 not really capture the actual
experience of insect eyesight—they only indicate what a human
being might see if he looked through several camera lenses at the
same time. In reality, the eye of a horsey is divided into 20,000
separate eye-cell clusters. Each one responds either to a very specic
wavelength of light or to certain chemicals oating in the air. As a
result, the picture of the world processed by a horsey’s nervous
system is inconceivable to us (what does it mean to “see” a chemical
in the air, anyway?).
A porpoise’s brain is almost as large as a human one, but 80
percent of it is devoted to processing sounds. Porpoises, whales, and
dolphins have remarkable hearing; some species are able to detect
one another’s “songs” through miles of water. The map of a
porpoise’s ear will tell me what kind of eardrum it has, and if I look
at the minute hair cells inside  the ear, I will see relatives of the cells
in my inner ear. All this similarity of structure is misleading,
however, because the porpoise’s experience is not understandable
by the human mind, no matter how good the map.
Even to use the word “hearing” is suspect. Hearing to a porpoise
is a kind of sonar, like a bat’s, that brings back three-d imensional
images closer to sights than sounds. A porpoise can “hear” how
large a shark is and in what direction it is moving. Actually, I
shouldn’t even venture this crude guess; for all I know, a porpoise
can “hear” that it is summer, that the sun is low on the horizon, that
a grouper is gray, or that Mars is tilted on its axis.
Looking at Sounds
If all perceptio n is personal, where do the “real” sights, sounds,
smells, tastes, and textures begin? We trust our eyes to see “real”
photons and our ears to hear “real” vibrations in the air, but it is
easy to show that this trust rests upon a very shaky foundation. In
his penetrating book on the world of the deaf, Seeing Voices,
neurologist Oliver Sacks tells the strange tale of David Wright, an
Englishman who thought he could hear until he “saw” that he was
deaf.Wright had lost his hearing gradually in early childhood and was
not stone deaf until the age of seven. Since he had been born with
normal hearing, the young Wright had already mastered speech and
was used to hearing people talk. This made it hard for him to detect
that he was being shut out of the hearing world: “From the very rst
my eyes had unconsciously begun to translate motion into sound.
My mother spent most of the day beside me and I understood
everything she said. Why not? Without knowing it I had been
reading her mouth all my life.” In other words, when his mother
spoke, Wright found himself unable to tell that her voice was not
real, since like the rest of us, he “heard” it. “It was an illusion that
persisted even after I knew it was an illusion,” he recalls. “My
father, my cousins, everyone I had known retained phantasmal
voices.”
Wright’s brain instantly and automatically turned the sight of
moving lips into sounds. These “projections of habit and memory,”
as he called them, lasted until he left the hospital where it had been
nally determined that his hearing loss was total and irreversible.
Then the turning point came: “One day I was talking to my cousin
and he, in a moment of inspiration, covered his mouth with his
hands as he spoke. Silence! Once and for all I understood that what I
could not see, I could not hear.”
Why, then, don’t we all see voices, instead of restricting ourselves
to the same worn rut of hearing? Many deaf people do “hear” the
wind in the trees when they see the branches swaying. Some
junction point  in their minds converts a visual signal into an
auditory one. Many blind people can likewise “see” faces by feeling
them with their hands. A mental junction point has taken the signals
of touch and converted them to sight. Presumably our brains could
do the same thing, but we prefer to let habit and memory  take over.
We see through our eyes and feel through our ngers because we
have been conditioned to do so. Is that statement so incredible?
In Walden, Thore au records that sometimes he lingered after
nightfall at a friend’s house in Concord and would have to tramp
back to his hut on Walden Pond without a lantern. Even if there was
no moon and the woods looked pitch black, he would “see” his wayperfectly, without stumbling, and after several miles would arrive
unerringly at his doorstep.
There is also the case of Meyer Schneider, an Israeli, born blind,
who managed to recover a remarkable degree of sight through self-
devised eye exercises. (He currently teaches these to a wide
following from his home base in San Francisco.) Although his vision
has been measured as 20/70, ophthalmologists who examine the
interior of Schneider’s eye see the same defective parts that he has
always had.
The whole notion that we have exactly ve senses is completely
arbitrary to begin with. Under the sense of touch, for example, we
include our response to heat, texture, pressure, the placement of our
limbs, the weight of our bodies, and pain—all are things we “feel.”
When the nervous system is intact, we may be said to have as many
as seventeen senses, according to researchers on perception. We do
not give names to most of these, and some are still disputable.
Everyone seems to be able to detect pheromones, for example, the
distinctive chemicals the body gives o when a person is afraid or
sexually aroused, and the pineal gland in everyone’s brain changes
its hormonal output by sensing the yearly cycle of the sun. But only
selected individuals count among their senses ESP or the ability to
see auras of light around other people.
Perception, we must conclude, is innitely exible, serving the
mind in any way the mind chooses. We create new worlds inside our
private universe, worlds that the ve senses then conrm as real.
Outer reality can even be turned o by a mere ick of the wrist. A
psychiatrist friend of mine  told me about being called on an
emergency in downtown Boston. A car had stopped at a red light
and had not moved when the light turned green. A policeman
arrived and found the driver motionless at the wheel. He was
apparently the victim of a heart attack. However, the ambulance
attendants who showed up within minutes saw that the driver was
alive but catatonic. He registered no response to light, sound, or
touch, even though his pupils continued to dilate if a ashlight was
shone at them. He sat like a statue, his hands gripped to the wheel,
and had to be pried from the car by force.When my psychiatrist friend saw the man, it was clear that he had
become totally  withdrawn. He had no history of mental disease
(although that does not rule out the possibility that he was a
“walking schiz ophrenic,” of which there are many). For reasons of
his own, he had just decided to stop, and in one instant his entire
perceptive machinery shut down. No one knows why some people
decide one day to make the world disappear. It is their prerogative,
and once they exercise it, no one outside the mental bubble holds
any importance.
Perhaps the dierence between ve and seventeen sense s is not
all that signicant, since any sense is just a channel for the real
business of the mind, which is to sort out, interpret, and nally
create reality.  A newborn baby feels completely fused with his
mother, and with all objects.  Even though his skin contain s working
nerves and his eye a working retina, these mechanical parts are not
enough to tell a baby that he is an individual. The touch and sight of
anything “out there” feels like “me” touching and seeing myself.
Getting out of this homogen eous soup of “me-ness” is the baby’s
main intellectual task during the rst months of life. All of us have
accomplished the task, except for a few. There are some people, for
example, who were autistic in childhood and still experience ashes
of feeling that they have blended back into the soup of me-ness;
they feel the touch of a wall when they look at it. The fusing
experience may be blissful for an infant, but for an adult it is
disorienting and, if it persists, terrifying.
Once a sense has been chosen for a particular function, the things
it sees, touches, or hears become “real,” but billions of stimuli have
to be excluded during the selection process. When you look at
another person you do not pick up the infrared wavelengths he
emanates, the electrical eld around him, the lines of magnetism
that loop away  from him and back again, the shudder of the ground
when he walks—all


 the easiest thing to do  because
a pill requires no life -style changes, nor self -discipline, nor personal responsibility. But vitamins are much more frugal than drugs.
Compared to prescriptions, even the most exotic life extension supplements are much less expensive. I am saddened wh en my
clients tell me they can't afford supplements. When their MD prescribes a medicine that costs many times more they never have
trouble finding the money.
    I am also saddened that people are so willing to take supplements, because I can usually do a lot more to genuinely help their
bodies heal with dietary modification and detoxification. Of all the tools at my disposal that help people heal, last in the race
comes supplements.
    One of the best aspects of using vitamins as though they were healin g agents is that food supplements almost never have
harmful side effects, even when they are taken in what might seem enormous overdoses. If someone with a health condition read s
or hears about some vitamin being curative, goes out and buys some and takes it, they will at very least have followed the basic
principle of good medicine: first of all do no harm. At worst, if the supplements did nothing for them at all, they are pract icing the
same kind of benevolent medicine that Dr. Jennings did almost two cen turies ago. Not only that, but having done something to
treat their symptoms, they have become patients facilitating their own patience, giving their body a chance to correct its pr oblem.
They well may get better, but not because of the action of the parti cular vitamin they took. Or, luckily, the vitamin or vitamins they
take may have been just what was needed, raising their body's vital force and accelerating the body's ability to solve its pr oblem.
    One reason vitamin therapies frequently do not work a s well as they might is that, having been intimidated by AMA propaganda
that has created largely false fears in the public mind about harmful effects of vitamin overdoses, the person may not take e nough
of the right vitamin. The minimum daily requirements of vitamins and minerals as outlined in nutrition texts are only sufficient to
prevent the most obvious forms of deficiency diseases. If a person takes supplements at or near the minimum daily requirement
(the dose recommended by the FDA as being 'generall y recognized as safe') they should not expect to see any therapeutic effect
unless they have scurvy, beri beri, rickets, goiter, or pellagra.
    In these days of vitamin -fortified bread and iodized salt, and even vitamin C fortified soft drinks, you almos t never see the kind
of life -threatening deficiency states people first learned to recognize, such as scurvy. Sailors on long sea voyages used to develop a
debilitating form of vitamin C deficiency that could kill. Scurvy could be quickly cured by as littl e as one lime a day. For this
reason the British Government legislated the carrying of limes on long voyages and today that is why British sailors are stil l called
limeys. A lime has less than 30 milligrams of vitamin C. But to make a cold clear up faster with vitamin C a mere 30 mg does
absolutely nothing! To begin to dent an infection with vitamin C takes 10,000 milligrams a day, and to make a life threatenin g
infection like pneumonia go away faster might require 25,000 to 150,000 milligrams of vitamin C daily, administered
intravenously. In terms of supplying that much C with limes, that's 300 to 750 of them daily –clearly impossible.
    Similarly, pellagra can be cured with a few milligrams of vitamin B 3, but schizophrenia can sometimes be cured with 3, 000
milligrams, roughly a thousand times as much as the MDR.
