Hi Nanner-
Well, your new toy should be fun. I have a vaguely similar thing that can blink all the lights in a room according to some kind of music or tone generator input. My wife doesn't like the blinking lights, so they're purely academic, but the music and embedded frequencies seem useful. These things are often good for calming the nerves or setting a mood for study.

You haven't done drugs? Good for you. I spent about five years as a hippie. It wasn't a total waste, but it taught me that drugs are not a necessity, and, in the end, they get in the way. Only very inexperienced shamans use such things. The major value of a drug experience is not the experience itself, but that fact that it gives a sort of parallax perspective on the rest of life. That insight is available through other means.

The three classical stages, concentration, meditation and contemplation can be developed relatively easily. Concentration is the first requirement, and means that we must be able to focus on a topic of interest without getting side tripped. Various ways to do this are obvious, but most of us got this level of skill pounded into us in school.

Meditation adds focus at a level that begins to exclude the outside world. As we get into a book, or a topic of interest, we often tend to shut down our associations with the outside world. A person deep in the intricacies of a fascinating book, or trying to understand some academic topic, often will tune out the world to the extent that nearby people can talk but are totally ignored. It's as if attention has been turned away from the outside world. That gives a meditative state. We all have had this experience many times, but it is possible that it pased by unnoticed.

Contemplation, or samadhi, is the next stage of excluding the outer world. In this phase of awareness the usual definitions of self and others fall away and the world is viewed as a unity in which all definitions form a closed system, and we perceive it as a single system, rather than as a collection of objects. Everything suddenly makes sense. Then, as all the other definitions and attachments fall away there is the experience of "nothingness" - nirvastarka samadhi - which is both the beginning and the end. The personal mind at that point has abandoned ego-selfishness, and has instead become a manifestation of the Cosmic Consciousness as manifesting in this world. The difference from the preceeding level is that the meditator has ceased to have any interest in the everyday world and is deeply absorbed in whatever the topic of the day happens to be.

My experience tells me that most people have these experiences spontaneously. The  only difficulties is recognition and interpretation. An example is Pulsar's post a few weeks back where he went into meditation and discovered nothingness, as if he never existed. Yet, obviously, he was still there. This is the point at which we meet our origins at the instant of creation, and both project ourselves anew, and also reconcile our nature with God.

I used to give people things to focus on as exercizes for meditation. But in fact any appropriate topic that is deeply interesting is OK. Death, karma, the nature of sin and error, the afterlife, rebirth and similar topics are usually good. Bruce offers a Home Study book on soul retrieval that is useful, and at very worst will still generate good karma.

If you want more experiences, any hypnotist should be able to put you in trance. It feels about like being half awake on a lazy morning. A hypnotist can give the suggestion that you will place yourself in the same state. It's also possible to wander about the spirit world if you so desire, and requires only a suggestion to go there. My preference is to go through a prior lifetime and death, but this is a personal choice.

Classic references include "Patanjali's Yoga Sutras" and "Hatha Yoga Pradipika" - these are aimed at practical issues. Then your favorite author can guide you with regard to the mechanics. As one example, "Meditative States in Tibetan Buddhism" (1997 by Lati Rinbochay and Locho Rinbochay, Jeffrey Hopkins Translator - Wisdom Publications. This gives how to, and what to do in case of problems with the processes.

Have fun!
dave

Hi Nanner,

Your gizmo reminds me of  my husband (David )'s illness, myasthenia gravis.
it's like Parkinson's of the visual system, when one eye functions separately from the other when nerve impulses are dissarranged. (my wording.)  He used to be a jeweler and would use a loupe (single eye magnifying lense) and  shut the other eye to concentrate on small detail. So to me to try to forcibly disconnect the eyes from tracking together sounds dangerous. Because having them do it on their own without warning is awful.

Next time you're to see a medical person, why not ask them about "your David'?Maybe 'my David's' situation can be a helpful warning for you.

Love, Bets