Rumored to have been murdered by the CIA, Itzhak Bentov was known for his simple way of explaining consciousness through physics. His core belief being that consciousness is not merely a byproduct of the brain but may be a fundamental property of reality. The universe can be understood as an evolving field of consciousness learning about itself.
Interesting Life, Interesting Death
Imagine having ideas so controversial that it’s rumored your death was an act by the CIA.
Itzhak Bentov was a Czechoslovakia-born Israeli-American scientist, inventor, mystic and author. He had patents for several inventions, including the steerable cardiac catheter, and helped pioneer the biomedical engineering industry. Without any formal education, he designed Israel's very first rocket during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. His success there led him to work for the secret Science Corps of the Israel Defense Forces.
Itzhak was known for his simple way of explaining consciousness through physics. His core belief being that consciousness is not merely a byproduct of the brain but may be a fundamental property of reality. The universe can be understood as an evolving field of consciousness learning about itself.
Bentov was on his way to California on May 25, 1979 where he was expected to present his ideas on science and mysticism to a group of scientists from Japan. Immediately after takeoff on American Airlines Flight 191 at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, the plane’s left engine detached from the wing, causing a loss of control and crashing about 4,600 feet from the end of the runway. He was only 55 years old.
You can’t blame others for the widespread conspiracy that his death was an act by the CIA. It has been confirmed in a now-declassified CIA report, that the CIA’s Gateway Project, a 1980s military-intelligence investigation into altered states of consciousness, referenced Bentov’s work. The project explored the impact of audio frequencies being used to achieve "brain hemisphere synchronization", also known as Hemi-Sync, to unlock astral projection, telepathy, and remote viewing. This was after loss of government trust in programs like the Philadelphia Experiment and Project MK-Ultra. The report dug into the science behind it, but it did spawn the work of the Monroe Institute, where work was underway to explore remote viewing capabilities using binaural beats to force the mind into a specific brainwave pattern – keeping the body asleep but the mind hyper-alert and awake.
Philosophy
Bentov dedicated his life to answering one core question: What if consciousness is not something that emerged from the universe, but something through which the universe is coming to know itself? Through vibrations, resonance, meditation, and self-awareness, he proposes that human beings are not isolated observers but active participants in a cosmic process of awakening. Let’s dig into some of his ideas.
The Universe Is Becoming Self-Aware
“At the risk of complicating things a little bit, we can also define the absolute as being an infinitely fine relative, that is, where the size of the waves is so minute and their frequency so high that they are invisible. When this happens we have a surface that appears calm and smooth but contains a tremendous energy and is full of creative potential. This is the actual definition of the absolute (to the extent that it can be defined); it is a high-energy creative potential plus intelligence. The ‘intelligence’ adds a self-organizing capability to any entity in creation.”
The cosmos evolves into increasingly complex forms: atoms, cells, animals, humans – through which consciousness can experience itself. Bentov tells us that consciousness is not accidental, but the precursor to the active process of self-realization – quite comparable to the teachings of Pramahansa Yogananda.
To Bentov, evolution may have direction and with time we propagate the next iteration. Awareness expands through experience and experience is the byproduct of lived activity. Humans are active participants in a larger process of “becoming” – we each have a role to play.
Meditation Is a Technology of Consciousness
If you’ve meditated before, you’ll find that it’s difficult to quiet the mind. It’s chatty and throws non-stop ideas and thoughts your way. But with enough time and through focused breathing, the thoughts slow down. If you’re lucky, you’ve been able to experience no thoughts. We participate in meditation today as a way to calm ourselves down, but to Bentov there’s a higher purpose.
Meditation is a technology of consciousness. It can alter perception and awareness in measurable ways.
“Remember also the case of the pendulum clocks hanging on the wall, which rhythm entrain each other. Now, you recall that the resonant frequency of the earth — ionosphere cavity — is about 7.5 cycles per second and that the micromotion of the body is about 6.8 to 7.5 Hz. This suggests a tuned resonant system. We may say now that in deep meditation the human being and the planet system start resonating and transferring energy. This is occurring at a very long wavelength of about 40,000 km., or just about the perimeter of the planet. In other words, the signal from the movement of our bodies will travel around the world in about one-seventh of a second through the electrostatic field in which we are embedded. Such a long wavelength knows no obstacles, and its strength does not attenuate much over large distances. Naturally, it will go through just about anything: metal, concrete, water, and the fields making up our bodies. It is the ideal medium for conveying a telepathic signal.”
When meditation is done well, it can act as a gateway to altered, trained consciousness. When you grasp that all the senses we use to experience the world can be represented as waves, it makes sense that altering the wavelength is correlated with altering your state of consciousness. Elevating your levels of consciousness – that’s the goal. When consciousness is the gas behind the engine of evolution, we use that as leverage to advance ourselves.
Bentov tells us that when a charged body is vibrating, it is coupled well to the electrostatic field of the planet. This vibration generates a regular, periodic signal or wave that is transmitted and propagated through the broader field of consciousness.
Evolution Is Not Merely Biological
Consciousness evolves. Human growth involves psychological and spiritual development, not just physical adaptation, therefore evolution is not merely a biological phenomenon.
