Hi! I have a postulate which I think most of us would agree is outside the boundaries of what is meant by, "real science."

However, I would also like to attempt to prove or disprove it using the scientific method, insofar as it is possible. (Realistically, I think the best I can hope for is to gather evidence that tends to support it, or not.)

So, I would like advice on how best to go about this. Things like how to break it down into its components and determine which aspects might be good candidates for some kind of test; and what kinds of tests might be best suited to produce useful results.

Here is my postulate:

Could trip-friendly music (such as psytrance) contain an intentional or inherent superimposed layer of instructions for hyperspacial experience?

As an example, here is the Wiki page on binaural beats.

What started me thinking about it is the way that some music will seem to mesh with the trip, and how the music creates 3-dimensional (or possibly 4) figures in my mind's eye that both represent the music, and are the music.

My ideas for possible interesting experiments so far are:

1. Have volunteers listen to the same piece of music while tripping, and then report back independently what they experienced. (We could look for predominating imagery, colors, or even memes.)

2. We could examine music generally agreed-upon as "trip-friendly" for similarities via spectrum analysis.

3. I also thought it might be very interesting to see if we could get anyone to listen to a negative or ugly piece of music while tripping, for comparative data.


Now, I am the first one to admit that the idea is far-fetched, and not likely to be falsifiable or anything. All the same, I have reasons to believe that it may be a worthwhile topic of research. And whether or not it's ever borne out, or whether it's a silly premise, there is no reason why I couldn't at least try to approach it with the accepted strategies of research.

What do you all think?

Before even thinking about the problems of scientifically analyzing subjective experience, I think you should think about the ethics of such an experiment. Doing these kinds of experiments outside of a safe, medical setting with a licensed doctor doesn't sit right with me. Personally I don't want to be responsible for the physical or psychological health of anyone, especially if you want to try to force bad trips as well as good ones, not to mention the legality of such an undertaking. I mean it's not like you can give DMT to a friend or two and ask them what they thought, you need a big enough sample size. So I think the best way to figure these out is personal experience and communication with people who experiment with the same concepts themselves.

But hypothetically if you could do something like this. Then try using pop music for your research since apparently it makes our brains high.

The following is part 4 of the V.S. Ramachandran talk on synesthesia. Great talk. I'd advise watching all of it, but the part that I wanted to point out starts at minute 8 and goes to the end of the clip. Like with synesthesia I think the idea that certain colours could be predominant in the general population during a psychedelic experience is a safe assumption. Of course we'd have to point out what psychedelic is causing the colours in the first place. The tricky part is the associations that come up with a particular colour. For one person red might be warm and friendly and for another it might be fiery and frightening.

The method works primarily upon falsification of theory, a theory that withstands falsification and is evidenced is considered probable.

So you need a claim to test.
Consider the following:

Could trip-friendly music (such as psytrance) contain an intentional or inherent superimposed layer of instructions for hyperspacial experience?

You have to define the specific terms, music, trip-friendly, superimposed, layer, instruction etc, all of these need to be defined to create a testable postulate.

I think that there might be some complications to your terms.
Try and make the most simple statement you can work with.
Then try and see if the data you want has already been generated and consider it in terms of your hypothesis.

I would consider that people listening together can have shared experiences, but that listening to it apart results in individual experiences. This presents a design flaw for potential experiments. You might try to generate data yourself, using you as the sole test subject and using specific types of music. The use of icaros in sorcery might hold clues about what you are pondering, the answer might well be, sometimes, but not always.

In its most genraland basic sense I would say that application of scientific method is done by arriving at a theory and then trying to disprove it through experimentation. Find out the different factors that affect the results, alter one of them while keeping all others constant and interpret your results and try to establish whether the variable you are changing has any bearing on the outcome. The thing you are planing on investigating sounds difficult as there are so many variables, each subject is different, their brain chemistry, dietary habits, age, gender, etc et etc there are reams of possibilities that could affect the results making it very hard to control and thus obtain usable data.

I am getting the feeling that I have casually stumbled upon a very incredible place here. Those are some excellent responses, just what I was hoping for.

First of all, MetaXIII, I am embarrassed that I actually failed to think of the ethical concerns you brought up. You are indeed correct, and thank you for pointing that out.

