jungle (the way you do) and stumbled across a tribe known as the Senoi. The set-up for this event was classic Shangri-La: cut off from civilisation for centuries, no crime, no violence, all land and monies shared and so on. The chief told Stewart that this was entirely down to 'dream control' and a daily ritual during which all villagers discussed their dreams and how to make them as positive as possible. The chief also laid out for the explorer the key principles behind this practice:

1. Always confront and conquer danger in dreams. If an animal looms out of the jungle, go toward it. If someone attacks you, fight back.

2. Always move toward pleasurable experiences in dreams, If you are attracted to someone in a dream, feel free to turn the attraction into a full sexual experience, If you are enjoying the pleasurable sensations of flying or swing, relax and experience them fully.

3. Always make your dreams have a positive outcome and extract a creative product from them. Best of all in this regard, try to obtain a gift from the dream images, such as a poem, a song, a dance, a design, or a painting.

Clearly, the Senoi leader was pretty erudite and up for hallucinatory stuff - although nobody's entirely clear what he meant by 'swing'. Joking apart, the story brought back by Kilton Stewart fired several important imaginations, and led the most eminent of these, G. William Domhoff, to go and have a look for himself. Opinions differ as to whether Domhoff swallowed the chief's accounts and theories, but by now the soi-disant Dreamwork Movement was off and running.

Dreamwork as a concept - self-affirmation to make one's dreams more positive - is still practised by CBT therapists, and as a confirmed user of the method, all I can record is that it works for me. But over time, the Senoi experience became more myth and legend, less scientific breakthrough. By the 1990s, Wilkerson among others rubbished the whole movement as based on the accounts of a Senoi leader with a propensity to change his mind and exaggerate every time a microphone hove into view. Civilisation found the Senoi of course, and soon the tribe was no more. Wilkerson thinks the 'no murder happy-clappy' account was a great big fib, largely because he met some of the tribe and found them rather seedy. Others (like Jeremy Taylor) feel the tribe was ruined by wicked contemporary civilisation. All I can say is, it's a good job Francis Wheen didn't get hold of this stuff, as nobody would have survived the subsequent literary blast.

That said, by 2003 Domhoff was still offering the following interesting (and quite balanced) view of the Senoi:

'While the Senoi did not, of course, employ our system of terminology, their psychology of dream interpretation might be summed up as follows: man creates features or images of the outside world in his own mind as part of the adaptive process. Some of these features are in conflict with him and with each other. Once internalized, these hostile images turn man against himself and against his fellows. In dreams man has the power to see these facts of his psyche, which have been disguised in external forms, associated with his own fearful emotions, and turned against him and the internal images of other people.'

It's hard to argue with that: whether the Senoi discovery was true or false, this is probably a lot of what dreaming is about - and not that far from the ancient Indian version recorded earlier. But I don't think it's got a lot to do with Alfie.

Some common sense

Analysis of one's dreams reveals the following over time:

1. Repetition of guilt and anxiety scenarios

2. Recording of recent events

Piece together the 'script' of almost all dreams (however surreal) and they will prove to be a mixture of these two: 'the postman arrives to deliver a telegram saying you're dead' does not require much insight to establish (a) the postman came that morning and (b) evidence of a hypochondriacal condition.

While we should not over-egg the frontal lobe separation thing, it's clear that the left cortex sifts all the daily dross and files or rejects it. The right cortex remembers only the traumas and records everything suggestive of a threat. Not only that, but this cortex - call it the Ego if you wish - takes every last file out night after night and says 'Bad news...bad news...yet more bad news....we're all doomed' etc etc. This is effectively like a super-efficient civil servant and a barmy bloke working in the same room with one filing cabinet between them. The result is a dream in which steak and chips in the doctor's surgery briefly leaves his stethoscope in order to throttle your dog.