    There are many many common diseases that the medical profession does not see as being caused by vitamin deficiencies.
Senility and many mental disorders fall in this category. Many old people  live on extremely deficient diets comprised largely of
devitalized starches, sugars, and fats, partly because many do not have good enough teeth to chew vegetables and other high
roughage foods, and they do not have the energy it takes to prepare more nou rishing foods. Virtually all old people have deficiency
diseases. As vital force inevitably declines with age, the quantity and quality of digestive enzymes decreases, then the abil ity to
breakdown and extract soluble nutrients from food is diminished, fre quently leading to serious deficiencies. These deficiencies are
inevitably misdiagnosed as disease and as aging.
    Suppose a body needs 30 milligrams a day of niacin to not develop pellagra, but to be fully healthy, needs 500 milligrams dai ly.
If that bo dy receives 50 milligrams per day from a vitamin pill, to the medical doctor it could not possibly be deficient in this
vitamin. However, over time, the insidious sub -clinical deficiency may degrade some other system and produce a different disease,
such a s colitis. But the medical doctor sees no relationship. Let me give you an actual example. Medical researchers studying
vitamin B 5 or pantothenic acid noticed that it could, in what seemed to be megadoses (compared to the minimum daily
requirement) largel y reverse certain degenerative effects of aging. These researchers were measuring endurance in rats as it
decreased through the aging process. How they made this measurement may appear to some readers to be heartless, but the best
way to gauge the enduranc e of a rat is to toss it into a five gallon bucket of cold water and see how long it swims before it drowns.
Under these conditions, the researcher can be absolutely confident that the rat does its very best to stay alive.
    Young healthy rats can swim f or 45 minutes in 50° Fahrenheit water before drowning. Old rats can only last about 15 minutes.
And old rats swim differently, less efficiently, with their lower bodies more or less vertical, sort of dog paddling. But whe n old rats
were fed pantothenic aci d at a very high dose for a few weeks before the test, they swam 45 minutes too. And swam more
efficiently, like the young rats did. More interestingly, their coats changed color (the gray went away) and improved in text ure;
they began to appear like young  rats. And the rats on megadoses of B 5 lived lot longer –25 to 33 percent longer than rats not on
large doses of B 5. Does that mean "megadoses" of B 5 have an unknown drug -like effect? Or does that mean the real nutritional
requirement for B 5 is a lot hi gher than most people think? I believe the second choice is correct. To give you an idea of how much
B 5 the old rats were given in human terms, the FDA says the minimum daily requirement for B 5 is about 10 milligrams but if
humans took as much B 5 as the  rats, they would take about 750 milligrams per day. Incidentally, I figure I am as worthy as any
lab rat and take over 500 milligrams daily.
    My point is that there is a big difference between preventing a gross vitamin deficiency disease, and using vi tamins to create
optimum functioning. Any sick person or anyone with a health complaint needs to improve their overall functioning in any way
that won't be harmful over the long term. Vitamin therapy can be an amazingly effective adjunct to dietary reform and
detoxification.
    Some of the earlier natural hygienists were opposed to using vitamins. However, these doctors lived in an era when the food
supply was better, when mass human degeneration had not proceeded as far as it has today. From their perspe ctive, it was possible
to obtain all the nutrition one needed from food. In our time this is unlikely unless a person knowingly and intelligently pr oduces
virtually all their own food on a highly fertile soil body whose fertility is maintained and adjusted  with a conscious intent to
maximize the nutritive content of the food. Unfortunately, ignorance of the degraded nature of industrial food seems to exten d to
otherwise admirable natural healing methods such as Macrobiotics and homeopathy because these disc iplines also downplay any
need for food supplementation.

Vitamins For Young Persons And Children
    Young healthy people from weaning through their thirties should also take nutritional supplements even though young people
usually feel so good that they  find it impossible to conceive that anything could harm them or that they ever could become
seriously sick or actually die. I know this is true because I remember my own youth and besides, why else would young people so
glibly ride motorcycles or, after o nly a few months of brainwashing, charge up a hill into the barrel of a machine gun. Or have
unsafe sex in this age of multiple venereal diseases. Until they get a little sense, vitamin supplements help to counteract t heir
inevitable and unpreventable use of recreational foods. Vitamins are the cheapest long life and health insurance plan now
available. Parents are generally very surprised at the thought that even their children need nutritional supplements; very fe w
healthy children receive them. A few are  given extra vitamin C when acutely ill, when they have colds or communicable diseases
such as chicken pox.
    Young people require a low dose supplement compared to those of us middle -aged or older, but it should be


 you rself, love for the world, love for life, love
for all others, and most significantly, love for your Source of being. Then
this is all that you’ll have available to give away, and consequently, all that
returns to you.
It’ s been said t hat the dif ference between all of us living at  ordinary
levels of  human  consciousness and those we call saints is that they never
for get G od even for a single  moment. They’re cheerful when life is
dif ficult, patient  when others are impatient, and loving when oth ers respond
with ha tred. Why? Because of that container. Ordinary people have a
container out of which they pluc k loving thoughts in certain circumstances.
The saint has an  internal vessel that contains nothing else, out of which and
into which love flows freely.
So rathe r than working on sim ply changing your thoughts in order to
become more peaceful and lovi ng, why not shoot for the moon and think
like the saint th at you are? F ocus on that container within. When you
continually say, Holy Spirit, guide me now,  you’ll see your container
overflowing with so many loving thoughts that it’ s impossible for negativity
in any form to alter the balance within.
What Love Looks Like Through the Eyes of a Child
Here are  some jewels describin g what love is, from the perspective of a
group o f four - to eight-year -old s. As you work to reset the “l ove balance
beam” of your life, consider these refreshing thoughts on what love is.
When someone loves you, the way they say your name is
differ ent. Y ou just know your name is safe in their mouth.Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of
your Fr ench fries without making them give you any of theirs.
Love is when my daddy makes coffee for my mommy, and he
takes a sip befor e giving it to her to make sur e the taste is
okay.
Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.
During my piano r ecital, I was onstage and I was scar ed. I
looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy
waving and smiling. He was the only one. I wasn’ t scar ed
anymor e.
And my favorite:
Love is what’ s in the r oom with you at Christmas if you stop
opening pr esents and listen.
There y ou have  it. Look within  and around. Listen. Love is what’ s left
over when falling in love fades away because love is an endless source.
Give it away. Share your French fries. Give someone the best piece of
chicken. W ave and smile to the U niverse, and you’ll soon know what V ictor
Hugo m eant when he observed, “Love is the reduction of the U niverse to a
single b eing.”Not only is love what’ s left over when falling in love fades
away, but love defines the Source from which we came. Elizabeth Barrett
Browning poetically describes the end of life as a return to pure love:
Guess now who holds thee?—
“Death,” I said. But there
The silver answer rang—
“Not Death, but Love.”And so it seems that love is truly all that’s left
over when this body falls away as well.CHAPTER NINE
EARTH’S CRAMMED WITH HEAVEN
B A L A N C I N G  Y O U R  S P I R I T U A L  L I F E
W I T H  Y O U R  M A T E R I A L  L I F E
“Life in the world and life in the spirit
are not incompatible.”
— THE UPANISHADS
“... the majority of men live without being thoroughly
conscious that they are spiritual beings...”
— SØREN KIERKEGAARD
H
eaven sh ould no t be thought of as a place you’ll ultimately arrive at
once yo u leave this earthly existence. Rather, it seems to me, that
you’d w ant to experience Heave n right here on Earth. As the titl e of
this chapter suggests (from a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning), Earth
itself is cramme d with Heaven. But do you see Heaven in your daily life?
Do you feel as if you’re in a Heavenly world? If the answer is no, then
you’re o ut of balance. Y ou’ve probably made your physical world the
primary focus of your life, with  little or no attention given to th e Heavenly
part of your earthly existence.
What This Imbalance Looks Like
When yo u place the lar ger part of your life ener gy on the material world,
you are generally in a continual  state of worry about your “stuf f,” and you
feel like you ne ver get ahead in the game of life. V irtually all of your
mental ener gy is focused on wh at you have or don’ t have. Y ou assess your
worth ba sed on such material issues as what kind of automobile you drive
or h ow fashionably you’re dre ssed. Y ou may even feel infer ior because
other people have mor e  s tuf f! This imb alance between  the spiritual and
material world usually means th at indebtedness is a way of life. Y our desire
to h ave bigger, better, and more  expensive stuf f leads to borrow ing money
and greater financial obligations. Before long, debts exceed yo ur ability to
pay for those material acquisitions.
When you’re overly involved w ith the physical, to the exclusi on of the
spiritual, you place a heavy em phasis on winning, becoming number one,
and comparing yourself to others. A preoccupation with the material aspects
of li fe leads to looking at life in a superficial way, where appearance is
viewed as more important than substance. In fact, how it looks supersedes
how it feels. What others think i s the most important measuring device, and
how you stack up to externally imposed standards becomes all-important.A d evastating aspect of spiritual/material imbalance is the amount of
time and mental ener gy spent on  monetary considerations. Money becomes
the single most important standard for evaluating everything, including
your happiness,  inner peace, and feelings about your value as a human
being. Everything is measured on a grid of monetary price or cost: How
much is it worth? How much does it cost? Can I affor d it? W ill it hold its
value? Should I insur e it? What if someone stole it? Could I affor d to
r eplace it?
Y our inn er worl d is crammed w ith thoughts of costs and cash value. On
your im aginary balance scale, the heaviest side is weighted down with
thoughts that emer ge from a consciousness where appearance, performance,
and acquisitions  are all that you notice. This consciousness p revents you
from re cognizing that right here, right now, wherever you reside is
crammed with Heaven. Rather than looking for Heaven on Earth, you’re
condemned by your thinking pr ocess to live with the conseque nces of this
disproportionate view of life.
