The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness

When I read the January issue of Discover Magazine, I found a fascinating article about an author’s journey to discover the familiar and less familiar states of consciousness. The article was titled “How To Sleep Like a Hunter-Gatherer”, with the intriguing subtitle of “Not all people sleep in ‘giant sleep machines,’ like we do.” It was an excerpt from the book The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness by Jeff Warren

It was a provocative article and I had read it shortly before Dwayne asked me if I’d be interested in writing a book review. I had planned on reading The Head Trip anyway, so I told him yes.

Started Having Second Thoughts

The book seemed so interesting from the beginning. However, I was starting to have second thoughts when I still hadn’t finished the first chapter after almost a month. Quite honestly, I was starting to consider choosing a different book. However, I’m so glad I kept reading. By the middle of the book, I was convinced that The Head Trip may be one of the best ten books I’ve read in the last year. By the end of the book, I was convinced that this book is among the ten most interesting books I’ve ever read.

Let me put this into some context: When I look at my list of favorite books, they typically deal with one of two topics: 1) The spiritual aspects of how we live and work, both from the cognitive brain hardware aspects, but also the thinking software perspective. Most of these books have inspired me to actually do something different. 2) Books that talk about big, big ideas: ideas so big that they take the reader on an almost psychedelic journey of ideas. (I include my list of top ten books at the bottom of this article.)

The Head Trip spans both of these favorite categories of mine. In this book, the author takes us along on his journey to personally discover, experience and chronicle all the known states of consciousness. He starts with the sleeping states (the hypnagogic, the slow wave, the Watch, the REM dream, the lucid dream, and the hypnopompic) and then goes into the waking states (the trance, the daydream, the SMR, the Zone, the pure consciousness event).

The first thing that I noticed while reading the book is the author’s sense of burning curiosity that propels this incredible (and not easy) journey. Furthermore, he has an astounding ability to record his perceptions along the way. Upon reflection, this is quite a feat: how can someone writing about what it feels like to fall asleep actually be interesting? After reading his chronicle, I was not only interested, but riveted!

During most of the chapters, I felt like I was being pulled into this incredible adventure, with the author serving as a tour guide on a frontier that we’re only vaguely aware of. And I felt that to even be on this frontier requires the help of someone like the author, to bring the sights into visibility and focus.

By the time I completed the second chapter, I found myself riveted by his descriptions of sleeping and dreaming. By the fourth chapter, I became dazzled, and started to share his sense of wonder and adventure, already starting to make plans of how I could replicate his journey. By the tenth chapter, I had dog-eared almost twenty pages so I could go back and generate a proper TODO list. By the end of the book, I had already called a neurobiologist to see if I could get training on controlling my theta and SRB waves, and find out how much insurance will cover (the answer in my case, it turns out, is 70%).

I believe that it is appropriate that the author used the metaphor of a journey to frame his book, complete with a passport stamp at the end of each chapter. It is an effective metaphor, because as a reader, I am already starting to prepare my own itinerary.

I've decided to on the “Top Ten List” format to structure this review. I’ve listed the top five surprises and revelations I had while reading his book.

Surprise 1: The real value of sleeping enough, and the strange segmented sleep

Sleep researchers have found that amazing things happen when people get enough sleep. In a series of experiments where people are deprived of artificial light for long periods of time, researchers found that people will first tend to catch up on sleep, as if to pay back any sleep deficit. And then they settle into a pattern where they are sleeping 7-9 hours per night.

What I found astonishing was how the subjects described their sense of well-being. They typically reported feelings that their days becoming more intense: “colors were more vivid, the air more crisp, their consciousness was crystal clear. Their testimony was so compelling, said Wehr, it made him wonder whether ‘any of us know what it is like to be truly awake.”

But, even more amazing, sleep researchers have found that another strange state of consciousness emerges after several weeks. After 2-3 weeks without artificial lighting, subjects’ sleep will divide into two periods, divided by a state called the Watch, a state of semi-wakeful contemplation.

