The Ganzfeld Experiment is a technique in parapsychology to test people for ESP abilities, with one notable side occurrence of causing one’s volunteers to, for lack of a better term, “trip balls.”  Being a curious party with a love for science and an unusual amount of time on my hands, I decided to recreate this supposed hallucinogenic, drug free, experience with only a ping pong ball, a red light, and some white noise.

In the original intent of the Ganzfeld Experiment, volunteer subjects would lay back in a dark room with two white, translucent coverings on their open eyes, facing a red light.  With headphones playing only white noise (flat frequency noise), they were to relax whilst another volunteer consentrated on a singular thought and attempted to send that thought to the sensory deprived volunteer.  The experiment is said to have a 32% hit rate.  However, volunteers who underwent the mild sensory deprivation did report on having pseudo-hallucinatory experiences and some even think it may induce global functional state changes (altered consciousness ie out of body experiences and astral projection).   It is only the latter I was interested in, the idea of inducing an LSD-equivalent experience without the chemicals or twelve hour bad trips (in all honesty, I’ve never tried LSD or any hallucinogenic).  Thus, the quest of epic proportions began.

It took four shops and two hours to get both a red light bulb with a bayonette end and cheap, ugly-as-sin bayonette fitted lamp. Why the country has two types of lamps escapes me, but trying to find an appropriate light bulb on top of it was like searching for the holy grail.   Then after having aquired a set of ping pong balls, I went home to prepare and to wait for Alicja to come over to be a guinea pig alongside me.  Lastly, I needed white noise.  Apple’s slogan is 100% true: there IS an app for that.  I downloaded an iphone app to my iphone called “White Noise” which not only had white noise, but also brown, pink, etc etc.  Perfect.   After having cut two ping pong balls in half, we were ready to begin.

Turning the lights off in the room and the red light on, both myself and Alicja laid back with the two ping pong ball halves over our eyes and headphones on playing the endless loop of white noise.  The idea here is you must keep your eyes open and be staring at the red light filtering in through the translucent ball.  Then, we waited.

After what seemed like fifteen to twenty minutes, the red light suddenly blew out thanks to the faulty, ugly, cheap, dildo shaped lamp I bought to put it in.  Upon checking the time we realized that not only had fifteen minutes passed, but fifty-five.   So with the only red light bulb for a bayonette lamp in the whole of England burnt out, we called the experiment and discussed our results.

To cut to the chase, no hallucinations happened for either of us, but a few things are worth noting.  Firstly, after some time of staring into the hazy and soft red light, blinking stopped becoming an automatic function for both of us.  We had to manually blink to wet our eyes.  I would hazard a guess it may have something to do with confusing the brain into thinking the eyes were closed, as the sensation of the ping pong ball and red light combo was one like looking into the sun with your eyes closed.  Secondly, while we didn’t exactly ride our unicorns off into the rainbow sunset, we both did experience more vivd than usual thoughts, and I would go as far to describe them as “dream-like” visions.   This is not unusual, however.  With the constant, unchanging sensory input from both the red light and the white noise, the brain eventually stops “noticing” these input stimuli and, when left with nothing else, will start to create it’s own.  These weren’t hallucinations in a tripping sense, but more like dreaming while conscious.  Lastly, we both found it to be very relaxing, and were both shocked at how distorted our perception was of just how much time had past.

All in all, is it worth doing?  I would still say yes, because it will run you less than $10 and it is still a very relaxing, very meditative experience.  However, I wouldn’t be too hopeful in reading what you find on the internet because the experience isn’t going to resemble a trip (not that I’d know) and websites mentioning the Ganzfeld Experiment tend to be a little too free with the word “hallucination.”  Lastly, I’d like to try the experiment again and test for certain factors such as, does it increase with time? What if you use something other than white noise?  and more importantly, where will I find another red light bulb?

Posted Nerdom |