Dreaming Life » Science

I Was Part of an ESP Experiment at Duke Last Week

Ben — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 00:11:40 +0000

A couple weeks ago I was flipping through the local paper and an innocent little classified ad caught my eye:

OK, so maybe that wasn’t really the classified ad I saw, but if it was, I would’ve called them too!

For real:

Instead I saw an ad placed by the Rhine Research Institute at Duke University in Durham, NC, seeking volunteers for an on-going ESP/Psi study going on. After making contact with them, I was able to volunteer in the study, which was a real interesting experience to be a part of and I thought it’d be fun to share with you!

Wait – Duke University Does ESP Research?

Until last week, I had never been a part of any kind of ESP experiments before. I’ve always heard rumors that Duke University had a long history with parapsychology and actually knew this was in fact true, and not just a rumor. But I unconsciously assumed the research had it’s hey day in the 1960′s or so and wasn’t active anymore.

Not true!

In fact, I learned there’s an ongoing handful of studies going on just down the road from me in ESP and other parapsychology areas.

Duke is a famous college here in the States, up there with the best of them really, and so it’s quite odd that they have this connection to ESP research. It appears to be an uneasy relationship that, thankfully, keeps going, even though I get the impression Duke distances themselves from the fact that there’s a center near campus with their name on it that is associated with experiments and presentations in remote viewing, precognition, ESP, and other mind weirdness.

My Experiment with ESP and Precognition

The experiment I was in was two fold:

I took a test to assess my beliefs and outlook on paranormal phenomenon that either put me in the range of being a hard nosed skeptic or a big believer in such those. Every participant does this.

Then I took a computerized test that showed me white fuzz or “visual” white noise, if you will, and I was supposed to pause it if and when I ever saw something in the noise. For instance, maybe I thought I could see a face in it all. The catch is that some of it was general noise with nothing in it, and sometimes there was an image hidden in it if you could spot it, and other times there was an image behind it all that I couldn’t see without some kind of extra sensory perception that would somehow know what was there behind the noise (or perhaps a precognitive ability to see into the future and fetch the image that way.) (The was also a second part with actual white noise with spoken words mixed in too.)

For what it’s worth, I saw the images in the noise that were there, didn’t see stuff that wasn’t really there, and didn’t at all see anything that was hidden that any ESP powers would have revealed to me.

But the experiment works on multiple levels beyond just testing for ESP abilities: it contrasts them with the users outlook that places them on the scale between a skeptic or a believer in paranormal activities.

Pretty cool, eh?

The Best Part: Getting a Behind the Curtain Look at Old School ESP Research Equipment!

The best part of this whole experience wasn’t actually the research study. It was the fact that the very kind and personable woman running the study let me into a room that had all this old equipment used in famous psychic studies from decades ago!

Seriously, it was freakin’ awesome looking at this stuff up close, even being able to touch it and hold it!

We’re talking about those famous machines that were used for random number generators, those decks of cards with images on it that people would try to guess, machines that rolled dice where people stood next to them and tried to manipulate the results with their mind, and other assorted parapsychology weirdness that I wasn’t even sure what it was to be used for!

Plus the room was decorated with various black and white photographs of the experiments themselves. It was great fun looking at these!

I really wished I would’ve brought my camera and could’ve photographed some of the equipment! You can see a few cool things over here at the Museum at the Rhine Center page, but this does NOT do it justice.

Back to this ESP Research Stuff: What Does The Study Mean?

The study is ongoing and so there’s no results published yet. But what a cool concept for an experiment to assess peoples beliefs and then contrast this with seeing patterns in noise and/or their ESP/psi abilities

I am sure there will be a correlation between people who placed super high on the scale of believing in ghosts, the afterlife, messages from the dead, etc and their ability to find patterns in the visual noise, and vice versa.

At least, I think that’s a fair speculation of what the results may show. Time will tell.

Oh PS: Your Grandfather Has ESP Powers!

On another note, I was telling my Mom about this experiment and the Rhine Research Center in general and she hit me with a shocker I will have to investigate.

Evidently, about 20 years ago, my grandparents were visiting us here in North Carolina and during the same visit my Grandfather took part in some parapsychology experiment at the same place. I don’t know any of the details yet but the detail that my Mom remembers is that whatever happened, the results seemed to suggest that my Grandpa had some kind of ESP or psychic abilities.

