# Sleep and Dreams > General Dream Discussion >  >  The Ganzfeld effect: Quick, safe, homemade hallucinations

## Noogah

> The Ganzfeld effect (from German for “complete field”) is a phenomenon of visual perception caused by staring at an undifferentiated and uniform field of color. The effect is described as the loss of vision as the brain cuts off the unchanging signal from the eyes. The result is "seeing black"[1] - apparent blindness.
> 
> In the 1930s, research by psychologist Wolfgang Metzger established that when subjects gazed into a featureless field of vision they consistently hallucinated and their electroencephalograms changed.



The Ganzfeld effect is an effect caused by sensory deprivation. When your mind is deprived of sight, and sound, it will often forfeit the two with hallucinations.

The Ganzfeld experiment is an experiment in which the subject lies in a chair/bed/whatever, and the Ganzfeld effect is induced. 

How it was done:

The subject, as stated before, laid down in a comfortable position. Halved ping pong balls were strapped around the subjects eyes (often accompanied by a red light) like so. 

Without red light:



With red light:



This was to ensure that only one consistent "unstructured" color would be perceived by the brain. 

As you can see in the above pictures, headphones were also worn by the subjects and white noise was played through them. This also provides "unstructured" sound for the brain.

Sometimes people will also wear gloves to block out touch, but only deprivation of sight and sound is necessary to duplicate the experiment, which we will also discuss.

How to replicate the experiment at home:

Required materials:

*Scissors

Two ping pong balls

Tape

A radio

A comfortable place to rest*

Suggested, but not necessary:

*Headphones

An mp3 player or computer*

Step 1.

Half the ping pong balls so that they will fit comfortably over your eyes. Use the above images for reference.

Step 2.

Tune your radio to static, and place it beside the place that you will perform the experiment. Turn it up so that it is all you will really be hearing. This will serve as your white noise. 

_Alternate step 2:

Download a white noise mp3 to your MP3 player/computer, and set it to continuously play. Plug in your headphones, and set it to a comfortable volume. A white noise download link is located at the bottom of the post._

Step 3. 

Lay down in your spot.

Step 4.

Strap the ping pong balls over your eyes with the tape. Not too hard, but sealed enough so that you cannot see any notably large cracks. Preferably none at all.

Step 5.

Wait. Depending on you, it could take ten-forty-five minutes. Just relax. Try to zone out and just daydream.



Really, the effect is so simplistic and inexpensive I'm rather surprised that I have not seen it discussed here before.

There have been many interesting results from this experiment:

_“For quite a long time, there was nothing except a green-greyish fog. It was really boring, I thought, ‘ah, what a non-sense experiment!’ Then, for an indefinite period of time, I was ‘off’, like completely absent-minded. Then, all of sudden, I saw a hand holding a piece of chalk and writing on a black-board something like a mathematical formula. The vision was very clear, but it stayed only for few seconds and disappeared again. The image did not fill up the entire visual field, it was just like a ‘window’ into that foggy stuff.”

“an urban scenery, like an empty avenue after a rain, large areas covered with water, and the city sky-line reflected in the water surface like in a mirror.”

“a clearing in a forest [Lichtung], a place bathed in bright sun-shine, and the trunks of trees around. A feeling of a tranquile summer afternoon in a forest, so quiet, so peaceful. And then, suddenly, a young woman passed by on a bicycle, very fast, she crossed the visual field from the right to the left, with her blond long hair waving in the air. The image of the entire scene was very clear, with many details, and yes, the colours were very vivid.”

“I can see his face, still, it's very expressive… [I could see] only the horse that comes as if out of clouds. A white horse that jumped over me.”

“A friend of mine and I, we were inside a cave. We made a fire. There was a creek flowing under our feet, and we were on a stone. She had fallen into the creek, and she had to wait to have her things dried. Then she said to me: ‘Hey, move on, we should go now’.”

“It was like running a bob sleigh on an uneven runway right down… [There] was snow or maybe water running down… I could hear music, there was music coming from the left side below.”

