I have been reading the rather lively Centerpointe thread and thought to start a slightly different but similar discussion.
I have been experimenting with binaural beats for over 25 years. I've made electronic tone generators and wrote lots of software to generate tones.
The tones work. Binaural beats work. Robert Monroe likened them to training wheels though. People I know who are adept at triggering their own altered states agree. You don't need the tones.
Monaural beats work also. One of the interesting things is that when people played binaural beat cassette tapes on "boom-boxes" the audience still got some effects. Dick Sutphen (hypnotist) uses a monaural (AM) beat quite effectively in his home study tapes.
Anna Wise has spent many years characterizing "localized" consiousness. One of the things she points out is that the brain produces multiple frequencies simulataneously. When the brain is firing on all cylinders you get a pattern she calls the awakened mind - beta, alpha, theta and delta occurring simultaneously.
Typically theta and delta are low amplitude and need to be encouraged. That's where the tones come in. Boost.
EEG does not seem to be very useful in charaterizing non-local consciousness (out of body, remote viewing, etc.)
Entrainment is a sorta slow process requiring minutes. If you sit and listen to nice spacy music or even silence then you'll get some of the same effects. If you listen to monaural or binaural beats you'll get some of the same effects.
Remember it is you doing it, not the tones or the tapes (think training wheels). You are the canvas the picture is painted on.
After you get to playing around with this stuff for a while you gain respect for those people who put a heck-of-a-lot of time in weeding out the non-productive combinations. Pretty soon buying their products becomes supporting their work.