What the hell!

I don’t know any more details than this, but never in my life would I have thought that my grandparents would have even considered partaking in a study like this, so to learn that they did and then evidently my Grandpa’s experience showed a correlation with psychic/Psi activity is just almost too much to handle.

And here I thought he was just your every day church going mid Western farmer!

Double PS: Just So you Know…I Am Skeptical As Hell of This Stuff in General

Just so you know, I am not prone to believing any claims of ESP, paranormal powers, etc. BUT this doesn’t mean I don’t have any open mind that can apply critical thinking skills to research into such areas.

I will use a logical fallacy here called the “argument from authority” in an attempt to lure you into agreeing with me that such research is important by quoting my boy Carl Sagan – a person whose work, life, and attitude I adore and revere like no other.

While he was not making a claim that these things are true or not true, real or not real, he did say this:

“At the time of writing there are three claims in the ESP field which, in my opinion, deserve serious study: (1) that by thought alone humans can (barely) affect random number generators in computers; (2) that people under mild sensory deprivation can receive thoughts or images “…directed at them; and (3) that young children sometimes report the details of a previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation..”

From: Sagan, C. (1995). The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. New York, Random House, page 205

BOOM. Take that!

What I’m trying to say is we can have a critical viewpoint of much of these claims yet still have a scientific analysis of the claims, and that’s where the fun starts. Most of it is bunk but there are all sorts of weird tiny results showing a correlation between people thinking about things and INFLUENCING them by mind alone. This is freakin’ crazy and is deserving of serious study.

One book that goes in depth into the results of such research is The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot. I wrote about this book here if you’re interested.

Japanese scientists developing software that can record images from your dreams

Ben — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 20:23:02 +0000

This is amazing.

Japanese scientists claim they have developed a technique that visually records ones thoughts and dreams onto a computer monitor.

The technique is done by analyzing changes in blood flow in the region of the brain where vision is processed, called the visual cortex.

A spokesman for Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, says that “by applying this technology, it may become possible to record and replay subjective images that people perceive like dreams.”

These are big words, with enormous implications!

So much that I thought immediately, “No… this is certainly a hoax.”

But such is not the case.

However, the research is not as far along as some of these headlines lead you to believe. While still an amazing feat, all I can deduce from the information released thus far is that researchers were able to reconstruct different letters that were seen by subjects, and this was done by only looking at brain processing data. (In this case, data from a type of MRI.) I do not see specific mention that images from a dream were captured.

But if this technology is perfected for bigger and more complex images, then theoretically, images you see in a dream could be captured and outputted onto a monitor! Ahhhh! (And we won’t even get into the creepy mind-reading privacy invasion issues this technology would bring about.)

Here’s an idea:

When the research gets to this point, experienced lucid dreamers would make excellent lab subjects.

Studies could be done in which a dreamer becomes lucid, finds a pre-existing object or manipulates the dreamscape to produce a specific object, marks the moment using an eye signal (such as looking left then right 8 times in a row), then focuses on the object for a specific period of time, and finishes with another eye signal to mark that they have stopped looking at the object.

If an image is produced from an analysis of the brains processing data from the time range in between eye signals, the dream subject would be able to concur if this is in fact, what he or she was looking at.

Wow. (And that would be just the tiniest tip of the iceberg for this technology…)

I wonder if this is something that in 5-10 years will be possible to do in the lab? Or will this run into unforeseen hurdles that are never jumped?

It just sounds too amazing to be true, I’m in shock.

…

Here’s some quality sources reporting on the study:

New Scientist: Mindreading Software Could Record Your Dreams

Scientific American: Can Brain Scans Read Our Minds?

Pink Tentacle: Scientist Extract Images Directly from Brain

Isolation Tanks and the Potential For Lucid, Trippy, Self Transformative Experiences

Ben — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:40:00 +0000

I’ve been fascinated with the thought of floating around in an isolation tank ever since I first saw the film Altered States ten years ago.

Um – what is an isolation tank, you ask?

“An isolation tank is a lightless, soundproof tank in which subjects float in salty water at skin temperature. They were first used by John C. Lilly in 1954 in order to test the effects of sensory deprivation. Such tanks are now also used for meditation and relaxation and in alternative medicine. Isolation tanks were originally called sensory deprivation tanks. Other synonyms for isolation tank include float tank, floating tank, floater tank, flotation tank, REST tank, flotation baths, John Lilly tank and sensory attenuation tank.”