“In the right side of the visual field, a manikin suddenly appeared. He was all in black, had a long narrow head, fairly broad shoulders, very long arms and a relatively small trunk…. He approached me, stretching out his hands, very long, very big, like a bowl, and he stayed so for a while, and then he went back to where he came from, slowly.”_

(Quotations courtesy of Mind Hacks)

It is speculated that this effect could be fuel for a Wake Induced Lucid Dream.

----------


## Jorge

Sounds like it can work, very nice find.

You know what this reminds me of...have you seen that movie Altered States? It's very similar to what you've shared here. There is a guy who is doing the same sensory deprivation, except he is in a tank filled with salt and body temperature water.

The salt makes the water very buoyant and makes the person float easily. With the water being body temperature the person also doesn't feel the water on his skin...so it's as if he is floating in mid air. 

The tank is also pitch black inside which also is another sensory deprivation, and the person wear some certain type of ear plugs to cancel out the sound.

I've heard some success with it, this seems more like a similar attempt to experience the same hallucinations. Regardless...

very cool  :wink2:

----------


## Noogah

> Sounds like it can work, very nice find.
> 
> You know what this reminds me of...have you seen that movie Altered States? It's very similar to what you've shared here. There is a guy who is doing the same sensory deprivation, except he is in a tank filled with salt and body temperature water.
> 
> The salt makes the water very buoyant and makes the person float easily. With the water being body temperature the person also doesn't feel the water on his skin...so it's as if he is floating in mid air. 
> 
> The tank is also pitch black inside which also is another sensory deprivation, and the person wear some certain type of ear plugs to cancel out the sound.
> 
> I've heard some success with it, this seems more like a similar attempt to experience the same hallucinations. Regardless...
> ...



Thankyou!

I've not seen the film, but I am familiar with the tanks. They are actually not fictional.

They are called isolation tanks.



These would definitely be the ideal way to deprive your senses (poor senses!), but they're just a liiiiitttle bit hard to come by. You might check your local spa though, because they sometimes have them.

I posted this, because this is a homebrew. Everybody loves homebrews!

----------


## Noogah

Does nobody else find this interesting enough to aknowledge?

----------


## MementoMori

i do!

I'm going to try this in a few days (gather supply's) and i will post the results here.
This should be very interesting if it works!!

----------


## Forsaken

I wonder why the pingpong balls are necessary. What about a sleep mask, or just closed eyes? Do the eyes need to be physically open as part of tricking the brain?

----------


## Rebelution

The ping pong balls allow only a certain wavelength of light into your eyes, clearing the way for distractive light.

I have tried this before, and nothing special came of it. To be fair, I did get bored halfway through and decide my time was better spent doing anything else  ::-P:

----------


## Ladon

A couple of nights ago I stayed up late, it was about 2am and I was reading this board, it was a very long post and I just sat back looking at my laptop screen and reading it (I have quite a big resolution so I didn't need to scroll for a long time). I was pretty tired at that moment as well and I sat completly still.

Then suddenly everything went black except my laptop screen... I freaked out... Like I turned of the lights or something. Then I was confused, got to the toilet (kinda spooked out), then went back to reading and the same thing happened again after some minutes o.O

So is this kind of like the same thing? You know... no stimulus and then hallucinations begin. Only like this was the first part? Everything getting black like the mind shutting of or something?

And isn't this just HI? It's what I do when I lay in bed when I try to WILD. After a while you just start getting visual feedback. Like one night I had this imaginary of the party I went to the day before and I saw people dancing and the camera moving around like I was there and then it suddenly 'sucked' me in, everything getting crisper like you were actually there. It shocked me and then I was back, 'zoomed' out.

I'm gonna try this experiment tonight, I'm gonna focus completly on the hallucinations, let's see where that gets me  :smiley:  Instead of allways focussing on my darn body that needs to fall asleep :p

----------


## Morphih

Noogah have you tried it?
And where's the white noise mp3 in your post. 
It seems interesting though, I think I'll try it some time

----------


## KingYetiTeffa

Presumably it doesn't HAVE to be ping pong balls, just something with the same kinda translucency I guess. So I was wondering whether something easier to get my hands on right now would work. Something like paper? In fact, I may even have to give paper I go. I did want to try this before, but alas I couldn't find a single ping pong ball in the house. I'm really not surprised by that though.

