Scientists Create Religious Experiences With a Homemade Device

For thousands of years, the human race was content looking to the heavens for answers. Starting with our earliest civilizations, gods and other supernatural forces were used to explain everything from natural disasters to our most private thoughts. Divine heroes rode the sun across the sky. Visions and messages from mysterious beings were encoded into human law. And miraculous healings were performed through the power of the supernatural.

Yet as the Age of Reason ushered science to the forefront, these supernatural forces were slowly pushed to the sideline, as diligent scientists found the answers to life’s great mysteries in their pursuit of physics, chemistry, and biology. And while science has provided us with technologies that would have seemed pure magic even a century ago, it continues to struggle when it comes to explaining the nature of human thought.

Yet today, even in the face of this dominantly rational worldview, religious belief continues to influence cultures around the world. But what if a scientific explanation could be found for our innate human tendency towards these beliefs? And what if a neurological device could force an individual into a divine encounter with a god or a vision from the afterlife?

Could a switch exist, somewhere in the complex folds of our brain, which would allow us to turn the religious experience on and off? In 1989, two researchers claimed to do just that, creating a device they called “The God Helmet.”

Behavioral neuroscientist and psychologist Michael Persinger had long been interested in identifying neurological causes for supernatural experiences, including psychic powers, collective consciousness, and even UFO sightings. In 1989, a collaboration with his colleague Stanley Koren at Canada’s Laurentian University led to an apparatus which could replicate a religious experience at will, suggesting that the brain can be directly manipulated to produce “mystical experiences and altered states.”

The decidedly low-tech appearance of the “God Helmet” belies its sophistication, drawing from Persinger’s previous neurological studies of paranormal and supernatural experience. The apparatus consists of a modified snowmobile helmet outfitted with solenoids which produce a weak magnetic field around the temporal lobes of the subject. These magnetic signals disrupt communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, creating conditions which interrupt the subject’s usual sense of self. This is not unlike a deep meditative state, in which advanced practitioners often report similar spiritual effects resulting from an imposed loss of self.

Different magnetic signals can produce different effects- in early experiments Persinger focused on a signal which would create the feeling of a “sensed presence,” a common aspect of the paranormal experience. The God Helmet uses fairly weak magnetic fields, which Persinger describes as “complex.” The Helmet’s efficacy relies on the information contained in the signal, not on its strength.

Persinger experimented on over 900 subjects, and reported that roughly 80% sense some sort of presence. Interestingly, the nature of the experience appears to mimic the subject’s preconceived beliefs: Christians tend to see Jesus or the Virgin Mary, Muslims may encounter Mohammed, while atheists may meet a deceased relative, or even experience something similar to an alien abduction.

One experimental subject had sought out Persinger and his lab after a series of terrifying experiences in his home, which lead him to believe it was haunted. Though he had moved out of the house, the man remained curious and spent 4 years investigating the hauntings; when under the influence of the God Helmet, the man was confronted with the same apparition he knew all-too-well from his former home. Although he panicked at first, the man was comforted by the idea that this supernatural force was in fact a figment of his own brain, and not a demonic spirit trapped inside his former home.

While the God Helmet gave Persinger a controlled laboratory environment to study these neurological effects, he was more fascinated by real-world phenomena which could produce a similar response. The fields produced by the helmet are no stronger than those present in most homes from common devices like clocks, microwaves, phones, and even electrical wiring. For Persinger, this encouraged his hypothesis that many paranormal experiences could be derived from a magnetic source.

One case of a haunting, for example, came down to a rather mundane fault of electrical wiring: “A young man and woman reported suddenly awakening between 2:00 and 4:00 A.M every night. The man experienced an apparition moving through their bed. Both individuals experienced odd sounds (breathing), marked apprehension, and the feeling of a presence. Continuous monitoring of their electronically dense house revealed repeated transients of complex magnetic fields, similar to those that evoke the sensed presence in our experimental studies. These peaks were concurrent with the reports of the paranormal experiences. The fields were generated by less than optimal grounding of the house.”

In a 2001 article, Persinger described an even more curious case of supernatural presence caused by a nearby clock: “A Roman Catholic female adolescent with a history of early brain trauma reported nightly visitations by a sentient being. During one episode she experienced vibrations of the bed, an external presence along the left side that moved into her body, vaginal sensations, and the sense of being impregnated by a force she attributed to the Holy Spirit. After the latter experience she felt an invisible baby superimposed upon her left shoulder. Analysis of the measurements for magnetic anomalies within her bedroom indicated an electric clock about 20 cm from her head while she slept. The complex form of the magnetic pulses generated by the clock was similar to shapes that evoke electrical seizures in sensitive humans.”

These complex magnetic pulses again recreate the effect of the God Helmet. A fascinating implication of this research is that certain chronic neurological conditions can create similar responses. Ellen White, one of the principal founders of the Seventh Day Adventist Movement, was inspired by divine visions; which motivated her teachings and beliefs. Dr. Gregory Holmes, a neurologist at Dartmouth Medical School, has uncovered evidence that Ellen White likely suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy, which would produce similar effects to Persinger’s helmet. In fact, the original concept for the God Helmet was inspired by the experiences of certain epilepsy sufferers, who sometimes reported mystical hallucinations accompanying their seizures.

Persinger has also entertained the possibility that certain locations on our planet emit a weak, but complex, electromagnetic force which can trigger a similar reaction to the God Helmet. This would explain so-called sacred sites and window areas- locations in which divine or paranormal encounters appear with incredible frequency. Could our entire history of religious visions and prophecy really be the result of a rare neurological condition? Persinger certainly thinks it is possible:

“The results of these studies strongly suggested that the sensed presence, a phenomenon that had been the subject matter of paranormal experiences and mystical elaborations for millenia, could be evoked experimentally”

Of course, Persinger’s findings have failed to find mainstream acceptance for many reasons; not the least of which is due to extreme reluctance from religious believers to accept that their dearly held beliefs are the mere result of an epileptic hallucination. Some critics have been quick to point out that those subjects who most often have successful trials with the God Helmet are more likely to have previously held paranormal beliefs. Persinger did not see this as a problem, but rather, an inherent part of the phenomenon:

“Paranormal beliefs and paranormal experiences are related. There is a moderate to strong positive correlation between the proportions of paranormal experiences that people report and their beliefs in the paranormal phenomena. Interestingly, paranormal beliefs appear to be substitutes for traditional religious beliefs.”

However, Persinger does not necessarily believe his experiments rule out the possibility of legitimate paranormal phenomen. In fact, he believed quite the opposite: it could be that the God Helmet effect allows people to perceive what Persinger calls, “actual information that’s in the environment.” “Particularly,” he says, “in places where people experience the same thing again and again.”

While his experiments have faced harsh criticism from other scientists, often citing failed attempts at replication, Persinger has noted the lack of rigor and proper execution in these replicated tests, often describing them as “technically flawed.” And recently, the God Helmet experiments have conclusively been replicated, although controversies still remain.

Could the God Helmet prove that all supernatural experience is a mere trick of perception? Or has it merely located a sort of paranormal antenna in our brain, desperately searching for a signal?