What if I told you god was a magnet?
That’s right. Magnets may do more than inspire doggy doody-direction. For those of you who see toilet time as a religious experience anyway, this logic may all fall together quite nicely. For those of you still furrowing your forehead, lemme ‘splain.
Reports have come from people in the past before they died that they saw their clone (or “doppelganger”) – like some supernatural soothsayer. Prominent figures in history have reportedly seen themselves before passing from this plane o’ existence. Even Lincoln said he saw a smaller, paler version of himself staring nose-to-nose at him in bed.
Random, right?
Maybe not. Apparently visions very similar to this are often seen when the right temporal lobe of our brain gets stimulated. Sometimes, when the cells there get excited, we see shadowy entities or even ourselves. It doesn’t always mean we’re epileptic or whatever (although sometimes it does).
Rather, this right-lobe response reportedly transpires when we get nervous about conceiving of “not being”. It assuages anxiety should it get too high, by supplanting it with a concept of infinity and an ever-present, resonant force. Then, other times, we wake up at 3 AM in a panic with terror pouring outta our adrenal glands, positive this guy is staring at us from the closet whose light just went out:
Both of these experiences seemed to happen when the temporal lobe phenomena was replicated.
One doctor dude created a “God Helmet”, slapped it on subjects, and left them blindfolded in an isolation chamber for about an hour. Much like when we meditate, the brain waves eventually calm down on their own, in the absence of light and free of sensory stimuli.
When the brain-rhythms became more regular, he’d zap a light magnetic coil (about the intensity of a low hair dryer) over the right temporal lobe. After the hour was up, the subject was interviewed.
One girl (who claimed no real belief system in the supernatural, good or bad) said she had two separate experiences – one of floating, where she was outside of herself including the presence of five entities made of “nothingness”. The other, she said, including uncomfortable heat, like fire.
Heaven, hell, and floaty creatures in between – all magnetism manifestations in our minds?
This may sound a lot like genetic predestination – god being a magnetic implant and us being chromosomal servants. But we need only look around at our fellow humans to realize that whether there’s a mind-math brain-blueprint or not, we still gotta lotta leeway.
A different episode I once saw on this same show described cognitive pre-destiny in a simplified way: sure, we’re on a race track and can’t change that. But we can still move the hurdles any degree up or down. That’s still pretty free-will-y.
What we do have free will over is our thoughts (and words and actions – short of Tourettes). With the girl in the experiment, it seems interesting that the “negative” event followed the “kinda cool” event. Could that be ‘cause she was locked in there for an hour? And after a while of experiencing phenomena you don’t believe in, you start to question yourself to the point of feeling insanxious? Then fear sets in?
Insanxious (in-SAINK-shuss): adj. Ashleyism for feeling anxious at the prospect of having the condition of insanity as one’s belief system is called into question; generally precedes onset of cognitive dissonance.
It seems like, if our temporal lobe cells start to party (and all’a our brain’s connected), whatever mood we’re in (visiting an Ashram in India after you saw Eat, Pray, Love vs waking at the witching hour after watching The Fourth Kind) would dictate how we receive this.
That said, you’re not crazy if you see shit. Lots of us do and just think, “That slamming door was definitely a draft from the ventilation that’s off and the window that’s shut.” Sometimes there’s a rational explanache and sometimes there’s not. And that’s alright. It’s nothing to wallow in (unless you like wallowing in which case that lobe’s gonna keep translating wardrobe demons.)
Why not paint our perceptions beautifully since we do get to control our thoughts?
Just because the cliffs notes for good and evil might boil down to brain magnetism doesn’t make it any less real. And it almost certainly doesn’t mean there aren’t forces we don’t know about. That’s a fact in that science evolves every day. Plus the thing is, maybe a lotta those famous dudes who saw themselves pre-death were about to die of a brain condition. But, like… after Lincoln did, he didn’t die of a brain attack.
Eh… not a spontaneous one, anyway.
#toosoon?
#imgoingtomagnethell