Dr. Michael Persinger: God's Helmet - Neurotheology and Neurobiology

[Zampano]

Through some spiritual experiences I had last year and still going

http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?40492-My-recent-enlightenment

I decided to spent some time investigating spiritual/mystical experiences. From self induced experiences through meditation, visualizations and pattern changing in the subconsciousness.
Also from external sources, like energy work and even body massage, light drugs (alcohol and weed) or just spending days in the woods.

The effects were similar. Feelings of interconnectness, presences in the room, sudden realizations...sometimes life changing.
Some years ago I heard about Dr. Michael Persinger's "God helmet".

He has a basic lecture about drugs and how they work as neurotransmitters in our brains.

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I also came across the famous DMT neurotransmitter, which "causes" spiritual events, but thats another topic-also found here on the forum.

Gods helmet and how it works

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How does it work?


The God Helmet is a popular name given to a laboratory apparatus more correctly called the "Koren Helmet", after Stanley Koren of Laurentian University's Neuroscience Department, who built it according to specifications provided by Dr. M.A. Persinger, it's director.

Used as a research tool to investigate the brain's role in religious and mystic experiences, the Koren Helmet has been given the name God Helmet. A few Journalists gave it this name when they learned that some people had visions of God while participating in Koren Helmet experiments. The name has stuck.

The Koren Helmet applies complex (having an irregular shape) magnetic signals to the head of the person who is wearing it. The fields don't work by inducing current in the brain. They have patterns that bear information, and magnetic fields that appear from the electrical activity in the brain pick up the information.
It's a field-to-field interaction, and not current induction. The fields pass into the brain, unaffected by the scalp or skull, because there is no such thing as a magnetic insulator. Nothing can block a magnetic field 1 2. Some psychologists, not understanding this, have mistakenly claimed that the fields used in the God Helmet aren't strong enough to reach the brain. Magnetic fields pass "through all head structures with no attenuation and can stimulate the brain without discomfort" reference. Further Discussion.
The Koren Helmet is connected to a PC computer through a 'black box' that cycles the signals through four coils on each side of the head, above over the place where the temporal lobes of the brain meet the parietal lobes. This is the area of the brain many researchers feel is the source of spiritual and religious experiences link.

This illustration shows how the signal shifts from one coil to the next. This is a side view. There is also another set of coils working on the other side. The two coils at the top are no longer used.

The sessions are done in an Acoustic Chamber - a completely silent room. A large part of the temporal lobes ongoing activity is dedicated to monitoring ambient sound. The temporal lobes are the source of religious and mystic experiences, so that silence helps a great deal in creating them in the lab. The same chamber also has a layer of electromagnetic insulation, so that the ambient energy emitted from lab equipment, cell phone towers, and computer monitors is screened out. Because magnetic fields can still pass through this fields screen (a Faraday Cage), the God Helmet research has included some interesting discoveries about the earth's magnetic field.

There is a youtube channel with 6 lectures of a Co-worker of Dr. Persinger:

God and the brain
Reincarnation in the human evolution
Enlightenment, the Self and the Brain
Psychic Skills and Miracles
Kundalini and so on

His name is Todd Murphy and his channel is

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You can also order the "Highway to spiritual events online"! Gods helmet

What do you think about that?

[Fred Steeves]

O.K. Zampano, I watched all but the last video, and still feel much the same as when we were talking yesterday. Persinger makes a lot of sense of course, and is a quite intelligent and interesting fellow, but I think he's discovering what he wants to find. The brain as I see it, is the conduit for consciousness to interact on this physical plane, not consciousness in and of itself in a "closed loop" as he puts it. Much as computers are a conduit for us to interact on the internet. For instance, if the computer dies the user is still present. They just cannot interact on the net, until they get a new computer that is...(LOL)

Sure psychedelic experiences, or God Helmet experiences are manipulations of brain functions, but to jump to the conclusion that this is all there is to it is wildly missing the mark IMO. As William Blake put it, who himself was a frequent user of hallucinogens if I recall correctly:

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”

This is where I think he's making his critical error. These experiences are the result of at least a partial cleansing of our locked up perceptions, and although often mis-interpreted, they are very real insights.

