The God helmet

[Lark]

I dont know if any of you have read about the so called God helmet, it was a device used to stimulate parts of the brain in some neurotests which stimulated what have been recorded elsewhere as spiritual experiences and was seized upon by a lot of theorists who wanted to confirmation for their own thinking that God and spiritual experience were bogus tricks of the mind.

Anyway, my first reaction to it was I'd love to give that a try, do you think that a spiritual experience which is triggered by an artifice like this would be a valid spiritual experience or just some kind of trip? Do you think people should be able to do things to their minds like this at the flick of a switch? What if you could create a dream to order and implant it in your mind as a real experience would you? Should you?

 

[HunterO]

I dont know if any of you have read about the so called God helmet, it was a device used to stimulate parts of the brain in some neurotests which stimulated what have been recorded elsewhere as spiritual experiences and was seized upon by a lot of theorists who wanted to confirmation for their own thinking that God and spiritual experience were bogus tricks of the mind.

Anyway, my first reaction to it was I'd love to give that a try, do you think that a spiritual experience which is triggered by an artifice like this would be a valid spiritual experience or just some kind of trip? Do you think people should be able to do things to their minds like this at the flick of a switch? What if you could create a dream to order and implant it in your mind as a real experience would you? Should you?

I think in the 1970s, the God Helmet was utilised to attempt to condition homosexuals into becoming heterosexual without any success by giving them access to pleasurable orgasmic sensations when looking at photos/videos of women. However, obviously for many reasons, this did not work.

I think it would be cool to have an interactive dream experience with friends either predicated by a theme of some sort of working through an idea together for a project. That would be the best brainstorming idea ever, to be able to envision these details within the dreamstate.

Of course, some people say, taking LSD is similar to the dreamstate, in which the filters of perception are lifted and the pineal gland releases an enormous amount of melatonin.

However, there are ethical considerations to be carefully examined and definitely I think we have to consider the pros and cons of having complete access to a person's mind/brain and to prevent overt manipulation of someone's state.

 

[Alomoes]

Yeah. Probably a bad idea, but I know someone is going to do it.

 

[Skarekrow]

From the studies that have been done they have had similar out of body type experiences as people who have had a near death experience in several ways.
They feel more “interconnected”.
They feel or sense a presence or spirit of dead family member in the room.
They have an altered viewpoint of reality (out of body).
Some have felt the presence of God.

They differ from NDE’s in the way that a NDE is hyper-real, or more accurately this reality is more dull and dreamlike upon return.
And the whole rest of the NDE is different too.

I think the God helmet is very interesting….I would love to try it…I don’t think it proves either side in the Materialist vs Post-Materialist science debate.
Those experiences that the people are having very well could be created by the brain…but we should consider that what the people are feeling and sensing is perhaps “real” (in the sense that there are real things not created by the mind).
Maybe they are really sensing their loved ones because their loved ones are actually around them and this simulates the brain in just the right way to allow us to “feel” or see their presence.
They had similar results in the G-LOK centrifuge experiments they did with pilots…the director of the program himself Dr. Whinnery spun himself to unconsciousness 7 times in a row once only to find while walking back to his office that his consciousness was about a foot and a half above and behind his own head.

It all boils down to the belief in a “soul” or some other outside force besides the brain being responsible for our consciousness.