The Impact of Imbalance
When you’re out of balance, with life heavily weighted down on the
material side of the scale, you pay a hefty price. The m ost serious
consequence is that you see yourself in a false manner. Y our tru e essence is
spiritual, rather than physical, but you’re unable to recognize this.
Y our inf inite sel f is never born and never dies. When you tip the balance
scales in favor of the material world, you’re identifying with an unstable
ally that’ s forever changing. Y our body, your possessions, your
achievements, a nd your finances are all ephemeral. They come and go like
the wind. Every time you think that you’ve arrived, whether it be physical
appearances or loads of money, something will change. In these arenas, you
will always revert to some form of striving, uncertainty, and anxiety.
Y our preoccupa tion with being so materially weighted down on the
balance scale is full of stress and worry. Y our obsession with yo ur body andhow it looks turns into bitterne ss and angst as it goes through the aging
process and leaves what you tho ught was the “real you” as only a memory,
an illusion that can’ t be recaptured.
Similarly, your possessions wear out, become antiquated, lose their value,
or just disappea r. Because of yo ur imbalance in this dimension, you’re left
feeling empty, purposeless, an d cheated. All of your hard work and
dedication to your acquisition s, achievements, and reputati on become
almost meaningless. The outcome is disappointment, regret, and perhaps
even hostility toward the world.  But this is not the world’ s fault—all of this
anxiety that leads to stress is avoidable if you opt to b alance the
material/spiritual scale. Just a balance, an even split between these two
aspects of yourself, is all you need to achieve.
The title  of this chapter, “Earth’ s Crammed with Heaven,” is meant to
signify that it’ s all right here, right now—not in some other  place, in a
distant future years from now,  or after the death of your ph ysical self


 a high er intensity
while still retaining a calm and even breathing pattern.
As it can be dif ficult for children and teenagers to correctly apply the
BOL T, progress can be measured by counting how many paces that they are
able to hold their breath while walking. This is explained in m ore detail in
the Oxygen Advantage program for children and teenagers on page 286.
At the beginni ng of this cha pter I made the claim that Oxygen
Advantage breathing exercises—even those that are practiced while sitting
down—are guar anteed to increase your BOL T score. People with a BOL T
score of  less than 15 seconds are often put of f from doing physical exercise
due to excessive breathlessness. However, by starting with gentle reduced
breathing exerci ses that can be performed while sitting down or walking
slowly, even those with low BO L T scores can significantly improve their
endurance and breathing ef ficiency in the space of just a few weeks. Once
your BO L T scor e is greater than 20 seconds, you will be able to partake in
physical exercise and continue to improve your score with more advanced
breathing exercises.
Any athlete can learn the tools to tap into the body’ s own natural
resources in order to train faster, exercise more intensively, and enjoy better
improvements to his or her hea lth. And if you are a coach, k nowing the
BOL T score of each of your pla yers will help you to provide feedback on
their ability to p erform. As they say, knowledge is power; un derstanding
your bod y’ s athletic capabilities will enable you to push harder and compete
to the best of your abilities.
Thr ee Steps to Incr easing Y our BOL T Scor e
The exercises in this book will guide you through each stage of your
journey to improved breathing, fitness, and endurance. Below is a brief
guide to each of the three steps to increasing your BOL T score:
1. Stop Losses of Carbon Dioxide
•  Breathe through your nose, day and night.•   Stop sighing; instead, swallo w or suppress the sigh. One sigh
taken every few minutes is enough to maintain chronic
overbreathing, so it is necessary to counteract the sigh by
swallowing or holding the breath. If you notice your sighs only
after they have taken place, then hold your breath for 10 to 15
seconds to help compensate for the loss of carbon dioxide.
•   A void taking big breaths whe n yawning or talking. Individuals
with a low BOL T score are of ten tired, and yawn frequently
throughout the day. T ry not to take in a lar ge breath during a
yawn. Likewise, individuals who talk for a living need to be
aware th at their breathing should not be heard during talking. If
you find that you can hear your breathing during talking, then it
is better to slow down the speed of your talking, use shorter
sentences, and take a gentle breath through your nose between
each sentence.
•   Observe your breathing thro ughout the day. Good breathing
during rest should not be seen or heard.
2. Impr ove T olerance of Carbon Dioxide
This is where yo u practice exercises designed to reduce your b reathing
volume toward normal. They wi ll bring a feeling of relaxation to your body
and encourage your breathing to slow down and become calmer. The
objective is to cr eate a tolerable need or hunger for air. A sustained need for
air over the course of 10 to 12 minutes resets the receptors in the brain to
tolerate a higher concentration of carbon dioxide.
Steps 1 and 2 are necessary to  increase BOL T score from 1 0 to 20
seconds.
3. Simulate High-Altitude T raining
During physica l exertion, as d iscussed, breathing volume increases
along with metabolic activity, which generates carbon dioxide. Breathing
less than you feel you need to during physical training is an excellentmethod of conditioning the body to tolerate a higher concentration of
carbon dioxide, while at the same time subjecting the body to a reduced
concentration of oxygen.
The ben efit of implementing O xygen Advantage breathing tec hniques
during p hysical exercise is that a  stronger air shortage can be created than at
rest. A strong air shortage is ne cessary to increase your BOL T score from
20 to 40 seconds.
Please note the f ollowing important points about increasing you r BOL T
score:
•   Y ou will feel better  each time  you r BO L T sco re increases by 5
seconds.
•   The g eneral p rogression is for a BOL T score to increase by 3 to
4 seconds during the first 2 to 3 weeks. When your BOL T score
reaches 20 seconds, it is norm al for the progression of your
BOL T increase to slow down. I t is not uncommon for a BOL T
score to remain “stuck” at 20 seconds for 8 to 10 weeks. In
order to  increas e a BOL T scor e from 20 to 40 seconds, it is
necessary to perform physical e xercise while incorporating the
techniques in this book. Be dete rmined, and don’ t lose heart if
your BOL T score is stubborn or lessens temporarily!
Meanwhile, you ’ll enjoy the b enefits you’ve already gained
from getting to 20 seconds in the first place.
•   The causes for slow BOL T score progress include lifestyle
factors, such as stress and excessive talking, and sickness. The
severity and duration of a health  condition will dictate the rate
of your BOL T progress, but w hatever your current state of
health, there are always exercises that can be performed to keep
you moving forward. It is worth persevering, as there are many
health b enefits related to even a slight improvement to your
BOL T score.
•   The most accu rate BOL T score is taken first thing after waking.
This BOL T measurement is more accurate because you cannotinfluence your breathing during sleep, and therefore an early
morning score will be based on your breathing volume as
naturally set by your respiratory center.
•   Y our goal is to maintain a morning BOL T score of 40 seconds
for a period of 6 months. As modern living can negatively
af fect BO L T scores, it is necessa ry to pay attention to breathing
throughout the day, ensuring it is light and thro ugh the nose,
and to incorporate the Oxygen Advantage program into your
physical exercis e and way of life. This will help you maintain a
high BOL T score.
Below are suggested exercises as based on your BOL T score (a more
detailed program is available on page 267):
BOL T scor e of 10 seconds or under:
•  Breathing Recovery Exercise to unblock the nose
•  Nose-breathe at all times
•  A voiding sighing and taking big breaths
•  Breathe Light to Breathe Right during rest
•  Breathing Recovery Exercise
BOL T scor e of 10 to 20 seconds:
•  Nose unblocking exercise
•  Nose-breathe at all times
•  A voiding sighing and taking big breaths
•   Brea the Lig ht to Breathe Right during rest and physic al
exercise
BOL T scor e of 20 to 30 seconds:
•  Nose unblocking exercise
•  Nose-breathe at all times•   Brea the Lig ht to Breathe Right during rest and physic al
exercise
•  Simulate High-Altitude T raining during a fast walk or jog
BOL T scor e of 30 seconds or gr eater:
•  Nose-breathe at all times
•   Brea the Lig ht to Breathe Right during rest and physic al
exercise
•  Simulate High-Altitude T raining during jogging or running
•  Advanced Simulation of High-Altitude T raining
T o reiterate: If you have any health problems or a BOL T score shorter
than 10 seconds, please do not attempt breath holds involving a strong need
for a ir, a s the resultant loss of control of your breathing may aggravate your
condition. Pleas e do not attempt  the nose unblocking exercise o r any of the
exercises to simulate high-altitude training unless you have a BOL T score
longer th an 10 seconds. It is als o advised to have a BOL T score of at least
20 seconds before attempting breath holding during jogging or running.
Body Detoxification
When you under go the Oxygen Advantage program, you may experience a
body detoxificat ion. The extent of the detoxification will depend on your
BOL T score and state of health. In general, the higher your BOL T score and
the heal thier you are, the less likely you will experience a de toxification.
On the other hand, if you have  a low BOL T result and have b een feeling
unwell f or years, you are much  more likely to experience a detoxification.
Remember that changing your breathing volume toward normal improves
blood f low and oxygenation of all tissues and or gans. W ith better -
functioning or gans and systems, waste products are expelled more


 showed up in the group. Ittakes longer to repair the damage than it does to cause it and it takes generationsof unflagging persistence.
I think much the same process has happened to humans in this century. With
the invention of the roller mill and the consequent degradation of our daily breadto white flour; with the birth of industrial farming and the generalized lowering ofthe nutritional content of all of our crops; our overall ratio of nutrition to caloriesworsened. Then it worsened again because we began to have industrial foodmanufacturing and national brand prepared food marketing systems; we begansubsisting on devitalized, processed foods. The result has been an even greaterworsening of our ratio of nutrition to calories.
And just like Pottenger’s cats, we civilized humans in so-called advanced
countries are losing the ability to breed, our willingness (or the energy) to motherour young; we’re losing our good humor in the same way Pottenger’sdegenerated cats became bad tempered. As a group we feel so poorly that wedesperately need to feel better fast, and what better way to do that than withdrugs. Is it any wonder that the United States, the country furthest down the roadof industrial food degeneration, spends 14 percent of its gross domestic producton medical services. Any wonder that so many babies are born by Cesarean, anywonder that so many of our children have crooked teeth needing an orthodontist?The most depressing aspect of this comes into view when considering thatPottenger’s cats took four generations on perfect food to repair most of thenutritional damage.