----------


## Snowy Egypt

Paper should work just fine. Instuctables.com even gives you a print out paper mask template and tells you how to utilize it. I've been meaning to try this again with that mask instead of getting ping pong balls.

----------


## lucid4sho

Seems feasible enough, I bet this requires a special narrow pectrum light source though, since just using a colored bulb or something would still be letting other spectrums through. I'll prob have to order a unique light source but Ill give it a whirl.

----------


## Catbus

> Does nobody else find this interesting enough to aknowledge?



I absolutely do. Over the summer I experimented with the Ganzfeld procedure, because I was skeptical as to how vivid and realistic the hallucinations would be. I got bored and began dozing off, and eventually I began having these weird visions and auditory hallucinations. They weren't as vivid as I had hoped, but it was certainly an interesting phenomena.

----------


## r2d2651

I read online that you can just evenly color each ball and lay in a well lit room. Also a question must you have your eyes closed or do you blink like normal with open eyes?

----------


## oniman7

I wonder if you could control these hallucinations, like in lucid dreams. Sounds plausible enough.

----------


## Seeker

> I wonder if you could control these hallucinations, like in lucid dreams. Sounds plausible enough.



 
I've been pondering that as well, those hallucinations sound a lot like HI to me.  I see no reason why sensory deprivation cannot be used to induce a lucid dream, especially 5+ hours into your sleep cycle.

----------


## ollei

This seems interesting especially as I've never experienced vivid HH.

Has anybody really had any succes? Please post your results.

----------


## Shwaleti

> A couple of nights ago I stayed up late, it was about 2am and I was reading this board, it was a very long post and I just sat back looking at my laptop screen and reading it (I have quite a big resolution so I didn't need to scroll for a long time). I was pretty tired at that moment as well and I sat completly still.
> 
> Then suddenly everything went black except my laptop screen... I freaked out... Like I turned of the lights or something. Then I was confused, got to the toilet (kinda spooked out), then went back to reading and the same thing happened again after some minutes o.O
> 
> So is this kind of like the same thing? You know... no stimulus and then hallucinations begin. Only like this was the first part? Everything getting black like the mind shutting of or something?
> 
>   :p



Yeah i think this is kinda similar. This actualy happens to me al the time, if you just keep your vision fixed to one place for a whil eit will just fade out and as soon as you move your eyes everything will come back your eyes just need to get new stimulus to send new messages to your brain.


And While back i did try this experiment thought i didnt color the ping pong balls. I may have been a little impatient but i didnt get any hallucinations i would expect only some faint swirling colors kinda like when you look at the inside of your eyelids.

----------


## TheUncanny

> I wonder if you could control these hallucinations, like in lucid dreams. Sounds plausible enough.



Bingo. Talk about a WILD, your eyes are still open!

----------


## Noogah

I bumped this thread because I wanted to bump it.

----------


## detroitLions1970

Once I tried this without a mask, staring into the dark (it was pitch black) with white noise on my iPod. I managed to get some interesting visual noise, and my senses seemed... heightened to a degree.

----------


## A dreamer168

I think I'll try this tonight...I'll just use the white noise from my TV. Is printer paper OK to use for this?

----------


## beachgirl

thanks...i'll have to try this really soon and i look forward to what others report!

----------


## Hidden

Sounds interesting.  I don't think I'll try it though.

----------


## Noogah

> I think I'll try this tonight...I'll just use the white noise from my TV. Is printer paper OK to use for this?



I don't think so. Although, wax paper might work.

Are ping pong balls so difficult to attain?

----------


## A dreamer168

It's not very practical. I'm in college, and I don't have a car. Also, it would be weird for me ask someone to go to a store just for ping-pong balls. (Will loose-leaf paper work?)