-Wikipedia Entry on Isolation Tanks

Ironically, the film Altered States is even (loosely) based on the work of John Lilly, although I don’t think in real life he de-evolved into an ape and went on a rampage attacking people and eating raw animal flesh. :)

A few days ago I happened to find a nugget of gold at my local used bookstore. Sitting on the shelf, almost offensively in the new age section, I saw John Lilly’s definitive book on his research into isolation tanks, titled The Deep Self: Profound Relaxation and the Tank Isolation Technique.

Published all the way back in 1977, this book is a bit of mixture of 2 things – scholarly research into sensory deprivation via the isolation tank & how it effects the brain, and the philosophical underpinnings of the experiences and what it means as far as reality/mind.

About half the chapters convey a very scholarly approach on the topic at hand, covering everything from how to build a tank, to problems, obstacles, issues you might have in using the tank, to what to expect in the tank, to how they conducted their research, and so on. This is based on 20 years of research.

The other chapters are somewhat strange and occasionally hard to follow – these are the chapters with Lilly espousing his ideas on reality, but (for me) too often draped in very scientific and mathematical terms.

It’s more than that though – he has this unique angle of how he writes & even a separate vocabulary of words and concepts that now, in 2008, sound quite odd to me. For instance, he regularly uses words such “biocomputer” , “metabelief”, “cybernetic” and “inperience”. External reality becomes e.r, and internal reality becomes i.r. Lilly constantly jumps his words together using a bracket or hyphen to connect similar concepts, resulting in very odd sentences such as “most other minds are not prepared to hear-understand-grasp what it means to explore-experiment-be-immersed-in such states.”

But don’t get me wrong here – it sounds like I’m putting down Lilly, and I’m not. He’s become a sort of personal hero to me, as I feel drawn to his passion for wanting to understand and his bravery and dedication towards using himself as a research subject, even at the cost of his own personal life and professional life.

I truly think he was tortured by his search for understanding, and this passion was the guiding principle of all his actions, no matter what the cost.

On page 72, he writes:

“Many of my former colleagues disavowed me…I understand their belief systems and the power such system have over our minds. I do not recriminate them, nor do I blame formers friends for not maintaining contact with me.

In my search (for “What is Reality?”), I have driven myself (and hence, close associates-relative-friends) to the brink of the loss of all communicational contacts for months at a time…. I have explored and have voluntarily entered into domains forbidden by a large fraction of those in our culture who are not curious, are not explorative and are not mentually equipped to enter these domains.”

These chapters on reality contain some of the most fascinating pieces in the book, with Lilly mapping out stages and ranges of consciousness/experience and exploring the old mind / brain / body problem (but in a way that I felt he was adding to the argument, and not just rehashing the same old ideas).

Finally, at the end of the book, we get to read logs of peoples experiences in the tank!

This is maybe the best part of the book.

Really, I had no idea just how far out you can go through sensory deprivation inside one of these tanks.

Some of the experience reports are so far out there, I have to wonder if they were conducting the experiment in combination with a psychedelic substance. (Lilly and friends were no stranger to LSD and other drugs, by the way!)

I want to quote at length from these logs, because I think the reports of the actual experience make for a more immediate understanding of what isolation tanks are all about.

Take a look at these excerpts:

“Gradually I seemed to make a head-on 180 degree roll so that I was facing down into an impenetrable night. Dawn broke from the eastern horizon, illuminating a vast desert of glittering sand a hundred feet below me. The sand became transparent and directly below me was a polished black granite monolith……in the center…was encased a sculptor of Jill. The effigy was of monumental size… when her eyes met mine, two lines of graphite streaked across the desert, straight to the source of sunrise beyond the distant mountains.”

“Immediately experienced floating out of body shell. Roamed and sauntered through a kind of cosmic park, full of density but infinite boundaries. People’s images occasionally came in and out of this…. Then as wondered on this, sudden enlightenment – there is no such things as separate consciousness.”

