Universities around the globe and the U.S. government are trying to map the human brains, the tools to do so now a reality. But before such a mission was possible, people still wanted inside their heads, using whatever methods were at hand, even if they were deeply silly.
The article, “Flow Gently, Sweet Alpha,” published in a 1972 issue of Life, is a participatory journalism piece by Jane Howard about the biofeedback craze of the time. Howard travels to several locales–New York, Los Angeles and Laredo, Texas–having electrodes glued to her head, learning to “program her dreams,” taking imaginary excursions through cubes of metal and enrolling in a “Mind Control” course in search of enlightenment. Being hooked up to a biofeedback machine for 45 minutes cost $145 at the time. Jack Gariss, one of the L.A. spiritual gurus featured in the article, had an earlier career as a screenwriter, earning a credit for Cecile B. DeMille’s biblical blockbuster The Ten Commandments. An excerpt from the piece:
Mind Control does not use hardware. ‘Those machines are hopelessly obsolete already,’ one instructor told the 50 or so of us in my class. ‘We’re light years ahead of them. In these four days we’ll open up a channel that will make you feel like you can walk on water. You’d better start with puddles, though, until you’re used to being at your alpha level.’
The Silva Mind Control Institute of Laredo, Texas, was founded a year ago by a visionary electronics technician. ‘None of what you’ll learn here is new,’ our instructor told us in the New York City branch. ‘But José Silva is the first man in history to arrange these ideas in their proper sequence. It took him 26 years’ research.’
Mind Control has 50,000 graduates in 50 states and three foreign countries. In four days we would be graduates, too. We would learn all sorts of things. But first we had to stand up, one by one, and say what our zodiacal signs were, what we did for a living, and why we had come.
“I’m a Gemini and a barber, and I heard this course was really far out.”
“I’m a Serpico and a stockbroker, and I figured all this alpha stuff might give me insights about the market.”
“I’m a waitress, Pisces with Capricorn rising, and I’ll try anything once.”
“I’m a salesman and I don’t know anything about horoscopes, but my boss made me come.”
“I’m a Virgo and a ski instructor, and my mother gave me this course as a Christmas present.”
I said I was a Taurus (moon in Gemini) who wanted to learn to concentrate and relax.
“Close your eyes and take a deep breath,” our instructor would tell us during our conditionings. “Envision and repeat to yourself the number 5 three times.” Then 4 three times, and so on down to one. At one, he told us we were “entering a deeper, healthier level of mind, much deeper than before.”
Was this apha? Whatever it was, it felt good. At “my level,” I felt the way accomplished meditators claim to–as if a tidal wave were rushing through my forehead, sliding downward toward the spine, making leisurely spiraling loops along the way. Maybe I wasn’t walking on water, but I did feel more serene.
Phantasmagoric imagery appeared on what I was told was my “mental screen.” I saw coral reefs, mountain cabins, hotel rooms I’d occupied a decade ago, and the pattern on a painted cigarette box my mother had when I was a child. I heard a music box we’d had then, too. It was far more beguiling than a movie, finding all this richness lodged in my mind. I truly felt free of my usual trains of thought, so well trodden as seem almost paved.
But José Silva had not labored for nearly three decades just so we could see pretty pictures. Each conditioning had its topic and purpose. We were told how to sleep soundly, awaken refreshed, relax at will, and project healing energy onto our ailing friends from afar–not firsthand , because the laws about practicing medicine without a license.
We were told we could cancel out everything negative, but merely uttering the simple incantation “cancel, cancel.”•