Outline From Presentation "Intraterrestrial Intelligence"
I. Introduction
A. My Name Is Kaleb Smith - a consciousness researcher at the Neurophenomenology Lab at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California.
B. In the past year has been to try to identify one or more distinct states of subconscious perception as well as develop some method of reliably inducing them.
i. My belief is that there exist many bandwidths or “channels” of consciousness beneath that of our typical waking state and that many of these are capable of facilitating legitimate perceptions and even communication.
ii. My current pilot study explores the possibility of inducing one of the of the out-of-body experience, using hypnosis.
a) But before I begin to talk about research and theory, I think it would be good to describe some of the actual experiences that inspired me to pursue this area of study, to give the work a solid grounding in reality - well, as solid as we could hope studies of this freaky stuff could get!
b) To give just the rationalizations, without the actual experiences I was trying to hard to rationalize, would be like giving you a glass and no water to hold in it.
II. Background
A. 2003 - In the winter of 2003, my girlfriend was raped in her sleep. It happened at a party, she was slipped some sleeping pills by her friend's husband.
i. The rape seemed to trigger a powerful set of spiritual events.
ii. You know, it's a different part of self violated in sleep - with her conscious defenses lowered, it was her deeper, subconscious self that was hurt.
iii. She began to wail in her sleep, and leave her body at night - that hurt aspect of her self crying out, looking for help. B. The following night, while the two of us laid in bed talking, she suddenly cried out that she felt a weight on her chest and that her was paralyzed. She said she could feel it climbing on top of her, she began to cry afraid. I had no idea, equally confused and terrified. by what I have since learned is called an Incubus Attack or, in psychiatric circles, the Night Paralysis Hallucination.
C. Possession
i. Hand - Myoclonic Jerk
ii. Illness followed, body attacking self
a) Vision of woman in white “Demons hand Grows Within You”
iii. Studies of OBE and Incubus Attack D. OBE - “Get Back!”
i. legitimate perception of room
ii. additional subtle perceptions E. Woman in White - Entity of white light
i. light radiated across several levels of perception
a) Existed physically from a location in room, but perceived in the minds eye from same location.
b) Light carried emotional information, comforting warmth and love.
c) Light absorbed by wall, overwhelmed minds eye days later with “residual heat”
III. New Life Direction SLIDE 2
A. So, after these experiences, I began to struggle to make sense of what had happened and what still continued to happen as my unexplainable illness progressed.
i. I came to refer to these entities that interacted with me and my family as “Intra terrestrial Intelligence,” as in intelligent beings existing within discrete ranges of frequency above or below the narrow bandwidth of our visible spectrum. I will describe this idea more fully later, but would like to speak first about the basics...
B. SLIDE 3
i. That of Frequency, itself
a) I started to realize how all-encompassing this form of the wave truly was.
b) Crest and trough
c) I came to think in terms of scales of energy, grand crest and troughs governing all of observable nature. Duality: Life/death. Day/Night. Solid/Space. Surface/Depth. Each implying the birth and necessitating the death of the other, in oscillating cycles of rippling frequency. I rationalized that if all observable life is subject to this law of duality, it is safe to assume that those aspects of life which are unobservable are, likewise, composed of frequency and energy, however subtle or, as of yet, unmeasurable.
C. SLIDE 4 A Ripple...
i. All we know and observe of nature exists as that same waveform, as the traversal of conscious energy across a carrying medium.
a) So, by applying the energetic laws that govern all observable nature to the unobservable: say consciousness, the afterlife, or the subjective experience of shamanic trance, we can draw potentially-testable inferences and even linear representations from this premise that all scales of energy, observable or not, exists as radiating frequency. Vice versa, it can be said that the existence of a frequency implies energy traversing a medium.
b) Now try to keep that image of expanding rippling frequency in your mind, as you view this:
D. SLIDE 5 electroencephalography,
i. A breakthrough in understanding came for me when I realized the rippling frequency across the surface of the pond was the same as the rippling frequency of neuronal activation, spreading across the surface of our cortex.
ii. Brainwaves represent not just a single frequency, but a vibrant and noisy pool of many interacting frequency states from different functioning areas of the brain - it is raining on the pond.
iii. It is in the rare occurrence of when these many areas become harmonized, that is brainwave synchrony occurs, that the truly profound felt shifts in consciousness, thought, and perception occur.
iv. So, lets dive a bit into brainwave states, their meaning and their potential meaning...
E. SLIDE 6 Electro - encephalo - grapic bands.
i. We see here the 5 major bandwidths of consciousness.
a) I am sure all of you have seen the brainwave states at some point, Gamma, beta, alpha, theta, delta...
b) The divisions are crude and overly general, and most researchers I have found who devote extended study into the EEG states ended up discovering many additional distinct stages - some claiming 12 or more of these micro-states.