“Although nothing happened in the first two sessions, hallucinations were experienced nearly every time thereafter…. They would continue for hours. I was always aware that I was hallucinating and part of my mind was nearly always making observations. There were the usual out of body…hallucinations…. When I moved my hands (actually in the water) I would see them move and sky appear between the fingers. I have later had imaginary flights over scenery. “

“I lost boundaries and time sense, immediately disappeared and I experience total peace and a feeling of unity…. What I experienced was a continuous void that was not boring, yet empty, not engaging, yet full.”

“Moving into an absolute void (experienced as consciousness of the interstellar space.) Timelessness. No difference between minutes and millions of years. Ending up the experience with feelings of regeneration, purification, refreshment, clarify.”

(This last quote is from Stan Grof. You may recognize his name. Interesting, I also saw Andrew Weil in the name of tank loggers, along with Richard Feynman (Yes, the Richard Feynman of quantum physicists fame. He spent something like 35 hours in the tank for Lilly’s research), and Ralph Metzner. )

…..

I really cannot believe how “far out” these logs read though. Many times over, I get the impression that floating in the tank, consciousness becomes like that of a dream. Sometimes people can direct the hallucinations, creating a sort of waking life lucid dream hallucination. This just blows my mind!

Why don’t more people know about this?

Why isn’t the use of these tanks more common?

I am now on the hunt for a tank in my area, as I really want to try out the experience* for myself!

*or as John Lilly would say, inperience.

Free Online Books, Journals, and Newsletters on Dreams, Lucid Dreaming, and Psychedelics

Ben — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:56:35 +0000

This page will be updated regularly with links to FREE online books, journals, and newsletters related to dreams and lucid dreaming, entheogens/psychedelics, and brain/consciousness/mind stuff..

You’ll find entire books released in PDF format for download and viewing (and printing), or books published online that you can read over the web. I’ve also included links to journals and newsletters that you can read for free online.

If a link is broken or if you have something to suggest I add, please email me.

Enjoy!

-Ben

PS Recommended items are highlighted in bold.

Last Updated: July 3, 2008

Newsletters and Journals

LDE: The Lucid Dream Exchange Newsletter (requires free Yahoo Groups account) – note: this is a currently active lucid dream newsletter!

Lucidity Letter Archive

MAPS Bulletin

DreamViews Newsletter – Submissions needed!

Free Books

From MAPS

Ketamine Dreams (PDF file)

The Secret Chief: Conversations with a pioneer of the underground psychedelic therapy movement – By Myron Stolaroff (online book)

Thanatos To Eros, 35 Years of Psychedelic Exploration (online book)

Drugs & Mysticism: An Analysis of the Relationship between Psychedelic Drugs and Mystical Consciousness (online book)

From Erowid

PiHKAL: Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved: A Chemical Love Story – By Alexander and Ann Shulgin (online book)

TiHKAL: Tryptamines i Have Known And Loved: The Continuation – By Alexander and Ann Shulgin (online book)

The Psychedelic Experience: a manual based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead – By Timothy Leary, Ph.D., Ralph Metzner, Ph.D., & Richard Alpert, Ph.D. (online book)

Salvinorin: The Psychedelic Essence of Salvia divinorum (online book)

Ayahuasca: alkaloids, plants & analogs (online book)

The Essential Psychedelic Guide (online book)

Varieties of Psychedelic Experience (PDF file)

Psychedelic Encyclopedia (PDF file)

Journeys into Bright World (PDF file)

From Sunrise Dancer

Hallucogens And Culture – by Peter T. Furst (PDF file)

Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream – by Jay Stevens (PDF file)

More Online Books

Out of Body Experiences: How to Have Them and What to Expect (online book)

Course on Consciousness – by Ian Wilson – A spectacular book on lucid dreaming and consciousness! (online book)

States of Consciousness – by Charles T. Tart (online book)

Traveling: An Accidental Expert’s How-To Leave Your Body Handbook – by Alan Guiden (online book)

Drugs, Brains, and Behavior – by C. Robin Timmons & Leonard W. Hamilton (online book)

Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences – by Abraham H. Maslow (online book)

If you would like to purchase any of these books, do so using the search box below at Amazon.com.

Happy Reading!

Free Podcasts, Radio Shows, Lectures, and Interviews – for Lucid Dreamers and Psychonauts

Ben — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:33:42 +0000

This page will be updated regularly with links to FREE podcasts, radio shows, and other audio downloads (interviews, lectures, etc) related to dreams and lucid dreaming, entheogens/psychedelics, and brain/consciousness/mind stuff.

