Thread: Ganzfeld hallucinations

http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2008/1...llucinati.html

At first this sounds like a bad practical joke. Begin my turning the radio to a station playing static. Then lie down on the couch and tape a pair of halved ping pong balls over your eyes. Within minutes, you should begin to experience bizarre set of sensory distortions. Some people see horses prancing in the clouds, or hear the voice of dead relatives.

It turns out the mind is addicted to sensation, so that when there's little to sense -- thats the purpose of the ping pong balls and static -- your brain ends up inventing its own.

maybe it can help in Lucid Dreaming especially if you can do it before you go to sleep, or it can help you concentrate while hallucinating.

You can simulate the Ganzfeld procedure in your own home by taping two half ping-pong balls over your eyes and listing to the radio tuned to static in an evenly lighted room.

I've done this before and I did start to see vague, morphing shapes in my field of vision but the way the ping pongs felt around my eyes started to irritate me a bit so I stopped.

I saw this posted on Digg and thought about going to Wal Mart to buy some ping-pong balls later, to give it another shot!

One thing, when I did it before I didn't use any radio static, but I am going to listen to binaural beats this time to see if there are any enhanced effects.

interesting... will try as soon as I can
what are binaural beats?

These sound like they are worth trying all for themselves, though the effects sound significantly different from a lucid dream.

I think, even cooler than this, is Ramachandran's mirror box's ability to help reduce pain, rather than cause it Or when they use it on those people who feel like their limbs don't belong to them. Damn, I can't remember what that's called

The Pinocchio illusion... how does a person even discover something like that?

Argh! What a cool website. Thanks for showing it.
Also... I'm gona try the ping-pong balls and purkinje lights hallucinations. I'm tempted by the hand smashing thing though as well.

Are the ping pong balls essential, or could you just blindfold yourself? I'm assuming you're supposed to do this with your eyes open, and the ping pong balls allow just enough light to create as sort of visual "static"?

I love the shrinking pain technique. I discovered awhile ago that pain in RL is exactly like pain in dream. The more you pay attention to it, the more it hurts. If you can ignore it completely, there is no pain. But that's easier said than done. The binoculars are a nice visual focus technique.