July 10th, I traveled back to the University of Edinburgh for my second clinical pre-cognitive Ganzfeld experiment. I was asked to return because I generated a ‘hit’ the first time I participated. I did not get a ‘hit’ this time, but I did have a very curious introspective experience. During this experiment I was extremely self-conscious not of my body or if I was doing it right, but if I would get the answer correct, therefore not trusting my own minds process and interpretation of the visions I was having during the sensory deprivation.
I sat in a comfortable recliner with the overhead lights turned off. White noise is being pumped into oversized headphones as I stare into the red-light mask that shields my eyes. While I’m staring into the red abyss a few things start to happen, my mind’s voice becomes loud and clear and potentially due to the effort or stress on the eyes from keeping a strong gaze into nothing, I start to see shapes and movement. If I think of something like a person walking, I see it clearly as a glow-y white and red outline. The more I concentrate the more sporadic and spontaneous the imagery appears. As I am visualizing, my minds voice acknowledges and speaks to the shapes, such as “I’m seeing a whale swimming or a group of men in trench coats walking down a path.”
At the same time, I’m thinking I should remember this, or this reminds me of this, or my hands are cold.
During these particular visualizations I saw three distinct things. An open eye, little bundles of movement, and two hands gesturing.
The first randomly generated video I watched was an early episode of popular Japanese anime “Attack on Titan” (subbed) where Eren Jaeger saves Armin from being eaten by a titan only to be swallowed himself for the first time. The second video was a large group of penguins walking on the ice. The third was of two astronauts in space, one hanging upside down and the other spinning around in circles as he’s explaining how due to the lack of gravity, he doesn’t feel dizzy or sick at this speed. The last was of two hands decorating a cake by pouring icing over the cake with a spoon.
By percentages of closest to furthest away of relatability, I ended up choosing the hands with the cake first, because of my visualization of the hands. Second, the episode of Attack on Titan, a series I have watched to completion, because of the visualization of the eye. Third, the penguins, to which I thought maybe less likely because I’m projecting the movement from the 1st experiment I participated in. And last the Astronauts because I didn’t have any connection to this in my preparation period.
The selected video was of the penguins.
Thinking about my experience with the experiment, it became obvious that my subconscious mind was showing, and my conscious mind was deciding. They present two different ways of speaking to each other, like a devil and angel on your shoulder, both are me but different parts of me, with different desires and traumas. The feeling of wanting to be right, to feel special, over being right, but second guessing myself out of a kind of fear. Trusting your subconscious takes effort and practice for some. Something I’ll be working on.