CHAPTER 04

Following Instructions and Going with the Flow

exposed to the repeating word stimulus, I found that certain people went through various kinds of trips. In one audience of two hundred people, we found that something like 10 to 12 per cent of the people tripped out and did not report anything about the alternates that they heard. When I was able to quiz two of these people about what had happened, they described trips very much like the ones I had found in the isolation tank. In addition, we found that we could program the alternates a person would hear by various means.

To see tbe programability of the alternates that were heard, the subject would listen to the repeating word for an hour and write down all of the alternates he heard md print them on cards.

Next the subject would hurn on the repeahng word and listen to it while looking at the cards one at a time. He relaxed and then, as he turned up a new card, he heard the altemate printed on that card. This experiment showed that visual input can program what is heard.

We also found that peripheral vision, that is, the vision which is off the main axis from where one is looking, could also program what was heard. We printed alternates with very large letters on cards and brought them into the peripheral vision of the subject while he was listening to the repeating word. He then reported out loud what he heard. The word that was being brought in from the periphery, m spite of the fact that he could not read it consciously, started programming what he heard. This was a "programming" gradient from the farthest reaches of peripheral vision at 90 degrees to the optic axis in toward the focal center on the optic axis. Just before the subject could read the word consciously, that is, where it was still far enough off the central axis so that he could not read it consciously,

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