In the specific case of my daughter, I know somethings about the nutritional
history of her maternal ancestors. My daughter’s grandmother grew up on a
Saskatchewan farm. Though they certainly grew their own rich wheat on virgin
semi-arid prairie soil, I’m sure the family bought white flour at the store for dailyuse. Still, there was a garden and a cow producing raw milk and free-range fertileeggs and chicken and other animals. There probably were lots of cannedvegetables in winter, canned but still highly nutritious because of the fertility of theirprairie garden. My mother consequently had perfect teeth until the GreatDepression forced her to live for too many years on lard and white bread.
During this time of severe malnutrition she had her three babies. The first one
got the best of her nutritional reserves. The second, born after the worst of themalnutrition, was very small and weak and had a hard time growing up.Fortunately for me, for a few years before I (the last child) was born, the worst ofthe economic times had past and the family had been living on a farm. There werevegetables and fresh raw milk and fruit. My mother had two good years to rebuildher nutritional reserves. But “Grannybell” did not managed to replace enough.Shortly after I was born my mother lost every one of her teeth all at once. Thebone just disappeared around them.
Thus, I was born deficient. And my childhood and adolescent nutrition was
poor too: soda crackers, pasteurized processed artificial cheese, evaporated milkfrom cans, hotdogs and canned beans, hotdogs and cabbage. It wasn’t until I waspregnant with my first baby that I started to straighten up my diet. I continuedeating very well after my first daughter, so my youngest daughter had anotherthree years of good diet to draw on. Thus both my own daughters got asomewhat better start than I had had.
My teeth were not as good as my mother’s had been before those years of
malnutrition took them all. Instead of perfect straight undecayed teeth like ahealthy farm girl should have, mine were somewhat crowded, with numerouscavities. My jaw bone had not received enough minerals to develop to its full size.My pelvic girdle also was smaller than my mother’s was. I had had a poor start.
My daughters did better. The older one (the first child typically gets the best of
the nutritional reserves) has such a wide jaw that there are small spaces between
her teeth. My second daughter has only one crooked tooth, she has wider, moresolid hips, stronger bones and a broader face than I do. If my younger daughterwill but from this point in her life, eat perfectly and choose her food wisely toresponsibly avoid empty calories and maximize her ratio of nutrition to calories,her daughter (if she gives us granddaughters as her older sister already has done)may exhibit the perfect physiology that her genes carry.
Along the lines of helping you avoid empty calories I will give you some
information about various common foods that most people don’t know and thatmost books about food and health don’t tell, or misunderstand.
Butter, Margarine and Fats in General.
Recently, enormous propaganda has been generated against eating butter. Its
been smeared in the health magazines as a saturated animal fat, one containingthat evil substance, cholesterol. Many people are now avoiding it and instead,using margarine.
Saturated Monosaturated Unsaturated
Butter 66% 30% 4%Coconut Oil 87% 6% 2%Cottonseed Oil 26% 18% 52%
Olive Oil 13% 74% 8%Palm Oil 49% 37% 9%Soybean Oil 14% 24% 58%Sunflower Oil 4% 8% 83%Safflower Oil 3% 5% 87%Sesame Oil 5% 9% 80%Peanut Oil 6% 12% 76%Corn Oil 3% 7% 84%
This is a major and serious misunderstanding. First of all, margarine is almost
indigestible, chemically very much like shortening—an artificially saturated orhydrogenated vegetable fat. Hydrogenated fats can’t be properly broken downby the body’s digestive enzymes, adding to the body’s toxic load. Margarine,being a chemically-treated vegetable oil with artificial yellow color and artificialflavorings to make it seem like butter, also releases free radicals in the body thataccelerate aging. So, to avoid the dangers of eating cholesterol-containing butter,people eat something far worse for them!
There are severe inconsistencies with the entire “cholesterol-is-evil” theory.
Ethnic groups like the Danes, who eat enormous quantities of cholesterol-containing foods, have little circulatory disease. Actually, the liver itself producescholesterol; it’s presence in the blood is an important part of the body chemistry.Cholesterol only becomes a problem because of deranged body chemistry due tothe kind of overall malnutrition Americans usually experience on their junk fooddiets. Avoiding cholesterol in foods does little good, but eating a low-fat, low-sugar, complex-carbohydrate (whole foods) diet high in minerals does lowerblood cholesterol enormously.
Actually, high quality fresh (not rancid) butter in moderate quantities is about
the finest fat a person could eat. But high quality butter is almost unobtainable.First of all, it has to be raw, made from unpasteurized cream. Second, butter cancontain very high levels of fat-soluble vitamins, but doesn’t have to. Vitamin-richbutter’s color is naturally bright yellow, almost orange. This color does not comefrom a test tube. Pale yellow butter as is found in the commercial trade wasprobably almost white before it was artificially tinted. Butter from grass-pasturedcows naturally changes from yellow-orange to white and back again through theyear as the seasons change. Spring grass, growing in the most intense sunlight ofthe year contains very high levels of chlorophyll and vitamins. Cows eating thisgrass put high levels of vitamins A and D into their cream, evidenced by theorange color of vitamin A. By July, natural butter has degraded to medium-yellow
in color. By August, it is pale yellow. Industrial dairy cows fed exclusively on hay
or artificial, processed feeds (lacking in these vitamins), produce butterfat that isalmost white.
I prefer to obtain my butter from a neighbor who has several dairy cows
grazing on fertile bottom land pasture. We always freeze a year’s supply in latespring when butter is at its best. Interestingly, that is also the time of year when myneighbor gets the most production from her cows and is most willing to part with25 pounds of extra butter.
In general, fats are poor foods that should be avoided. Their ratio of nutrition
to calories is absolutely the worst of all food types, except perhaps for pure whitesugar, which is all calories and absolutely no nutrition (this is also true for otherforms of sugar. Honey, too, contains almost no nutrition.). Gram for gram, fatscontain many more calories than do sugars or starches. Yet gram for gram, fatscontain virtually no nutrition except for small quantities of essential fatty acids.
The perverse reason people like to eat fats is that they are very hard to digest
and greatly slow the digestive action of the stomach. Another way of saying that isthat they have a very high satiety value. Fats make a person feel full for a longtime because their presence in the stomach makes it churn and churn and churn.Fats coat proteins and starches and delay their digestion, often causing them tobegin fermenting (starches) or putrefying (proteins) in the digestive tract.
The best fats contain high levels of monosaturated vegetable oils that have
never been exposed to heat or chemicals—like virgin olive oil. Use smallquantities of olive oil for salad dressing. Monosaturated fats also have far lesstendency to go rancid than any other type. Vegetable oils with high proportions ofunsaturated fats, the kind that all the authorities push because they contain nocholesterol, go r


 before, bu t which had not
been integrated into an effective organization;
and somehow human beings are prone to
regard such achievements as less striking and
less creative than those of the order of
Helmholtz's and Fechner's. But the man who
sensed the movements of  scientific thought as
Wundt did, who embodied them in the first
laboratory, who gave them form in an
influential system, and w ho imparted them to
enthusiastic students w ho were proud to carry
on his work, has no small claim to the title
often accorded him, that of father of modern
psychology. Wundt himself was not unaware of
the debt psychology owed him, and not
altogether indifferent as to whether or not it
was recognized. In his role as father, he
inclined toward the patriarchal, almost toward
the papal; he reserved the right to speak with
authority, to pronounce ex cathedra on
psychology and psychologi sts, and to draw a
distinct line of demarc ation between authentic
psychology and psychology  of which he did not
approve. Even to-day, so great have been his
influence and prestige, the term "experimental
psychology" to many still has as its first
connotation the kind of  A New Domain  7
psychology which was taught in Wundt's
laboratory or which Wundt recognized and
approved.7
Wundt made two major contributions to the
transformation of educati on in the West. The first
was theoretical and will be taken up here. The
second is addressed in the next chapter, The
Impress."
Wundt asserted that man is  devoid of spirit and
self-determinism. He set out to prove that man is
the summation of his experiences, of the stimuli
which intrude upon his consciousness and uncon-
sciousness. In directing the work of his students, he
focused their energies on minute examinations of
sensory perceptions, in an attempt to dissect and
quantify every aspect of action and reaction. What
determined the difference between one individual
and another in reaction time to stimuli? Why do
some individuals combine stimuli differently than do
others? What are the "laws" of the associations that
can be formed between words? Wundt and his
students regarded such questions as paramount.8
A highly respected physi ologist, Wundt estab-
lished the new psychology as a study of the brain
7 Heidbreder, Edna, Seven Psychologies (New York: D. Apple-ton-
Century Company, Inc., 1933), 96-7.
8.   Boring, op. cit., 339-344.  8 THE LEIPZIG CONNECTION
and the central nervous system. From Wundt's
work, it was only a short step to the later redefin-
ition of the meaning of education. Originally,
education meant the draw ing out of a person's
innate talents and abilities9 by imparting the
knowledge of langua ges, scientific reasoning, hist-
ory, literature, rhetoric, etc.—the channels through
which those abilities would flourish and serve. To
the experimental psychologist, however, education
became the process of exposing the student to
"meaningful" experiences so as to ensure desired
reactions:
...learning is the result of modifiability in the
paths of neural conduction. Explanations of
even such forms of learning as abstraction
and generalization demand of the neurones
only growth, excitability, conductivity, and
modifiability. The mind is the connection-
system of man; and learni ng is the process of
connecting. The situation-response formula is
adequate to cover learni ng of any sort, and the
really influential fa ctors in learning are
readiness of the neurones, sequence in time,
9. A concept going back to the Latin root of the word, eductus, to bring
out, lead forth, from e, out of, + ducere, lead. Hence, "to develop the
faculties and powers of by teaching, inst ruction, or schooling," from Emery,
H.G., and K.G. Brewster, The New Century Dictionary of the English
Language (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1927).  A New Domain  9
belongingness, and satisfying consequences.10
If one assumes (as did Wundt) that there is
nothing there to begin with but a body, a brain, and
a nervous system, then one  must try to educate by
inducing sensations in that nervous system. Through
these experiences, the individual will learn to respond
to any given stimulus, with the "correct" response.