----------


## MementoMori

i tried this last night, got the ping pong balls from a local arcade, and used my a white noise i downloaded. I sat still for what seemed forever and my sight began to turn into a form of tunnel vision. after a few more moments my hearing seemed to fade in and out in the pattern of ocean waves. Then the trip started, my vision started to swirl into a center point and yellows and blues began appearing in the "vortex" like swirl. As the sounds went in and out the swirl deepened and shallowed. After a few moments of this the sounds became louder and i could hear thumps and tings off in the distance, and the swirl opened up to a masked face grinning at me, the mask looked similar to a guy fawkes except without the facial hair and it was bearing sharp gold teeth,  the vision went in and out of focus. I let this continue for a few more moments and then decided i had experienced enough of it. I removed the ping pong balls and the headphones, all my senses were intensified for a few moments. I laid down a it took me a bit to fall asleep, as the picture of the grinning mask kept popping into my mind... 

This is something i may try again some time later in my life, but if all my hallucinations from this are going to be this creepy, then i may not.

----------


## Noogah

Well! At least it worked. That's pretty cool. now you have something neat to tell people about.

----------


## A dreamer168

I'm going to try this with the ping-pong balls and the white noise from my radio.

----------


## Lucid fanatic

@Noogah

I can get those swirls whenever i like, When i was younger sometimes i pushed the palms of my hands into my eyes (Sounds horrible but its not painful at all, just like wiping sleep from your eyes in the morning.) and then just keep trying to blink. I don't really do it anymore because I'm pretty sure its bad for you, but when i do, I start to be able to imagine things really well while remaing very conscience (Not nearly as vivid as a dream though, just imagination.

----------


## Hidden

I did something similar to that when I was younger, but instead I would just press my palms into my eyes and stay like that, looking at the patterns for like half an hour.

----------


## Noogah

Yes, I've done the same thing. But those patterns are not hallucinations, they are just spontaneous and irritating blinking lights, and you get out of it half blind.

----------


## Lucid fanatic

It used to develop into hallucinations for me after awhile. Actually it was more like vivd imagination.

----------


## Noogah

Really!

How complex were they?

How long did it take to induce?

----------


## Bobblehat

Just a few thoughts:

1) Could it be worth RCing (or imagine RCing) when you get the hallucinations? Would this behaviour carry over to dreams?

2) Could people scared of SP use this to overcome their fear?

3) If you did this during a WBTB would it make your dreams more vivid when you go back to sleep?

Will try this when I get time. It sounds fun.

----------


## JamesLD

I'm gunna try this

----------


## Lucid fanatic

Well after awhile of just sitting there they'd start just taking on things I thought about, I'd try to mould all the patterns together and they'd start becoming a semi vivid imagination.

----------


## Noogah

I'm just wondering how long I would have to sit on a chair pressing my palms to my eyes for it to happen. Five minutes? Thirty? Longer?

----------


## Lucid fanatic

TBH I haven't done it since I was a kid, but I can't remember it taking long, like 5 minutes (less even). And as I said earlier there nothing close to dream like in vividness but they sure beat imagination. Also, the way your deliberately phrasing it starting to sound like your mocking me. Don't mock me.

----------


## Noogah

No, I'm not mocking you. I seriously wonder how long it would take. I'm fascinated. I just think i would look silly.

----------


## Lucid fanatic

Yeah Its not very practical thats why I don't really mention it. You know, when you take your hands away your visions very blurry, and honestly don't want to be responsible for people going blind  :tongue2:

----------


## Hidden

> I just think i would look silly.



Because taping ping pong ball halves over your eyes looks very intelligent.

----------


## Kraftwerk

I'm gonna try this, and see if I can't WILD with it. I'd rather not use pingpong balls though.

----------


## Noogah

> I'm gonna try this, and see if I can't WILD with it. I'd rather not use pingpong balls though.



That will probably not work. The point is to 100% deprive your senses, by giving them non structured feed. I.E, white noise is one constant and unstructured senseless sound. Having translucent plastic over your eyes provides a constant unwavering hue of light.

----------


## Kraftwerk

> That will probably not work. The point is to 100% deprive your senses, by giving them non structured feed. I.E, white noise is one constant and unstructured senseless sound. Having translucent plastic over your eyes provides a constant unwavering hue of light.



