Read Part 1

So. Where were we in the discussion of my personal computerized neuro-enlightenment madness? Oh yes, we were about to speculate on contributing factors: exactly how a new computer and online interaction may have brought on a burst of neural re-organization akin to enlightenment.

Here goes:

Sudden Exposure To New and Different Perspectives

I’d already had a pretty interesting mental reorganization as I learned basic DOS structure, and some early Visual Basic programming.

But accessing the Internet itself did more to broaden my perspectives, exposing me directly to people, ideas and cultures I’d otherwise never have encountered. I wasn’t just reading about them; I was interacting with people whose backgrounds spanned spanned generations, geography, income and educational levels. Mixed in was exposure to spiritual systems ranging from psychotic cults like Heaven’s Gate to traditional Buddhism.

Instead of looking on as a spectator, I was trying to put myself in these peoples shoes, to understand their perspectives and what made them tick. All that learning no doubt created a new neural pathway or two (thousand).

Removing Familiar Aspects Of Communication:

Chatting online meant shifting how I processed communication.
The information conveyed in person through facial expression and body language was missing - so was tone of voice, accents, emphasis. I had to learn to read people differently, to “hear” their voice in my head even when I had no idea what their voice sounded like, or what they looked like. I had to learn to interpret their emotion and intent without familiar clues.

This meant developing new interpretive skills, learning to exclude some accustomed interpretive skills - sort of like spending the weekend blindfolded will cause you to develop better listening skills. As a result, I’ve no doubt that my brain was forced to engage in new ways.

It also meant developing a new type of non-judgmental attitude: if I could not read their emotional intent and tone, I had to withhold judgement, and not leap to conclusions.

An Experience of Sameness/Oneness:

The early days of online chat had no mySpace equivalent. There were no profile pictures, fancy fonts, or avatars. Usernames were short, and usually unremarkable. Women were a minority who rarely identified themselves, so we were largely gender-neutral.

Everyone “looked” the same, everyone “spoke” in Arial Black, everyone’s eyes rested at nearly identical screens. There was a powerful feeling of overwhelming anonymity, sameness, shared experience, a strong and disorienting sense of connectedness without form.

A Sense Of Interconnectivity, Mind-to-Mind:

That sense of connectedness without form was linked to the removal of the visual and auditory cues in conversation.

My mind seemed incapable of understanding how a box could communicate emotions, information and more, without physical interaction.

Sure, I understood telephones and television, I’d grown up with them. But that knowledge didn’t seem to translate automatically to this new experience of “talking without talking”. Intellectually, I understood the process, but the practical bits of my mind seemed only to grasp that we were communicating without form, as if directly mind to mind. Trippy

Non-Judgemental Attitudes:

One of my first stops online was to a writer’s group. From them, I learned the art of free-writing. Free-writing amounts to forcing a rapid, focused stream of consciousness, a trick to move past the critical editing ego. To succeed at it, you have to set aside judgement of your work, and just write.

This was new to me, the idea that something could just “be”. Not be good, or bad, not be in need of editing, not be brilliant or stupid - but just “be”.

I would turn off my monitor as I typed, so I couldn’t see to edit. The result was a sort of typing into “nothingness”. I didn’t write *for* anyone, I didn’t write with a point or goal, I just wrote. It was as if my audience was the universe, the universe was receiving it as I typed, and the universe was non-judgemental.

In hindsight, I can see this as moving past the ego and sense of self, learning to just “be”

Double Trippy.

Trance States And A New Sense Of Detachment:

Before my newfangled 386sx, I’d always written long hand. I’d enter page after page in my old computer for editing, but I wrote with pen and paper.

Now that my computer could keep up with me, I started writing on it. As anyone doing a lot of typing knows, it creates a type of trance state, similar to driving familiar roads.

At once, writing seemed to come to me as naturally as speaking outloud. Between the free-writes, IM’s and chat rooms, I was communicating through my *fingers* rather than my voice. No one could see my hands move, and yet, they “heard” what I said. Again, it created a strange, trancelike disconnected sense of connectedness

Single Pointed Attention/Focus:

The contemplative, single pointed attention on the computer screen encourages a focused trance state itself. Disciplined, meditative contemplation, and something I learned as effortless concentration, are taught as basic skills in Bhuddhism and variousr mystical traditions.

It was also the state induced in many of us as we sat at the computer, back when our computers crashed if we asked them to multitask — completely, singlemindedly focused on our screens.

Trance and Brainwave Entrainment:

This is the shakiest of my ideas - but I am curious about it.

The old CRT monitors had discernable flickers, with refresh rates between 50-75 hz. It’s always seemed likely to me that sitting in front of that old monitor (which I curiously loved) may have been a form of brainwave entrainment.

If so, it would have been in the gamma range - which is associated with perception, consciousness, and connecting different regions of the brain. It’s also a brainwave pattern shown to be unusually dominant in the Tibetian monks that have been studied by neurologists.

Combined with the presumably lower brainwave states I’d expect in “typing trances” and the sort of visualization process that often goes on during chat, I’d think that could create a pretty powerful brainwave cocktail - one very similar to brainwave patterns seen in shamanic experiences (A deep trance state, in which one remains aware and clear minded)

In Summary?

Working with the computer (and especially going online with the computer) exposed me to a wealth of new experiences and perspectives: experiences and perspectives that did not fit with the views I’d developed of the world around me. These new views were accompanied by new skills, and time spent in unintentional periods of altered brainwave states. The combination almost certainly forced my brain to create new neural patterns - patterns of thought, which, in hindsight, are startlingly similar to enlightenment.

Like enlightenment, the changes seem to be long term, perhaps even permanent. I simply don’t *think* the same way I did before.

I had a point, somewhere, but it escapes me for now. This is a complex and in depth subject I’m somewhat regretting getting into, but now that I’ve started, there’s nothing for it but plowing through, I suppose!

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MindTweak: “When you put your hand to the plow, you can’t put it down until you get to the end of the row.” — Alice Paul

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