Mind Machines Mean No-Sweat Serenity

For many moons, you have traveled the road of inner knowledge, seeking serenity, wisdom and the best no-load mutual funds. Long and hard you have chanted and meditated and nibbled abhorrent tofu, and at last you have come upon His Nirvana-ness, a beaming Bhagwan, who sits beneath a sacred fig tree.

Bhagwan is carrying cream rinse - says he needs it 'cause his hair gets weird after a session in the flotation tank. And he's wearing - can this be real? - ski goggles and headphones.

``Oh, wondrous guru,'' you say. ``I have traveled so far to find enlightenment! I have nibbled abhorrent tofu and sat on rocks watching the river flow until the circulation in my extremities ceased. Am I almost there?''

Bhagwan knows the answer. He snaps his fingers, and a limo appears.

``Shed your sarongs and sandals, my friend,'' the guru tells you, sounding alarmingly like Ricardo Montalban. ``These are the 1990s. Nirvana lies at the brain spa!''

No, the above scenario never happened, as far as we can tell.

But is it a vision of the future? A nightmare? A hoax?

Those questions today are drawing more and more attention as bliss-seekers from Seattle to New York City are tuning in, trying out - and buying up - the latest technologies offered at dozens of ``brain spas'' around the country.

``Mind machines,'' the new gizmos are called. ``Brain machines,'' ``light-sound machines'' and, somewhat jokingly, ``God boxes,'' are other names for them.

No larger than your average Kleenex box, mind machines are meditation inducers that come equipped with goggles or glasses that emit tiny beams of light, and headphones that carry synthesized background tones.

For reasons that no one precisely understands, exposure to rhythmic sound and light transports many people into near-instant meditative trances - and mind machines deliver a perfected version of this process.

``The lazy path to enlightenment,'' one manufacturer proudly proclaims them.

A 30-minute session once a day or less, devotees say, can help improve memory, learning abilities and concentration, while relieving stress, headaches, depression, smoking, overeating, substance abuse and other addictions.

The new rage for New Agers, mind machines are the main attraction at about two dozen brain spas or ``mind gyms,'' where meditation is the No. 1 goal, followed closely by rotating on tables, floating in tanks and listening to crickets.

They're the Jiffy Lubes of the karma repair movement; the drive-up windows of the cosmic consciouness craze. Just a decade ago, only Woody Allen could have dreamed it possible.

``We call this mind fitness,'' said Dan Perl, owner of the New York Mind Fitness Center, located near the heart of the world's stress capitol: Wall Street. Perl caters to his stockbroker- and business-types by offering no-muss, no-fuss relaxation - $59 for a six-session package.

No longer must the stressed-out spend years in meditation, fans say. Clients can race in, lie back, hook up to mind machines and instantly find peace.

``We're promoting them as the next logical step after physical fitness,'' said Perl. ``My clients say it's healthier and a lot more relaxing to go see Dan and `get zapped' then go get a beer.''

``Getting zapped'' may offer momentary relief from stress, critics agree. But nothing outside oneself - and certainly no machine - can help speed up the arduous, step-by-step and ultimately profound search for nirvana.

The gadgets, critics say, accentuate some of the sorriest aspects of the U.S. culture - we want things painless, we want them easy and we want them now.

``I see this as a reflection of our nation's search for an `instant fix,' '' said Albert Carlin, associate professor at the University of Washington department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. ``At best, it's a lot less dangerous than alcohol or cocaine.''

Robert Austin of Synetic Systems in Seattle and other manufacturers warn that people with epilepsy or seizure disorders, brain injuries, toxemia, light sensitivities or mental illnesses like schizophrenia, should not use electronic meditation devices without a doctor's permission.

But isn't no-sweat serenity better than no serenity at all?

