Measuring Consciousness

 Consciousness is defined as state of awareness, leading to knowledge, introspection, experiencing phenomena and mystical moments.

When we measure brainwaves, it seems we are measuring consciousness as recognized by the patterns and rhythms braincells make when communicating with each other.

Different abilities are associated with these different states of consciousness/patterns, and we can control which states we are in to some extent. 

We CAN control how and when we enter those conscious states, when we want to use them to make changes, to achieve something, improve our condition, find our purpose.

Think of it, we can choose to manipulate the electrical waves in our brain! When we want to accomplish something, we can choose to Mobilize our Conscious Mind to achieve it.

There are scientific explanations for how this works, but it still seems like magic to me.

The EEG machine measures brainwaves by quantifying how many marks are made per inch on the graph. As the # of marks decline, the quieter the brain and the more efficient it works.

BETA waves are associated with alertness, lots of incoming stimuli, concentration, anxiety, fear, stress. BETA can be a noisy state of alertness. The brain is processing peripheral vision, sounds, extraneous data, etc. The things you are focused on and the things you are not focused on.

ALPHA waves are associated with a feeling of wellbeing, relaxation, light trance/meditation, enhanced learning, indicated by increased serotonin production, distracting stimuli reduced.

                                                                                                                                                THETA waves are the target of brainwaves we want to control.

                                                                                                                                                 Theta waves are associated with REM sleep and dreaming, increased learning and memory, deep meditative states, hypnogogic imagery and trance, daydreaming, ‘Flow State’, and be able to access the unconscious.    We can all recognize this as the state we are in when we are so immersed in something like a book, movie, game, task, that everything else just falls away.                                                                                                                                                  I have a story about this very Theta memory phenomenon, and a dream, but I must preface it with the fact that dreams are symbolic and abstract and yet they can be strangely literal. A symbolic dream gesture can represent a much larger experience, like putting several documents into a file.                                                                                                                                                   I used to work with a very bright woman, a science teacher, who had very bright children. One of her daughters almost always got perfect scores on tests (SAT), and had a ‘photographic’ dream memory in that if she had a certain dream at night, she would remember everything she learned in school that day.

In the dream she was facing a large wall of drawers, like those lovely Shaker built in bedroom walls of drawers.

She would pull out a thread from her brain, very Harry Potter and the Pensive; open the drawer marked with the name of the subject of the thread, and put the thread into the drawer. As long as she had this dream, she retained all that knowledge from her classes that day. 

Metaphor: Storage; Symbolically storing knowledge.

THETA and DREAMS are recorded during REM sleep, a high functioning state of consciousness. 

The object is to achieve and then direct this state of consciousness during wakefulness.

DELTA brainwaves happen during the deepest state of dreamless sleep. Vital to healing daily dings, HGH and Prolactin are released, janitor cells roam and repair.

Sleep hygiene is important (side bar).