The Ganzfeld Effect: My Experience

Note: I am writing this introduction before I conduct the Ganzfeld Experiment.


Ok, so a member of Dream Views recently introduced the concept of the Ganzfeld Experiment to me, and I decided I would give it a shot, as hallucinations are radical. The basic concept behind it is this; when your mind is deprived of what it is 'addicted' to it will attempt to put something in its addictions place. In the case of the Ganzfeld Experiment you remove visual and audio stimuli, the way you do this is by blocking your vision with either ping pong balls or blacked out goggles and with a pair of headphones you listen to brown/pink noise (not white) - removing your addictions from your mind and forcing it to replace them, which in this case, it uses hallucinations, sounds cool right.

Tonight, before bed I will be attempting this and will be writing down everything that happened to me below, if it succeeds I will be doing it most nights of the week.



The experience began at about 8.11, I layed down and turned the noise on. The first 10 minutes or so were uneventful, but eventually I began to heat up, and felt like I was on fire, and began sweating, a lot. This lasted throughout the whole experience. Eventually I started to see what I can only describe as the northern lights, just moving a lot quicker and with the colours red, blue, green and yellow. After a while I started hearing voices, I heard something call my name and then heavy breathing, soon after I started to see faces and eyes that changed rather quickly and would randomly appear at different sizes and places in my vision, some human looking, others alien looking. This went on for who knows how long, I eventually decided to pull out the headphones and take off the goggles, it was 8:35.

All in all, it was not what I was expecting, but I definitely enjoyed it a lot, it reminded me of some of the hypnagogic images I have seen from WILD'ing. Will be trying it again tomorrow night with a different noise playing. Thanks for reading.

sounds good
I wonder if it can be used for WILD... maybe you can effectively use the hallucinations to enter a dream more easily

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Originally Posted by Conscience

sounds good
I wonder if it can be used for WILD... maybe you can effectively use the hallucinations to enter a dream more easily

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Was considering this also, but I don't think it would work, considering you need your eyes open, but something similar may, I'll be thinking about ways to capitalise of the concept of it, that's for sure.

First of all. Awsome experience! Thanks for sharing. Do u have any idea how to interpret this all"?

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Originally Posted by Phased

Was considering this also, but I don't think it would work, considering you need your eyes open, but something similar may, I'll be thinking about ways to capitalise of the concept of it, that's for sure.

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What do you mean, the eyes need to be open? For wild? how-so? :P
I considered that it might just be a little different from actual dream scenes that's why it is hard to use for wild. But something different,maybe? Astral projection perhaps? Self-hypnosis? Sounds like this was very intense.

Last question, if you happen to do more tests. Is it a factor which colour-sound you are using? Never heared of the Ganzfeld effect.I am trying to start a project for using sounds as a dream inducer so i'm very happy to hear you have booked succes.

Ganzfeld Effect (2nd Attempt): Ok, so I finally had some spare time (although short it may be, 30 minutes had to cut it) to have a second go at doing the Ganzfeld effect. It started off very similar to to the first time I did it, but this time I had a lot more visual hallucinations, mainly of clowns.. The hallucinations that I had from this particular night were mainly frightening, and I actually had to assert myself that they were in fact hallucinations on two occasions, the sounds I were hearing were bagpipes and trains moving. But the hallucinations varied between clown faces and beastly looking dogs as well as bright flashes of white light. Eventually I had enough and removed the goggles and took off my headphones.




@Dthoughts To answer your first question, I was talking about the Ganzfeld effect, in order for it to work you need to have your eyes open, as if you would if you were walking down the street or something similar. As for your second question as too the effects of different coloured noise I am yet to test any other sounding noise other then a Brown/Pink hybrid (the pink noise being the Iso tone.) I'll defiantly try out a different noise next time and get back to you on that though. Thanks for your interest.

reminds me of an IDoser I've listened to, which was said to feel like weed... but it didn't.. only had hallucinations about carnival music and trolls

do you think it could also be some kind of placebo effect?

I tried doing this today and the effects were very mild. It was as if I were experiencing Hypnogogic Hallucitations that were very abstract and ended up fading away into a dark redish color. Thats very typical for me to see very abstract shapes while wild meditating and in my many attempts I couldnt get them to form a dreamscape. Some people said they experienced zoning out completely and having effects similar or exactly like lucid dreams and could be a WILD induction technique or a variation of it.

I'm gonna try this again some other time, good luck with your attempts.

Maybe you need more Melatonin? I think these dark reds colours have something to do with our day-night cycle. I get the same kinds of things. I would opt for Natural Melatonin, btw. Not sure where i'm going with this. :P

Why brown/pink noise?

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Originally Posted by mcwillis

Why brown/pink noise?