The child is not, for example, thought capable of
volitional control over hi s actions, or of deciding
whether he will act or not act in a certain way: his
actions are thought to be preconditioned and beyond
his control, because he is a stimulus-response
mechanism. According to this thinking, he is his
reactions. Wundt's thesis laid the philosophical
basis for the principles of conditioning later
developed by Pavlov (who studied physiology in
Leipzig, in 1884, five years after Wundt had
inaugurated his laboratory  there) and American
behavioral psychologists such as Watson and
Skinner; for lobotomie s and electro convulsive
therapy; for schools oriented more toward the
socialization of the child than toward the
development of intellect; and for the emergence of
a society more and more blatantly devoted to the
gratification of sensory de sires at the expense of
responsibility and achievement.
10. Pintner, Rudolph, et al., An Outline of Educational Psychology, rev.
ed. (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1934), 79.  2. The Impress
WUNDT 'S second major contribution to
psychology's preempting of education wasn't theoretical
at all: he produced the first generation of researchers,
professors, and publicists in the new psychology. This
group went on to establish experimental psychology
throughout Europe and the United States:
Through these students, the Leipzig Laboratory
exercised an immense influence on the
development of psychology. It served as the model
for the many new laboratories that were
developed in the latter part of the nineteenth
century. The many students who flocked to
Leipzig, united as they were in point of view and
common purpose, constituted a school of thought
in psychology.1
1.   Schultz, op. cit., 45.
11 12 THE LEIPZIG CONNECTION
The list of Wundt's students is a Who's Who of
early European and American psychologists. In
succeeding years, one could go to almost any
major European or Ameri can university and study
the new psychology with a professor who had re-
ceived his Ph.D. directly  from Wundt at Leipzig.2
Naturally Leipzig became the Mecca of stu-
dents who wished to study the "new"
psychology—a psychology that was no longer a
branch of speculative philosophy, no longer a
fragment of the science of physiology, but a
novel and daring and exciting attempt to study
mental processes by the experimental and
quantitative methods common to all science.
For the psychology of Leipzig was, in the
eighties and nineties, the newest thing under
the sun. It was the psychology for bold young
radicals who believed that the ways of the mind
could be measured and treated experimentally—
and who possibly t hought of themselves, in their
private reflections, as pioneers on the newest
frontier of science, push-
2. Some of the more notable of Wundt's European students were Kiesow
at Turin, Kirschmann at Toronto and later Leipzig, Storring at Zurich and
Bonn, Kulpe and Kraepelin ("father" of schizophrenia) at Munich,
Meumann at Hamburg, Marbe at Wurz-burg, Lehmann at Copenhagen,
Wirth and Krueger at Leipzig, Lipps at  Zurich, Durr at Bern, and Lange at
Tubingen. Boring, op. cit., 427-9.  The Impress  13
ing its method into reaches of experience that it had
never before invaded. At any rate they threw themselves
into their tasks with indus try and zest. They became
trained introspec-tionists and, adding introspection to
the resources of the physiological laboratories, they
attempted the minute analysis of sensation and
perception. They measured reaction-times, following
their problems into numerous and widespread
ramifications. They investigated verbal reactions, thus
extending their researches into the field of association.
They measured the span and the fluctuations of
attention and noted some of its more complex features
in the "complication experiment," a laboratory method
patterned after the situation that gave rise to the
astronomer's problem of th e "personal equation." In
their studies of feeling and emotion they recorded
pulse-rates, breathing-rates, and fluctuations in
muscular strength, and in the same connection they
developed methods of recording systematically and
treating statistically the impressions observed by
introspection. They also developed the psychophysical
methods and in addition made constant use of resources
of


 saying, “I love you” too
soon. “Y ou don’ t know me, how could you really know you love me? If it’ s
that easy for you to say, how can I know I am really special?” (As if being
special had anything to do with elapsed time, or, even more absurd, if one
loved more than one person, somehow neither, instead of both, was special.)
I abandoned the rules to which others paid so much tribute, and I became
the subject of much consternation throughout my life. Nevertheless, despiteattacks on my character because I chose to live by my instincts, I found that
I was never disappointed in ME for trusting my first impulses when it came
to how and when I loved others. It was always others who had the most
difficulty with my quick assessments of whom I could or couldn’ t love. On
a first meeting, a first date, or a first anything, others were always careful to
say only the right thing while I blithely went my way trusting myself and
proud of my ability to ignore rules about how one ought to feel.
It was this instinct for trust that was working for me in the bleak hotel
room on Uranus. I had only seen an image of this woman called Eykis on
the television screen, and yet I knew that I loved her. She was someone I
could trust to give me an insight into her people. Although she seemed so
familiar that she could have been from my home town, she was my first
contact on Uranus with anything dramatically dif ferent from what I had
known on Earth. The anxiety attack report that she delivered with such
concern was the new element. This was my first moment of genuine inner
excitement. Until then I was disappointed at this planet called Uranus,
modeled after Earth. Or vice versa. Did we model ourselves after them? I
ruled that out right away. On Earth we certainly had no anxiety attack
reports. I was going to find out, right from the person who delivered that
report, everything I’d need to know to file my own account of the residents
of Uranus. I was thrilled at the thought of it, since until then I had figured
that my final statement on this entire visit, this project of assessing Uranus
in all its many facets, would be summed up in a report composed of one
word: “Ditto.”
I knew that “ditto” would not impress my fellow Earthlings. If nothing
else, Eykis was going to save me from having the distinction of being the
first space traveler to file a one-word summation. I dozed of f thanking this
Eykis lady. My instincts were finely tuned. T omorrow I must find and talk
with this marvelous woman whom I knew instinctively that I loved.
OceanofPDF.com2
 Eykis
She was the most approachable person I had ever encountered. I called the
studio just once the next morning and we set up an appointment for four
o’clock in the afternoon. Neither of us made any clumsy ef fort to be polite,
and she didn’ t hem and haw about a busy schedule. I had planned an entire
scenario to make myself as convincing as possible, But she made
everything very easy.
“Hello, is this Eykis, the person who gave that anxiety attack report on
the evening news yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“I’m a visitor here, and I’d very much like to meet with you as soon as
possible,” I said, of fering her every opportunity to refuse such a brazen
request politely.
“What is it you would like to know?” she asked.
“It’s very dif ficult for me to explain over the telephone. I would really
appreciate it if we could meet. Y ou can be sure there’ s no danger,” I said to
reassure her.
“I’m sorry, what is that last word you used?” she asked.
“Danger,” I repeated.
“I’m not familiar with that word. What does it mean?”
“I mean I wouldn’ t cause you any harm. I simply want to talk with you.”
“Again you use a word with which I am unfamiliar. Harm? What is this
harm and danger you use?”
“Would it be all right if I explained them to you when we meet in
person?” I asked.
“Certainly,” she responded, as if she were confused but still willing to
discuss the matter.
“What time is convenient for you?” I asked.
“I’ll meet you at four this afternoon. I’ll come to your place, since you
are visiting and perhaps unfamiliar with the transportation.” There was nota trace of suspicion or doubt in her voice.
I gave her the name of the hotel and that was it. In three hours I would be
holding my very first conversation with an inhabitant of this place called
Uranus. It was becoming increasingly obvious to me that my initial
assessment of Uranus as a replica of Earth was incorrect.
I jotted down three items in my notebook:
1. Anxiety Attack Report?
2. No concept of Danger?
3. No concept of Harm?
I thought about the phone conversation with Eykis again. She hadn’ t
doubted me for a moment. There was absolute trust implicit in her voice,
and she had made it all so easy.
I spent the rest of the afternoon walking about the city. Again I was
searching for anything that would provide me with a clue to the uniqueness
of Uranus. The dif ferences that would have made my discovery more
impressive were minimal and not really noticeable without careful scrutiny.
I did not want to spend my time as a tourist, and the idea of uncovering
subtle distinctions was obscured by the excitement of my forthcoming
meeting with Eykis. She was the person I was counting on to give me
honest answers to my questions and unlock the mysteries for me. I began to
see the folly of looking for external dif ferences. I had noted some, but I
decided I would stop looking for outward appearances on which to base my
investigation. I would follow my own instincts and listen to the people
themselves. I would focus on Eykis. I simply could not get her innocent
honesty out of my mind.

We spent three hours together that afternoon and evening. When Eykis
left, my faith in the old bromide “Don’ t judge a book by its cover” had been
renewed. Uranus might have all the external trappings of my home planet,
but in fact it had almost no resemblance to Earth. Before meeting with
Eykis, I had spent my time trying to unlock the secrets of a culture without
looking into the one thing that constitutes a culture in the first place, the
people themselves. I had stared blindly at the externals, instead of going tothe source. All the information we have about Earth’ s prehistoric people is
based on the same mistaken principle. W e leap to conclusions about these
people on the basis of their artifacts—their pottery, hunting tools, homes,
and so on. W ould I want to be assessed and understood on the basis of the
car I drive or the shape of my eating utensils? Does a fork tell anyone
anything about me? I use the fork because I was taught to do so, but I could
also use my fingers, or anything else available to get the food into my
stomach. When the car isn’ t working I walk or hitchhike. But what does any
of that tell you about me? Very little, of course, yet we make many absurd
assumptions about Neanderthal Man without having any more information
about them than our forks reveal about us.
I knew that our collective knowledge about all cultures prior to our own
was infinitesimal, and yet I had begun my visit to Uranus with the same
erroneous assumptions. I had studied Eastern philosophy extensively. I
knew about looking inward, I had even said many times to acquaintances,
“It’s not what happens around us, or to us, but within us that really counts,”
but when it came to applying it, I had slipped miserably. After three hours
with Eykis I would never for get that truth again. By seven o’clock at night
on my second day on Uranus, I had stopped looking at the external
similarities between our two worlds. They had become meaningless.
