It's Time to Awaken: Monroe's Hemi-Sync

Robert Monroe (monroeinstitute.org); Dharma editor, Wisdom Quarterly

Hey, Big Cat, it's time to awaken! - But it feels so cozy to slumber! Just a few more aeons?

Scandinavians are very strange people.

My teacher once taught me the secret to her success, which surprised me greatly. She evolved so suddenly from struggling-to-meditate, to countersign, through the absorptions (the Eight Attainments), to the goal of insight. It seems not right that so many meditation teachers say to "have no goal."

It sure feels good not to, to just sit, and doing it that way can succeed for zen (dhyana, jhana, chana, seon, the absorptions) and eventual wisdom. But if one establishes stillness (samadhi) for the purpose setting up the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, which because of practicing Dependent Origination as an exercise, will deliver us to liberating-insight. The Truth, truth-truth, the ultimate-truth, that sets us free. What is that? That's intellect asking. The Truth is what's true. Who would be afraid of it? Who prefers delusion, darkness, confusion, and ignorance to clear-seeing of form, feeling, mind, and mind-objects?

Paddle when paddling, surf flow when surfing.

The "secret" to her sudden success? Binaural beats, particularly those developed by Robert Monroe of the Monroe Institute branded "Hemi-Sync." They really worked? They did for me, said she. We're tough enough; it's time to soften, men. Women, maybe some toughening is in order, just a tiny bit for balance. These things are possible in this very life. If they weren't, there would be no reason for Wisdom Quarterly to carry on. Thank you, Teacher.

NOTE: My teacher had a teacher, who was my other earlier teacher, an advanced expert in the ways of Buddhist meditation. Without that Teacher, binaural beats would not likely have been enough to realize these things and any kind of Buddhist-liberation. But without Monroe's research, there's good reason to believe she would not have able to attain these things so quickly as they happened. When our paramis ripen, the Teacher offered as an explanation, we are ready, if we practice and have the good fortune to have a good teacher with whom to practice. So practice. Practice, practice, practice but with sthira-sukha.