The God Helmet Experiments

Book excerpt: The God Helmet Experiments is about the research which led to a technology that created a wide range of religious, mystic, and spiritual experiences in the laboratory. These included some visions of god, out of body experiences, waking dreams, apparitions, and the feeling that there is someone standing behind you when no one is there. It's even elicited Near-Death Experience phenomena. Used in other ways, the God Helmet has also created paranormal experiences, including ghostly visions. There were even a few experiments successfully applying the God Helmet for depression.The God Helmet was developed by two scientists at Laurentian University's behavioral neurosciences program, Stan Koren, and Dr. Michael Persinger, who was the director of the research group until he passed away in 2017. The editor took some of Dr. Michael Persinger's difficult to read scientific papers about the God Helmet, and rewrote them to make them easier to read. This book is designed to help you understand the God Helmet, the brain's role in religious and mystic experiences, and even presents some material related to the debates and misunderstandings in this area of brain science. The God Helmet Experiments is a new kind of science book, letting the reader see the actual research. It's still a work of science, and still calls for some careful reading, though it's very much easier to read and understand than the original scientific journal articles. Dr. Michael Persinger was Todd Murphy's (this book's editor) mentor for 23 years, and they even published a few papers together. Not only can The God Helmet Experiments help you to understand the how the brain contributes to spiritual experiences, but it will also let you see the other exciting possibilities in this fascinating technology (low intensity complex magnetic signal stimulation). The book has three sections. The first is dedicated to some of Dr.Persinger's longer review and summary articles, four in all. The second is a series of experiments using the God Helmet, recounting the experiments, one by one. The third is a response to Persinger's critics and their (unfounded) criticism. Dr. Michael Persinger published over 500 articles in scientific journals during his career, and this volume only scratches the surface. Nevertheless, this collection of simplified papers by Dr. Persinger includes some of the most important "review" articles, where he summarizes his work. One day, mysticism and mystic experience could be available to every human being through this technology, or a future version of it that no one can now imagine. There may be a few errors and typos in this book, and we ask the reader to be understanding about them. Let the author know, and they'll be fixed in a future revision. Thank you.