Transcranial Magnetic Stimulations God Helmet Meets a Psychic

At the 2006 International Remote Viewing Associations conference, in a rare speech by remote viewing phenomenon, Ingo Swann responded to an audience member’s blurt about Dr. Persinger’s research on the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation machine known as the “God Helmet”. Unfortunately, the IRVA took the video down. They are now selling it. In the video, Ingo mentions something that lingers on in my mind. He says the Persinger is locked out of his lab because of certain discoveries. As the father of “remote viewing” and a onery, straight shooter, Ingo is a bit of champion for me, but I couldn’t help but be skeptical. I started to research his statement.

A bit more about the God Helmet. This is a device that allows 80% of its participants to have “spiritual” experiences. They feel a presence, hear voices, have visions etc. Some have taken this to mean that all such phenomenon are artificial.

I have been very much interested in the God Helmet and Persinger’s research so when Ingo Swann talked about being apart of Dr. Persinger’s experienment, I had to search it. What I found was a very interesting set of comments from Marcos Ferreira and others regarding Dr. Persinger’s perspective on paranormal phenomenon on the blog of author Micheal Prescott.

Comments from Michael Prescott’s Blog:

I came across this 2001 paper by famed neuroscientist Michael Persinger (he of the notorious “God Helmet”, and cited approvingly by Dawkins, Blackmore, and the JREF crowd).

The paper is about neural correlates of paranormal experiences. Under the section “Special Cases”, he tests a psychic (Sean Harribance) and a remote viewer (Ingo Swann). Both tests give statistically significant results under double-blind conditions. Persinger casually ignores the implications of this (“The neural mechanism … remains to be identified”) in order to spend time discussing the EEG readings…

Did this generate a controversy which I’ve missed, or has this just been quietly ignored? I can find plenty of squabbling about the supposed experimental failings of Gary Schwartz and the SRI researchers, but no real mention anywhere of this replication by “one of their own”. Is anyone aware of any responses or discussion of these results?

Posted by: marcos ferreira | September 17, 2007 at 01:13 PM

No surprise on the Persinger data: once a science becomes attached to a particular theory, data which contradicts that theory tends to disappear without effect. Has anyone ever been able to reproduce Persinger’s reported results with magnetic stimulation of certain brain areas, especially the temporal lobe? His widely trumpeted claims that temporal lobe epilepsy was responsible for NDEs and OBEs hasn’t, to my knowledge, been corroberated. I know that changes in temporal lobe functioning have been found in NDExperiencers, but it isn’t known whether the changes produced the experiences or vice versa. I’m looking forward to Carter’s book. It promises to be a good follow-on after “Irreducible Mind”.

Posted by: Kevin | September 17, 2007 at 05:22 PM

I corresponded with Persinger a few years ago about Dr. Andrija Puharich’s book “Beyond Telepathy” — a must-read!! Puharich emphasizes the magnetic momentum of the proton-electron resonance being altered through increased potassium and decreased sodium intake. Puharich then ties this physiological transformation to his “psi-plasma vortex” model for bending spacetime.

Persinger knew Puharich fairly well and Persinger told me that he thought very highly of Puharich’s psi-plasma model. When I asked Persinger about Puharich’s CIA work I received no response. haha.

The Persinger’s paper only talks about the phenomenon in the Special Cases section of the paper. It sounds like he does not doubt that such abilities exist. The data indicated that these “remote viewers” and “psychics” are more sensitive to the TMS device.

Interesting cutting edge stuff.. to say the VERY least, but I am still not sure what Ingo was talking about.

New America: Solar Storms are Coming

Currently there is a controvery over “Global Warming”.  Most scientist agree that the weather is changing and the temperature on Earth will increase over the next century by 3 degrees.  In America, this has become a huge political issue as politicians like Al Gore have stepped up to the plate with movies like “An Inconvenient Truth”.  The main debate is whether humanity is the primary contributing factor in Global Warming and if we as a people should take more actions to change it.  With the amount of pollution and waste we produce in and around our cities this should be a debate at all.

While there is no doubt in my mind that humanity has had a MAJOR impact on the Earth and her ecosystem, the coming changes may well be completely beyond our control. 

New America & New World Changes 

20 May 07, I was listening to a very interesting radio show on AM’s third most listend to conservative talk show, Glenn Beck.  Even though I tend to disagree with many of the oppinions of Rush, Hannity and Micheal Savage, I love talk radio because it is one of the last (dwindling) bastions of free speech.  And even these guys tend to be puppets of the Republican party.  

Glenn had a man whose name I don’t recall (Dr. Mike Lynn?) on his show who, in addition to insightful thoughts about the current Immigrations issue (amnesty of illegal imigrant), he mentioned something about the comming three nation highway meshing with the “new map of America.” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He also talked about TRM technical remote viewing and was roasted by Glenn Beck but I was more interested in this New map idea.  Anyway, this stuff is really interesting to me because it seems to keep coming up.  Not so much the map, but visions of impending doom for millions of people and not just from “psychics” and remote viewer (see Ed Dames Killshot) predicting cataclysmic disasters around 2012, but now even from NASA.  They predict massive solar flares by 2012.  

Solar Storms

“Who’s right? Time will tell. Either way, a storm is coming.” NASA

 According to scientists, the sun has a “conveyor belt” of electrically charged gases that cycle on the surface and deep within the sun.  http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/10mar_stormwarning.htm 

When the belt is turning “fast,” it means that lots of magnetic fields are being swept up, and that a future sunspot cycle is going to be intense. This is a basis for forecasting: “The belt was turning fast in 1986-1996,” says Hathaway. “Old magnetic fields swept up then should re-appear as big sunspots in 2010-2011.” (NASA)

Like most experts in the field, Hathaway has confidence in the conveyor belt model and agrees with Dikpati that the next solar maximum should be a doozy. But he disagrees with one point. Dikpati’s forecast puts Solar Max at 2012. Hathaway believes it will arrive sooner, in 2010 or 2011. (NASA)

Will this solar max do anything to the Earth’s Magnetosphere severe enough to cause a cataclysm?  Perhaps this has something to do with the end of the Mayan calendar which just happends to end 2012.