From “The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life” by Lisa Miller, PhD
Back when Lorne was still a doctoral student, our initial collaborative EEG study at Columbia had revealed that people who recover from depression through a deepened spirituality give off a posterior high-amplitude alpha wavelength – the same wavelength given off posteriorly in some practices by meditating monks. I was curious where else in nature this wavelength was found and asked Lorne to help me find out. I had asked him, “What is it in nature, a tree, a leaf, an animal, that vibrates at alpha?” Lorne showed up at my office a week later with a bright smile. “Alpha is everywhere,” he said. He showed me research beginning as early as 1893 that examined what are now called Schumann resonances, a set of spectrum peaks in the extremely low frequencies in the Earth’s electromagnetic field spectrum. Alpha is a resonance in the space between the Earth’s crust to one mile up, set and reset by lightning and other activity in the ionosphere. High-amplitude alpha is everywhere. The same wavelength of brains in meditation or prayer, and shared by the men and women holding hands in times of pain, is the wavelength of the oneness of all life. The brain-to-brain coupling site by which we perceive ourselves on common ground with fellow humans is also that through which we perceive oneness with God, nature, or the universe. All these forms of unitive awareness, of moving from a point to a wave – whether shared with people, nature, or a higher power – involve energy at alpha frequency. When we awaken, we resonate at the same frequency as all of nature on Earth. We rejoin life.