 Let's begin with the seeming paradox. The deeper one goes, the more one opens. I have found this true as an anatomist while teaching anatomy, particularly cell function from cell to cytoskeleton, to proteins, to nuclear proteins, to chemistry, to physics. Boom, the cosmological. I found this true as a lifetime meditator, as a structural integrator and movement therapist and with somatospiritual practices. These and other activities calm the active mind and clarify its perceptions and allow for our intuitive skills to ripen. It is a time to be, not a time to do, even while doing as in Zen. These practices can lead to a deepening and an opening to the universal, to insight and to compassion. We find this in science, philosophy and theology, where from chaos, conjecture and concept, one deepens into facts, functional truths and the spiritual, which open up to practices, treatments, ways of being and beliefs. And of course, we find this in the float experience. As one withdraws from the sensory milieu, one often moves from consternation to relaxation to exploration of the self, a deepening, leading to an opening via an immersion in the Theta state, the Buddhist plenum void, the nothing. We are part of an ever-growing and morphing field. This is a business, a technology, a science, a therapeutic, a clinical approach, a creative act, and occasionally an ecological and spiritual awakening. And all of this based on a singular, private, subjective experience. We go into the tank, our brain waves slow down, and we enter what has been called the spellbound state, where possibly the stuff of the world is in a potential or flux state and we are not separate. We are interconnected. We are of, and we can create anything. And this makes all the difference. The research we've heard about and its methodology are vital and it forms the bedrock of this field as the substrate is to the state. So let's speculate. I would like to start our speculation with panpsychism. In philosophy, this is the view that consciousness, mind, or soul is a universal feature of all things and the primordial feature from which they all derive. Early forms were in shintoism, daoism, and shamanism. It leads to the idea of a world soul or an anima mundi, which led to the Gaia hypothesis, which then has led to ecological research and eco-spirituality. It proposes very much related to quantum physics that matter or physical energy all the way down to subatomic particles is sentient. This leads to the belief that the universe is composed of mind or consciousness. Consciousness as something we live, not something we have. And our self-consciousness is an aspect of this greater consciousness, a neuro-complexification leading to reflection. And that maybe, just maybe. But we experience in the tank through the doorway of theta is a subtler neural activity, which opens to this universal mind or consciousness. Let's continue our speculations with the four different aspects of the float experience, the four L's, levity, liminality, luminosity, and language. Levity, lightness of mind and body, a state of ease, buoyancy in gravity, whimsy, humor, a state of superficiality which reflects a deeper seriousness. This obviously happens in the tank by floating in an appropriately quiescent state. Floating is one of a number of practices which increase mental, physical, and emotional levity. They loosen and activate kinetic, energetic, and emotional pathways. They increase one's mindful and easeful response to experience and increase structural and physiological efficiency. In the tank, this happens concurrently by being out of gravity, out of an external sensory milieu, and in a temporary state which is more relaxed, creative, and open-ended. We are in part biostensegrity structures that stabilize their shape and function by a tensional integrity. This tensional network is created by our fossil network, and this allows us to be suspended within gravity and have a buoyancy and a levity which increases the efficiency of our bioprocesses, our movement, and our perception. The cell structure also is a biotensegrity structure. It creates an information pathway and this information pathway globalizes in the Living Matrix concept. In brief, this system is a liquid lattice of adhesed proteins structuring water into a liquid crystalline state. It is a quantum coherent vibratory continuum. That's what you are. And it is through the levity and suspension created by this that the world often speaks to us bypassing the brain. To enter into the tank, to be in a state of levity, to quiet the mind creates a bridge between the inner and the outer. Shall we call this the quiet bridge? And it is this bridge which leads to liminality. There is a sense for many that we are not merely losing places and species, we are losing our place in the world. The fabric of the world is torn and can a newfound spirit or awareness re-knit the rupture. A spirit, a sensibility reformed in the liminal space which leads to stillness and opening a path. Are we not hoping to recover a sense that the act of paying attention and letting go can open a space in the soul? A space in which the world may live and move in us? Is this not the space experienced in the tank? The space between inner and outer worlds? A place where the healing can begin? The theta state as doorway? The light we sometimes see in the darkness. Could this be the inner light that illuminates? In the spiritual literature there is a thought that luminosity can only be found discovered within the darkness in a darkening time. Never has the fate of humanity and the fate of the world been more intertwined. Our soul and the soul of the world are not separate. In the float experience, in essence, we relearn the art of witnessing. Within the dark we sense the inner light. Leonard Cohen once said, there is a crack in everything and that's how the light gets in. That is the theta state, the crack in consciousness between inner and outer. It is this inner light that gives outer life its meaning, language. In this field with so many aspects and with so many languages describing these aspects, what of the language of the subjective experience undergone in the tank? I will suggest the poetic, not necessarily a poem, the poetic as a way of thinking and expressing where is an equal emphasis on silence, sound, word and context. Where the emphasis is on surprise, oddity, relationality and metaphor. A poetics like this highlights the plasticity and adaptability of thought and expression. As poesis, the Greek, to make an action and expression that transforms and continues the world. A few brief examples of this poetic from the community. To sense the ocean as source to the wave of the self. My mind was a blossom. Your wild flight of mind unleashed. And to quote our next speaker in his wonderful book, Blue Mind, when he came out of the tank, he entered a mindful mindfulness. From the Kabbalah, the depth of primordial being is called boundless. It is also called nothingness. If one asks what is it, the answer is nothing. Meaning no one can understand anything about it. It is negated of every conception. No one can know anything about it except the belief that it exists. Its existence cannot be grasped by anyone other than it. Therefore, its name is I am becoming. It is important to know that nothingness is real. It is a powerful dimension. It hasn't become embodied in form yet. It is pre-definition, pre-manifest in a fluid state of possibility. In nothingness, there is great freedom because there is no restriction. And even a thought form is restrictive. Through our attention and intention, through the nothing state, we become a pathway for creativity and relationality. From the Sufi, nothingness helps us be attentive. With one foot in nothingness, with one ear attuned to the silence, we are in form. With one foot in nothingness, with one foot in nothingness, with one ear attuned to the silence, we are infinitely watchful and undisturbed. In the nothing state, the theta state, the liminal state, we continually begin again. We are out of struggle in a state of becoming, and it is here where we can develop grace. And the world needs grace now more than ever. So please, go in grace and thank you.