If a link is broken or if you have something to suggest I add, please email me.

Enjoy!

-Ben

PS The best part of this is many of these are mp3s, meaning you can download them and listen to them anywhere from your iPod or mp3 player. Yeah!

Last Updated: July 3, 2008.

Steve Pavlina Podcasts on Lucid Dreaming & Consciousness

from Steve Pavlina: Personal Development for Smart People

Steve Pavlina has 20 awesome podcasts available for free on his blog. You can check them all out here.

Here are three great ones to start with:

Lucid Dreaming

“This podcast addresses the fascinating subject of lucid dreaming, which is the ability to retain full conscious awareness while you dream. And best of all, this one is conducted by my wife Erin, who first taught me how to have lucid dreams when we met in 1994.”

Click to listen:
Mp3 download
Audio Stream

Overcoming Fear

This is a brilliant hour long + podcast that gets into some very deep concepts related to self/non-self and our (false) construction of an external reality, and from this angle, overcoming fear with an understanding of its false foundations. Awesome!

Click to Listen:
Mp3 Download
Audio Stream

The True Nature of Reality

Steve Pavlina brings together “concepts of intention-manifestation, the Law of Attraction, and subjective reality to explain how they relate to each other.” This is the most interesting stuff I’ve seen about this hip buzzword concept known as The Law of Attraction. Pavlina really get into some deep thinking here in this hour long podcast.

Click to listen:
mp3 download
Audio Stream

NeuroSoup Psychedelic Podcasts

from Neurosoup.com

4 Free podcasts by K. Cole of Neurosoup. Podcasts are between 15-30 minutes long.

Click to Listen:
Integrating the Psychedelic Experience (mp3 download)
Group Tripping (mp3 download)
Sex and Psychedelics (mp3 download)
Candy Flipping (mp3 download)

Dreamtime With Robert Hoss

from Voice of America Radio Shows

A 28 week series on dreams and dreamwork by researchers, psychologists and other professionals in the field. Contains 14 shows on the research and science of dreaming”

Click to Listen:
Podcast Archive
Warning: confusing navigation!

BBC Radio: All in The Mind

Exploring the limits and potential of the mind

Podcast with dozens of shows online for free from 2006 to the present relating to the mind.
Here’s an example of one of their shows:

“Claudia Hammond takes a trip into the world of psychedelic drug.”

It’s nearly 40 years since LSD was made illegal, but now there’s growing scientific interest in studying hallucinogenic drugs. In the 50s LSD was believed to be a wonder drug and used widely in psychiatry to treat conditions from depression to addiction.

In this week’s programme Claudia finds out about the new research underway using psychedelics, and asks whether modern psychiatry is really the place for drugs like LSD, magic mushrooms and Ecstasy.

Click to listen:
Stream this show listed above now!
All in the Mind archive

National Public Radio: The Savvy Traveler Show

The Journey of Ayahuasca Tea
by John Rieger

The search for spiritual enlightenment is a growing sector of modern travel There’s a new spiritual center developing in Iquitos, Peru. There, on the edge of the Peruvian Amazon jungle, a special sort of traveler is seeking out a powerful medicine made by the local shaman there. “Ayahuasca Tea” is a potent psychedelic that you drink under the guidance of a spiritual guide. Reporter John Rieger went in search of Ayahuasca, which is believed to heal broken souls.

Click to Listen:
Real Audio stream (courtesy of The Savvy Traveler)
Mp3 download (courtesy of MAPS)

MAPS Lecture Series

Psychedelic Research Panel: A Vision for the 21st Century

“This panel presents an overview of the current state of psychedelic research, which is undergoing a small renaissance”

Click to Listen:
MP3 download

Hallucinogens and Transpersonal Medicine.

“This talk will examine the continued relevance of hallucinogens to the transpersonal fields, and will pose the question of whether the long discarded psychedelic research model can be revived within contemporary mainstream psychiatry and medicine. The shamanic role of plant hallucinogens as The Great Medicine in indigenous people will be discussed, as will their subsequent invalidation and oppression at the hands of dominant Euro-American culture…”

Click To Listen:
Mp3 download – Part 1
Mp3 download – Part 2

The Effects of Psilocybin on Patients with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

“Anecdotal reports suggest that the psychedelic substance psilocybin helps to relieve symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder during and after the acute psychedelic experience.”