He's also leaving out of the equation DNA and heart, which although have different functions, operate in much the same manner.

[mahalall]

"recognise the stimulus"!Dr Micheal Persinger,God Helmet

A self state awareness (meditation helps) enables one to recognise a stimulus's effect and to isolate the source of the Transcranial stimulation.
Seem to being living in a soup of influence both organic and inorganic.

[Youniverse]

So here we have another materialist in Dr.Persinger trying to reduce all of spirituality and our divine presence down to a lump of tissue called our brain. Isn't that what he's trying to say? How would he explain Eben Alexander's experience of 7 days in a coma with his neo-cortex completely shut down and having extremely lucid, mystical/spiritual experiences? Not to mention countless other testimonies of NDEs, OBEs, etc. I've been watching Morgan Freeman's show "Through the Wormhole" and it has some interesting topics and points. Where it loses me is the total disregard for anything spiritual or God and treating everything from a scientific perspective. Of course it's on discovery science chanell where I live so this is not surprising that it is all about science. And don't get me wrong, I enjoy science very much, but you have to blend the two(science and spirituality) to get anywhere near the truth. There is often an arrogance and over-confidence in the scientific world(at least many of the so-called scientific authorities put on mainstream tv shows are that way) that their way is the only legitimate way to understanding anything. So when I watch shows like "Through the Wormhole" I hear about scientists flirting with questions that ancient mystics knew the answers to thousands of years ago.

These experiments like the 'god helmet' are interesting and may be useful in understanding our bodies better, but it is tricky to draw any broad conclusions from them. For example, there is much evdidence that the brain is one of many body parts that thinks (check out the book "The Heart's Code") and then we have muscle memory and Bruce Lipton's work on epi-genetics showed that our cells also think. I think it was in Bruce Lipton's Biology of Belief where he talked about a story where someone's brain was all but gone and they still managed to live a regular lifestyle and even did well in college. There's so much emphasis on our brain in this society, but it's not as magnificent as it's often made out to be. Yes it's a great tool and we have a lot to learn about it, but it's also a part of our body that's been over-used throughout millenia due to the many physical threats to our physical survival included in this Earthly experience.

[marielle]

I bought one of those devices from Todd--very nice man. I wish I could say it worked but my brain is just too active and it's too hard to relax when I'm all wired up like that. I think I've tried everything there is, except mind-altering drugs to escape this reality: meditation, light and sound machines, brain wave analyzers, electrical stimulation on my head, and so on...I even spent months writing some software that would analyze my brainwaves coming from a small eeg device on my head, find the dominant frequency and send the corresponding freqs to my light and sound machine to try to "step me down". The number of wires and connections involved in that clusterf*** was amazing and it never failed--as soon as I was all wired up, the dog would want out or my son would want something.

I decided to take up flying airplanes instead--nothing like flying a plane to put me completely in the present and quit trying to figure out what my purpose is :)

If anyone wants to try the "God Helmet", I'm willing to give it away to a fellow seeker in the Northern California area. It's actually more of a strap that goes around your head with magnets hooked to usb connections that is controlled by a computer.

[Zampano]

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”

This is where I think he's making his critical error. These experiences are the result of at least a partial cleansing of our locked up perceptions, and although often mis-interpreted, they are very real insights.

This sounds very plausible to me. Some shamans in South America work similar with their apprentices. In order to help them cleanse their perception and TO SEE, they give them psychotropic drugs. Kind of some lurks into the real world, to understand the bigger picture. Thats the same what the helmet is doing, but with out major sideeffects.
I do know that the heart creates the largest electromagnetic field in the body, around 60 x stronger than the brains. Hm...interesting.

