Washington - Propped against my headboard, I let a kaleidoscope of lights from my iPhone dance across my closed eyelids.
New Age-y synths surged in my ears. I was on a vision quest for enlightenment. But it had to be a quick vision quest: I had plans in 40 minutes. Luckily, this particular path to Zen was timed precisely at 22 minutes, 57 seconds.
Such is the promise of Dream Weaver. A meditation app recently conceived by alternative medicine guru Deepak Chopra, it posits that Zen may be a pit stop on the way from the pharmacy to the dog park or coffee shop.
Dream Weaver, available at the App Store for $14.99 (about R167), is a “light and sound program” that uses the LED strobe on your smartphone in conjunction with a soundtrack. The combination of soothing music, narration and psychedelic twinkling is meant to induce a trance state, entailing relaxation and perhaps visions. Dream Weaver’s online promotional materials compare it to the drug LSD.
The app uses brainwave entrainment, which co-creator David Mager defines in the Huffington Post as “any procedure that causes one’s brainwave frequencies to synchronise with a periodic stimulus (sound, vibration or light) having a frequency corresponding with the intended brain-state”.
The idea is that different frequencies of brainwaves map on to different levels of alertness: spiky beta waves are associated with hyper-vigilance; alpha waves with relaxed attention; theta waves with deep tranquillity and rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep; and delta waves with dreamless sleep. Dream Weaver works by flashing light at you, at lower frequencies.
Your anxious beta-brain supposedly follows the light down to theta-Wonderland like Alice behind the White Rabbit. In any case, the testimonials are inspiring.
“I could literally feel the waves of energy and shifting of my brain into the altered state. I especially felt a definitive awareness in my 6th chakra, or third eye. After the strobes stopped, I could see many colours and shapes and what seemed like sparkles, “ a user said.
“I exploded into an archetypical state of releasing sadness and fear. Even now when writing the lines of this text my eyes get wet and I am filled with joy and compassion.”
“I saw several darkly clad strangers come out of a room. I tried to offer them a message of peace telepathically. They immediately circled around me and zapped me into a state of the most joy and ecstasy I have ever felt in my life.”
“I seemed to be visited by balls of light that wanted to say hello. I was in Aruba, on vacation in Aruba!”
Methods for steering the mind into deeper waters have existed for ages: Gregorian chanting, Native American drum circles, Hindu kirtan, Tibetan prayer bowls. But Dream Weaver marries spirituality and “science” in a way that feels peculiarly of-the-moment.
Obsessed with holistic health, we are also susceptible to pitches about the mysterious efficacies of neurons and transmitters. Many of us are willing to believe that the secret to transcendence lurks somewhere in uncharted brainwaves, just as the key to long life might have something to do with quantum mechanics. What’s more, Dream Weaver presents itself as a life hack, a technology for improving productivity by making us more creative and relaxed.
There is something contradictory, or at least counterintuitive, about a meditation app. Smartphones are great at filling our brains with information; are they also suited to wiping them clean? While technology exists to smoothe and streamline, isn’t climbing the path to enlightenment supposed to be hard? What happens when you reinvent an ancient, effortful practice for a medium that’s all about finding the perfect shortcut?
Dream Weaver is designed specifically for people like me, spiritual slackers who lack the discipline to achieve nirvana without a tech boost. Preparing to test out the app, I felt hopeful. I reclined in bed with my eyes closed and got ready to plunge into the void.
Or, more accurately, to stand in the woods. I downloaded a storyline called A Trip to the Forest. It includes avian chirping, a gentle rainstorm, and lots of gauzy, vaguely Eastern-sounding music.
Towards the beginning, a woman tour guide announces herself with loud knocking, which terrified me because I thought someone was banging on my door. Her job is to douse you in “anti-gravity dust” (“Don’t worry, it won’t stain your clothes”) so you can fly to the forest; I wondered why Chopra, who narrates the rest of the trip, couldn’t administer the dust himself. Throughout all this, the LED strobe drew forked golden lines on the inside of my eyelids, which was nice. But transcendent? Not really.
Since then I’ve journeyed to the woods several times with. I have never hallucinated, or even fallen asleep, but the app calms me down.
I’ve come to appreciate the delicate branch work of the light patterns, though I suspect they pull me somewhat out of the zone, it’s hard to surrender completely to Zen with an LED strobe flashing in your face. Still, just because my experience has been short on “darkly-clad strangers” and trips to Aruba does not mean a more advanced meditator or haver-of-reveries wouldn’t love Dream Weaver. On line or off, we probably all get the enlightenment we deserve at some point eventually. – Washington Post