On the Path to Awareness Inside a 3-by-4-Foot Box

The lights seem to sear the brain.

In two straight lines on the ceiling, they flash in rhythmic white patterns like strobes on some cosmic dance floor. The mirror-covered walls vaguely reflect 900 images of oneself seated cross-legged on a cushion at the center.

“Imagine you are not here,” says a soothing male voice backed by heavenly musical strains. “Expand your right brain as a balloon. Let your right brain become a huge basket of popping popcorn. Feel your right brain being eaten by friendly dwarfs, thousands of them.”

All this in a 3-by-4-foot metal-and-birch box at the Marina Pacifica Mall.

The voice is that of Cliff Cowles, a Carmel Valley psychologist and inventor of this latest technological step in the march toward New Age consciousness.

Welcome to the Star Chamber--a device whose time, its promoters say, has decidedly come.

Cowles, 38, says the human brain responds to flashing lights by slowing its own brain-wave pattern to match the cycles of the flashes. Thus, by sitting in the chamber and adjusting the light cycle appropriately, he says, one can quickly enter the low-brain-activity “alpha” state, described by psychologists as “deeply meditative and creatively receptive.”

By watching the mirrored images and listening to specially designed tapes of music and guided imagery, Cowles says, chamber users can relax and, in some cases, even act as their own therapists. “They’ve got a chance to slow down, to see themselves more as they are and to achieve a focus on what they want to become,” he said.

Achieving enlightenment in an enclosure is not a new concept.

As early as the 1950s, researchers began experimenting with sensory deprivation tanks. Designed to allow users to explore their inner selves by eliminating all outside sensation, the tanks are now widely available.

About 7 years ago, an Orange County firm, Environ Inc., began producing Environ Personal Retreat, an 8-by-6-by-4-foot cylinder with an adjustable cushioned seat, stereophonic sound, colored lights and a rose-scented air filtration system. The units were designed to provide busy executives with a quick way to deal with the pressures of their jobs. Although they never caught on in the corporate world, a handful survive today as pain and stress reducers in Los Angeles-area medical offices.

Other companies over the years have attempted, with varying success, to market chambers designed to enhance human consciousness.

Cowles says his boxes are unusual because of their emphasis on specific self-improvement goals. He has produced 25 audio-cassette tapes to be used in conjunction with the Star Chamber on subjects ranging from “retuning” relationships to overcoming addiction.

Apparently the idea has resonated in more than a few places. Since going into business in early 1986, Cowles said, he has placed 154 of the units nationwide--about half of them in private homes--at prices ranging from $4,000 to $8,000. Of the 45 units in California, only two are in the Greater Los Angeles area, one at a specialty shop in West Hollywood and the other at a trendy tanning salon in Long Beach.

“We want to give people a way to relax without having to have two or three martinis,” said Dick Edwards, owner of Sun Days Solaria in the Marina Pacifica Mall, where about 10 customers since September have paid $10 apiece for half-hour sessions in the Star Chamber.

A former stockbroker with no background in either meditation or psychology, Edwards, 46, sees the device as a way to bolster an otherwise seasonal business. “I was excited,” he said of his first experience in the chamber. “I enjoyed it, and I felt that others would be equally interested.”

Yet independent psychiatrists and psychologists disagree sharply in their attitudes toward such devices.

Dr. Mohan Nair, a UCLA neuropsychiatrist specializing in brain function, said that while he is not familiar with the specific technology developed by Cowles, he believes in the concept of self-help through alpha-producing devices. “There’s plenty of room in everybody’s life for introspection and a calm state of mind,” he said. “I don’t think people should have to go to doctors; they should have access to things that can help without going through intermediaries.”

Some of Nair’s colleagues, however, express reservations about putting people in consciousness-altering chambers without the guidance of trained therapists to warn them of possible disquieting effects.

Robert Butterworth, a psychologist with offices in Los Angeles and Downey, said last week that the trend toward using such devices instead of taking a longer-range approach to solving personal problems can be self-defeating. “Yuppies want instant gratification and instant everything,” he said. “This is another Yuppie product for the 1990s--no one wants to work at anything anymore.”

At Sun Days Solaria, recent customers seemed equally mixed in their reviews of the strange-looking contraption gracing a front window amid the tanning booths and manicurists’ trays.

Steve Miller, a Garden Grove salesman who has been in the chamber a dozen times, said he likes it so much that he is considering purchasing one. “It’s fantastic,” said Miller, 26, who believes that his sales have increased 5% to 10% as a result of his time in the chamber. “It’s enabled me to think more clearly about specific events. I put together a whole marketing strategy in one of these things in 25 minutes that otherwise would have taken three days.”

Ralph Hacker had a different reaction entirely. “Their strobe equipment isn’t all that high-tech,” complained the 45-year-old aircraft worker, who tried the chamber on a whim after working out at a nearby gym. “It just seems like another way to get money.”