Sit a neurotic patient down for ten minutes, and both the subject of (and experiences behind) the anxiety dreams will become rapidly clear. Mensa intelligence and profound intuition need not be packed for this mission: the deeper the neurosis, the more vivid and repetitive the surreal right-cortex stuff will be. And without wishing to repeat myself, CBT self-affirmation is vastly more effective in correcting disturbing dreams than chatting merrily away for ten years to a chap who smells of mothballs and leather patches. Tell (and show) your left cortex that the fear is drivel, and it will politely order the ego to shut up - which, like all bullies, it does.

As a form of immediate diagnosis of mental imbalance, dreams are of course significant. Rather more interesting, however, is what's going on when we're asleep - and not dreaming at all.

Sound asleep

As we saw earlier, nobody is certain what the point of sleep is. It is almost certainly multifunctional: it helps children grow, it stores learning and information, it gives the brain some downtime (although not that much) and without it for even a few days our cognition is so badly affected, delusional behaviour soon sets in. This is nature's way of saying 'Don't be a dummy, sleep'.

As an energy-saver, however, it's almost irrelevant. The average sleeper saves just fifty calories in a night - roughly the Kcal of a slice of toast. Given we all spend between a quarter and a third of our lives doing it, you'd think we might be clearer by now about the bottom line on sleep, but we aren't even close.

The different functions seem to be correlated with the different types of sleep. There are two overall: non-REM (rapid eye movement) and REM. In REM sleep almost all the dreams occur. This is a highly alert state involving normal breathing and a frequently rapid heart rate. Most of us have three to five episodes of it per night, and each one can last anything from ten seconds to twenty minutes.

Non-REM sleep comes in three flavours - light, true and deep. During the last of these, even the brain is snoring away, and the heart-rate drops dramatically. If we could remember what it's like afterwards, I bet we'd all come back saying it was better than any drug we'd ever tasted: all is calm, steady and blissfully unaware. It is, in fact, very close to what Buddhists in general (and Tolle in particular) call Being. And just about the only thing we know for certain about it is that our brainwaves during Deep Sleep are almost entirely Delta.

Riding the Brainwaves

Brainwaves are very 'in' at the moment. The field of study and practical application is called Neurofeedback. There are relatively few people who know what they're doing engaged in it, and they're all snowed under with work. This reflects the fact that the ramifications of Neurofeedback are gigantic: they range from more reliable detection of truthful answers in police work, right through all the creative and performing arts,and on to a treatment for depression and anxiety that could save the NHS more than £6 billion a year in drug costs.

The principle is very simple: a person's brainwaves are recorded during simple tasks and questionnaires, after which the wave-frequencies are compared to norms. Thus a creative person can be trained to emit more Theta waves, an insomniac more Beta waves etc etc - or Joe Bloggs off the street can learn (for his own interest) whether his waves are 'normal'.

Most of the work at the moment is using 'binaural' sound frequencies to 'kid' the brain into synchronizing with the resultant net frequency. Sounds complex, but keep reading: a frequence of 15 Hz goes into one ear, and one of 8 into the other. This produces a net wave pattern of 7 Hz, which is sort of Theta-ish, and a pattern at which a great deal of creativity occurs. 'Why not just play both ears a frequency of 7?' I hear you ask,and the answer is doing that doesn't work - and no, I haven't the remotest idea why. This is Wild West science we're dealing with here.

Thus, the practitioners out there are chiefly working in commercial areas where wakeful behaviours can be improved. This kind of makes sense - but doesn't help with the Alfie search.

Alfie, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Theta

Sorry about that, it was irresistible. And anyway, it is sort of making a point about The Point. For as time goes on, I've become increasingly persuaded that deep, non-REM sleep holds at least some of the secrets of Alfie. But to look at this more carefully, we need to understand the brain wave types precisely. This is where it gets difficult, because in this young science, nobody's very precise about anything.

