How the U.S. Air Force Induced Out-Of-Body Experiences | Big Think
How the U.S. Air Force Induced Out-Of-Body Experiences
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The illegal status of psychedelic substances is a terrible thing, says Ben Goertzel. With everything happening behind closed doors, our societies are not developing the right set of cultural institutions to guide people in the productive use of psychedelics.Once scientists have mastered artificial general intelligence (AGI), the psychedelic experience could be engineered for the modern world – it would be safer, less haphazard, and more meaningful. We would “trip” by jacking our brains into the superhuman AGI mind cloud.”We’re going to be exploring states of consciousness that go way beyond anything we can imagine now and way beyond anything that the very crude psychedelic drugs that exist allow us access to,” Goertzel says.
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BEN GOERTZEL:
Ben Goertzel is CEO and chief scientist at SingularityNET, a project dedicated to creating benevolent decentralized artificial general intelligence. He is also chief scientist of financial prediction firm Aidyia Holdings and robotics firm Hanson Robotics; Chairman of AI software company Novamente LLC; Chairman of the Artificial General Intelligence Society and the OpenCog Foundation.His latest book is AGI Revolution: An Inside View of the Rise of Artificial General Intelligence.
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TRANSCRIPT:
BEN GOERTZEL: Psychedelic drugs, in my personal view, can be an amazing tool for gaining insight into one’s own mind, to other people’s minds, to the ecosystem and to the universe in general. So there’s a tremendous amount of insight that can be plumbed using these various substances. There’s also a lot of risk there, as with most valuable things. I mean, I’ve had friends and family members literally be pushed over the verge of insanity by excessive and poorly thought out use of psychedelics – it’s a great potential benefit and a great potential risk. And I think it’s generally a terrible thing that these substances are illegal in most modern governments because that means that we’re not developing the right set of cultural institutions to guide people in really productive use of these substances.
When I was a teenager and first used psychedelics it was like at a Pink Floyd concert or something, it was all good fun, it didn’t go awry, it certainly could have gone awry. I think these substances can give tremendous insight. I would say you can also get, even without a bad trip or some tragedy, you can get a lot of illusory insights using these things also. I mean, Terence McKenna, I loved reading his books. He had a lot of deep insights into how the mind works. I never really quite believed 2012 was the end of an era and the beginning of the dawn of the new age or something, so I think there’s something that can happen where symbolic insights or metaphorical insights that are very meaningful in a certain domain you can access with psychedelics then when you bring them back into this logical and empirical domain where we spend our everyday lives, you don’t want to take these metaphorical and symbolic insights that literally, necessarily. And many people can lose sight of that also so there’s a mix of amazing reward and insight, some dangers and then just the risk of things that are meaningful in some sense but illusory and delusional with respect to the empirical and illogical world.
I think AIs are going to have it a lot easier in a lot of ways. So psychedelic drugs are just very, very crude instruments. LSD is sort of a serotonin mimetic; it looks a little bit like some neurotransmitters. It makes weird patterns appear before your eyes and it can give you some real and some fake insights into how your mind works. DMT is a naturally occurring substance in the brain. If you put a bunch more into your body than naturally occurs, many very interesting things are happening in your brain at that time, it can be a challenge to tell which of them are real insights or sort of rampant neural circuits generating meaningless entertaining movies. And I think for an AI, things can just be much more carefully engineered and thought out because it’s not as though these drugs were designed by brilliant, insightful, enlightened scientists to direct the brain in the direction of maximum insight and creativity – you’re just sort of tweaking things almost in a quasi-random way, then it’s up to you to fish out the valuable things from the states of consciousness you get into. But with an AI that’s engineered, its psychedelic …
For the full transcript, check out https://bigthink.com/videos/psychedelic-drugs-artificial-intelligence-brain-interface
@CoreyF84
October 6, 2025 at 6:07 pm
The apparent “overlaps” between G-LOC episodes and NDEs are largely superficial once you look closely at timing and content. In both cases, people may report a tunnel effect or bright light, but in G-LOC this occurs as a brief, early hypoxia artifact—essentially a visual system shutdown—that ends abruptly as consciousness returns. In NDEs, that same entry stage often unfolds into extended, coherent experiences: the tunnel may open into expansive landscapes, the light may become an interactive being or realm, and the narrative can continue for what feels like minutes or longer. What pilots in centrifuge studies often describe as “out-of-body” turns out, on interview, to be a passing sensation of detachment or floating, not a sustained, veridical observation of the physical world from outside the body. Crucially, G-LOC reports almost never include hallmark NDE features such as life reviews, encounters with deceased individuals, or profound emotional transformation. In short, the overlap is mostly in the fleeting onset sensations, while the deeper, time-extended elements that define many NDEs simply aren’t present in the G-LOC data.