Click to listen:
Mp3 download – Part 1
Mp3 download – Part 2

Transpersonal Psychopharmacology: The Re-emergence of Sacred Sacraments as Modern Medicines

“Psychedelic substances can be used as tools of self-discovery, sacred sacraments, and/or recreational drugs….[ ] ..This talk details intended investigations with MDMA for the terminally ill and with peyote for Native American substance abuse.”

Click to listen:
Mp3 download – Part 1
Mp3 download – Part 2

Anatomy of a Nightmare

from NPR: Talk of the Nation

Today, we’ll talk to The New York Times science columnist Natalie Angier about why we have nightmares in the first place and the evolutionary function they serve; and to Kelly Buckeley, dream interpreter extraordinaire.

Click to Listen:
Play Audio Stream

Stephen LaBerge on Coast to Coast Radio Show

Coast to Coast Radio

Stephen LaBerge has been on this radio show 3 times.

Show Descriptions:

“Psychophysiologist Dr. Stephen La Berge joined his associate at the Lucidity Institute, Dominick Attisani, to discuss how science is researching consciousness via the laboratory of the mind and lucid dreaming”

“Dr. Stephen LaBerge, the founder of the Lucidity Institute, discussed how lucid dreaming can enhance individual lives.”

“Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D. is a world-renowned authority on lucid dreaming. His pioneering studies at Stanford University have brought scientific attention to this potentially illuminating state of consciousness.”

Click to Listen:
Coast to Coast Show Page

Note: requires registration.

Why We Dream

from NPR: Talk of the Nation

Guests inclues Allan Hobson and Rosalind Cartwright.

“Dream interpretation has been a popular pastime since Biblical times. This century, Freud brought a quasi-scientific authority to the practice, and the imprint of psychoanalysis on the way we look at dreams has been hard to shake. The intense nature of dreams leads us to think they must have some significance, but is there really a scientific basis for dream analysis? Join Melinda Penkava and guests for a look at why we dream, and if dreams have meaning.”

Click to listen:
Real Audio Stream
Another Stream Link

100th Anniversary of Freud’s The Interpretations of Dream

from NPR: Talk of the Nation

“In this hour, we’ll take a look back at Freud’s ideas about dreams and dreaming, and talk about whether today’s brain science backs up those ideas, or calls them into question.”

Click to listen:
Real Audio Stream

Also: NPR’s All Things Considered did an 8 minute segment on the same story. Click here for the stream.

What happens when you combine mindblowing psychedelics with a sensory deprivation tank? A look at the film ALTERED STATES.

Ben — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 00:29:43 +0000

Official ALTERED STATES movie trailer:
Plot Summary: A scientist takes drugs inside a sensory deprivation chamber, has crazy intense psychedelic trips, then genetically regresses into a primordial pre-human, ultimately regressing into the void of existence itself.

The story revolves around a young scientist named Eddie Jessup, whose interest in his work overshadows everything else, including not only his marriage to but even his own well-being.

I read that the actors experimented with ketamine while making this film. I thought this was strange but awesome of them. Later on I discovered why they did it; ALTERED STATES is based on the life and work of scientist, writer, and ketamine-enthusiast John Lilly.

I did some searching and found an incredibly fascinating interview with John Lily interview on the Erowid archives, originally appearing in Omni magazine, about his life and his work and a bit on the film Altered States.

Learning more about Lily’s personality, life, and work made me appreciate this film even more. He, just like the character in Altered States, was driven nearly to madness, and almost to his death, for his passionate and all-consuming interest in exploring his own mind with drugs. This was no joke to him. I was astonished to learn that Lily once spent 100 days straight on ketamine.

Despite the fact that this makes him sound like a crackpot, he was a real scientist with a number of mainstream accomplishments under his belt. He is credited with inventing the sensory deprivation tank in order to learn if the brain needed external stimuli to “stay awake.” He also devoted much research into inventing a technique for communication between humans and dolphins. (I would very much like to know where this research went; in the interview, nearly 25 years ago, he states that we’re about five years away from breaking the language barrier between humans and dolphins.) He also published many books over the years on his own experiences and scientific research.