Go to most websites on the subject, and you'll be told there are five brainwave types - Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Theta. This isn't true at all: there are three more, but they 'ride on the back of' Delta waves. Note yet again the scientific fudge when they don't know. Incredibly over-simplified, the eight wave types go like this - in order of Hz of output:

Lamda (200)

Hyper-Gamma (100)

Gamma (38 - 90)

Beta (12- 38)

Alpha (7.5 - 12)

Theta (4 - 7.5)

Delta (0.5 - 4)

Epsilon ( < 0.5)

For what it's worth, the 'optimum' place to be if you're 'well-balanced' is lower Beta at 40 Hz, although for my money this might also mean you're insufferably boring. It seems that most astronauts and test pilots stay at this level - even during lift-off. This is what Tom Wolfe called The Right Stuff, although I'm not convinced he was right at all.

Outside of lists, it doesn't work like this at all. First of all, there are lots of combo states (Beta/Alpha, Beta/Theta and so on). Second, three of these states are rarely if ever reached by anyone - Epsilon (almost suspended animation), Hyper-Gamma and Lambda. The only reason we know they exist is that Buddhists monks can do them. And for the third reality check, we need to cue Outer Limits music.

Da-da-dereder da-da-derdere.....

Although there appears to be a hierarchy, there isn't: in truth, it's a circle - roughly like this:

 

Those of you not already bashing out Delta waves after all this can probably see that this doesn't 'work', as such. That is to say, the closest 'next thing' to Epsilon (at under 0.5 Hz and therefore almost dead) is Lamda (at over 200Hz, practically an acid/ectasy cocktail) followed by Hyper-Gamma (over 100 Hz, and thus the rough equivalent of a pure amphetamine-buzz).

Yet these three states are the only ones employed by trained Buddhist monks when meditating. And they seem to hop quite happily from one to another.

Just to put this into a field-research context, monks in Lamda have been known to endure testicular torture at the hands of Chinese secret police without uttering a sound. (Now that's what I call mind over matter.) Those still messing about in Hyper-Gamma can walk twenty miles naked across the snow-driven tundra at temperatures well below freezing. But stick a monitor on a monk in Epsilon, and it's hard to even detect a heartbeat.

Is this science or something else?

It's science alright, but not as we know it Jim.

For example, talk to any creative person - an advertising copywriter through to a sub-atomic physicist - and they will tell you that most of the time, they have their ideas when thinking about something unrelated to those ideas. They will say (almost without exception, even including Einstein) "I've no idea where the breakthrough came from - I was in the bath/on the loo/ reading a magazine at the time."

There is no especially spiritual reason for this: the Theta wave state (commonplace during shallow meditation) is barely conscious. Often, we are in light sleep when it happens. But there is something in the brain's inner communication system that will make a connection between a half-conscious activity and a previously unsolved problem.

The writer and sociologist Edward De Bono made a small fortune out of writing about this process, which he called Lateral Thinking. What De Bono's methods proved is that we can all manipulate and improve the efficiency of the process. As distinguished researcher Ellen Weber puts it:

"Theta brainwaves represent a state of deep relaxation and meditation and are the source of creativity. It is also associated with stress relief, light sleep and dreaming. When you feel something is missing or not quite right you are in Theta. This is the voice of the subconscious mind and home to our memories and emotions."

That sounds like a cool place to be alright - but Delta makes this state look like a tense session with your mother-in-law. Weber again:

"Delta Brainwaves provide personal radar and feelings at unconscious levels. In healthy doses, these signals cause empathy. If you read other people’s minds, you probably have more delta activity than most."

There are some mega-clues in there which might tell you where I'm heading. The key ones are 'integrate', 'let go' and 'decrease awareness of the physical world'. Also significant is the finding that 'it is the dominant rhythm in infants of up to one year of age': chiefly because this is innate stuff that the screaming shit-machine has long, long before socialisation blinds it to what's really going on. And last but not least, of course, the epsilon, lamda and hyper-gamma states are even weirder.