The entire universe is condensed in the body and the entire body in the Heart. Thus the Heart is the nucleus of the whole universe. This world is not other than the mind, the mind is not other than the Heart; that is the whole truth. (Ramana Maharshi)

I wouldnt say "trying to reduce all of spirituality to our brain". He just stimulates the areas in your brain to evoke mystical events, experienced by many 100.000s throughout earth's history in a similar way. And all of them had a brain, which works nearly exactly the same in every human and I am quite sure, that in all cases these particular brain areas were stimulated when such experiences happened. Thou shalt not underrate your brain.

There is a great quote from Todd Murphy, the lecturer from the video (around 35:30) in the first post:
There is nothing in this line of evidence that proves that there is a God and there is nothing in this line of evidence that provesm that there isn't a God.
If there is a Creator of the universe who exists outside of me and I experience "his" presence, is God working through my brain to come into my awareness? Or is my brain working to produce my sense of Gods presence outside of my body?

Thanks Marielle for your report on the helmet...which one did you buy? As I saw on Todd's Homepage, there are a couple of different ones.

Lol and now, you are flying airplanes...

[sigma6]

Yes, now I think you are getting closer to the point Zampano... I felt the same too... that he is neither proving nor disproving God... I really think there is something more profound going on in what he is saying... Persinger is asking us to read between the lines, especially in his "No More Secrets" seminar. If you think he is speaking literally, think again... Nor is he telling us everything he knows, if he was he would talk more about his past his research in mind control for the US military. He admits he was the one behind the project that Ingo Swan was cultivated out of....

Here's the kicker... he is running particular subtle frequencies of electrical energy through the brain... and it is creating certain effects in effect he is monkeying with already existing structures... tantamount to throwing a monkey wrench into the "black box" to see what happens... we know about the pineal gland and the influence of Ihuwasca on it. And now it is understood the human body has the biological equivalent of almost every type of known electrical device ever invented (coincidence?) ie. transmitters, receivers, repeaters, conductors, electrical wiring, etc, etc

Point is any good scientist would make the observation and have to ask the question... What are these structures doing in the brain? If everything is random and designed for "fitness" what purpose would structures in the brain that "help ease the passing from life to "non life" serve to promote fitness of the species long after the creature in question is even operating within the window of "competition" ?

There was a good argument that Blacks tend to have more athletic musculatures on average, because they were bred for that... (as inhumane as that sounds) however they suffer from a high preponderance of afflictions that affect them more profoundly in later years, diabetes, stroke, etc. And this was explained according to an 'evolutionary' perspective showing that ailments that have no effect on their prime competitive fitness years would not be selected for. Valid argument, of course they have done the old "switch" routine. As that would equallly be an argument for "adaptation" ...which they love to thoroughly mix and confuse with "evolution" a term that by now is essentially more of a political philosophical definition with roots in the masonic agenda to undermine Christianity at the time, Complete with freemason professors faking evidence which still to this very date, NO MISSING LINK has yet to be found! the word has multiple interpretations both metaphorical, theoretical, and quasi scientific (but that's another story...)

In Persingers case, it would seem 'ramdom' nature is bestowing a rather luxurious gift in the way of electrical transmitting receiving devices solely for the purpose of "one last hallucinatory experience before we "check out" ... what a grand stroke of luck, if it were that 'simplistic' as people like Richard Dawkins and his agenda would have us believe.

These anomalies clearly fly in the face of random purposeless design... And any scientist of any acumen would know this intrinsically... I think that is why Persinger is in effect "coming out from the dark world" of military research he has lived in for the last 30, 40 years... why do we have mechanisms that allow us, as he clearly explains in "No more secrets", to be able to receive information from photonic energy from anywhere on the planet... ??

Could this be another reason for the slow destruction of the planet's atmosphere? and the magnetic field around the planet? to counter mankind's increasing psychic awareness? or thwart superior Russian techniques at remote viewing that they have no defense against otherwise... (these are the questions that intrigue me...)