Interestingly, hundreds of descriptions of this state can be found in literature written before the invention of artificial lighting (e.g., Homer’s Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, Robert Louis Stevenson, etc.) It was often described as a period of reflection and relaxed alertness (and also, apparently, a common time to have sex).

The author describes his experiences with segmented sleep, and describes his hyper-alert state during waking hours, like a “plucked guitar string.”

Holy cow! There is a whole level of awareness and energy that we can derive just from sleeping more. Talk about a something that seems worthwhile to experience!

Surprise 2: The lab experiments behind lucid dreaming

Lucid dreaming describes the state when the dreamer is not only aware that he or she is in a dream, and but can then, to some extent, control their actions and surroundings in the dream. The experimental breakthrough that legitimized research in this area was when Dr. Stephen LaBerge in 1978, in controlled laboratory conditions, was able to repeatedly enter the REM dreaming state.

In the experiment, he was able to recognize that he was in a dream (i.e., “Oh, I just woke up in the lab. No, I’m not! I’m actually only dreaming that I’m back in the lab!”), and then while remaining in the dream state, deliberately signal to his research partner in the lab through up/down eye-motions (i.e., “I am dreaming. So, I will signal my research collaborator by moving my eyeballs three times, which he will be able to detect.”)

Through these experiments, he and his collaborator (Lynn Nagel) were able to confirm the existence of this special type of consciousness and awareness while dreaming. Since then, there has emerged a group of practitioners who practice lucid dreaming. One of the appeals is that for the dreamer, experiences are perceived similarly by the brain, whether they occur in a dream or in reality. Feelings reported often include heightened states of mindfulness, as well as being vivid and exultant.

What I found astonishing is that practitioners find that they often catch themselves being tricked by the brain into thinking they are in reality, when in fact they are dreaming. Lucid dreamers learn to constantly question, “Is this reality, or am I only just dreaming?” To question reality, the dreamer must always test reality, looking for key giveaways, such as light switches not working when toggled quickly, or digital clocks not advancing. Why? The dream state seem unable to replicates mechanical actions correctly.

What? Perceived reality not always being what it seems? It’s like The Matrix, but in real life!

Surprise 3: The extent to which the brain programs the mind

Studies have repeatedly shown how much influence cognition can have on the body. But, the author gives an example that I have personally experienced. Certain people have a tendency to wake up right before their alarm clock goes off. What is strange is that this holds true even on those days when they have to wake up at an unusually early time. In other words, they set their alarm clock for 3:30am, and they still wake up at 3:27am! In other words, the cognition that we need to wake up early seems to preprogram a set of chemical release that makes us wake up early.

Amazing! Even when we don’t consciously intend to pre-program our body, such as to wake up early, our bodies often chemically pre-program our bodies for us!

Surprise 4: There are tools to help increase focus

There is an increasingly accepted field called neurofeedback that is used for children diagnosed with ADD. It is predicated on the observation that certain brainwaves are critical for focusing, such as the lowered theta and elevated SMR levels. Researchers confirmed that these levels are reversed in ADD patients, and is coincident with impulsiveness, leaping from task to task, and hyperactivity.

Amazingly, simple operant training (like how Pavlov trained the dog to drool by ringing a bell) can be used to create more focused states. The author actually goes through 40 training sessions – although he makes little progress in the first 30 sessions, he finally makes a breakthrough that resulted in a friend commenting that he seemed more relaxed. He cites other people expressing far greater effects, such as feeling like “a changed man,” “becoming aware of things outside her own head: she could hear more sounds, feel sensation she hadn’t noticed before, feeling more alert and upbeat.”

The author describes his struggle to achieve his breakthrough in the allotted 40 sessions, but quotes Martin Seligman, former president of the American Psychological Association, on the “dirty little secret of biological psychiatry is that every single drug in the psycho-pharmacopia is palliative. That is, all of them are symptom suppressors, and when you stop taking them, you’re back at square one.”