F. SLIDE 7 - GAMMA
i. Gamma is the rarest of the brainwave states, not typically experienced in our day to day waking consciousness. It represents some of the highest recorded frequencies of cortical activation
ii. A study by Lutz showed Long term Buddhist meditators experience powerful high amplitude gamma synchrony - that is, they induce a high frequency state of consciousness across many different areas of the brain.
iii. What is interesting is that the exact same states of consciousness achieved by Buddhist monks by decades of intense daily meditative practice are also achieved by simply drinking ayahuasca once.
a) Luna, Stuckey, and Lawson, studying ayahuasca ceremonies in Brazil, found Widely distributed cortical hyper-coherence, that is to say
b) Ayahuasca causes many areas of the brain fire at the same brainwave frequency
c) This makes sense given the profound synthestasia experienced during ayahuasca -- seeing the icaros, hearing the visions, feeling the lights and colors all occur while those different sensory areas of the brain are resonating together, at the same wavelength.
IV. SLIDE 8 - BETA AND ALPHA
A. We see BETA with the beta-states with strong, excited emotions such as fear, rage, or anxiety, as well as with alert attentiveness, selective attention, concentration, or anticipation.
B. The ALPHA state is linked to focus and imagery - that is it has a suppressive function which allows us to selectively filter out extraneous stimulus.
i. When we smoke a joint, this is “zone out” state - staring off and focusing on a single object or thought, a sort of “tunnel” cognition where all surrounding distractions are drowned out by alpha.
ii. Alpha has been of special interest to me, especially with my EEG studies of supposed mediums at the William James Center.
a) What is interesting is that, as they claimed the spirit entered their body to speak, we saw a FLOOD of high amplitude energy surge in the alpha band. It was not continuous, but seemed to serve as a sort of GATEWAY function, seen only during the entrance and exit of the entity into the body.
V. SLIDE 9 - THETA
A. Theta is amazing, it is where the ocean of subtle internal perceptions begin to intermingle with the external: known as
hypnagogic or transitional perceptions.
B. Delta is slow wave sleep and, like the other extreme, can be reached by experienced shamans or meditators.
VI. SLIDE 10 - MYOCLONIC JERK
A. Yet the most fascinating things occur along the lower range of alpha, extending into theta - the MYOCLONIC JERK. This is the twitch of the leg and, in the case of the possession, the gnarled claw taking control of the hand in place of the body paralysis.
B. The jerk occurs as we begin to lose awareness of our physical surroundings, the muscles of the body begin to release from motor control - which often presents as a feeling of falling.
VII. SLIDE 11 - MYOCLONIC GATE
A. My belief is that the twitch represents the edge of a unique bandwidth of consciousness, a discrete range in which our subtle or residual self may separate from the body.
i. With the body and residual self separate, I was paralyzed - the separation also served as a gateway through which a different entity could enter my body and take control.
ii. At the myoclonic gate, the outer physical self and the inner spiritual self may separate, experienced as a descent into a lower realm or a non-physical perception of the room and the body, or an out-of-body experience.
VIII. SLIDE 13 MS. Z out-of-body
A. In the fall, I will begin a pilot study attempting to show the legitimacy of these non-physical perceptions, perceptions of the room and of self made without the sensory organs.
B. Here is the experiment, as performed by my professor Dr. Charles Tart.
i. Ms. Z, the subject, claimed to leave her body several times a week, floating above bed.
ii. Dr. Tart placed 5 digit random number several feet above the bed, 4th night...
IX. SLIDE 14 SHAMANIC REALMS
A. My experience is that the science of consciousness can serve as an interpretive framework for the shaman's journey. His ascent and descent into realms of inner experience, and his interaction with intelligent conscious beings existing there in that “inner terrain,”
B. Descending out of body once, in the realm inbetween sleep and wake, I suddenly could hear two women talking - becoming aware of them suddenly, mid conversation. Amazed, I listend as they spoke of children....but moments later, there was a pause of several seconds, and then one of them said amazed “...He can hear us!”
C. As I speak with others, I learn these are not isolated or rare experiences, but occur to many people.
X. SLIDE 15 - RADIO
A. But what does it mean....
B. The interactions suggest that consciousness is not limited to observable physicality, but exist as an energetic sea extending above and below the narrow bands of the visible spectrum.
C. To simplify using analogy, our awareness could be thought of as a radio dial.
i. Descending down into sleep or trance, we descend slowly down through frequencies along a spectrum.
ii. Rather suddenly, we may come upon “stations,” whole bandwidths of words and consciousness existing as a realm of experience beneath our own.
iii. And perhaps as we learn to “tune” our perception and explore this expanse of frequency, we may learn our little station really never was the most popular!
XI. SLIDE 16 - A. Thank you.
i. Please feel free to contact me to learn more or take part in the research I mentioned.