I shall never for get my first conversation with Eykis. I asked her if she
would mind if I taped our talk. She had no objections. In fact, during the
more than three hours we were together, she did not object to anything. I
decided to begin with total honesty. I explained who I was, how I had
arrived, and what I was doing on Uranus. I devoted several tense moments
to trying to explain as clearly as possible, hoping that she would believe me
and that she would not feel threatened, or want to turn me over to the
authorities, who would subject me to endless questioning. (I simply
couldn’ t get rid of my parochial habit of seeing the inhabitants of Uranus as
I was, rather than as they were.) Eykis did not appear surprised at what I
told her. Without flinching, she asked me what I wanted to know. I
suppressed a strong desire to tell her all about Earth and, instead, asked
what I thought would be a startling question.
“Why do you believe me? How do you know that I’m not lying and
haven’ t come to exploit you in some way?


sodium pento
barbital). A platinum electrode was inserted into the
catheter, which was irrigated continuously with phys-
Fig. VI: 13. Artificial electric charging and discharging of
li•;ng tissue of a dog. One platinum electrode was placed
against the mesentery and one in the lumen of the aorta via a
fe.moral catheter. A 23 volt potential, giving initially 6.5 mA
current, was applied between the electrodes for 15 minutes.
I. 8 volts were then measured between the electrodes. The
c111rrent flow between the electrodes was then read by means
of a digital microampc: rcmctcr in parallel with the voltrne~c.r.
The initial part of the discharge took place very rapidly he
tween the cessation of applying potential to the eltctrodes
and the first measurement. Initial current values are there
fore not included.
10
5
...
04---------~--------.-------~r- -.
0 5 10 IS tnt.n
58 Electric potentials iologic saline solution. The abdomen was surgically
opened. Another platinum electrode was directly
placed against tissues of various organs, e.g., mesen
tery. A direct current potential of predetermined mag
nitude was applied between the electrodes for one to
several minutes. The potential difference between the
two electrodes was then measured with a millivolt
meter immediately after interruption of current flow.
The electrodes were then short circuited over a mi
croamperemeter in parallel with the millivoltmeter.
The values of current and potential were then read at
regular intervals and plotted against time.
These experiments revealed in the 5 dogs that in
vivo an artificial electrical charging and discharging of
a tissue was easily demonstrated.
Thus, in the experiment illustrated in Fig. VI: 13 a
potential of 23 volts at an initial current of 6.5 rnA was
applied between the aorta and a mesenteric electrode
in a dog. After 15 minutes, a potential of 1.8 V was
measured between the electrode-s. The electrodes were
then connected to each ot!her over the microampere
meter. The current-time integral of the discharge is
illustrated in Fig. VI: 13. The initial values are not
included because initial discharge was very rapid.
Differences of electric impedance and ionic concen
tration in different tissues aUow local variations of
electric charges. These charges can be artificially
changed when the tissues are electrically connected to
each other over electrodes and an external conductor.
Thus, short circuiting between tissue regions of differ
ent electric potentials can level that potential differ
ence. Moreover, when an external source of direct
current is connected into the circuit, an artificial local
charging of tissues can be obtained. Different tissues
such as fat, muscle, viscera, bone, blood, interstitial
fluid, cell membranes, etc., are aJso known to have
different resistivities (see Chapter X!D. It is therefore
logical to regard tissues as composed of numerous
galvanic cells with different capacity. A tumour or
granuloma with an electric potential in relation to the
surrounding tissues should therefore contain a surplus
of cations or anions in relation to surroundi ng tissue.
Why and how such ionic s-eparations occur in vivo is
another problem, which will be considered later.
E. Control studies of electric
potentials of normal and
pathological tissues
At this stage of experimentation the existence of elec
tric potential between a pulmonary lesion and sur
rounding lung was checked with a modified technique.
This part of the study was performed in a group of fifteen patient-volunteers. In these studies nonpolari
zable Ag-AgCI electrodes with KCI-agar bridges were
used. The electric potentials of normal lung, pleura
and liver in dog will be described as a background to
discussions of integrated influences by "reference"
tissues.
l. Electrodes, recording of potentials,
and techniques of cell sampling
Nonpolarizable Ag-AgCI electrodes with KCI bridges
were used in order to explore the possibility that diffu
sion potentials participate in the development of the
observed electric potentials of lung lesions.
Silver strings, ISS mm long and 0.25 mm thick,
were each soldered to electrical cables. The site of
soldering was protected with Araldite"' and a plastic
tube. The strings were polished and chemically
cleaned (CCI4 IS minutes, I M HN03 2 minutes,
10% (COOH), 5 minutes). The surfaces of the silver
strings were then coated with a layer of Teflon (954-
103) in liquid suspension. The Teflon was allowed to
dry with the string in a vertical position. The string
was then placed in an oven for 5 minutes at a tempera
ture of 26<f. In this manner two Teflon layers were
applied to the surface of the string. The distal 5 mm of
the Teflon layers were then scratched off the string
and the surface polished and cleaned chemically as
described above. A chloride layer was applied to the
0.04 em~ of silver surface (0.9% NaCI solution, cur
rent of 0.4 mA between the string and an equally
cleaned silver plate, duration SO seconds).
Electrodes manufactured in this way were then kept
in the dark in a 2 M KCI solution. Their electrical
a Plain AgCI electrode
Jo.1mV Smin 1
b
Io.rmv tmin cables were connected to each other and to a carbon
rod, which was also placed in the KCI solution, as
recommended by Cooper (2). Because carbon is slight
ly cathodic with respect to silver-silver chloride, a
small chloriding current was maintained. Electrodes
treated in this way show good electrical stability, com
parable to what has been reported by Cooper (2) and
Geddes and Baker (4).
Sale bridge carriers were manufactured from hard
radiopaque Teflon tubes, Teflon coated cannulas (1.2
mm thick), or in dog experiments, glass capillaries.
They were filled with 3 M KCI solution in 2% agar.
Cyrologica/ sampling followed by electric potential
studies was performed through hard Teflon tubes.
These tubes (165 mm long, 1.5 mm thick) were pro
vided with a plastic three-way stopcock and an in
dwelling, I mm thick, biopsy cannula. Each tube was
inserted under local anaesthesia in the skin through a 3
mm incision. The tube was advanced under fluo
roscopic comrol to the edge of the lesion. Cytologic
material was then sampled by means of a screw needle,
0.55 mm thick, inserted through the cannula into the
tissue, according to the technique previously described
by the author (II). After removal of cellular material,
a new needle was inserted through the plastic tube and
advanced to the distal wall of the lesion, where again
cellular material was sampled.
The lumen of the plastic tube was then filled with
the sterile agar-KCI solution, which shortly before was
made liquid by placing the agar-KCI bottle in boiling
water. The Ag-AgCI electrode was introduced into the
plastic tube with the proximal part secured in the hub
of the stopcock. Care was taken not to introduce air
bubbles, both when filling the tube with the KCI-agar
material and when inserting the electrode.
A corresponding, grounded, reference electrode was
also introduced into the subcutis of the chest wall.
AgCI electrode with salt bridget 3M KCI in 2X agar)
Fig. Vi: 14. Stability tests of Ag-AgCl electrodes in 0.9%
NaCI. (a) Drift of 6 microvolts during a 30 minute period.
Fluctuations <± 10 mjc:rovolt s. (b) Same electrodes in 0. 9 o/o NaCI with interconnected 3 M KCI-agar bridges. Po
tential drift of 100 microvolts during a 30 minute period.
Fluctuations < ±40 microvolts.
Electric potentials 59 lung mediastinum lung pleura
Fig. VI: 15. Profile of electric potential of tissue through the
chest of a dog in re.lation to subcutaneous grounded refer
ence electrode. Anteroposterior radiograph. Needle elec
trode was inserted from the left side through the chest, an·
terior and superior to the bean. While the exploring elc.;
tn>de was removed, 30 mV positive pOtentials arc seen when
Elecrric potential of the tissues was recorded during
withdr•wa l of the exploring electrode. When record
ings were made during cineradiography (frame speed
50/sec), the position of the electrode was determined
by comparing the cine frames with the markings of the
frame exposures on the same chart paper as the electric
potentials.
The impedan ce of the recording circuit was usually
in the kil


lower lobe of the right lung (Fig. XVII: 35 a, c). Sever
al 3-4 mm diameter nodules, presumed to be metasta
ses, were also apparent in the posterior basal segment
of the right lower lobe (Fig. XVII: 36a).
Before DC treatment of each of the two large tu
mours, screw net-die biopsies were obtained, confirm
ing the diagnosis of metastases from the intrapelvic
stromal sarcoma (Fig. XVII: 37).
Fig. XVII: 38a illustrates an electrode implanted in
the more anterolateral of the two largt.,;t tumours and
the screw needle inserted in the tumour for cytologic
verification of the diagnosis. Fig. X VII: 38 b and c
shows anteroposterior and lateral photofluorographs of
the position of the electrodes in the tumour and in the
pulmonary parenchyma before treatment.
304 Treatment of cancer Fig. XVII: 35. Decrease in
si~e of two pulmonary me
tastases, right lower lobe,
patient no. 4, after treat
ment with direct current.
Primary intrapelvic sarccr
ma. Radiographs, right pos
terior oblique projection.
(a) Before treatment, one
metastasis is anterolateral
(black arrow), one medial
(white arrow). The diameter
of each tumour is about 1.5
em. The anterolateral tU·
mour was the first to be
treated with direct current
(100coulombsat 10 volts
electrode potential). (b) 153
days later, the anterolatera l
tumour has disappeared. A
3 mm piece of platinum
electrode (black arrow)
shows the previous site of
the tumour. 1 12 days after
treatmem with direcr cur
rent (180 coulombs at 10
volts), siu of the mediaJJy
located rumour has de
creased slightly. (c) Comput
eri~ed tomogram through
the rwo rumours before
treatment. See also Figs.