The article on pop music was fascinating, and also very funny. In addition, I can see that I will be spending quite a bit of time watching the rest of V.S. Ramachandran's talks on YouTube, what a brilliant guy. The point he, and you, bring up about the semiotics of our collective associations between color, numbers etc. is very much relevant here.

AlbertKLloyd: "I think that there might be some complications to your terms."
Heh, right you are sir! I realized after I had posted that those really are just about the most vague terms I could use. I guess I thought that someone might have a good idea about a particular angle that might present the basis for a usable thesis. I looked around a bit in the S.H.E. threads for accounts of commonality of experience; and the impression I got is that you are right about collective vs. solitary experience. Still, I am aware that there are certain kinds of "information" (for example, infrasound) that can produce broadly similar effects in large groups of humans. It's that kind of thing that expecially gives me pause.

I looked up "icaros," and that is a very cool aspect. I am going to have to look into that in-depth; if anyone knows of a paper that has been written on icaros from any standpoint, or maybe an interview somewhere with a shaman about these songs and their uses, I would love to see it!

Shattered_Symmetry, well, you're right as well. On closer inspection it does seem to present a task that is virtually impossible. Maybe there's one small part I could focus on to start.

Thanks to everyone so far!

Yeah, this is a pretty incredible place. I felt the same way when I stumbled upon it. Spent a good amount of time just sponging up info here before gathering up the courage to join and participate myself. I'm very happy that I did sack up and dive in, the water is very fine.

As for Icaros, there is a mountain of stuff about them out there. I don't have any links to flow you offhand, but there are even some books in the ebook section of this very website with info on them. SWIM has been on huasca and watched the visuals change as a shaman sang the patterns into being. It reminded him of cymatics. Play with it yourself next time you have the occasion. Any tone or whistling sound, steady rhythm or pulse, shaker or rattle will produce pronounced effects.

This fact leads me to guess that some aspect of your thesis will be provable and pan out should you design a good enough experiment. The difference between communal and solo experiences is to be expected as there is likely a type of group consciousness or telepathy that supersedes the basics of tone and rhythm. Still, it is likely that you will find correlations.

I've been working with subliminal messages, brainwave frequencies, harmonic tones and whatnot for a very long time. There is no doubt that certain frequencies are very resonant with aspects of consciousness.

I've been regularly using mind machines that use flashing lights, binaural beats, specific tones etc. to influence the brain to produce matching or harmonic brainwaves. Such things work. Of this there is no doubt. Flashing lights and tones together can influence brainwaves down or up to a marked degree. Especially if one is open to it and going with it. Pushed into the low thetas, nearly everyone begins to hallucinate without any drugs at all.

I never found that subliminal messages had that much of an effect though. If the message is inherently powerful and one your subconscious wants to adopt, it can be a friendly reminder. Mantras and the typical "breathe deep" stuff have some effect. I don't think that anyone who is not borderline personality syndrome or nearly schizophrenic can be programmed or hypnotized by such things though. This is evidenced by the fact that we all are not running out to buy Nikes and Coca Cola.

There are tones that seem disharmonic and less healthy than others, though. Not universally, but for our specific human bioelectric setup. But I haven't come across any evil tones. There are some fabulously uplifting ones and ones that can put one in a somewhat psychedelic altered states.

I do think that the frequencies used by people in electricity both in Europe and the US are not the best choices we could have made. It would be better for our health if the frequency of our environmental EMFs were resonant with our bodies' EMF.

Good luck with your concept and implementation. Keep us posted on any results.

Peace, bro.

The scientific method can be summed as follows.

Believe nothing. Allow for anything. Question everything.

If you adhere to those principals the rest of the scientific method will fall into place.

Peace

joedirt: Well said.

Hey, I think I would like to try a small experiment:

Subjects smoke a given quantity of spice, sub-breakthrough dose I think, then listen to a specific song. Upon their return, they write a description of their visual experience; and on a given day, subjects all post their findings at the same time. (to avoid cross-contamination of data through suggestion.)

Anybody game?

Well, I can report a small data point with respect to my postulation.

I was listening whilst smoking to a Nine Inch Nails song, "Non-Entity," not as an experiment, but because I really, really love that song.

Don't do that. It's dangerous. Heh heh, almost disappeared completely.

Further data: listening to The Mutants, an obscure but awesome 80's punk band from San Francisco, is probably also a bad idea while smoking spice.