Teetering in similar fashion on the cliff-face of sanity is The Divine Soma Experiment, an organisation which reassuringly displays literary knowledge by naming itself after the calming 'Soma' pills of Huxley's classic novel Brave New World. Here as well - while the language gets a little floral on occasions - they tend to agree with the boffins in saying things like:

'DELTA waves endow a total vacation from existence and provide the most profound feelings-of peace.Brain pattern studies were recently conducted by researcher Melinda Maxfield into the (SSC) Shamanic State of Consciousness. She found that the steady-rhythmic beat of the drum struck at four and one half times per second was the-key to transporting a shaman into the deepest part of his shamanic state of-consciousness. It is no coincidence that 4.5 beats, or cycles per second, corresponds to the trance like state of theta brain wave activity. In direct-correlation, we see similar effects brought on by the constant and rhythmic-drone of Tibetan Buddhist chants, which transport the monks and even other listeners into realms of blissful meditation.'

In recent years, this thinking has gone beyond wind-chimes and into being Big Business. Neuro-feedback is very much the new kid on the block (over a million Google sites now feature it) but there's clearly something in it. Here's another abstract from the Soma website, which I think is instructive:

'Rhythm is the nature of the universe. Everything is moving to it's own beat - from the micro-orbits of electrons and protons to the macro-orbits of planets, stars and galaxies. In lifeforms, rhythm is even more obvious, from the continuous beating of the heart, to cycles of the breath.'

You may wish to place me in the wacky camp on this one, but that observation is one for which the evidence is overwhelming; one of the major problems of our civilisation is its emphasis on a speed which is completely out of whack with the natural order of things. Websites that talk of energy vibrations, bad karma, negative electricity and other such inaccurately meaningless terms do themselves and all serious researchers a disservice: the empirical observation of at least four separate branches of science shows beyond any reasonable doubt that an overload of 'fast' thinking and action leads to 'burnout' - and other things too unpleasant to mention on a family site. And yet - a minute number of humans seem to be able to transcend the physical at both ends of the brain wave spectrum: because both ends are right next to each other. (Which of course, they shouldn't be, otherwise it isn't a spectrum any more.)

Learningwithneurofeedback.com is a member of The Society of Applied Neuroscience (SAN), and as such (while very much in the dark-leaping zone) must be regarded as at the very least serious.

SAN is in turn an affiliate to the International Society for Neuro Regulation, a largely US-led organisation. One of its members, North Texas University, has a full-time experimental lab funded entirely by the American Government. I have found that, on the whole, weirdo organisations able to attract massive Fed funding have cottoned onto things that just might be useful to the military. On the same dimension, I am inclined to believe that such organisations may have wisdom to offer, whether or not it gets perverted by the guys with scrambled egg on their caps.

All of these host and individual organisations agree on one thing above all: Delta waves are heap powerful medicine. In fact, when talking to people in the field, the general impression one gets is that most practitioners are wary of them -and often ignorant of the Weird Trio above and below. So much so, the conspiracy theorists are onto Delta waves. This is from a site called tribe.net:

'Learn to set up a Delta Frequency EM brainwave entrainment system modeled directly from a Psy-War Agent Training System developed by a post-BlackOps Government Operative. Research and share developments in conscious evolution. Get the scoop and discuss the Psychic Operatives in action within many first world governments, and discover protection and empowerment techniques for dealing with sensitive situations. Enhance your own Distance Viewing, Astral Projection, Energy Work, and more.

Now is the time for Activated Action. Now is the time for Engaged Empathy. Now is the time for Integrated Intelligence. Now is the time for Overt Omnipresence. Now is the time for Unprecedented Unification.'

Well, absolutely. Unfortunately, we all just know for certain that ten years ago this psychographic had found out about a secret government establishment in Death Valley where Ronnie Reagan was being cloned. Ten years before that, they were camped outside Rothwell Airbase looking for glimpses of long-captured aliens. And twenty years before that, their mums and dads welcomed the Age of Aquarius and its main output, large-building levitation.

It's easy to laugh, and before we get too deeply into the habit, let us realise that, at the time of writing this piece, the nearest that The Sun tabloid had got to Delta tranquility was featuring the vivacious, curvaceous and divine Delta Goodrem, new Aussie starlet girfriend of Brian MacFadden - renowned as a love rat to his former wife Kerry Katona. Fully 43% of Sun readers voted this story the 'must-read' in that day's paper. The species still has a long way to go.

