I Just love the headline. Well, really, the sub-head:

Hack your brain

How to hallucinate with ping-pong balls and a radio

DO YOU EVER want to change the way you see the world? Wouldn't it be fun to hallucinate on your lunch break? Although we typically associate such phenomena with powerful drugs like LSD or mescaline, it's easy to fling open the doors of perception without them: All it takes is a basic understanding of how the mind works.

The first thing to know is that the mind isn't a mirror, or even a passive observer of reality. Much of what we think of as being out there actually comes from in here, and is a byproduct of how the brain processes sensation. In recent years scientists have come up with a number of simple tricks that expose the artifice of our senses, so that we end up perceiving what we know isn't real - tweaking the cortex to produce something uncannily like hallucinations. Perhaps we hear the voice of someone who is no longer alive, or feel as if our nose is suddenly 3 feet long.

I like the assumption that there's an eager audience for quick, simple, and inexpensive ways to hallucinate.

The research cited is interesting, especially the the description of the Ganzfeld procedure. I remember reading a while back that this procedure was being used to test precognition and other paranormal phenomena. I didn't know that it was also a means of getting a cheap -- and presumably reasonably safe? -- hallucinogenic high.

We were talking about how to teach and instill creativity on the most recent FastForward Radio. Well, here's outside-the-box suggestion: perhaps the Ganzfeld procedure has a role to play. Once a month or so, maybe we should white out our visual field and pump white noise into our ears and see what kind of creative imagery our subconscious coughs up for us.

Granted, it would probably be a small part of a much larger overall program to instill creativity. But, who knows? Hallucinations may have an important role to play in helping us understand ourselves and our place in the world better.

Reporting on my trip to Arizona a couple of years ago, I mentioned a sacred grotto in the Palatki ruin, near Sedona, where people went for hundreds or possibly thousands of years to eat peyote and other hallucinogens and then stare at the petroglyphs.

Why did they keep coming back? Was it just that hallucinogens were part of their religion? (If so, they were hardly alone.) Perhaps these rituals served a practical purpose beyond spiritual discipline and / or recreation. Maybe these ancient peoples were trying to be more creative?