….

I loved ALTERED STATES from the very beginning – the sense deprivation tank, the crazy drug trips, the religious nature of his hallucinations (including burning crosses, visions of hell, and scenes from the Book of Revelations). I also enjoyed spotting the side references to Charles Tart, Timothy Leary, and amanita muscaria. (And being that I was born in 1980, I’m sure I missed quite a few other things key to 60′s and 70′s drug culture.)

The plot moves along pretty quickly and goes something like this:

After attending a shamanic religious ritual and tripping with a bunch of Indians, Eddie brings back a few grams of the drug for scientific analysis.

Once he combines this unknown drug with the sensory deprivation tank, the movie really kicks up it’s psychedelic heels and takes you for a crazy ride.

At this point, these trips in the tank have become much more than just journeys of the mind. The combination of the sensory deprivation tank with this unknown drug allow him to tap into the genetic history contained within every cell of his body. First he regresses into a primal, pre-human ape-like creature. Ultimately, by the end of the film, he regresses back to the very beginning of existence itself, terrified by the overwhelming nothing that he becomes one with, and saved from it only by his love for his wife, Emily.

Some of the imagery is fitting for a horror film and I certainly don’t recommend anyone trip while watching this fun. Ultimately this film is a throwback to a post-60’s scientific culture when scientists were allowed to experiment with mind-altering substances in the lab. If you’ll excuse some of the cheesy dialogue and the under-developed romance between Eddie and Emily, you’ll find a fascinating film about drugs, the brain, and the nature of reality.

Sidenote: I’ve not had the chance to get inside a sensory deprivation tank but would really enjoy doing so. I would love to hear from you if you’ve had a chance to use one. I’d also be curious to know where it is and how you were able to use it. Maybe you’d want to write something about your experience and we can post it on the blog?

In closing check out this short clip from Altered States
showing Eddie tripping about god and the death of his father.

Brain Electrodes Help Man Speak Again

Ben — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 20:02:57 +0000

I recently came across this article titled “Brain Electrodes Help Man Speak Again” at Forbes.

In sum, this guy has been a vegetable for 6 years until doctors stimulated his brain with electrodes. Now, he’s able to talk, express emotion, watch movies, and eat on his own without a tube.

Basically…

it sounds like he’s become a person again.

What does it say about who we are when a brain-dead man comes back to life after having parts of his brain electrically stimulated?

Isn’t this pretty strong evidence towards a materialistic understanding of personal identity and the self?

What does this mean then when I ask:

Are you the sum total of the processes going on in your brain?

If not, what else is there?

Skeptics Penn and Teller on Near Death Experiences, Dreams, Out of Body Experiences

Ben — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 19:52:23 +0000

This is a great 7 minute video connecting dreams, near death experiences, and out of body experiences.

It comes from Penn & Teller’s popular show, kindly known as Bullshit.

(That should give you a hint about what sort of opinion they have about NDE and OBE.)

If that puts you off, at least check it out the centrifuge test experiment videos! It looks like something from Clockwork Orange or maybe some secret CIA torture research. WTF!

Too bad Penn’s voice is annoying and he always sounds like an asshole, even those times when he might be right.

Best quote from the video:

“Near Death Experiences are just another form of very vivid dreams.”

Too bad they don’t allow this guy to elaborate much on this.

Note: Here’s another skeptic video on NDE/OBE’s.

Wearing the God-Helmet for Out of Body Experiences and Alien Abductions

Ben — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 15:28:58 +0000

This is a fascinating 6 minute video into the research of Michael Persinger, inventor of the “God Helmet.” His research into out of body experiences, alien abductions, ghosts, and other “paranormal” phenomenon is predicated on the idea that these experience take place in the brain i.e. they’re an illusion and do not take place in physical reality.

To this end, he has invented a technique to stimulate the temporal lobes of the brain via magnetic pulses. The resulting device is known as the “God Helmet”, and in his lab people wearing it have experienced all sorts of wild and paranormal sensations - invisible presences, alien abductions, meeting the devil, out of body experiences and so on.

Since no one else in the room sees or experiences these things, this certainly lends evidence to the idea that the experiences are taking place in the brain and not in physical reality.