Some qualifications

You may have spotted in Ms Weber's quote about Delta waves earlier the important words 'in healthy doses'. This too makes the Delta thing intriguing: because a few of us pump out Delta waves all or most of the time. And as the Journal of Neuropsychobiology observes:

'Delta waves during sleep have a close correlation to negative symptoms in schizophrenia'

It remains a tragic truth for all those who live with, or care for, scizophrenia that we still understand so little about how this illness develops and why certain drugs can alleviate the symptoms. (This is also true about even the most cutting-edge anti-depressants: researchers know their effect, and they know the brain chemicals involved, but they understand neither their function, nor why these chemicals are stimulated or suppressed by the medications.)

Nevertheless, in 2004 a team at the Harvard Medical School did some ground-breaking work comparing otherwise matched samples of balanced volunteers and schizophrenic patients during simple IQ tasks. They found that all the schizoid patients were deficient in Gamma Rays and replete with Delta. Gamma rays,as we've seen, are the highest frequency in the normal rnge - they appear during higher mental activity such as complex mental arithmetic - but their other (only recently discovered) job is to aid communication between different perceptional parts of the higher brain.

In short, schizophrenia appears to be a breakdown in supply of the waves that analyse physical reality, the Gammas being replaced by Deltas - which, by definition, are completely divorced from that same reality. Thus, the meditator chooses and controls the Delta state, but schizoid patients over-dose on them because they have no choice. Hence their altered reality.

Why am I telling you all this? Two reasons really: first, because these and a whole host of other examples suggest strongly, again, that waves other than Delta (and the mysterious epsilon-lamda-hyper-gamma axis) are absolutely key to the nature of what most of us perceive, when we're awake, as reality. And second, because all the different wavelengths (and their potential manipulation) probably represent the greatest opportunity society has ever had to improve interpersonal behaviour on a macro basis....or turn it into a bomb.

ANOTHER HYPOTHESIS

I see the hunt for Alfie as having proceeded as follows:

1. The 'safe' elements of the material Universe (and calculation of appetitive success) are closely correlated with the faster 'normal' brain waves - that is, associated with wakefulness, 'work' in one form or another and goal achievement.

2. While dreaming is clearly vital for sorting data and looking at unresolved issues, dreamless sleep is associated with one of the slowest waves, Delta. This state effectively leaves physical 'reality' behind. As to the Mysterious Three - who know what they're about? Nobody knows - but I'll be offering some theories in the next chapter.

3. Gamma, Beta and Alpha waves look like the best candidates so far as the 'producers' (in a theatrical sense) of The Grand Illusion of wakeful, physical reality referred to in the previous chapter. By contrast, learning to achieve (and control the dose) of Delta waves seems to represent a road on the way to Alfie - albeit only the first part of the journey, and probably the windy roads rather than the motorway.

But this in turn begs some final questions - so let's move on.

 

6. WHY?

 

It's entirely possible that, in a few years time, all these brain waves will have been completely re-written, new ones discovered and many minds changed about what each of them do. As we've seen throughout this journey, today's near-certainties are tomorrow's leeches: when I was in my teens, the definitive astronomers' view was that Pluto was the final planet in our solar system. Today, we're discovering endless further ones every few years.

Equally, it seems to me very likely that one could devote a whole (very thick) book to all the potential applications of neurofeedback technology.

But my primary concern here is to suggest what the scarier brain waves might be about - and whether they offer any clues as to the Alfie thing: does the Universe have a purpose, and if so, what is it?

In short, why do we have brains that can detect both the real and the unreal?

A certain lack of discernment

When I first underwent behaviour therapy, it came as a huge shock to discover that the unconscious mind cannot tell reality from dreams at all. Over the years I've known many folks who weren't clear about the dividing line even when conscious, but it seems the bits doing all the work without us noticing can't tell even slightly, when a four-legged skyscraper falls on one from three thousand feet, that this isn't actually happening. Or rather, this is what the medical community says.

