Through the Flaming Sword

To start

I sit in a comfortable chair that helps me keep my back as straight as possible, feet flat on the floor. I close my eyes. I take a couple of natural breaths.

The eyes

The brain devotes seventy-five percent of its activity dealing with the outer senses to vision. So just closing your eyes reduces brain activity substantially. But one more eye technique can jump-start your descent into the depths: looking upward.

I was taught that the reason that saints look up in sacred art is because looking upwards lowers brainwave activity. The artists somehow intuitively knew this. Of course, they could also have been looking up toward heaven. Same thing?

Brain waves

Let me get into this a bit. The brain produces four bands of brain waves from different parts of the brain, and these regions of the brain contribute different aspects of our consciousness. The bands of brain waves are named alpha, beta, delta, and theta. All parts of the brain are firing at once pretty much all the time, so we are always producing all of the brain wave groups, but at any one time one of these groups has the greater share of the total brain wave pie chart.

Our normal wakeful consciousness is in beta (so-called because it was the second to be discovered), between 14 and 21 cycles per second (CPS). Alpha (the first to be discovered), between 7 and 14 cps, is the brain in the dream state and in periods of deep relaxation or creativity. Theta (4–7) is deeper sleep and responsible for fight and flight. Delta (1–4) is deep sleep.

Back to the eyes. Looking upward shifts the brainwave balance toward more alpha, less beta.

“Deep up”

You can raise the upward angle of your gaze in three stages. The second stage brings you deep; the third stage is a very powerful deepening exercise.

Stage 1: Just look up, which you will easily do with focused and sustained attention.

Stage 2: Deliberately look even farther up, as far up as it seems “natural”. You will begin to feel a little strain on the muscles controlling the eyes; it’s a little bit uncomfortable.

Stage 3: Look even farther up, with the focus of your gaze up inside your skull deep behind your forehead, where the pineal gland is. This is the third eye.

Doing this feels really weird, and I can only sustain it myself for a moment or two. But that’s all it takes. You will feel a tension in your forehead and in your brain and a mental plunging sensation—I don’t know how else to describe it. When you release your gaze, you will notice a major difference in your consciousness.