Here's an excerpt from Science Frontiers, original source Cook & Persinger, 'Experimental Induction of the Sensed Presence in Normal Subjects and an Exceptional Subject' in Perceptual and Motor Skills (1997) 85:683...
"All cultures have contained a few people who have claimed to be visited by spirits, gods, angels or even extraterrestrials. Cook and Persinger associate these visitations with a phenomenon they call 'sensed presence' or 'the awareness of an extrapersonal, incorporeal entity.' They assert that the 'sense of self' is a construct of the left brain, the side usually associated with language. Secondly, they hypothesize that a 'sensed presence' is only a fleeting right brain homologue of the left brain 'sense of self', like a transient short-circuit between both hemispheres of the brain that probably travels along the corpus callosum that interconnects them."
In their lab at Laurentian University, Cook and Persinger asked subjects to press a button when the 'felt a mystical presence'.
Unbeknownst to them, they were subject to an occasional weak magnetic field. More often than chance would predict, mystical presences (button pushes) correlated with applications of magnetic fields."
[This is just an anecdote about a theory and an experiment, for whatever interest it has, which will probably be none for some and a little more than that for others.-- E.] |