No More Secrets
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[Angela Payne]

Youniverse, keep in mind that most scientists won't go near the subject matter that Persinger investigates. Also, when we hear his statements and read his papers, we are seeing him in his role as scientist. I have a feeling what he would say in private conversation would be even more interesting than what he says publicly. In one video he talks about how artists and creative people are much more sensitive to the electromagnetic field than the general population and he says this is often due to temporal lobe lability ... he also describes himself as being one of those persons.

The fact that he got both Michael Shermer and Richard Dawkins, both arch-skeptics and arch-atheists, to try out the God Helmet speaks volumes. Maybe they were trying to find something faulty in his method, and thereby have a means to discredit him, but I don't get that impression. At the least, Persinger's research demonstrates that people who "claim" psi and paranormal experiences, and people who have religious and/or spiritual experiences, aren't making it up, aren't crazy, etc. This is a step forward.

Reading between the lines of what he has said, I get the strong impression that he does, in fact, think that consciousness is not a product of the brain alone. A protege of his, Dr. Todd Murphy, has some interesting hypotheses concerning consciousness and reincarnation. He has hypothesized that we do, in fact, reincarnate and there's an evolutionary reason for it. Naturally, if we can reincarnate we have consciousness that can exist separately from the body itself. Of course, you and I know this already but it's great to hear a scientist say this. And this is a scientist who was mentored by Persinger. The links to Murphy's video lectures are provided by Zampano, above. Interesting stuff!

[Angela Payne]

Fred,

Persinger appears to be highly intuitive. (The best scientists usually are.) I do get the impression that he is trying to discover something in particular. His work in psi research, even working with remote viewer Ingo Swann and psychic Sean Harribance, would indicate that he thinks our brains are both generators and receivers of information (and consciousness).

It would appear that he's trying to find a scientific way to explain away religious, spiritual and paranormal experiences ... but his interest in the effects of geomagnetic fluctuation and its correlation with - seizures & religious experience among temporal lobe epileptics and, especially, its correlation with psi events (particularly esp of high accuracy) whether they occur in real life settings or the lab ... have to mean that he sees the brain as a potential receiver.

Again, he appears highly intuitive. As a clair-sensitive (claircognizance) who also happens to be highly sensitive to geomagnetic activity ... I find his insight to be remarkable. This kind of insight does not come to those who deny psi and non-local consciousness. They just aren't capable of it. They don't get. But Persinger gets it.

We know that neurological activity accompanies all thought. So, the view of materialism/scientism is that our neurons generate all thought, all consciousness. But the old scientific rule that "correlation does not equal causation" seems to be lost on the materialists here. Even though all thought/awareness is accompanied by neurological activity ... that does not necessarily mean that all thought/awareness is created by it. Perhaps it's just a correlation showing activity, period, whether the activity is the result of our brains generating thoughts/consciousness or the result of our brains receiving thought/awareness (as in telepathy). Persinger is intuitive and insightful enough to have seriously considered this. I suspect a lot of his research is (purposely) headed in this direction.

[Zampano]

Thank you for the input Angela Payne

I do think as well, that Mr. Persinger isnt going that far as he maybe could do-beeing a scientist.


We know that neurological activity accompanies all thought. So, the view of materialism/scientism is that our neurons generate all thought, all consciousness. But the old scientific rule that "correlation does not equal causation" seems to be lost on the materialists here. Even though all thought/awareness is accompanied by neurological activity ... that does not necessarily mean that all thought/awareness is created by it. Perhaps it's just a correlation showing activity, period, whether the activity is the result of our brains generating thoughts/consciousness or the result of our brains receiving thought/awareness (as in telepathy).

That is spot on, I think. Thought is accompanied by neurological activity. Or not? Hen or egg? Both :-)
A friend of mine ordered the God Helmet-the small version from Todd Murphy. Lets see whats happening if we figure out, how to use it.
The description on it is a book itself and thats a good sign I think.

And thanks sigma as well...electromagnetic fields is something I have to twist my brain arround :-)

And what starts this "mystical, spiritual" experiences or insights, when you do not have god helmets stimulation? Neurotransmitter, powerful electromagnetic field from the heart, spirits, higher self?