Experience visionary states with ganzflicker
a luminous launchpad into liminal dreaming
To sit, with eyes closed, in front of a stroboscopic lamp is a very curious and fascinating experience.
Aldous Huxley. The Doors of Perception: And Heaven and Hell
Strobonaut is a stroboscopic ganzfeld (ganzflicker) app for android phones. When used in a smartphone Virtual Reality headset for meditation and music-listening reverie it has psychedelic effects promoting mental health and creativity by giving access to altered states of consciousness and vivid dream-like visual imagery released from the deep brain / unconscious.
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Read the Safety Information before downloading the app. You will be unable to open Strobonaut until you have read the Safety Information.
Click the icon below to download Strobonaut for android
Go to the Flicker Drive page for instructions on how to pilot the app.
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Smartphone VR Headset
- Basic smartphone VR headsets can be found for as little as £10–£20.
- These headsets are lightweight, easy to use, and widely available online and in stores.
- Any smartphone VR headset which fits your phone can be used for ganzflicker meditation with the Strobonaut app.
- If you want to use Eye Movement Desensitisation during Strobonaut trips, the Destek V5 headset has a touch button to switch between ganzflicker mode and eye movement mode.
If you use an iPhone, consider purchasing a refurbished Android phone online—these are available from around £40–£65, depending on the model and condition. Using two phones enhances a Strobonaut trip: Have your main phone by you for audio (music, guided meditation, hypnosis etc.) and keep the dedicated secondary phone in the headset.
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Stages Of Attentional Style
To cultivate ganzflicker visioning, you move from focused attention to immersive absorption through five stages, or five styles of attention:
1) Focused Attention;
2) Physical and Mental Relaxation;
3) Blank Gaze (unfocused attention);
4) Vision Acceptance;
5) Immersive Absorption.
What Is The Difference Between Focused Attention And Absorption?
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Multiple research studies have shown that the personality trait and attentional style of Absorption consistently predicts mystical-type experiences and a positive outcome in psychedelic therapy. Conversely it has also been shown that experience with psychedelics increases an individual’s ability to enter trance states characterized by Immersive Absorption.
A similar thing holds for Flickering Light Stimulation which has psychedelic effects. People with high Absorption ability enter altered states more readily with flicker stimulation and experience more flicker-induced visual imagery.
And similarly there is evidence showing that people high in Absorption ability tend to report more intense or elaborate visual imagery and altered-state phenomena in settings of perceptual deprivation, the best researched of which is the Ganzfeld procedure.
Since the 1930’s a consistent finding from research studies has been that the first stage of the ganzfeld experience is alpha-mediated suppression of external visual input and the experience instead of an inwardly generated ‘luminous mist’.
When ganzfeld is combined with stimulation by flickering light at alpha frequencies, as in the Strobonaut ganzflicker app, there is compensatory activation of the evolutionarily older retinotectal pathway to the superior colliculus of the midbrain, the deep brain of primal consciousness which we share with animals. This activation of the deep brain releases visions related to its basic Emotional Operating Networks and the associated feelings.
When cortical visual areas are further inhibited by alpha rebound following a period of eye closure, this flicker-driven subcortical excitation becomes further augmented, producing mystical-like perception of immersive, colourless, boundless very bright light. Immersive absorption in this inwardly generated bright light induces pronounced awe-related affect, ego dissolution, and beneficial therapeutic effects.
On the Brightening of Subjective Luminosity in Ganzflicker Meditation; A Dual Pathway Hypothesis
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Levels Of Ganzflicker-Induced Visioning
Ganzflicker visions fluctuate in their level of complexity, varying from elementary patterns and shapes to complex scenes and filmstrips. Regular practice of ganzflicker meditation leads to a natural hallucinatory progression of increasingly complex and condensed imagery.
Level 0: Blank Screen
Level I: Central Focus / Mandala
Level II: Patterns / Tunnel
Level III: Luminous Mist / Shadowy Shapes
Level IV: Scenes / Settings
Level V: Filmstrips
Level VI: Participatory / Waking Dream
Level VII: Mystic Bright Light
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For further information contact:
strobonautinfo@gmail.com
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strobonaut.com 