Presented at the 2009 International Amazonian Shamanism Conference
A. My Name Is Kaleb Smith - a consciousness researcher at the Neurophenomenology Lab at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California.
B. In the past year has been to try to identify one or more distinct states of subconscious perception as well as develop some method of reliably inducing them.
i. My belief is that there exist many bandwidths or “channels” of consciousness beneath that of our typical waking state and that many of these are capable of facilitating legitimate perceptions and even communication.
ii. My current pilot study explores the possibility of inducing one of the of the out-of-body experience, using hypnosis.
a) But before I begin to talk about research and theory, I think it would be good to describe some of the actual experiences that inspired me to pursue this area of study, to give the work a solid grounding in reality - well, as solid as we could hope studies of this freaky stuff could get!
b) To give just the rationalizations, without the actual experiences I was trying to hard to rationalize, would be like giving you a glass and no water to hold in it.
II. Background
A. 2003 - In the winter of 2003, my girlfriend was raped in her sleep. It happened at a party, she was slipped some sleeping pills by her friend's husband.
i. The rape seemed to trigger a powerful set of spiritual events.
ii. You know, it's a different part of self violated in sleep - with her conscious defenses lowered, it was her deeper, subconscious self that was hurt.
iii. She began to wail in her sleep, and leave her body at night - that hurt aspect of her self crying out, looking for help. B. The following night, while the two of us laid in bed talking, she suddenly cried out that she felt a weight on her chest and that her was paralyzed. She said she could feel it climbing on top of her, she began to cry afraid. I had no idea, equally confused and terrified. by what I have since learned is called an Incubus Attack or, in psychiatric circles, the Night Paralysis Hallucination.
C. Possession
i. Hand - Myoclonic Jerk
ii. Illness followed, body attacking self
a) Vision of woman in white “Demons hand Grows Within You”
iii. Studies of OBE and Incubus Attack D. OBE - “Get Back!”
i. legitimate perception of room
ii. additional subtle perceptions E. Woman in White - Entity of white light
i. light radiated across several levels of perception
a) Existed physically from a location in room, but perceived in the minds eye from same location.
b) Light carried emotional information, comforting warmth and love.
c) Light absorbed by wall, overwhelmed minds eye days later with “residual heat”
III. New Life Direction SLIDE 2
A. So, after these experiences, I began to struggle to make sense of what had happened and what still continued to happen as my unexplainable illness progressed.
i. I came to refer to these entities that interacted with me and my family as “Intra terrestrial Intelligence,” as in intelligent beings existing within discrete ranges of frequency above or below the narrow bandwidth of our visible spectrum. I will describe this idea more fully later, but would like to speak first about the basics...
B. SLIDE 3
i. That of Frequency, itself
a) I started to realize how all-encompassing this form of the wave truly was.
b) Crest and trough
c) I came to think in terms of scales of energy, grand crest and troughs governing all of observable nature. Duality: Life/death. Day/Night. Solid/Space. Surface/Depth. Each implying the birth and necessitating the death of the other, in oscillating cycles of rippling frequency. I rationalized that if all observable life is subject to this law of duality, it is safe to assume that those aspects of life which are unobservable are, likewise, composed of frequency and energy, however subtle or, as of yet, unmeasurable.
C. SLIDE 4 A Ripple...
i. All we know and observe of nature exists as that same waveform, as the traversal of conscious energy across a carrying medium.
a) So, by applying the energetic laws that govern all observable nature to the unobservable: say consciousness, the afterlife, or the subjective experience of shamanic trance, we can draw potentially-testable inferences and even linear representations from this premise that all scales of energy, observable or not, exists as radiating frequency. Vice versa, it can be said that the existence of a frequency implies energy traversing a medium.
b) Now try to keep that image of expanding rippling frequency in your mind, as you view this:
D. SLIDE 5 electroencephalography,
i. A breakthrough in understanding came for me when I realized the rippling frequency across the surface of the pond was the same as the rippling frequency of neuronal activation, spreading across the surface of our cortex.
ii. Brainwaves represent not just a single frequency, but a vibrant and noisy pool of many interacting frequency states from different functioning areas of the brain - it is raining on the pond.
iii. It is in the rare occurrence of when these many areas become harmonized, that is brainwave synchrony occurs, that the truly profound felt shifts in consciousness, thought, and perception occur.
iv. So, lets dive a bit into brainwave states, their meaning and their potential meaning...
E. SLIDE 6 Electro - encephalo - grapic bands.
i. We see here the 5 major bandwidths of consciousness.
a) I am sure all of you have seen the brainwave states at some point, Gamma, beta, alpha, theta, delta...
b) The divisions are crude and overly general, and most researchers I have found who devote extended study into the EEG states ended up discovering many additional distinct stages - some claiming 12 or more of these micro-states.