I prefer to put it another way: the unconscious mind doesn't recognise any difference between physical 'reality' and other states. My point is that this may not be a shortcoming - the chances are it knows something most of us don't.

Logically, medically and mathematically, I should have died in that fire, or at least broken my back. There was certainly no way I should've been able to walk around on feet that were little more than two bags of marbles. And for me, it simply doesn't cut it to say the brain blocked out the pain by slicing off the pain-receptor route from foot to head: how did it do it? There's still nobody who can tell me, thirty-six years on. All I can tell you is that, like any good atheist, I shouted for God to help me. Did that work?

Is nothing real?

My theory is that we perceive various forms of reality, and the brain accepts all of them. There is physical reality, there is surreal (dream) reality and there is abstract reality. I also suspect very strongly that a large part of the 'Alfie' point is that we should - by our own efforts - realise that the true reality (ie, a fact, not a perception) is the abstract version where there is no light, time, or mass.

So no, I don't accept the adage (adopted in a half-baked manner by John Lennon) that nothing is real. I think most if not all of Alfie is about realising what is real.

Since Planck and Einstein, it has been hard to deny that Time and directional Light are an illusion - if only because they are relative. Since the wave/particle quantum discoveries of the last thirty years, it has been impossible to accept that physical distance is a reality - because if it is, how can two electrons be in the same place at once? Separation, therefore, is also an illusion. Effectively, E=mc2 made it clear - once and for all - that we are trapped in the three-dimensional physical Universe. But spooky action at a distance offered the clue that the way out of a physical illusion is via mastery of the abstract. In trying to paint a thought, in fact, Picasso was making his own intuitive contribution to the unravelling of The Great Secret.

Some final hypotheses

At the time of writing, I have two:

1. The Universe is an experiment that could only be the product of a (literally) astronomical intelligence. The point of the experiment was/is to see how - as light travelled outwards and provided a time measurement - whether (at all life-maturing points of the process) physical life would work out how to escape from the experiment via abstract portals. For some reason that as yet I can't fathom, there appear to be two options: the high Hz or low Hz version. Perhaps only one can achieve escape, and the other is a form of preparation - I've no idea.

The good things about this hypothesis are that it allows for the movement of chess pieces by those in charge of the experiment, provides a far more credible explanation of Big Bang, explains all the 'chains' provided to prevent physical escape, makes a reality-flexible brain sensible, provides a raison d'etre for the odd arrangement (and existence) of various brain-waves, and neatly ties up spiritual intuition with 'scientific' discovery.

None of this, of course, is any guarantee that even 1% of the theory is correct.

2. Good and Evil do, in fact, exist after all. Those who exist in the abstract realm know only good: they created the Universe solely to find out if they could create three-dimensional Evil.

In our 3-D Galactic battle between Dark & Light, there is the low road and the high road, the nasty back entry and the noble path. Which one would/will physical creations take?

The ego-driven physical beings see physical longevity one day stretched into physical immortality. They also see the quantum web as a means by which they can make room in an infinite Universe for the propogation and expansion of their species. Genetic engineering allows them to slow down decay to 0% and make the physical brain more and more adaptive and clever. This route is self-obsessed and can only lead to inter-Galactic conflict.

The brighter, more sensitive and spiritual beings see meditation and neuroscience as the noble way via which to reach the higher plane and thus join those who created them.

This hypothesis helps explain why some thugs are bright, and as an idea it would make a much better Hollywood movie than the first hypothesis. To be honest, I find it far-fetched - but you never know.

Do we care?

Er, not sure really. But I do, because it gives our species back the 'higher order goal' it lost when religion went out of the window. You see, if by shutting up our dysfunctional egos, achieving better brainwave patterns and generally being more calm and meditative we can evolve and survive....it's got to be better than never getting past being a bunch of ashes chucked off some cliff somewhere.

Don't you think?

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