Personally, I have little problem accepting that out of body experiences (and associated phenomenon) take place within the brain. I’m open to the idea that I’m wrong – in fact I would LOVE to be proven wrong – but I’ve just not seen any solid evidence that points to the OBE as actually being a physically real experience.

Either way, I would love to be a subject in one of these tests and I fully support research into understanding what’s happening in the brain when we have mystical, out of body, and near-death experiences.

Question:

If we know how to physically manipulate the brain in order to experience out of body sensations, near-death experiences, the presence of (invisible) beings, aliens, demons, and angels, etc – does this mean that there is no value to these experiences?

The Death of Lucid Dreaming

Ben — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 18:45:00 +0000

Will virtual reality mean the death of lucid dreaming?

Recently I saw the movie eXistenZ by David Cronenburg. It’s about a fully-encompassing virtual reality game, where of course, something screwy happens and you begin to question what’s real and what’s not.

To play, you have to surgically install a “bio-port” at the base of the spine that the game plugs into. Conceivably, the game interacts with the brain via the nervous system via the spine. Users then “plug in” and are transported into full-scale virtual world in which they can interact with others and the environment, just like they would in the real world. Pretty neat.

Ultimately, eXistenZ suffers the same fate of so many other science fictions film; cheesy characters, bad acting, with predictable scenes all along the way.

But 45 minutes into the film it actually goes from “this is starting to suck” to “okay this is getting interesting” once they go into the game known as eXistenZ.

Anyhow, the movie got me thinking about lucid dreaming and virtual reality, and how similar the two experiences are.

There’s a scene in existenz where they’re speaking in front of a game character about the fact that they’re in a game, and guy just stands there, wobbling back in forth, in a “game loop,” not understanding what they’re saying. This cracked me up and reminds me so much of just the general weirdness that the existence of a dream character entails, and how strange it can be to tell a dream character that they are just part of your dream.

Beyond this little snippet though, the overall experience of being in an “unreal” environment that fully encompasses all the senses is what makes lucid dreaming and virtual reality so very similar. Obviously, lucid dreaming is a kind of virtual reality, and I think it rightfully fuels an interest in the development of virtual reality systems.

However, I don’t think the reverse will be true.

Virtual reality, once possible, could very likely have a negative effect on the growing culture of lucid dreaming.

Because, let’s face it – lucid dreaming is hard!

If you could simply enter into a virtual world at the touch of a button, wouldn’t you do it?

And wouldn’t it be awesome?!

Ah…but it’s just a fantasy right?

Well, I really don’t think so. If global warming or a nuclear war doesn’t ruin everything, we could develop the technology for virtual reality systems here in a few decades.

If this sounds ridiculous – and it probably does, considering, well, futurists are always wrong – go grab a snack, get comfortable, put on your thinking cap and then read this presentation by Ray Kurzweil titled The Human Machine Merger: Why We Will Spend Most of Our Time in Virtual Reality in the Twenty-first Century.

Ray Kurzweil is one of a few dozen figureheads who speak about the exponential acceleration of technology, and how this is going to result in a “Singularity.”

This term has become somewhat of fuzzy concept with lots of different meanings, but it’s safe to say it includes the point where we create an Artificial Intelligence that exceeds human intelligence. Once this AI is created, it will create increasingly more capable AI’s, who in turn do the same, and so on, creating a point at which the future simply whisps off into a singularity beyond our capacity to even imagine.

Whew!

(Yeah, that’s a lot to take in. I realize it sounds pretty absurd if you’re hearing it for the first time. If you’d like to learn more, get ready to have your mind blown so hard that it’s gonna splatter on a nearby wall and check out The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil and Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies – and What It Means to Be Human by Joel Garreau. Radical Evolution is a more unbiased look at what’s coming and I recommend reading it first for anyone not already familiar with Kurzweil’s ideas.)

Anyhow:

What’s this got to do with lucid dreaming?

Nothing in particular, just that I think those of us who are fascinated with the idea of being in a lucid dreaming world where we can do whatever we want will likely find it fascinating that we’ll be able to replicate this concept virtually, without going to sleep, without any special skills, without supplements, and without techniques, cheaply and easily here a few decades.

Supposedly.

For me personally -

If I could enter into a virtual world at the click of a button, I bet I’d eventually spend much less time exploring the world of dreams.

What would you do?