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Doing the shakti..

  
 
33
17:42 / 10.08.06
http://%20www.innerworlds.50megs.com/winshakti/8_Coil_shakti_testimonials.htm

For those not aware..

For those that are and have dooned the helemt I would be interested to hear your thoughts..

arrr
 
 
EventHorizon
19:36 / 10.08.06
Here's a fixed hyperlink to those who'd prefer to click:
http://www.innerworlds.50megs.com/winshakti/8_Coil_shakti_testimonials.htm


This device looks highly interesting, but I would be suspicious of how powerful the fields it could crank out would be. If it were powerful enough to be useful, I imagine it could draw the ire of the FDA as an unlicensed medical device, but alas, it nevertheless could be quite effective.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation is a highly interesting field of research, as this New York Times article illuminates:

A series of electromagnetic pulses were being directed into my frontal lobes, but I felt nothing. Snyder instructed me to draw something. ''What would you like to draw?'' he said merrily. ''A cat? You like drawing cats? Cats it is.''

I've seen a million cats in my life, so when I close my eyes, I have no trouble picturing them. But what does a cat really look like, and how do you put it down on paper? I gave it a try but came up with some sort of stick figure, perhaps an insect.

While I drew, Snyder continued his lecture. ''You could call this a creativity-amplifying machine. It's a way of altering our states of mind without taking drugs like mescaline. You can make people see the raw data of the world as it is. As it is actually represented in the unconscious mind of all of us.''

Two minutes after I started the first drawing, I was instructed to try again. After another two minutes, I tried a third cat, and then in due course a fourth. Then the experiment was over, and the electrodes were removed. I looked down at my work. The first felines were boxy and stiffly unconvincing. But after I had been subjected to about 10 minutes of transcranial magnetic stimulation, their tails had grown more vibrant, more nervous; their faces were personable and convincing. They were even beginning to wear clever expressions.

I could hardly recognize them as my own drawings, though I had watched myself render each one, in all its loving detail. Somehow over the course of a very few minutes, and with no additional instruction, I had gone from an incompetent draftsman to a very impressive artist of the feline form.

Snyder looked over my shoulder. ''Well, how about that? Leonardo would be envious.'' Or turning in his grave, I thought.

Article - "Savant for a Day"

I'd be curious as well if anyone has tried the Shakti device, as it definitely has some potential to be quite useful.
 
 
grant
19:47 / 10.08.06
Here and here and here and here are some prior discussions on transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Barbelith user astrojax works at the Centre for the Mind. That last link concerns his experience as a test subject, rather than researcher.
 
 
Dead Megatron
20:14 / 10.08.06
Actually, I did use that thing once. I was during a "therapy" session with a psychic* exorcist priest (I shit you not).

It made me feel sweaty, and light, and with very cold, tingly hands. Like I've just had half an E. But no hightened psychic or mental abilities or anything like that (hallucinogenic drugs taken in a ritualistisc environment still work better for me), at least in that one little taste of the equipament.

It did get me curious on how one could use in a personal practice, for meditation and "mind-expansion", but I'm concerned with two issues: 1) is it dangerous, possibly brain-damaging, to use it without proper guidance? and 2) how to purchase and import me one of those wonderful toys?...

* Psychic as in healing-hands, psychic-surgery, mind-reading kind of psychic.
 
 
Quantum
20:27 / 10.08.06
a "therapy" session with a psychic* exorcist priest

Wow DM, tell us more- were you possessed or something?
 
 
Dead Megatron
21:26 / 10.08.06
No, I wasn't. The guy had visited my family's home for a general blessing, and asked me to pay him a visit because he "wanted to talk to me in private".

During the session, he told he was seeing a shadowy guy holding a scythe (very Grim-Ripper like) over my head, and that Our Lady of Antioquia was telling him it was due to too much drugs ans weird sexual practices*, so I needed to tone things down a bit, for my health sake. I was also unnemployed and without much perspective in like then (year 2000), and had a few months prior a bad 'shroom trip in Amsterdan, so I was feeling a bit down, on the way of being clinically depressed, and he probably picked that bad vibe out.