In New York's SoHo district, hundreds who think so flock to Syncro-Energize, a sound-and-light center marked by the smell of incense, the sound of chirping crickets and the choice of futon, Japanese bio-magnetic sleeping pad, water bed or bunk bed. Headgear at Synchro-Energize includes a third eye in the middle of the forehead.

At the Altered States Float Center and Mind Gym in Los Angeles, $30 buys one hour on a number of harmony-helpers, including: The Synchro-Energizer, a ``mind machine'' that emits a mild electromagnetic field; the ``Graham Potentializer,'' an electromagnetically charged table that clients lie on while it rotates; and the ``Hemi-Sync'' synthesizer, which allegedly creates inner harmony by making the left and right brain lobes broadcast on the same frequency.

In the Altered States ``Star Chamber,'' clients get to see 900 reflections of themselves under flashing strobe lights.

``It trains you to go into the trance state with your eyes open,'' said Keith Merryman, facility coordinator, whose clients include Robert Downey Jr., Ally Sheedy and a number of other stars. ``Ultimately, it frees you from body consciousness.''

Altered States also offers sensory deprivation flotation tanks: womblike vesicles that leave clients suspended and weightless in a dense soup of salt water (Cream rinse afterward comes highly recommended; the salt makes your hair clot.)

``With this type of technology, we can put ourselves back into balance - it's like nervous-system aerobics,'' said Scott Menge, an owner of Seattle's main brain spa, the Comfort Zone Relaxation Spa at 86 Pine Street Courtyard.

For $16 to $40, the Comfort Zone offers stress-busting massage, flotation tanks, whirlpools or mind-machines, which Menge sells, too. The East West Bookshop, 6417 Roosevelt Way N.E., also sells mind machines, or rents them for $5 a session.

The price: about $295 for small portable machines and $895 or more for luxury models.

``Humans have always had the need to be soothed, to be tranquilized, to be put to sleep or whatever,'' said Menge. He believes he's used the machines 2,500 times and says he's never felt more capable or energized.

``We've always sought a way of getting out of ourselves,'' he said. ``And unfortunately, a lot of the ways we choose are bad for us and have a terrible long-term health effect.''

Using the machines, ``gives you the support you need to say, well, I really don't have to do those kinds of things,'' he said. ``And isn't this a lot better than a red-wine hangover three times a week?''

But how does it actually feel?

Put on headphones, pull on goggles (cheaper models use sunglasses), close your eyes.

Instantly, you are trapped inside a TV set gone haywire, only the TV set is your brain. Colors throb, mutate and pulse in a kind of Day-Glo car wash of color - blues, yellows, greens, psychedelic pinks. Fireworks burst inside your synapses and fade somewhere left of your ear. The rock group Pink Floyd comes to mind.

The background sound is adjustable. Some machines, like the MindsEye Plus, offer up to 16 different computerized sound and light programs. The noise this reporter experienced was something akin to a helicopter in the Kingdome.

``The machine is basically a computer with a complete stereo synthesizer inside,'' said MindsEye Plus creator Austin of Synetic System, a business based out of his North Seattle home.

The pulsing noise and lights induce something called ``entrainment,'' Austin said, in which brain waves follow the stimulation down a path of ever-slower frequencies.

The beta waves of tense-adult wakefulness are said to give way to alpha waves of aware tranquility, theta waves of meditative trances, and delta waves of deepest, dreamless slumber.

Inventors, meanwhile, are racing to create ever-more-affordable and sophisticated machines. In a future they dream about, millions of honchos and health-conscious Americans use ``God boxes'' to keep their brains tuned.

Scientific evidence to support manufacturers' claims, for the present, remains slim.

``There is a great deal of hype in this field - claims about how you can turn on, go into orbit, attain a different state of consciousness,'' Lynn Henriksen, co-founder of the Neurotechnologies Research Institute in Sausalito, told East West magazine. Henriksen said she personally has been impressed with the machines, but noted that neither her institute's research on them, nor any long-term definitive studies, have yet to be concluded.