(From Anna Wise, “High Performance Mind”.)

The four types of brain rhythms (electrical firing patterns of whole assemblies of neurons) are beta waves, alpha waves, theta waves, and delta waves.

Beta waves represent logical thinking, concrete problem-solving, focus on the outside world, waking state, consciousness, planning, judging, making lists. (But not self-consciousness – observing oneself doing it.)

Alpha waves, observed when awake subjects have their ~ eyes closed, represent visual scan (i.e. Readiness to receive sense data), (meanwhile) day-dreaming, fantasizing, visualization. This is the bridge between the conscious and the subconscious.

Theta waves represent the meditative state, the sUbconscious, memories, sensations, emotions. They occur in dreaming (REM) sleep. Probably the brain integrator assembles these elements into dreams.

Delta waves represent the base: the fully unconscious, intuition, empathy, personal radar. They occur in deep sleep, interspersed with spikes. (Perhaps the spikes remind us to breathe, which we may forget to do in the sleep apnea disorder. )

In ordinary living we buzz around with nothing but a splayed beta. We gain a connection with our inner self by semi-closing the beta splay and introducing some alpha, which gives us self-consciousness, and a partial bridge to the subconscious [and the superconscious?]. But it takes, as well, adding some theta and splaying the delta to become a fully “awakened” mind, which integrates all levels from the unconscious through the subconscious to the conscious.

In that awakened state, we gain focus, clarity, and unity. The diagram (below) looks vaguely like a human figure.

In the metaphor of the multiple bodies of the esoteric school, perhaps beta can be identified with the dense body, alpha with the etheric body, theta with the astral body, and delta with everything above that.