The session was mostly talking, but he did gave me a few passes and rigged me to the shakti helmet (which looks as lame as the pics linked show). It was an overall testing of my energy he was doing, I imagine.

After I followed his advices to pace myself, things have improved quite a bit. I now am as far away from depression as possible without being bipolar, taking drugs lightly and sex even more lightly, have a job, a future, and things are going fine. You know, in case someone out there actually cares...

The priest-guy and me still talk to each other quite regularly, since he is somewhat of a family friend and I do translation to English for him: he does missionary work in California, but he doesn't speak English, so I translate letters from and "spiritual reports" for his patients.

He is quite an interesting character, this exorcist: A Brazilian Catholic priest of arabic descent, he speaks Portuguese, Arabic, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Aramaic (that I know of), and has ties with some major players in the the Vatican (he is a benedictine, like the Pope), and the US, like John Kerry's wife, and Mel Gibson (although, now that is not actually something to be proud of). He's quite tolerant, although a bit arrogant, towards other religions, including other Christian denomination, and Budhism (he knows Dalai Lama too), and was a pioneer on missionary work with imporvished AIDS patients back in the 80s. One major flaw of him, though, is that he can be a bit anti-semitic (which fits with the Mel Gobson thing). He says the jews wandered the world for two thousand years becauses they were "cursed" for turning their back on Jesus' whe he was crucified (he doesn't say they "killed Him", though), and that does make my alarms go of. But, in all, he is one worth-knowing human being and magician...


*they were not that weird, but the guy is a Catholic priest, so his threshold for sexual weirdness is expectably quite low...
 
 
Ticker
21:42 / 10.08.06
now am as far away from depression as possible without being bipolar, taking drugs lightly and sex even more lightly, have a job, a future, and things are going fine. You know, in case someone out there actually cares...

I care. Glad you're doing better, oh my brother in Decepticon-luv.
 
 
EventHorizon
22:51 / 10.08.06
Glad to hear things are going well for you, Megatron. Yes, the pictures of the "Shakti Helmet" look suspiciously like a bike helmet wrapped in duct tape but I suppoose looks can be deceiving.

Grant, those threads you've linked are extremely interesting...I've always been highly interested in TMS but I didn't realize I was in such good company on Barbelith. I did a bit more digging, and found some more interesting connections. As it turns out, our friend sine, is linked to the creators of the Shakti system.

While browsing through the wonderful threads Grant linked above, I found this thread, where our very own sine explains in wonderful detail his forays into TMS:


For many years, I worked on projects which had as their goal the artificial stimulation of altered states of consciousness through directed, patterned magnetic fields. I had a great deal of success, experimentally if not financially. My work involved heavy correspondence with my colleagues doing similar experiments, most especially Micheal Persinger at Laurentian Neuroscience, whose highly publicised work is likely familiar to people here.

At the time, Micheal and I differed on certain fundamentals behind our work, especially in the area of religious and mystical experiences. He believed that the 'on cue' production of such experiences and their relation to brain structure was an excellent footing to disprove the existence of supernatural forces i.e. angels, aliens, Elvis, God.

I however did, and do, believe that these experiences may have served as a controllable method of contacting entities that have an independent existence.



Now, If you go to the root site of the shakti page here, you'll find an interesting introductory paragraph:


My name is Todd Murphy, and I'm a Behavioral Neuroscientist associated with Dr. Michael Persinger. Most of my ideas and publications are based on his work, although my emphasis is on the spiritual aspects of neuroscience, and like all researchers, I see things through my own eyes. That means I take a scientific approach, not a clinical one.


So apparently the developer behind the Shakti devices is someone from Persinger's TMS group, but who seems to side with sine on the esoteric/spiritual potential of TMS.

So to me this gives the Shakti device alot more potential to actually be useful, since most devices I've seen available for purchase that claim to be in the TMS category smack of new age snakeoilery.

Thanks to grant for dredging up the goods on TMS.
 
 
33
15:58 / 11.08.06
Incase for any reason any one missed it here is the page that proudly displays two helmets for sale..


And here is account from someone who tried one of these models..




arrr
 
  
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