XVIJ: 38,40 (electrode im
plantation s).
DC treatment was performed under local anaesthe
sia after preliminary medication with 10 mg Valium®
and 5 m,g morphine-scopOlamine. Tbe anterolateral
tumour receive-d 100 coulombs at 10 volts. Fig.
XVII: 39 presents the relationship of current to time in
this treatment. The discontinuities in the curve indi
cate that the treatment was interrupted twice, each
time because the patient complained of sudden pain.
The pain is presumed to have been caused when the
flow of current was interrupted by gas produced
around the electrode'S. Other than the moderate dis
comfort produced by these interruptions of current,
the patient had no complaints. When the electrodes
were pulled out, one small piece of the tumour elec
trode broke off and remained in the tumour. A small
pneumothorax was also produced hut the air resorbed
spontaneously in two days. Fig. XVII: 36. Decrease in size of small pulmonary nodules
(2no,vs), lateral basal segment, right lower lol:H:, patient no.
4t after large metastases in the same lobe were treated with
direct current. Radiographs, shaHow right anterior oblique
Fig. XV/1:37. Sarcomatous
tissue from lung and pelvis,
patient no. 4. (a) Cytologic
specimen from metastatic
tumour, medially situated in
the right lower lobe. (b) His
tologic section, primary pel
vic sarcoma. The cellular
material is comparable from
each of the two lesions. a
• • projection. (a) Before 1reatment. (b) Four months later. Sev
eral of the smaU les.ions b:ave di$Appe:ared or diminished in
size.
Treatment of cancer 305 In this patient the first treated tumour rapidly de
creased in size. Five months after treatment the tu
mour could no longer be identified. As seen in Fig.
XVII: 3Sb, no tumour remained at its previous site, as
indicated by the remaining piece of the electrode.
Radiologically, no scar tissue is evident in tbe lung at
the sites of the electrodes.
The position of the electrodes implanted for DC
treatment of the posterior basal tumour is also shown
in the radiographs in Fig. XVII: 40a, b. A computer
ized tomogram (Fig. XVII: 40c) shows the reactions in
the lung about 30 minutes after treatment of this
tumour. The arrow points to a small cavity in the
tumour, the dotted line a larger cavity at the site of the
previous position of the cathode. Haziness in the ca
thodic area is caused by electroosmotically collected
tissue fluid ("B" zone effect). Gas produced around
electrodes is always more extensive around the cathode
than the anode. This tumour was given 180 coulombs
at 10 vohs electrod-e potential. Despite treatment with
a dose nearly twice that given the anterolateral metas
tasis, the medial basal tumour decreased 10 a size only
somewhat smaller than before treatment (right tu-
mA
20
10 Fig.XVl/:38. Oirectcu.r
rent treatment of anterolat
enol basal pulmonary metas
tasis, patient no. 4. (a) Per
cutaneous e.lectrode for
treatment (wire on left) with
screw needlt, and sampling
of ceUular material to con
firm the pre~ucnptive diag
nosis of metastatic sarcoma.
(b) Anteroposterior, and (c)
latenol photofluorognophs of
electrodes in tumour and in
nearby pulmonary paren-
chyma.
mour, white arrows in Fig. XVII: 35 a, b). Neither of
the treated lung tumours showed any sign of recur
rence during the observation period ( 485 and 444
days). The patient died from recurrence of her prima
ry intrapelvic sarcoma and brain metastases.
Tbe behaviour of tbe two tumours of patients no. Z
and 4 requires some comments. In patient no. 2 a
more rapid and prominent decrease of the slightly
larger tumour (III) occurred after 65 coulombs than of
the smaller tumour (II) after 100 coulombs (Table
XVII: 2). In patient no. 4, the lateral basal tumour
disappeared after 100 coulombs, while the size of the
posteromedial basal tumour decreased only slightly
after 180 coulombs. These discrepancies between
amount of current and effect on tumour size have been
interpreted as follows:
The growth of a tumour can be stopped permanent
ly when all tumour cells are destroyed.,'\ resorption of
devitalized tumour tissue will then take place, which
may lead to total or partial disappearance of the tu
mour. In case an overdose of current is given, the
treatment will also interfere with the functions of the
surroundin g normal tissue. For example, microthrom-
o+---------~ ------ --r--- -----,------ --~--------Fig. XV/1:39. Current-time
chan, patient no. 4, treat
ment of the.anterolateral
metastasis (100 coulombs,
10 volts). Interruptions in
the curve indicate the two
instances when the patient
reported pain, which was
presumed to be caused by
gas around the electrodes in
terrupting the flow of cur
rent. 0 20 40 60 80 min
306 Treatment of cancer Fig. KV/1:40. Oir«t cur~
rent treatment of medial
basal pulmonary metastasis,
patient no. 4, rndiographic
images. During trtatment
the cathode was in pulmo
nary parenchyma posterola·
teral to the anode in the tu·
mour. Gas has formed
around each electrOde.
(a) Anteroposterior, (b) lat
eral projections. (<) CompUI
erized tomogram 30 minutes
after treatmem. Tu.mour
shows small gas bubble (thin
arrow). Centre of cathode
shows larger cavity sur·
rounded by elecuoosmoti ·
cally accumulated oedema
(dotted line).
boses and fibrosis may develop, preventing the resorp
tion of destroyed rumour tissue. We then obtain what
might be called a seq~stration of destroyed tumcur tissue,
which might be an even more reliable effect of the
treatment than apparent disappearance of a tumour
after


,  what  it means  to hold  the Balance
over  the human  from  the Ascended  Masters'  Octave;  for
the Release  of Our  Light  into  the octave  which  is a lower
vibratory  action.  We  see and  know  so clearly  what  that
means;  how  so many  have  been  lifted  out of their  limita-
tions;  and  had  the Complete  Release  from  this  lower  octave, DISCOURSE  XVIII  261
while  still  moving  in it. We know  there  is no limit  to what
can be accomplished  for the students.  Try  to realize  with
Me today,  aside  from  yourselves  who  are students,  these
Mighty  Decrees  going  forth  in the  mental  and  feeling
world  of mankind,  are reaching  thousands  and  thousands
of people  who  have  not yet touched  This  Work.  It is acting
in their  feeling  world.  The  moment  the  slightest  thing
comes  to call their  attention  to This  Mighty  Presence,  their
"Mighty  I AM,"  their  feeling  is prepared  and  ready  to re-
ceive  It.
It is why  the Transcriptions  and  the Radio  Broadcasts,
have  done  so much  for the Blessing  of mankind  and  they
are bringing  such  a tremendous  number  of people  into  This
Understanding.  Therefore,  remember  in your  Group  Work
and in your  Decree  Work,  you  are rendering  a Service  In-
describable  and  Unparalleled  in the history  of the Earth.
If it had  not been  for that,  We could  not have  hoped  to have
saved  humanity,  from  the  condition  which  threatens  the
entire  World.
I said  mankind  might,  one  day,  be surprised  at another
Transformation  which  would  take  place  in Russia.  I still
maintain  It! The  change  in the feeling  world  of those  peo-
ple, may  bring  a great  Transformation  there,  and  We  are
pouring  the Light  forth  for It. The  destructive  element  in
that great  country,  is fast losing  its power.  It is why  recently,
We asked  the students  everywhere  to give  their  assistance  to
Europe  and  the Orient.  We are trying  an Experiment  and
so far it is beyond  Our  expectations. 262 THE  "I AM99  DISCOURSES
As We  have  found  Ourselves  reaching  a certain  point
of safety  in America,  We have  been  utilizing  some  of This
Power,  released  from—let  Me call them—the  Great  Amer-
ican people,  because  they  are!  Who  on Earth  is so great  as
those,  who  give  forth  their  Life  Energy,  so We may  utilize
It, to bless  mankind  and  the world ? Should  Our  Experi-
ment  succeed,  you  will  see a Transformation  in Europe
which  will  be the Greatest  Miracle  you  ever  witnessed!
We cannot  yet tell you  the outcome,  for We  cannot  de-
pend  upon  Europe,  as We do upon  the students  of Amer-
ica, today.  Let  Me  call  your  attention  to something  you
might  have  heard,  some  of you.  Beloved  Saint  Germain
performed  This  Tremendous  Service.  When  it was  planned
to send  a secret  fleet  of airplanes  with  their  destructive
power  at night  over  America,  to spread  devastation,  He
prevented  that  plan's  success.  Five  times,  He intercepted
the messenger,  who  tried  to carry  it out.  At last,  He com-
pelled  their  destruction  back  into  the messenger  in order  to
prevent  it. Then,  He went  to the instigator,  who  is at the
head  of a great  army—made  Himself  visible  to him—and
said to him:  "If you  try this again,  I will  destroy  every  plane
and all that  is in them;  and  then  if you  persist,  I will  destroy
your  entire  army,  and  if you  think  I cannot  do it, try Me
out"!
It is what  comes  from  the Activity  of the Great  Cosmic
Light,  which  on the seventh  day  of the Shrine  Class,  made
it possible  for the viciousness  of Individuals  to be returned
upon  their  creators!  There  is no wrong  in doing  that!  There DISCOURSE  XVIII  263
is no viciousness  about  it. Get  this  clear  in your  minds;  be-
cause  if you  don't,  you  will  find  yourselves  meeting  ob-
struction ! The  World  today,  is under  the pressure  of vicious
destructive  human  qualities.  All mankind  is to some  degree
responsible  for it; but those  who  have  utilized  the destruc-
tive force,  to get the governing  power  over  mankind,  to
compel  the people  to be subservient,  will  find  themselves
meeting  their  own  creation.  When  they  are compelled  to
look  upon  it, they  will  see their  own  destruction.
