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Beyond Biofeedback – Drs Elmer and Alyce Green

AE was a woman in her mid-thirties and a professional writer.  She entered the programme to help in creativity…. When AE first began training she was able to practise no longer than 30 to 40 minutes at a time.  As she became more comfortable in it she extended the times to an hour and sometimes even longer.  After 7 days she asked to try a session without feedback…………….  Two days later she again tried a theta practice session without feed-back, and, as she says, with more success:

I did theta practice without feedback for the second time, and on this occasion was more successful. I began with regular breathing, saying Sa-Hum, and visualizing the chakras-this for perhaps seven or eight minutes. I felt myself to be relaxed. Some time toward the end of the period, I vividly experienced this scene: I was in a curious place. It was a corridor, well-lighted, that ran a straight length outward and somewhat downward. Off the corridor on the left (something like a New York City railroad apartment) were rooms, also lighted as far as I could see, in which I felt there must be people and scenes. I saw into only the first of these rooms, and I saw myself and someone else, together but doing I know not what. I really peered into the room for a few seconds, then withdrew and stepped back into the corridor. I had something in my hand . . . it may have been a rag doll, and there were coins on the floor . . .big shiny ones, not like money as we know it, but more like big ancient coins of gold and silver.

Suddenly, as the conscious-I became aware of this scene (as if the conscious-I said, Oh, look at this, this is a theta scene, I'm sure!), the l-in-the-scene looked up at the conscious-I and halted what she was doing, as if she were being spied upon; she stopped and looked at "me," seeming to say' Well, so what do you want; yes? can I help you? You are interrupting me but I will attend to you so you will go away and I can go on with what I was doing. . . . That is what her look seemed to say. And for a brief instant there were three of me: One in the room, one looking into the room, and one looking at the first two.

In this moment the scene froze, then faded. A few minutes later I ended the theta session and, looking at the record, I'd say it was pretty sure that this experience transpired simultaneously with the few minutes of closely spaced theta activity that show on the polygraph just before the end.

To sum up this week's practice with theta: I think that I have a fair idea of the theta experience. When it comes in just a brief flash, presenting just one image, say, like the Indian warrior, I think I can recognize it as theta. I feel slightly more confident about identifying more durable images, such as the corridor experience.

During our discussion of this theta session A.E. expressed the wish to visit that corridor again; her verbal report of the experience seemed to me to have a sense of "unfinished business." Twelve days later, just two days before the end of the program, she did return to the corridor, and experienced even more vivid imagery:

Today's session bore more tangible fruit. I did not feel that special at-easeness, as a matter of fact, but, during the last seven to eight minutes of the forty-minute session there came a series of images that were associated with my hearing the theta signal. They were as follows:

I saw myself as a tiny mannikin standing before a huge blank wall; that won't do, I told myself, you mustn't stand off and look at yourself trying to "go blank"; get down there into the figure, be the figure' And then I traveled down and merged with the figure so that "I" was staring at the blank wall. . . . Then I saw a door, tall and wooden, standing slightly ajar in the midst of deep, velvety blackness. Brilliant light streamed from the other side of the door, radiating into the velvety blackness and clearly illuminating the form of the door, its hinges, frame, knob. The image persisted; I found it very attractive, still, solemn, flowing, beautiful . . . then I had the idea of going through it, that there I might find the corridor. So I went through and there indeed was the corridor and the other me frozen into the exact same attitude of "Yes, what is it?" in which I had left myself some days ago. . . .

Again I tried to be active: Don't just look at her, I told myself, be her; so I went over and tried to merge with this figure of me as I had done earlier with the mannikin.

Okay, now, I said, let's look again into the first room, c'mon, look; and let's look more at the corridor . . . but I couldn't do so; I couldn't make out anything in the room and, instead, the me-of-the-corridor just sank down slumped against the wall-exactly like a limp rag doll: She was inanimate, without consciousness. . . . So I didn't push any more . . . I just let it be. . . . And then I became aware of a huge eye; a beautiful eye, filling my entire visual field. It lingered quite a while; it just looked, its lid blinked naturally; but what was most beautiful, most enthralling, was the pupil: It was golden -an alive, moving, vibrating, changeful gold. I looked at the eye, and it at me, quietly, solemnly, benevolently, compassionately, beautifully -for a long time. . . . And then it was gone, and perhaps five minutes later I ended the session.