Becoming Supernatural

Joe Dispenza opens the book with a redefinition. To him, supernatural is neither magic nor a miracle coming from the outside, but rather something natural that we have not yet learned how to use. The word describes human abilities that seem extraordinary only because almost no one trains them, such as healing oneself, perceiving beyond the five senses, or experiencing states of bliss and oneness.

This proposal comes as a continuation of his previous works, which focused on changing mental and emotional habits. Here, the next step is more ambitious: stepping out of our ordinary way of functioning and accessing experiences that spiritual traditions call mystical, but through a method, daily practice, and explanations drawn from neuroscience and physics.

It is important to state right away that the book mixes very different topics. There are personal accounts of experiences, meditation instructions, scientific interpretations, and claims that science does not confirm. This summary aims to separate these layers without mocking those who seek spiritual meaning and without treating mere hypotheses as facts.

Dispenza's starting point is the idea that most of our life is repetition. We wake up with the same thoughts, feel the same emotions, make the same decisions, and create, day after day, the same results. In his view, we become addicted to familiar emotional states, such as worry, resentment, or rushing, and we seek them out without realizing it.

This cycle is supposedly maintained by the body, which gets used to certain chemicals associated with each emotion. When we try to change, the body craves the comfort of routine, and the person falls back into the old pattern. A classic everyday example is someone who promises not to get mad at their family anymore and, at the very first argument, reacts the exact same way.

The message is that change requires breaking this repetition. Anyone who does not change their inner state keeps generating the same life, even if they change jobs, cities, or partners. The book's bet is that meditation is the tool capable of interrupting the cycle.

Dispenza bases much of his method on the concept of brain waves. In a state of alertness and worry, the brain produces fast activity associated with analytical thinking. In deep relaxation, activity slows down, and the person moves through slower frequencies linked to imagination, intuition, and the feeling of being between wakefulness and sleep.

According to the book, it is in these slower frequencies that the mind becomes more open to suggestion and change, because critical thinking decreases. To meditate, therefore, is to train the brain to reach this state without falling asleep, keeping consciousness awake while the body rests.

There is a scientific basis for the idea that the brain changes its electrical pattern according to its state of alertness, as well as for the relaxing effect of meditative practices. However, making the leap to say that certain wave frequencies produce special powers is an extrapolation by the author, not a scientific consensus.