Michael Persinger
| Michael A. Persinger | |
|---|---|
| |
| Born | June 26, 1945, Jacksonville, Florida, U.S. |
| Died | August 14, 2018 (aged 73), Sudbury, Ontario, Canada |
| Nationality | Canadian, American |
| Education | University of Wisconsin
University of Tennessee University of Manitoba |
| Occupation | Professor of psychology |
| Known for | Consciousness Research, Neurotheology |
| Notable works | Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs (1978)
TM and Cult Mania (1980) |
| Website | |
Early life[edit]
Michael A. Persinger was born June 26, 1945 in Jacksonville, Florida, USA. He grew up in an era when consciousness and electromagnetic phenomena were beginning to intersect in scientific inquiry.
Education and career[edit]
Persinger earned his B.A. from Carroll College (Wisconsin), his M.A. from the University of Tennessee, and his Ph.D. in physiological psychology from the University of Manitoba (1971).
He spent his career at the Clinical Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. He also held positions in the Behavioral Neuroscience Program, Biophysics Section, Laurentian University.
He was a full professor at Laurentian for over 45 years, directing both the Consciousness Research Laboratory and publishing prolifically on the neurological basis of religious and paranormal experiences.
Notable/unique[edit]
The "God Helmet":
Persinger's most famous contribution was the development of what journalists dubbed the "God Helmet" (originally the Koren Helmet, named after his collaborator Stanley Koren).
As described in the On the Back of a Tiger documentary interviews:
"It was dubbed the god helmet by a reporter... the Koren helmet... They did an experiment using mild electrical electromagnetic stimulation of the right hemisphere which is where it had been determined that religious psychedelic experiences seem to be highly related to right hemisphere activity. They set up this room... you sit in the dark room and they run the program and a number of people experienced some sort of a feeling of presence. That was then filtered through their cultural eye, their lens... if they were religious then they might have had like a mystical religious experience of feeling like God was in the room. For other people it was more just like a presence, something that definitely seemed to have a strong effect on consciousness."
Ray Peat's assessment:
Peat noted the remarkable power-to-effect ratio: "The difference that there's such powerful fields in the environment, but that you can have profound changes in consciousness with just a very weak field that he used to apply, causing religious experiences for people with something that has no more power than a hair dryer or something like that."
Inter-brain communication experiments:
Persinger conducted experiments on consciousness linking between individuals. Peat explained: "He also did experiments with generating a field that he said was the same as the field of the Earth around 7 hertz... and putting the exact same field around two people that he separated into two rooms that were dark and flash a light in one person's eyes and if they applied the same field to both people's head, the flash would register in the other person's brain as well."
Work with Ingo Swann:
In 2002 Persinger, Roll, Tiller, Koren, and Cook considered whether there are physical processes by which recondite information exists within the space and time of objects or events. They tested the artist Ingo Swann who can reliably draw and describe randomly selected photographs sealed in envelopes in another room. WINDOWS-generated but not DOS-generated patterns were associated with a marked decrease in Mr. Swann's accuracy. Whereas the DOS software generated exactly the same pattern, WINDOWS software phase-modulated the actual wave form resulting in an infinite bandwidth and complexity.
Peat elaborated: "I think that's what got Persinger started with those experiments was he was working with someone who was somewhat of a clairvoyant... by enhancing the field, he found first that when someone came into the room that his brainwaves would sync up with whoever came in and that seemed to be related to his ability to read them."
Quantum neurophysics:
The authors have assumed there are specific temporal patterns of complex electromagnetic fields that can access and affect all levels of brain space. The article presents formulae and results that might reveal the required field configurations to obtain this access and to represent these levels in human consciousness. The time required to expand one Planck's length as inferred by Hubble's constant for the proton was about 1 to 3 ms, the optimal resonant "point duration" of our most bioeffective magnetic fields.
Death[edit]
Dr. Michael Persinger passed away on August 14, 2018 in Sudbury, Ontario. He died "way too young" at age 73. Fortunately, Brad and Jeremy of On the Back of a Tiger had captured interviews with Persinger, Ho and Hillman before their deaths.
Published works[edit]
Persinger was extraordinarily prolific, publishing hundreds of peer-reviewed papers. Key works include:
| Work | Year | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Space-Time Transients and Unusual Events | 1977 | Co-authored with Gyslaine Lafrenière; linked geomagnetic phenomena to paranormal reports |
| The Paranormal: Part I & II | 1974 | Early examination of neurological basis of paranormal |
| Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs | 1987 | Seminal work arguing religious experiences arise from temporal lobe activity |
| "The neuropsychiatry of paranormal experiences"[1] | 2001 | J Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2001 Fall;13(4):515-24 |
| "A theory of neurophysics and quantum neuroscience"[2] | 2007 | Int J Neurosci. 2007 Feb;117(2):157-75 |
All of Michael Persinger's publications have been saved and archived following his death, as his original websites became defunct.