What I found so intriguing is that there are the curative approaches, such as antibiotics or trained self-regulation such as neurofeedback, which make a lasting impact on how we feel and how we think.

Surprise 5:  Milestones to the Pure Consciousness Event, and strange utterances from skeptics

As an occasional meditation practitioner, I was aware of the amount of research that has been done on Buddhist meditation, but was astounded by the amount of research that has been adapted from Visuddhimagga (“the Path of Purification”), as it serves as a rigorously objective chronicle of thousands of years of meditation practice. Considerable work has been done confirming and replicating the path of meditation practitioners to achieve the PCE state.

Combine this with the fact that the brain is incredibly adaptable: the visual areas of the brain in blind people get taken over by tactile processing, and London taxi drivers increase the size of their hippocampus the longer they work.

In the same way, meditation changes the mind, to the extent that the author suggests that meditation not only helps achieve altered states, but altered traits! The author describes the levels of progression that many meditation practitioners and scientists have been able to repeatedly confirm of achieving mindfulness, to equanimity, to a cessation of consciousness.

I’ve read books on this topic before, the author presents the background and path better than any I’ve read. And it includes some very surprising sources, including Daniel Goleman (Mr. Emotional Intelligence) and Paul Ekman (famous for his groundbreaking research on facial expressions and emotion).

He describes Paul Ekman’s (a very distinguished and skeptical scientist) surprising experience: “He was so impressed by his short private session he and his daughter with the Dalai Lama that afterward he started up something called the Extraordinary Persons Project to investigate ‘the transformative quality of interactions with extraordinary beings.’.. The encounter, Ekman explained later, was what ‘some people would call a mystical, transforming experience… I was inexplicably suffused with physical warmth during those five to ten minutes… I felt a goodness I’d never felt before in my life, all the time I sat there…” He then describes that after a lifetime of erupting anger, after his meeting, his flare-ups ceased. “I believe that physical contact with that kind of goodness can have a transformative effect.” (!!!)

This borders on the woo-woo, as are some other books on my favorite list. But given this kind of substantiation, it reinforced to me that there is something in this journey that makes it worthwhile destination!

In summary

In writing this book review, I found myself dusting off some of my favorite books I’ve read and recommitting myself to increasing my mindfulness and meditation practices. The book reinforced the value of some very pragmatic steps we can take to increase our awareness of the world we live in, and be more cognizant of how the brain (hardware and software) affects how we think.

Even if I never achieve the Post Consciousness Event, even reading about others achieving it inspires me with a sense of awe and wonder. And to me, that has very spiritual aspects, as well as being inherently a joyful and jubilant learning experience.

Some of my favorite books in this area

Brain hardware and software (from scientifically rigorous to increasingly woo-woo):

• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (by David Allen)
• The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement (by Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt)
• A General Theory of Love (by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini), Richard Lannon)
• Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind Can Heal the Heart (by Tara Bennett-Goleman)
• Find Your Focus Zone: An Effective New Plan to Defeat Distraction and Overload (by Lucy Jo Palladino)
• Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life (by Steven Johnson)
• Don't Just Do Something, Sit There: A Mindfulness Retreat (by Sylvia Boorstein)
• Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief (by Andrew Newberg, Eugene D'Aquili, Vince Rause)
• Buddhism Plain and Simple (by Steve Hagen)
• The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe (by Lynne Mctaggart)

Mind expanding ideas:

• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (by Robert Pirsig)
• Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time (by Dava Sobel)
• Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea (by Charles Seife)
• Distress (by Greg Egan)
• Accelerando (by Charles Stross)

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About Gene Kim;
Gene loves the idea of joyful and jubilant learning, especially about the software and hardware aspects of cognition, and the biological basis of elevated states of awareness. You can read about his journey of becoming trained as a Theory of Constraints Jonah at http://tocjourney.typepad.com.