Integratron

You don't have to be a NASA astronaut to leave earth. A quick trip out to Joshua Tree will do the trick.

The Integratron has an interesting history, beginning in 1953 when creator George Van Tassel was practicing weekly meditation in the dessert when he claims to have been contacted by extraterrestrials from the planet Venus. Supposedly, he received directions from these creature for how to construct what George described as "a machine, a high-voltage electrostatic generator that would supply a broad range of frequencies to recharge cell structure." He began building the entirely wooden structure in 1957 with money he raised entirely from donations, and intended for it to rotate to create electricity to recharge the human body and conduct research on time travel. After his death, Emile Canning and Diane Cushing bought and preserved the Integratron in 1997 and in 2000, the Karl sisters purchased it and opened it up to the public for sound baths, meditation, and spiritual healing. While the building does not spin, it is an extremely special place that functions similarly to how George Van Tassel intended. Having experienced a sound bath for the first time inside the Integratron, I can admit that the experience is unlike any other.

It would be difficult to go into detail about my experience during the sound bath because I blacked out for much of it. As a class, we first layed down on mats inside of the perfectly architectured sound dome,  and I closed my eyes, relaxed by body and mind, and allowed myself to become vulnerable and accepting to whatever was about to come. The sound bath began as she used her tool to stroke around the rim of the crystal bowls, sending sound waves around the dome to circle back and forth, reacting and interfering with the architecture and other waves from the other bowls she was playing. While at first I was dismissive and unwilling to believe the hype about "leaving the body," what happened next was beyond my control. I closed my eyes while the vibrations bounced back and forth between my ears, transferring through the membranes of my brain and merging my left and right brain. Blues and yellows appeared, with changing geometric patterns, and reds and purples then became prevalent. While the colors and patterns were enticing, I felt myself falling into deep meditation, unable to control my own thoughts. At the end of playing each bowl, she would tap it three times to signal a shift to the next, but I lost track of the experience after the third bowl and my memory of the experience becomes hazy. I remember the sounds kept repeating over and over again and began to sound like words that kept being repeating, I'm assuming as the waves continued to circle around the dome. I regained consciousness as my left leg jerked up from the ground, similarly to when a doctor hits the nerve on your knee and you involuntarily kick. I'm unsure why this happened, if it was the sound waves controlling my nerves, or if my spirit left my body while I was unconscious and returned at that moment. I am still trying to wrap my mind around the experience and justify what I felt from what may or may not have actually happened, but I am eager to return and try another sound bath with my eyes open or with a different mindset.