QA193 QUESTION: There is, in the sciences and in psychological research, a thing called biofeedback, in which machines are used to monitor brain waves and galvanic skin reactions. This has been in use for some time, but there are now new uses being made in medicine to help people cure psychosomatic diseases such as colitis, ulcers, migraine headaches. And I wondered if something like this might not be also perhaps useful to people on a path such as ours?

ANSWER: Anything that is helpful can be useful provided that it is seen as a symptom removal, and that the symptom removal not be abused so as not to get to the manifestation that is a clue to where work is needed.

QUESTION: I thought of it more as an aid to awareness.

ANSWER: Yes. It depends on how it is being used. If it is used to complement, aid and help more awareness, then it is wonderful. If it is used to remove a symptom and let it go at that, it would be destructive, from the overall point of view.

QA199 QUESTION: I’d like to know about using biofeedback to get to the alpha state. What does the Guide think of this?

ANSWER: These are just words and different terminology. Such words in our opinion create limited and closed attitudes. It becomes a thing which you want to attain. And then the thing becomes another grasping. The state you speak about is a very natural process.

You need to follow through, going into your inner being with great honesty, with accepting yourself, and allowing yourself to express what is there, and not the grabbing and grasping for a state that often tries to bypass the unpleasant self-recognitions and the experience of residual painful feelings, or the going through of fear – this has to be done if it is genuine. Then the truth, the cosmic feeling – which we’ll talk about in the next lecture [Lecture #200 The Cosmic Feeling] – the true awareness of reality, and the experience of ultimate reality will come, whatever name you may give to it.

It comes first with interruptions. You gain and lose it by degrees. Little by little it becomes your home ground. Other methods can be helpful tools in addition to the unavoidable work that the Path here presents you with – facing of the self in all aspects, the dealing with feelings one usually does not want to deal with.

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