The Return of the God Helmet

By Thad McKraken via Disinformation

I’d completely lost track of what was going on with Michael Persinger’s “God Helmet” but in stumbling on a few new articles I got the gist. As with much controversial research into altered states of consciousness or psi, what apparently went down is that someone (who probably had an enormous confirmation bias) tried to replicate the results and failed (likely on purpose). So in the court of popular/scientific opinion, that was it. Nothing to see here. Except that scientists in Brazil have just effectively replicated his results so you know, game on:

“A team of neurotheology researchers have replicated and confirmed the results of the iconic “God Helmet” experiment. The apparatus, originally developed by renowned neuroscientists, Stanley Koren and Michael Persinger, generates weak magnetic fields around the test subject’s temporal lobes, and elicits a distinct set of experiential phenomena in the participant’s brain, including: altered mystic states, visions of God, and the feeling of a sensed God-like presence. This new independent study confirms that the effects from the God Helmet experiment are not due to suggestion or suggestibility in subjects, and provide the first scientific verification of the technique’s direct influence on the brain. 80% had feelings of a “sensed presence”, and the other 20% had either minor effects or none.

The authors of the study, which was published in the Journal Of Consciousness Exploration and Research, write, “The God Helmet places four magnetic coils on each side of the head, above the temporal lobes. Some subjects exposed to these fields reported having ‘spiritual experiences’ during our tests. These subjects included atheists, as well as religious believers. 80% of the subjects reported the ‘presence’ of ‘nonphysical beings’ in the room where the experiments were conducted, including the ‘presence of God’ in a small number of subjects.”

“Thus far, about 20 or so people have reported feeling the presence of Christ or even seeing him in the chamber (The acoustic chamber where the experimental sessions took place),” says Koren in a recent interview. “Most of these people used Christ and God interchangeably. Most of these individuals were older (30 years or more) and religious (Roman Catholic). One male, age about 35-years-old (alleged atheist but early childhood Roman Catholic training), saw a clear apparition (shoulders and head) of Christ staring him in the face. He was quite ‘shaken’ by the experience. I did not complete a follow-up re: his change in behavior. [What] we did find with one world-class psychic, who experiences Christ as a component of his abilities, was we could experimentally increase or decrease his numbers of his reported experiences by applying the LTP pattern (derived from the hippocampus) over the right hemisphere (without his awareness). The field on-response delay was about 10 to 20 sec. The optimal pattern, at least for this person, looked very right hippocampal. By far most presences are attributed to dead relatives, the Great Forces, a spirit, or something equivalent. The attribution towards along a devil to angel continuum appears strongly related to the affect (pleasant-terror) associated with the experience. I suspect most people would call the ‘vague, all-around-me’ sensations ‘God’ but they are reluctant to employ the label in a laboratory. The implicit is obvious. If the equipment and the experiment produced the presence that was God, then the extrapersonal, unreachable and independent characteristics of the god definition might be challenged.”

Read the rest here, or read the entire documented study here if you’re more inclined.
Of course I probably wouldn’t be posting this if I didn’t have something to say about it that no one else has mentioned, so here goes. The God Helmet and all the attention it got is sort of backassward. Why? Because Persinger’s entire design is, at least loosely, based on the work of Robert Monroe as far as I can tell. I’ve yet to see anyone mention this.

Back in the 70s Monroe developed what he referred to as hemi-sync technology that syncs the hemispheres of the brain to help induce a sleep paralysis state, which is the gateway to astral projection. Of course, Monroe’s techniques accomplish this via calculated sound patterns broadcast into headphones. All Persinger did was go, hmmm, maybe we could do similar shit with electromagnetic pulses because that would be more science-y.

What’s funny about this is that in all the studies I’ve read on the God Helmet, Monroe’s techniques seem quite a bit more effective. But he wasn’t a scientist working for an academic institution so no one in that capacity officially took him seriously. He was a successful businessman who started spontaneously having out of body experiences and spent his own money establishing a non-profit to study them. Plus he was a best selling author of new age books. Of course, all of that stuff “isn’t real” so there’s no reason to study it. At least, according to mainstream science. The exact same shit I ran into as a psychology student. So what Persinger really did was find a less effective way to accomplish what someone else had already figured out. Except now it appealed more to the materialist set.
Science has a hard time explaining how meditation can demonstrably change brain patterns, but if you forcefully fuck with them externally by manipulating neurology with lasers or some shit, then hey, we’re onto something. We could maybe turn that into a weapon. It’s even more embarrassing that the God Helmet was philosophically used as a “gotcha” for materialists who claimed, “Science just explained out of body experiences, man. It’s just brain chemistry, morons. Nothing to see here.” As a psychedelic advocate my response to this has always been, ummm, obviously spiritual states of consciousness can be induced by manipulating brain chemistry. It actually supports the receiver model of consciousness.

Anyway, I don’t want it to seem like I’m shitting on the God Helmet here. I actually find this sort of thing incredibly fascinating and am glad someone else picked up the torch. While everyone else is jizzing their pants over the potentialities of Occulus Rift and the theoretical idea that we could upload our brains into computers I’m like, errr, aren’t the potentialities of this sort of technology roughly a billion times more compelling? Occulus Rift will do little more than serve capitalism, while if honed, this sort of technology could serve to destroy it. Once people figure out that they can get greater kicks manipulating their brain chemistry on the cheap than they ever will at the mall (or in a church), the whole charade crumbles.

On a final note, if you’re reading about the God Helmet and thinking, I really want to try it, keep in mind that it would probably cost you quite a bit of money and time to build one. And it most likely wouldn’t work nearly as well as Monroe’s hemi-sync sound patterns, which you can pick up right now for a mere $75 bucks. Less than a decent bag of weed. Does it work? Yep, I tried it, my mom tried it, my brother tried it. Worked for all 3 of us, although I delved in a bit further and had much more profound results (some of which you can read about in my book super cheap), which is something that’s maybe a bit more difficult to explain.

You know what else is funny? I saw Duncan Trussell live in Seattle months back, and he just so happened to mention that he’d experimented with Monroe’s tech as a teenager. It worked for him as well, but you know, also scared the living crap out of him (same deal with me, really). This is all my way of saying that Monroe’s techniques are incredibly repeatable, but yet another thing that mainstream science refuses to tackle on principle alone. Instead I suppose we’ll have to settle for stuff like the God Helmet. At least it’s a start, and on a plus note, it looks freaking awesome from a fashion perspective. Just once I’d like to roll into a show and find a bunch of young hipster kids rocking something like that. Just once. I don’t have to buy my drugs from the bar man, I’m bombarding my brain with good vibes from inside this stylish sci-fi headwear. That’d be some real progress. Oh and hey, it could potentially shut down the drug trade as well, which is precisely why capitalism will never let it catch on.