Itzhak Bentov and the CIA’s Gateway Process: The Holographic Theory of Consciousness
Saturday, August 23, 2025. These next few essays on the nature of human consciousness are for my son, Daniel Gordon Hamilton (1973-2025). We enjoyed many happy hours discussing these ideas. And the conversation in my mind continues.
What if your heart wasn’t just pumping blood, but also helping tune your brain into the frequencies of the universe?
That was the audacious claim of Itzhak Bentov, an Israeli-American inventor who straddled the worlds of biomedical engineering and mystical speculation.
He designed medical devices that saved lives, yet he’s best remembered for arguing that consciousness itself is a kind of vibration — one that can stretch beyond the body and even into the cosmos.
The Engineer Who Built Mysticism into Physics
Bentov’s day job was serious science. He worked on biomedical devices that improved heart care. But he also had a second obsession: figuring out what consciousness actually was. In his 1977 book Stalking the Wild Pendulum, he proposed something radical:
The human body, especially the cardiovascular system, is a finely tuned oscillator.
Every heartbeat sends waves bouncing around inside us.
Those waves can sync with brain rhythms, creating feedback loops that stretch awareness.
In other words, we’re not just meat and neurons. We’re tuning forks in a vibrating cosmos.
A Universe That’s Holographic
Bentov didn’t stop at the body. He extended his model outward, claiming the universe itself was holographic. Like a hologram, every piece of reality carries the whole. Consciousness wasn’t locked in the skull. The brain, in his view, was more like an FM receiver, picking up the universal broadcast of mind.
The CIA and the “Gateway” to Altered States
In 1983, Lt. Col. Wayne McDonnell prepared a now-famous report called Analysis and Assessment of the Gateway Process.
The document leaned heavily on Bentov’s theories. The Army was exploring how binaural beats (slightly different tones played in each ear) could entrain the brain and launch soldiers into altered states of consciousness.
McDonnell borrowed Bentov’s model of the body as an oscillator, suggesting that synchronized brain hemispheres could slip into the “universal hologram.”
This, supposedly, allowed for remote viewing, accelerated learning, and even out-of-body experiences.
It sounds like science fiction.
But the report was real, stamped “Top Secret” until 2003, and now freely circulating online. For many, it’s their first encounter with Bentov’s name.
Between Admiration and Skepticism
Reactions to Bentov’s ideas have always been mixed:
Psychologists like Christina and Stanislav Grof found his work inspiring, folding it into broader theories of non-ordinary states.
Integral thinkers like Ken Wilber wove his holographic vision into models of consciousness.
Neuroscientists, however, mostly shook their heads. There’s no empirical proof that aortic standing waves launch the soul into orbit.
Still, Bentov was ahead of his time in noticing that physiology and consciousness are deeply intertwined.
Today’s research on brain–heart coherence, vagal tone, and meditation echoes what he hinted at decades earlier. Bentov went there first.
The Strange End of a Life About Strange Things
In 1979, Bentov was aboard the infamous American Airlines Flight 191 when it crashed moments after takeoff from Chicago O’Hare. It was the deadliest aviation accident in U.S. history at the time. He was just 55.
For a man who spent his career sketching diagrams of consciousness leaving the body, the irony was hard to miss. Friends said he had always believed death was less of an ending and more of a transition. I imagine he would not have been surprised.
Why Bentov Still Matters
Bentov’s theories still remain more poetry than proof. But I’ve noticed that poetry has a way of shaping how we think.
Therapists today often borrow his metaphors unwittingly, describing resonance in relationships, the tuning of nervous systems, and the way human beings feel part of something larger.
The intriguing bottom line is this: Bentov offered a vision of consciousness not as a private possession but as a shared field, one we’re all plugged into, whether we know it or not.
He offered a vision of consciousness not as a possession locked inside the brain but as a shared field of awareness, one we’re all immersed in whether we notice it or not. That simple, radical idea — that we are not isolated minds but participants in a larger pattern — may be why his work still hums like a struck tuning fork, decades after his voice was silenced.
That hum also continues to attract dreamers, seekers, and the occasional intelligence officer.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed
REFERENCES:
Bentov, I. (1977). Stalking the wild pendulum: On the mechanics of consciousness. New York: Dutton.
Grof, S. (1985). Beyond the brain: Birth, death, and transcendence in psychotherapy. Albany: State University of New York Press.
McDonnell, W. B. (1983). Analysis and assessment of the Gateway process. U.S. Army Operational Group. Declassified 2003.
Wilber, K. (2000). Integral psychology: Consciousness, spirit, psychology, therapy. Boston: Shambhala.