Nifty wire contacts dangle from my earlobes; I feel like an electronic drag queen. Another contact is pasted to the back of my skull. For fifteen minutes or so I squeeze out boops—this is a five-buck demonstration session at the Alphagenics Institute. The boops mark alpha waves: selected grunts and groans of my brain. The room is dark; my eyes are shut. I’m a competitive type, I figure I’m doing pretty good for a rookie. Some nice two-second boops. There’s a trick to it, roll your eyes up like a Momma doll on its back. Eye isometrics: it hurts a bit. Couple months of exercise and I can bench press two hundred pounds with my optic muscles.
But it’s a vicious cycle: Make the boop and your brain says, “Ha, that’s a good one,” and silence . . . the boop is gone. This negative feedback is intentional: meant to prepare you for alpha production under stress. There’s a contradiction between relax and concentrate. And yet there is no contradiction. As the Buddhists say, “Emptiness makes the cup useful.” But emptiness requires a conscious effort.
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