Ringing in the Brain, Making Connections

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXwqokws42s

Last week, in Viendo el tiempo, Sintiendo los Colores, Saboreando la luz, I mentioned what a great feeling it is when new connections are being made to like-minded individuals around the world. The Spanish subtitles created for my recent video blog by YouTube user EmpoweredByKnowledge are a great example of that.

Now, here's another new video blog for your enjoyment. The text blog version of Ringing in the Brain was published last October, I'm still pretty far behind here but trust me, I'm trying to get these more caught up to each other as quickly as I can.

Rather than quote YouTube comments this time, I wanted to thank a reader named Tara who contacted me with questions about Carl Jung and his concept of the Collective Unconscious, and also about Nikola Tesla, where she provided this fascinating quote from the wikipedia entry about his life:

Tesla engaged in reading many works, memorizing complete books, supposedly having a photographic memory.^[21] Tesla related in his autobiography that he experienced detailed moments of inspiration. During his early life, Tesla was stricken with illness time and time again. He suffered a peculiar affliction in which blinding flashes of light would appear before his eyes, often accompanied by visions. Much of the time the visions were linked to a word or idea he might have come across, at other times they would provide the solution to a particular problem he had been encountering; just by hearing the name of an item, he would be able to envision it in realistic detail. Modern-day synesthetes report similar symptoms. Tesla would visualise an invention in his mind with extreme precision, including all dimensions, before moving to the construction stage; a technique sometimes known as picture thinking. He typically did not make drawings by hand, instead just conceiving all ideas with his mind. Tesla also often had flashbacks to events that had happened previously in his life; these began during his childhood.^[21]

In entries like Seeing Time, Feeling Colors, Tasting Light and Crossed Wires in the Brain, we've talked not just about synaesthesia, but also explored how the implicit connections within these conditions might be helping to reveal other things about how intimately connected reality and consciousness really are. In the same vein, Adam, who's a YouTube fan calling themselves "virulentRant", asked me about a condition I'd never come across before: ever hear of Exploding Head Syndrome? Here's a quote from the wikipedia article on that condition:

This noise usually occurs within an hour or two of falling asleep, but is not necessarily the result of a dream and can happen while awake as well.^[1] While the sound is perceived as extremely loud, it is usually not accompanied by pain. Attacks appear to change in number over time, with several attacks occurring in a space of days or weeks followed by months of remission. Sufferers often feel a sense of fear and anxiety after an attack, accompanied by elevated heart rate. Attacks are also often accompanied by perceived flashes of light (when perceived on their own, known as a "visual sleep start") or difficulty in breathing. The condition is also known as "auditory sleep starts". It is not thought to be dangerous,^[1] although it is sometimes distressing to experience. Sufferers may experience an inability to vocalize any sound, or mild forms of sleep paralysis during an attack.

Which leads me to another interesting contact I recently received from a new Facebook friend who suffers from Sleep Paralysis and is participating in a study at the University of Waterloo: "SPAWN, the Waterloo Sleep Paralysis and Waking Nightmare Study". Check out the link, this was a whole other field I'd never heard of before but which seems to be an interesting tangent to all of the above discussions.

Don't you love those times when it seems like things are coming together, and the synchronicites are firing, and you're in the Flow? Me too. That's what seems to have happened in the past few weeks since my new Ringing in the Brain video was released.

Enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

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