This  is not  a matter  of My  Opinion,  your  opinion  nor
anyone's  opinion.  It is the Law  of Life  which  is the Law
of cause  and  effect;  and  when  the cause  of destructive  qual-
ities comes  to a certain  point  of action,  the reverse  of that
action  takes  place!  Not  all human  Beings  on Earth  nor
Ourselves,  can prevent  it; because  it is the creation  of man-
kind  returned  upon  its creator.
Now  you  will  see how  great  is your  Privilege  in the Use
of the Violet  Consuming  Flame;  and  the Understanding
of the Power  of your  Presence  which  is Life;  to draw  about
you the Tube  of Light,  which  is your  Protection.  THE
POWER  OF  THE  VIOLET  CONSUMING  FLAME
DISSOLVES  AND  CONSUMES  YOUR  OWN  INDI-
VIDUAL  CREATION,  SO  YOU  MAY  NOT  LOOK
UPON  IT.  YOU  NO  LONGER  FEEL  ITS  EFFECTS.
YOU  CANNOT  IMAGINE  EVEN  IN YOUR  FOND-
EST  IMAGINATION,  WHAT  THAT  MEANS  TO
YOU!
Utilize  This  Power,  Beloved  Students,  and  call your  Pres-264 THE  "I AM99  DISCOURSES
ence  into  action  as never  before;  to use the Violet  Consum-
ing Flame  thru  your  physical  body,  your  mental  and  feeling
world  with  dynamic  power!  Already  you  have  consumed
the larger  percent—I  mean  ALL  EARNEST  SINCERE
STUDENTS—have  consumed  the larger  percent  of their
own  accumulation;  but  there  are some  who  are trying  to
do this  with  their  intellects.  They  are not  producing  the
results  in their  feeling  world.  I say to you  today,  be sure
your  feeling  is following  the activity  of your  attention.
Then,  what  do I mean  by that  in regard  to the Violet
Consuming  Flame?  If you  say just  from  your  neck  up:
" 'Mighty  I AM  Presence'!  dissolve  and  consume  all my
discordant  accumulation  by the Power  of the Violet  Con-
suming  Flame,"  a slight  result  is produced;  but if you  are
aware,  your  feeling  is sustaining  your  call,  then  you  will
find Results  which  are astonishing,  take  place  in your  Life.
Watch  your  feeling  follows  your  Call  or the Power  of your
attention  in everything  you  do. Whether  it be in your  outer
business  or what  it is, makes  no difference;  the same  Law  is
acting,


 it does in general health. Elevated heart rate variability
(HRV) has been  linked to bette r erectile function in men.33 HRV, which is
used as a measure of parasympathetic or vagal tone, can also be used to
predict female sexual dysfunctio n. In a study of 84 women aged  between 18
and 47 years, low HRV was identified as a risk factor for sexual
dysfunction. The study recor ded measurements of respir atory sinus
arrhythmia (RSA) before, during, and after sexual arousal. Researchers
found significant differences in vagal activity between women  who were
sexually functional and women  who experienced dysfunction,  suggesting
that vagal tone could provide a potential mechanism through which to treat
sexual dysfunction.34 This implies that sexual dysfunction could be
alleviated by stimulating the vagus nerve—which can be done by practicing
slow breathing at six breaths per minute.
Research from 2015 reached a similar conclusion from a different
starting point. In a study of women who had survived childhood sexual
abuse, their HRV was compare d against women who had no history of
trauma. It was found that when  women were treated to reduce autonomic
imbalance, their sexual well-being improved. Over time, as HRV became
better regulated, the women showed increasing improvements in sexual
arousal and or gasmic function.35
The vagus nerve is implicated in female orgasm and in ejaculation for
both men and women. In women, vaginal orgasm is physiologically
different from clitoral orgasm.36 While sensory input from the clitoris
travels to the brain via the puden dal nerve, information from the vagina and
cervix travels via the pudendal,  pelvic, hypogastric, and vagus nerves. The
vagus nerve is stimulated durin g heterosexual sex as the penis connects
with the cervix. This stimulation appears to be linked to better
cardiovascular and psychological function and increased vagal tone.36
Research by Beverly Whipple and Barry Komisaruk, authors of The Scienceof Orgasm, demon strates that the vagus nerve plays a role in deep orgasm s
in women.37 So much so that it is possible for a woman who has a
completely severed spinal cord and no feeling in her lower extremities to
experience orgasms, even in the absence of any connection between the
external clitoris and the brain.36
More recent research has shown that much of the clitoris is internal,
with four-inch roots reaching into the vagina.38 This would indicate that
vaginal and G-spot orgasms are, in fact, also clitoral and come from
stimulating the internal parts of the clitoris. It is certainly the case that if the
vaginal walls had as much sensation as the clitoris, childbirt h would be
impossibly painful. Just the tip of the clitoris has over 8,000 nerve endings,
double the number found in the penis.39 However, it is hardly surprising
that understanding of female orgasm is limited and conflicting, because it
wasn’ t until 2009 that the first sonographic mapping of an erect  clitoris was
carried out. Without this knowle dge, much study of the female anatomy and
female sexual satisfaction has assumed that penile stimulation is necessary
to orgasm—only adding to an unhealthy culture around female sexuality
that may help explain why 1 in 10 women has never had an or gasm.
Looking at it from a different direction, the ancient Tantric idea that
restricted breathing creates a type of internal contraction, blocking feeling
and emotions, was confirmed in 2008 by scientists who made a link
between the way a woman walks and her experience of, or potential for,
vaginal orgasm. The researchers speculated that chronic muscle tension
impacts sexual function by impairing feeling and functional movement,
possibly representing mental or emotional blocks. The paper cites a study of
men in which it was found that a method of therapeutic manual tissue
manipulation known as Rolfing  decreased postural problems in the pelvis
and increased cardiac vagal tone, which indicated better parasympathetic
function. Research from 2004 similarly linked physical therapy with better
orgasmic function in women,40 and another review from 2007 indicated that
problems in the muscles of the pelvic floor are closely related to sexual
dysfunction.41 The 2008 paper concludes,
The discerning observer may infer women’ s experience of vaginal
orgasm from a gait that comprises fluidity, energy, sensuality,freedom, and absence of both flaccid and locked muscles.36
This raises the question, could the diaphragm—which is central to
breathing, integr al to the core, vital for stability of the spine and pelvis, and
connected to the vagus nerve— also play an important role in the ability to
achieve satisfying or gasms?
Significantly, that all-important vagus nerve also innervates the voice
box and throat, and it is direc tly connected to the cervix and uterus.42
Research into this area is incredibly sparse, but one paper explores the
involuntary vocal noises we typically make during sex, linking the more
powerful sounds with hyperventilation. It is the first study to examine blood
sensitivity to CO 2 during intense sex. It suggests that the metabolic changes
occuring in the brain during hyperventilation may deepen states of sexual
trance.43 The researchers observe that changes in breathing patterns during
sex are similar in both men and women. However, accelerated breathing is
more accentuated in women. Anecdotal evidence also suggests that women
are more vocal during sexual intercourse.43
The Multi-Or gasmic Woman  describes the use of the breath to extend
female orgasm by contracting the pubococcygeus muscle and expressing
pleasure with the voice, explaining that, according to Taoist wisdom, the
throat and vagina are connected.44 As you gain better control of your sexual
energy, “you will be able to extend your orgasm through one long out-
breath, a quick intake of breath, and then another one or two breaths.” The
book states that if the throat  is open, the genitals will be “open to
pleasure.”44 In the book The Multi-Or gasmic Man by Mantak Chia and
Douglas Abrams, we learn that the ability for men to control ejaculation and
have more than one orgasm also begins with strengthening and deepening
the breath45. If you are interested in exploring the Taoist techniques for
sexual pleasure more deeply, those books, along with The Multi-Or gasmic
Couple, provide an approachable and informative resource.
As we know, hyperventilation alters levels of blood CO2, and CO2
moderates the rate of blood flow in tissues, especially the brain.
Hyperventilation also induces changes to the blood’ s acid-base balance,
which increases the affinity of blood hemoglobin for oxygen. This further
decreases the amount of oxygen available for the cells and tissues. Bloodflow to the brain can decrease by as much as 50% during
hyperventilation.43 At the same time, metaboli c activity in the brain
changes. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies show that
oxygen consumption is predomi nantly reduced in the neocortex gray matter
and much less in the limbic structures. The limbic systems in the brain are
responsible for our emotional responses, while the gray matter influences
attention, memo ry, thought, and motor control. The study suggests that this
may explain the role of hyperv entilation in intensifying emot ional states
and changing behavioral control during sex.
The study also suggests that changes within the nervous system induced
by hyperventila tion could lead to altered states of consciou sness. This
involves a shift in the pattern of activity between different structures within
the brain. The result is someth ing that scientists describe as an “arousal
dissociation,” which may result in a more primitive form of brain function.
This brain “state,” which involves activation of pleasure responses, less
self-control, a decrease in abstract thinking, and an increase in emotionally
guided thinking is known to occur during dreams, hypnagogia (the state of
consciousness just before we fall asleep), and in states induced by
hallucinogenic drugs.43 Hyperventilation may be used instinctively in this
context to intensify experience s of sexual excitation, sexual trance, and
orgasm.43
Tantra.com founder, Suzie Heumann, speculates that for women,
opening the mouth and chest cavity with slow, deep breathing may connect
with the vagus nerve to greatly enhance orgasmic capacity.46 Heumann
writes,
When women emit deep, low sounds from their abdomens and with
their mouths wide open this can sometimes lead to longer lasting,
powerful or gasms and even female ejaculation.46
Since it has been found that people who are more suscep tible to
hypnotic trance have a higher autonomic responsiveness and higher levels
of brain  to body vagal activit y,47 Heuma nn’s suggestion that a highly
activated vagus nerve can produce “out of body pleasure” may not be far
from the truth.WHEN SEX IS DYSFUNCTIONAL
Sexual function is defined in Western medicine as a state of physical,
mental, and social well-being as it pertains to sexuality. It requires a
positive and respectful approach  to sexuality and