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Other therapists are using the concept of altered states of consciousness that became familiar through the drug culture. Some are even using drugs. One of the best known of these researchers, Psychiatrist Stanislav Grof of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, is experimenting with LSD for dying patients. He has found that they progress through several stages. At the last they have mystical experiences that Grof recognizes as similar to those "described for millennia in various temple mysteries, initiation rites and occult religions." Such experiences, Grof concludes, are intrinsic to human nature and "suggest the possibility of bridging the gap between contemporary science and ancient wisdom."
Other experiments in altering consciousness have concentrated on alpha waves, a brain-wave rhythm often associated with states of relaxed alertness. Investigators believe that human beings can learn to produce these waves at will if they are guided by "biofeedback training," a system of recording brain waves and letting a subject know (by means of a light or other signal) whenever he succeeds in emitting alpha. Capitalizing on the widespread hunger for instant nirvana, commercial promoters are selling "alpha machines" for home use and opening "alpha training institutes." According to Psychologist Thomas Mulholland, chairman of the Bio-Feedback Research Society, these attract chiefly "the naive, the desperate and the superstitious."
Nevertheless, biofeedback is a real phenomenon. So is "visceral learning," a process of becoming aware of and controlling such usually unconscious and involuntary physiological processes as heartbeat, blood pressure, temperature and intestinal contractions. As with alpha waves, the teaching process consists of asking a subject to try to produce a particular bodily effect, then signaling him whenever he manages to do so.
One investigator in the field is Psychologist Neal Miller of Manhattan's Rockefeller University, who has had spectacular though temporary success in teaching a victim of serious hypertension to lower her blood pressure at will. (He points out, however, that similar efforts with other patients have failed.) At Topeka's Menninger Foundation, Psychologist Elmer Green is regularly successful in alleviating migraine headaches by teaching patients to increase the blood flow to their hands (as yet, he cannot explain why this works). Green has also tested Swami Rama, an Indian yogi who demonstrated his ability to stop his heart for 17 seconds. Like that of his colleagues, Green's research is motivated by a belief that human beings can assume responsibility for their own wellbeing. Ultimately, Green predicts, people will be able to stay healthy not by taking drugs but by practicing intensive exercises in self-awareness and body mastery. Whether or not this will be possible, the new research is bound to result in a better understanding of the complex, little-explored connections between biology and behavior and thus to reveal new facets of man's nature.