Make your own brainwaves!

Back in college I had the opportunity to do a little research into meditative states.  Along the way I ran into a few little tricks that did wierd and wonderful things.  One of them in particular was the binaural beat generator.  The way in which a binaural beat generator works is it produces tones, one to be played into the right ear and one to be played into the left ear, which are just a few cycles per second off in frequency.  You might have a 440 Hz tone in your left ear and a 446 Hz tone playing into your right ear.  The really neat thing that occurs here is that when a person has these offset frequencies played into their ears, their brainwaves synchronize to the difference in the frequencies.  If you used the frequencies mentioned in the above example, then your brainwaves should synchronize to somewhere around 6 Hz.  Brainwaves (the readings you get when you hook a person up to an EEG) are still rather cryptic, but certain frequencies have been noted to be related to certain mental states, as you can see in the nifty little graphic.  While I can't say anything about there being a direct correlation between having a particular frequency and experiencing a particular mental state, I can say that some level of mental state shift can be brought about when using a binaural beat generator.  Myself and my associates at the time performed made several observations about the effects of binaural beats on a person's mental state and it suffices to say that a good time was had by all.  If you've got a spare hour or two, go download this nice little program which does exactly what I'm talking about and give it a try.  In time, you can try programming your own presets.  If you find anything neat, post it in the forum!