About Centerpointe Research Institute

About Bill Harris

Charitable Giving

Modest Beginnings

Centerpointe Research Institute had its modest beginnings in the fall of 1989. Bill Harris and Wes Wait, both with a long-term interest in meditation and personal growth, had spent the previous four years testing Holosync® with a small circle of friends (which eventually grew to about 150 people in North America and Europe).

The idea of using precise sounds to alter a listener’s state of mind came from a 1973 article in Scientific American by researcher Dr. Gerald Oster of Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York. In this article, “Auditory Beats in the Brain,” Oster describes a characteristic of the brain wherein electrical brain wave patterns resonate to certain precise frequencies when presented with audio tones of certain frequencies.

Harris and Wait were also familiar with research done at the world-famous Minninger Clinic and by the Transcendental Meditation movement establishing a relationship between specific brain wave patterns and a variety of states including those of meditation, superlearning, increased focus and concentration, enhanced creativity, and others.

Creating a Structured Method

Between 1985 and 1989 Harris, Wait (and, eventually, approximately 150 others in North America and Europe) informally used a forerunner of today’s Holosync® and shared their experiences with each other. This early research group experienced what could only be described as profound mental, emotional, and even spiritual changes.

Eventually those in the research group encouraged Harris and Wait to create a structured method for using Holosync®. They did so and in 1989 began marketing Holosync® to the general public.

Silent Messaging Technology

The initial idea was to re-create, with modern high-tech methods, the ability to meditate as deeply as those few who are willing to devote many hours each day to meditation, over several decades. Then, to allow faster changing of unconscious mental programming, they added, beginning with the second level of the program, silent affirmations chosen by the participant and recorded in his or her own voice, and delivered using Centerpointe’s proprietary Autofonix® silent messaging technology, based on research done at the Medical College of Virginia on methods of communicating with the profoundly deaf.

Positive Results

The results were spectacular and participant feedback extremely positive. Users of Holosync®and Autofonix® not only reported dramatically better results from their meditation practice, they also reported profound positive changes in physical and mental health, mental clarity, happiness, and inner peace.

To help Holosync® users deal with the rapid mental, emotional, and spiritual changes they were experiencing, Follow Up Support Letters were added, along with the ability to speak by phone (and later using email) with Bill Harris (in the early years), and later to a staff of highly trained coaches. This “high-touch” support has become a hallmark of Centerpointe’s customer care.

Today’s support includes video, audio, and written information, periodic Special Reports about new discoveries in brain science, webinars, as well as other ways of communicating with and supporting Holosync® users.

Expansion

In the beginning Centerpointe was, literally, a “kitchen table” operation, with borrowed recording equipment set up on Bill Harris‘s kitchen table, and with participants’ names kept on file cards in a small recipe box. The banks of computers and massive racks of recording equipment and server rooms full of equipment were to come later, as the company expanded.

In 1990, Centerpointe Research Institute was formally incorporated in the State of Oregon, and shortly thereafter, Wait sold his interest in the company to Bill Harris and left the company to pursue other interests. Soon, Centerpointe began running full page ads in a number of national magazines including New Age Journal, Psychology Today, Yoga Journal, East-West, and Omni Magazine, and Centerpointe began to grow. Over the first four years, sales revenues grew at a rate of 400% per year as people from over 30 countries on six continents joined the program.

Adapting the Work of Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine

Between 1990 and 1993, Bill Harris became aware of the work of Nobel Prize-winning scientist Ilya Prigogine. Prigogine’s work about how complex, non-linear systems evolve and grow provided an elegant explanation of why (and how) Holosync® creates such profound changes in the brain, leading to life-changing mental and emotional changes. This new paradigm was subsequently incorporated into the Centerpointe support material, greatly increasing its value and usefulness to participants.

Inspired by Prigogine’s work, in 1992 Bill Harris wrote the first edition of his book, Managing Evolutionary Growth, a gift to all participants as they begin the second level of the Centerpointe program. Managing Evolutionary Growth expands on the information in the Support Letters, and serves as a reference book for Holosync® users as they continue the program.

In 1994, Centerpointe introduced three new soundtracks as part of the deeper levels of the program (those following Awakening PrologueTM), Immersion 1.5, Immersion 0.5, and Immersion 0.3. These soundtracks expanded the power of each Holosync® deeper level by taking listeners into the deepest levels of the delta brain wave pattern where, according to our experience with close to two million Holosync® users around the world, the greatest evolutionary changes happen. This brought the number of custom made soundtracks in each level to six.

Centerpointe Retreats

In 1996, Centerpointe held its first retreat. Participants from four continents gathered in Oregon for five days of informative speakers, intense listening to Holosync® soundtracks, beautiful scenery, great food, and fellowship. The retreat was such a success that a second retreat was held in 1997, and twice-annual retreats were held for the next twelve years, drawing people from all over the world.

The next major change in the program occurred in 1997, when Centerpointe began using a proprietary 3D recording process to record the custom levels of the program, causing a reduction in the stress discovered to be a side-effect inherent in stereo recordings when listened to with headphones (which are required for Holosync®).

Joint Ventures

At this point Centerpointe for the most part ceased their national magazine ad campaigns and began creating joint venture relationships with other major players in the personal growth field, including Tools for Exploration, Learning Strategies Corporation, Sedona Training Associates, ConsciousOne.com, noted author and philosopher Ken Wilber, Jack Canfield (co-author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series), bestselling authors Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks, Gateways Mind Tools, and many others. Today Centerpointe is endorsed and promoted by hundreds of other personal and spiritual growth teachers, as well as by therapists (including those at Veterans Hospitals), several Zen masters and Zen teachers, a number of prominent doctors (including Daniel Amen, M.D., Mark Hyman, M.D., Sara Gottfried, M.D., and many others.)

The World Stage

In 1997, in an effort to meet the needs of its growing international participant base, Centerpointe launched its first web site and is now one of the most popular personal growth sites in the world.

By 1997 Centerpointe had grown so much that it became necessary to move the company to new and larger quarters. A building was purchased and renovated, the staff was doubled, and the recording studio capacity was tripled to handle the flood of orders for custom program levels pouring in from all over the world. Later, in 2003, Centerpointe again moved its headquarters to an even larger facility.

In 2003 Bill Harris published his second book, Thresholds of the Mind. With approximately one million copies in print, Thresholds of the Mind is considered by many to be among the best personal development books ever written. Today all Holosync® users receive a free copy with Awakening PrologueTM. Also in November of 2003 Bill Harris gave a three hour address to the United Nations Values Caucus.

In 2004 Bill Harris became a founding member of the Transfomational Leadership Council, started by Chicken Soup for the Soul series co-author Jack Canfield. He was also asked to be an inaugural member of Ken Wilbur’s Integral Institute. Over the years Bill has also become a sought-after speaker and workshop leader, and has shared the stage with the Dalai Lama, Stephen Covey (author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People), Richard Branson, Jack Canfield, Zen Master Genpo Roshi, and many other notables.