Regardless, I'm still going to try this. I have quite a few things I'd like to do with these halucinations.

----------


## Noogah

> Regardless, I'm still going to try this. I have quite a few things I'd like to do with these halucinations.



Cool. Let me know how it goes, cuz I'm low on ping pong balls. Like, I don't have any at all.  ::D:

----------


## AURON

I commandeered a ping pong ball from the last I was out playing beer pong.  Unfortunately they have a name brand written on them, so I'm going to have to sand it off before I can really try this out.

----------


## Snowy Egypt

Do any of you know what color the ping pong balls need to be, or does it matter? I'd imagine they'd need to be either orange or white.

----------


## Noogah

> Do any of you know what color the ping pong balls need to be, or does it matter? I'd imagine they'd need to be either orange or white.



Doesn't matter, so long as both ping pong balls are the sane color.

----------


## JamesLD

does it matter if you blink? and how long does it take to actually start working?

----------


## Noogah

*You don't open your eyes. You keep them closed.*

I don't know. I think it varies. From what I've heard, it usually takes around fifteen minutes to start. Reasonable by my standards.

----------


## Snowy Egypt

> *You don't open your eyes. You keep them closed.*



Then that defeats the purpose of having the ping pong halves over your eyes.  :Confused:

----------


## Kraftwerk

> Then that defeats the purpose of having the ping pong halves over your eyes.



What noogah is getting might just be HI. The Ganzfeild effect should work regardless of Eyes open or closed.

----------


## Snowy Egypt

Then why use the ball halves?

----------


## Noogah

Regardless as to whether or not your eyes are closed, light is filtered into the eyes, unless you are in the dark, in which case, it does not actually matter.

In truth, I have never even tried this. I have no ping pong balls.

It's just that the classic experiment involves ping pong balls, and every article on the issue says you should use them.

----------


## Hidden

The ball halves are supposed to only let in one frequency of light...  Maybe you can still see other ones through your eyeslids?  I don't know.  I was under the impression that you kept your eyes open.

----------


## Snowy Egypt

> The ball halves are supposed to only let in one frequency of light... Maybe you can still see other ones through your eyeslids? I don't know. I was under the impression that you kept your eyes open.



That's what I'm getting at, because that's the whole point of the experiment.





> Regardless as to whether or not your eyes are closed, *light is filtered into the eyes*



In essence, your eyelids are too thick to let in sufficient light unless you were really close to a light source. I've tried this with something somewhat close to ping pong halves. You can't filter in light if the filter isn't somewhat seethrough. Your eyelids are just that; lids.

And this...





> . . .unless you are in the dark, in which case, it does not actually matter.



...would make the whole experiment fail.

----------


## redisreddish

So, I'm a bit confused.

Do you absolutely have to use ping pong balls? Could some kind of paper work?

Do you keep your eyes opened or closed? If opened, does it matter if you blink?

How long does this usually take, or does it vary for everyone?

----------


## Hidden

@red: I don't know, but I approve of the quote in your signature.  :smiley:

----------


## redisreddish

::chuckle::

----------


## Snowy Egypt

If the quotes thread was still around, I'd would've posted that quote.  ::D: 

red, I'd imagine you could blink if you needed to. The whole explination of the experiment is pretty vauge as far as the small details go. You could go ahead and try it with paper and see if it works and report back to us. It would definately save us money.  ::D:  And I'm pretty sure the time varies for everyone.

----------


## Hidden

Speaking of which, what happened to the quotes thread?  That thread was great.

We probably have a golf ball lying around somewhere...  Even though no one in my family plays golf.

----------


## redisreddish

Alright. I'll try it with printer paper and report back tomorrow.  :smiley:

----------


## Noogah

Why can't you do this in the dark?

----------


## Lucid fanatic

> Speaking of which, what happened to the quotes thread?  That thread was great.
> 
> We probably have a golf ball lying around somewhere...  Even though no one in my family plays golf.



Wait.... A golf ball?

----------


## redisreddish

Golf balls aren't hollow, though. They would be kind of difficult to use.