I'm actually surprised that smart, well intentioned people are still misinterpreting this data.
@frankiecrocker
October 6, 2025 at 6:07 pm
I don't understand why anyone would be on an operating table with their glasses on.
@meegz149
October 6, 2025 at 6:07 pm
My mom just died two days ago. I so want her to have a soul that can interact with me. I started crying during this. It hurts so much,
@ryancox5097
October 6, 2025 at 6:07 pm
I like big titties.
@JesaniNizar
October 6, 2025 at 6:07 pm
Our souls are essentially all of our mentation and sensation, we don’t realize that – every experience whether waking life, daydreaming, sleep, mystical, near death, hallucinations, etc are just us producing mental worlds – even right now we are doing just that and the only difference is that we agree to this image collectively…
@oscar9558
October 6, 2025 at 6:07 pm
When public would report OBE & NDE, the CIA & military would say "oh that's simply hallucinations…" And then they secretly got to work on it to find a way to weaponise it. They are total shit heads and hell is waiting for them.
@MelWilliford-du8qk
October 6, 2025 at 6:07 pm
Why are all of these people on my phone having out of body experiences 😂
@the40thstep
October 6, 2025 at 6:07 pm
Kotler is making it sound like NDEs and OBE are understood but there is no solid theory as to how it happens including the biology. Take for instance the case of Velma Thomas who was clinically brain-dead for 17 hours when she woke up and was fine. The odd thing is she never wanted to speak about her experience.
@purplerider2362
October 6, 2025 at 6:07 pm
When I was married I’m pretty sure this happened to me. It felt like a dream. But I can still remember every detail. I was in my kitchen. And I look at this little gargoyle statue we had on our kitchen table. It stated to throw up. And I could feel something evil. It felt like my chest was swollen or something. Like fizzy in my stomach and head. So I started to get scared. I ran to my bedroom and I could see myslef and my wife asleep. Only I was grabbing my chest while I’m sleeping. It almost looks like I’m trying to pull something out my chest. Just then I’m hit with something and I’m knocked to the floor. My wife gets up and starts to freak out. I’m screaming help me. But nothing is coming out. Next thing I know I wake up and my heart is racing like crazy. I wake my wife and tell her what just happened. She tells me I’m tripping and I’m ok. This has disturbed me very much. Keep in mind this was in about 2006. Other times I’ve seen huge spiders coming at me. As I’m awake. Then I jump up and it’s gone.
@JordanDave-ld9rh
October 6, 2025 at 6:07 pm
i don't think we can control this! OBE is nature's way to take care of youre soul when youre body is in danger,actualy youre spirit must leave youre body before the tragedy happens,so you don't experience the trauma of body pain..
@snooopledinkeroo
October 6, 2025 at 6:07 pm
Dude looks like a discounted version of George Clooney. Like someone left George Clooney in the freezer too long
@Adam-fl9uc
October 6, 2025 at 6:07 pm
It is the oxygen saturation in the body thing
@audreydugan9668
October 6, 2025 at 6:07 pm
👏👏👏 yay
@ashmeadali
October 6, 2025 at 6:07 pm
The moment anyone falls asleep, that person is "automatically" out-of-the- body. It is the most natural thing, no drugs needed. Remembering the experience is the tricky part. Spiritual leader of ECKANKAR, Harold Klemp, points out that a dream is mainly an incompletely remembered (and sometimes distorted) Soul Travel experience. He suggests starting a dream journal, to boost the recollection process. More information in his book "The Art of Spiritual Dreaming" and also his e-book "ECKANKAR- Key to Soul Travel".
@eelcj1
October 6, 2025 at 6:07 pm
The religious crowd would be so triggered
@mrsmarie1292
October 6, 2025 at 6:07 pm
I Astro project all the time since I was a kid
@melissasalasblair5273
October 6, 2025 at 6:07 pm
So interesting….. 🌌💭
@United_Wings
October 6, 2025 at 6:07 pm
😮
@ke11yke11z
October 6, 2025 at 6:07 pm
The creator is science and science is the creator.
Who says faith and science cannot work hand in hand… in a continuum
@yuiopoli9601
October 6, 2025 at 6:07 pm
You notice how they've ridiculed anyone and everyone who's ever talked about this but now they're acting like they discovered it and were never dismissive or refusing to research the subject matter.
Science so often steals what others have discovered and honed of knowledge for thousands of years, calls you crazy for thinking about it, and then completely hijacks it as if academia, medicine, etc were the only groups your should listen to about it.
Their dismissive hubristic attitude is disgusting!
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