“As we move higher on the scale of evolution, we encounter the so-called spiritual realities. These reach all the way to the absolute. Note the very high energy-exchange curve of the highest, the spiritual level. This implies total control over Nature. We can sum up the above statements this way: it seems that a continuous spectrum of realities arises due to the ability of matter to contain consciousness. Therefore, a rock will contain less consciousness than a plant or a dog. This entails the rock’s lesser degree of control over its environment, fewer possible responses, and therefore less free will (that is, if one can speak about the free will of a rock). But let us not forget that we humans also have only limited free will. The higher we move along the scale of evolution, the higher the degree of free will, and the higher our ability to control or create our own environment.”
Growth continues after survival needs are met and just as we mentioned we are all active participants in the universe being self-aware, well this is part of that evolution. Development as a whole has multiple dimensions. The higher we move up the consciousness chain, the more expansive our sense of self.
The Ego Is Not the Whole Self
The ego is not the whole Self and we come to understand this when our consciousness achieves elevated levels. Ordinary identity is only a small portion of consciousness. What we call "I" may simply be a localized expression of a much larger awareness, just as a ripple in a wave is a localized manifestation among a more expansive field. So we can look at our individual consciousnesses and understand why it could be a local expression of a larger, universal field of awareness.
The ego is not the whole Self, therefore identity is limited. It is through awareness that we extend beyond our self-image, changing our perspective and understanding separation of selves is partly illusory. Humans participate in a larger intelligence which is why connection is so fundamental and why those who have experienced some flavor of this, say that all is “love” and “compassion.” Individual growth contributes to collective evolution.
Consciousness May Be More Fundamental Than Matter
“Matter, being made of quanta of energy, is the vibrating, changing component of pure consciousness. Therefore, we can divide creation into two components, the absolute and the relative. The absolute is fixed, eternal, and invisible, while the relative is the visible, manifest, and changing aspect. The latter may be coarse or fine, short-lived or long-lived, but it is always based on the absolute. By accepting this tenet, we have solved the mind-over matter problem. The “solution” is that there is no basic difference between the two. We have until now tended to associate mind much more readily with consciousness because mind is abstract and intangible; matter, on the other hand, is solid, hard, hot or cold, and seemingly very different from the mind or consciousness. When we know that reality is made up of two components, one, an immutable reference line or background, and the other a dynamic, vibrating aspect of the same thing, then we know that both mind and matter are made of the same basic stuff.”
Bentov explores the possibility that consciousness is primary rather than secondary. Instead of consciousness arising from matter, matter may arise within consciousness, challenging current materialist assumptions. This is where we become active participants in the universe, if awareness precedes physical form.
Reality Is Fundamentally Vibration
“When we think, our brains produce rhythmic electric currents. With their magnetic components, they spread out into space at the velocity of light, as do the electric waves or sounds produced by our hearts. They all mingle to form enormous interference patterns, spreading out and away from the planet. They are admittedly weak, but they are there. The more finely our systems are tuned, the clearer a signal we can pick out of the general noise and jumble of “sounds.” When we have a system of tuned oscillators, even the tiniest signal can be picked up. You may recall that it requires very little energy of the correct frequency to drive a resonant system. Our planet itself is producing shock waves in the plasma that fills the solar system. These shock waves interact with those caused by other planets and produce resonances between the planets and the asteroids. In short, our whole reality is based on one common factor, and that is periodic change, or sound. Our senses are geared to respond to all these different “sounds,” but we are always comparing one sound with another. We can appreciate only the differences in sound.”
Everything – from atoms to galaxies to thoughts – can be understood as patterns of vibration. The heart, nervous system, and brain operate through rhythms and frequencies that affect consciousness.
Nothing is truly static, as matter is organized energy and energy is either kinetic or potential. The universe is one big dynamo, just look at the helical model of the solar system to see how chaotic and multi-dimensional the movement of planets and solar systems and galaxies truly are. So within these movements there must be interference patterns, and if that were so, we can understand how consciousness may interact with these vibrations.
“Suppose we tune two violins, then put one of them on the table and play a note on the other. If we watch carefully, we shall see that the same string that we are playing on one violin is also humming on the violin that we placed on the table…. The energy transfer within the system is therefore optimum, and such a system, made up of two tuned oscillators, is called a resonant system.”
This concept Bentov alludes to is known as sympathetic resonance, or sympathetic vibration. In this case, the violin has a natural frequency at which it prefers to vibrate. When you play a note on one violin, the air carries that vibration to the second violin. If a string on the second violin is tuned to the same frequency, it absorbs the energy very efficiently and begins vibrating on its own. Energy transfer here is maximized because the frequencies match. Think of it as synchronicity. Or, a more apt descriptor would be a coupled oscillator.
Systems that share frequencies can exchange energy and information much more efficiently than systems that do not. This principle is used in modern science, with lasers, radio receivers, MRI machines, musical instruments, Circadian rhythms, and neural oscillations in the brain. Bentov is alluding to the body being an information-processing system, where biological rhythms influence awareness. He believes meditation alters internal states, potentially leading one to clarity through coherence of resonance.
Humans have an electrostatic field around the body, as well as a unique frequency generated from the heart beating – if we accept the sound principle in physics, we can see how this extends to consciousness.