Anyways, I was an epic fail trying to use the printer paper, so I ditched it and used one of those plastic Easter eggs. I got one without holes in the top/bottom and put the top half on one eye and the bottom half on the other.
I put the static on the radio and just laid in bed. After ten or so minutes (I think) my vision started going kind of wonky; black/gray kept waving in from the sides and those little blobs of color that are there when you close your eyes came and went. I watched that for almost fifteen minutes and then decided nothing else was going to happen.

Maybe the Easter egg just wasn't good for this, or maybe that was it. Oh well, it was kind of fun.  ::D:  And I looked SO intelligent with yellow plastic egg halves stuck on my face.  ::chuckle::

----------


## Hidden

Oops, I meant ping pong ball. >.>

I also thought about using plastic Easter eggs.  They seem more convenient than cutting a ping pong ball in half.  Maybe you didn't wait long enough...  -shrug-

----------


## nick818

Have any of you seen Joe Rogan's isolation tank? he explains it in detail in a video. It seems more effective than this method though, because of the deprivation of all senses. Also, he has pure oxygen running into the tank.

----------


## Noogah

It's also really expensive.

----------


## Hidden

I've heard of float tanks before.  I'd like to try one sometime, to see if I can WILD in it.

----------


## CeDeR

Tried it and i got some creepy hallucinations...first all black then like portraits in a black background with faces deforming and a weird tingling in my ears and suddenly a complete disappearance of sound.. Also after i stopped when i closed my eyes i could still see faintly the hallucination but disappeared shortly. I will try it again it is really interesting.
btw i did it with my eyes open, first it was a bitch trying not to blink but after a while just dozed off and after 20-25 mins it happened.

----------


## Noogah

So cool that it worked!

----------


## nymetsrule

Does not work, and there is no scientific evidence to prove it works.

----------


## Snowy Egypt

Maybe not for you. Have you tired it? Scientific evidence isn't needed for everything. Lucid Dreaming is a prime example.

----------


## nymetsrule

> Maybe not for you. Have you tired it? Scientific evidence isn't needed for everything. Lucid Dreaming is a prime example.



Scientific evidence is needed for everything outside of religion. Until this is proven to work consistently, then it is not proven to work at all. It is just a theory at best.  ::sleeping::

----------


## Snowy Egypt

Again, maybe for you. I don't need scientific evidence to tell me if this will or won't work. And apparently CeDaR didn't either since it seemed to work for him. You should at least try for yourself before making such a strong statement as "if science doesn't back it up, it doesn't work".

----------


## nymetsrule

> Again, maybe for you. I don't need scientific evidence to tell me if this will or won't work. And apparently CeDaR didn't either since it seemed to work for him. You should at least try for yourself before making such a strong statement as "if science doesn't back it up, it doesn't work".



From what I have learned throughout my life, red light will not and does not cause hallucinations. I have spent time in quiet photography dark rooms for extended periods of time...and have never hallucinated.

All I see this as is a person reaching the beginning stages of sleep. 



> it could take ten-forty-five minutes.



 Laying down in a dark, quiet room for that long will cause most people to begin to drift off.

 ::content::

----------


## Hidden

Even if it is just early HH, so what?  Hypnogogic hallucinations are still hallucinations, and if this method can help induce them then I don't see what the problem is.

----------


## Snowy Egypt

Well yeah, the red light is optional. (Most people probably don't have it anyways. XD And I don't really see why it's needed.) I still don't see how it would work in a dark room (for the reasons you stated), even though, from what I understand, CeDaR managed to pull it off. If that was the case, you wouldn't even need the ping pong halves. Personally I just think we all just don't have enough time to go get some friggin ping pong balls to properly do this with.  ::D:

----------


## Noogah

> From what I have learned throughout my life, red light will not and does not cause hallucinations. I have spent time in quiet photography dark rooms for extended periods of time...and have never hallucinated.
> 
> All I see this as is a person reaching the beginning stages of sleep.
> Quote



Well, no. Red light will not cause HI, unless it is the ONLY light that your brain is receiving. Simply put, if you have any sort of structured sound/imagery/feeling in your head, it will be next to impossible to hallucinate.