F. SLIDE 7 - GAMMA
i. Gamma is the rarest of the brainwave states, not typically experienced in our day to day waking consciousness. It represents some of the highest recorded frequencies of cortical activation
ii. A study by Lutz showed Long term Buddhist meditators experience powerful high amplitude gamma synchrony - that is, they induce a high frequency state of consciousness across many different areas of the brain.
iii. What is interesting is that the exact same states of consciousness achieved by Buddhist monks by decades of intense daily meditative practice are also achieved by simply drinking ayahuasca once.
a) Luna, Stuckey, and Lawson, studying ayahuasca ceremonies in Brazil, found Widely distributed cortical hyper-coherence, that is to say
b) Ayahuasca causes many areas of the brain fire at the same brainwave frequency
c) This makes sense given the profound synthestasia experienced during ayahuasca -- seeing the icaros, hearing the visions, feeling the lights and colors all occur while those different sensory areas of the brain are resonating together, at the same wavelength.
IV. SLIDE 8 - BETA AND ALPHA
A. We see BETA with the beta-states with strong, excited emotions such as fear, rage, or anxiety, as well as with alert attentiveness, selective attention, concentration, or anticipation.
B. The ALPHA state is linked to focus and imagery - that is it has a suppressive function which allows us to selectively filter out extraneous stimulus.
i. When we smoke a joint, this is “zone out” state - staring off and focusing on a single object or thought, a sort of “tunnel” cognition where all surrounding distractions are drowned out by alpha.
ii. Alpha has been of special interest to me, especially with my EEG studies of supposed mediums at the William James Center.
a) What is interesting is that, as they claimed the spirit entered their body to speak, we saw a FLOOD of high amplitude energy surge in the alpha band. It was not continuous, but seemed to serve as a sort of GATEWAY function, seen only during the entrance and exit of the entity into the body.
V. SLIDE 9 - THETA
A. Theta is amazing, it is where the ocean of subtle internal perceptions begin to intermingle with the external: known as
hypnagogic or transitional perceptions.
B. Delta is slow wave sleep and, like the other extreme, can be reached by experienced shamans or meditators.
VI. SLIDE 10 - MYOCLONIC JERK
A. Yet the most fascinating things occur along the lower range of alpha, extending into theta - the MYOCLONIC JERK. This is the twitch of the leg and, in the case of the possession, the gnarled claw taking control of the hand in place of the body paralysis.
B. The jerk occurs as we begin to lose awareness of our physical surroundings, the muscles of the body begin to release from motor control - which often presents as a feeling of falling.
VII. SLIDE 11 - MYOCLONIC GATE
A. My belief is that the twitch represents the edge of a unique bandwidth of consciousness, a discrete range in which our subtle or residual self may separate from the body.
i. With the body and residual self separate, I was paralyzed - the separation also served as a gateway through which a different entity could enter my body and take control.
ii. At the myoclonic gate, the outer physical self and the inner spiritual self may separate, experienced as a descent into a lower realm or a non-physical perception of the room and the body, or an out-of-body experience.
VIII. SLIDE 13 MS. Z out-of-body
A. In the fall, I will begin a pilot study attempting to show the legitimacy of these non-physical perceptions, perceptions of the room and of self made without the sensory organs.
B. Here is the experiment, as performed by my professor Dr. Charles Tart.
i. Ms. Z, the subject, claimed to leave her body several times a week, floating above bed.
ii. Dr. Tart placed 5 digit random number several feet above the bed, 4th night...
IX. SLIDE 14 SHAMANIC REALMS
A. My experience is that the science of consciousness can serve as an interpretive framework for the shaman's journey. His ascent and descent into realms of inner experience, and his interaction with intelligent conscious beings existing there in that “inner terrain,”
B. Descending out of body once, in the realm inbetween sleep and wake, I suddenly could hear two women talking - becoming aware of them suddenly, mid conversation. Amazed, I listend as they spoke of children....but moments later, there was a pause of several seconds, and then one of them said amazed “...He can hear us!”
C. As I speak with others, I learn these are not isolated or rare experiences, but occur to many people.
X. SLIDE 15 - RADIO
A. But what does it mean....
B. The interactions suggest that consciousness is not limited to observable physicality, but exist as an energetic sea extending above and below the narrow bands of the visible spectrum.
C. To simplify using analogy, our awareness could be thought of as a radio dial.
i. Descending down into sleep or trance, we descend slowly down through frequencies along a spectrum.
ii. Rather suddenly, we may come upon “stations,” whole bandwidths of words and consciousness existing as a realm of experience beneath our own.
iii. And perhaps as we learn to “tune” our perception and explore this expanse of frequency, we may learn our little station really never was the most popular!
XI. SLIDE 16 - A. Thank you.
i. Please feel free to contact me to learn more or take part in the research I mentioned.
Presented at the 2009 International Amazonian Shamanism Conference