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Well white noise is basically an algorithmic or random generation of all sound frequencies that the human ear can hear. So 20Hz to about 20kHz. White noise can be a bit harsh to listen to though, because all of the frequencies are playing at the same volume. It's mostly the higher frequencies that sound harsh on the ears. Brown noise, named after a botanist named Robert Brown, goes by a formula that basically has lower frequency waves at a higher volume while the higher frequencies are at a low volume. The same goes for pink noise but pink noise gives off more high frequencies than Brown Noise, but still carries the same formula. Low frequency = High Volume and High frequency = Low Volume. Hope that helps!

*bonus* Also there is Blue Noise which has the low frequencies at a low volume and high frequencies at a high volume :D

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Originally Posted by jshumck

Well white noise is basically an algorithmic or random generation of all sound frequencies that the human ear can hear. So 20Hz to about 20kHz. White noise can be a bit harsh to listen to though, because all of the frequencies are playing at the same volume. It's mostly the higher frequencies that sound harsh on the ears. Brown noise, named after a botanist named Robert Brown, goes by a formula that basically has lower frequency waves at a higher volume while the higher frequencies are at a low volume. The same goes for pink noise but pink noise gives off more high frequencies than Brown Noise, but still carries the same formula. Low frequency = High Volume and High frequency = Low Volume. Hope that helps!

*bonus* Also there is Blue Noise which has the low frequencies at a low volume and high frequencies at a high volume :D

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Thanks. I remember distinctly a few years ago that pink noise was a lot more pleasing to listen to than white noise.

I've tried experimenting with ganzfeld in the past and I found it boring and unrewarding and a waste of time. I'm not suggesting that it IS a waste or anything, and I'm sure it has its uses, but as someone who has been down the rabbit hole many times and seen some crazy shit...ganz just didn't do anything for me. I'd do it for a good 45 min and all I ever saw was flashy lights.

I've tried Ganzfeld Sessions for several times. I think your main hallucinations will be of that kind your most dominant sense is. If you are a visual type, you will get more visual hallucinations and so on.
My most dominant sense is the kinaesthetic sense.

I started ganzfelding with the ping-pong-balls and pink noise from iso-tones.com and a red lamp. The first five minutes were quite boring. But then first sensations started: My body started feeling strange, I felt it more intense, a feeling of going deeper into my body. I felt like I was connected with all humankind. Then I started hearing music. Drum and Base and stuff.
I had some mild open-eye-visuals, some fractal patterns in beautiful colors.

You can find here some more reports (the quotes are in englisch, the rest of the page is German, maybe you will need the google translator. For the reports scroll down. There are also many links to scientific studies about Ganzfeld experiments, brainwaves during Ganzfelding and stuff.

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Originally Posted by EmoScreamo

I've tried Ganzfeld Sessions for several times. I think your main hallucinations will be of that kind your most dominant sense is. If you are a visual type, you will get more visual hallucinations and so on.
My most dominant sense is the kinaesthetic sense.

I started ganzfelding with the ping-pong-balls and pink noise from iso-tones.com and a red lamp. The first five minutes were quite boring. But then first sensations started: My body started feeling strange, I felt it more intense, a feeling of going deeper into my body. I felt like I was connected with all humankind. Then I started hearing music. Drum and Base and stuff.
I had some mild open-eye-visuals, some fractal patterns in beautiful colors.

You can find here some more reports (the quotes are in englisch, the rest of the page is German, maybe you will need the google translator. For the reports scroll down. There are also many links to scientific studies about Ganzfeld experiments, brainwaves during Ganzfelding and stuff.

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You dug this out from the depths of DV aha, seems pretty good to me. Nice experience and cheers for sharing mate, it's been a while since I've done anything Ganzfeld related so you may have inspired me to do some more sessions.

:)

Have you done some further research yet? I was thinking about combining the ganzfeld effect with some binaural beat stuff. Maybe this would potentiate the effect?

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Originally Posted by EmoScreamo

:)

Have you done some further research yet? I was thinking about combining the ganzfeld effect with some binaural beat stuff. Maybe this would potentiate the effect?

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I would not be surprised if the binaural beats did alter the effects in some way or another, from what I've gathered I doubt it would potentiate the effects rather differ them. The original experiment used pink noise for whatever reason, I personally used brown noise for the times I did it so my experience with other sound deprivation is non existent - but that's what I am getting at, the aim of the experiment (at least as far as I can tell) is to deprive the brain of access to senses so that it attempts to fill in what it is not receiving, so, if binaural beats were to be used in the place of noise the effects mightn't be what one would expect as most binaural beats differ their pitch and volume a lot.

I have had a similiar effect. Boring colours. White, grey, black, orange, purple, blue. All of them blooming. Sometimes fastly sometimes slowly. I woke up after 30 minutes and I have felt my left hand was numb. I also saw little black tiny claws trying to get me from the edge. I have very weak vision though. I used white noise with noise cancelling headphones and I used a white, home-made sleeping mask with rubber bands.