And, while there may not be any kind of strict evidence, many experiments have been done with the ganzfeld effect. As you can see on this very thread, it has worked for many.

----------


## jfenello

I've had a lot of experience with the Ganzfeld effect.  The color of the field of vision is not as important as the field being uniform and featureless.  To learn more about the effect, check out MindwavesGoggles.com

----------


## Kahiko

this is nice

----------


## Jules2007

I tried this the other night but didn't get very good results-my vision seemed to extend far out and I got cold on the two times I tried it (I hadn't previously been cold in the room although it might've been because I wasn't moving) and that put me off. I only tried for about 15 mins. I didn't have the static either so I will definitely try again. 

There's a youtube vid flashing a red light that I use for this-if anyone wants the link for it let me know. Next time I'll use the red light with the ping pong balls and static.  A lot of people seem to get creepy visions from this-I don't usually have nightmares or worry about scary stuff but people saying they've seen scary faces makes me not be able to stop thinking about it when I do this experiment!

----------


## Zoe

I've been meaning to experiment with this and last night I started. I'm using orange ping-pong balls and listening to "pink noise" which has a slightly different composition than white noise and is less jarring. I'm listening to it through headphones. The boyfriend interrupted my session last night but I'll be at it again 2 days from now. Are you supposed to keep your eyes open? If so, when you blink there will be a change in the sensory stimulus.

----------


## Belisarius

I've also spent considerable time in darkrooms, and I've often experienced this effect, at least in a mild HI-like form, in dark rooms(no red light). Eventually blotches of color appear in my field of vision and don't go away when I blink, then eventually bright sparkles of light and intricate patterns start to form, similar to pressure phosphemes.  I never saw any more organized, dream-like imagery, but I have gotten some of that after HI and this phenomena seems to be related(maybe even the same process), so it seems to me that it should be possible to go into a dream from this state.

----------


## yuriythebest

decided to give it a show - made myself one of these  :smiley: 



attempt number 1 (failed)
eyes were mostly open, room was dark, I was sitting in my armchair listening to static on my headphones (not to soft and not too loud)  - total time : about 30mins. 
began to feel sleepy and had no way of keeping track of time so aborted.

any advice/suggestions on how to make it work will be appreciated

----------


## Bonsay

> room was dark



 Well there's your problem... The way I understand it, and the only way it makes sense to me, is that the golf balls diffuse light creating visual sensory depravation. The white noise creates auditory sensory depravation. Technically, I don't see the diference between closing eyes in the dark - creating a void of darkness, and the golf balls in the light - creating a void of whiteness. Just that my knee-jerk reaction to a person in a dark room + relaxation = HI. If you browse through wikipedia regarding Ganzfield hallucinations you'll find various other articles like "prisoners cinema" and reports of hallucinations when people deal with featureless landscapes etc.  Although based on my own personal experience, regarding hypnagogic and hypnagogic like waking hallucinations, the white background creates a better contrast for my hallucinations. Perhaps there is some deeper neurophisiological difference, but it all seems connected on some level.

----------


## sAfuRos

Two friends and tried this twice each for 30 minutes after finding out about it a year or so ago
We first used generic ping-pong balls and one of us did white light, then us other two did red light. 30 minutes, none of us got anything.

Thinking it might be the small amount of text, we tried again, and also sealed off all gaps with white paper and used completely blank ping pong balls
Listening to radio static while under a red light, again, none of us got anything :/

----------


## Mancon

My ping pong b alls are yellow is this okay?

----------


## Temo

not sure if this is related, but recently when ive been having trouble sleeping, just laying in darkness in my bed, ive imagined the narrative of a dream just without actually being asleep, like a really vivid day dream. this sort of thing could lead to sensory-deprivation initiated dreams

----------


## Michael

So if you do this while already tripping, will in increase hallucinations? Sorry, have to ask.

----------


## xspectrum

Is there an alternative to the ping pong balls?  Could I just use paper?

----------


## whitedreams

you said use a red light? do you think using a black light word enhance this experience?

----------


## melanieb

The OP hasn't bee active in some time.

The thread should answer your questions.   :smiley: 

**Thread closed**

----------

