Research Program / Claims / esp-12
Through exercises involving moving around objects with the mind's eye and imagining walking, Rob experienced the operation of the inner senses and spontaneously had vivid visual apparitions.
罗通过心灵之眼环绕物体和想象行走的练习，体验了内在感官的运作，并自发出现清晰的视觉幻象。
Concept esp · Domain Extended Perception and Consciousness Transduction · experiment record · interface 3/3 · testability 3/3 · status untested · ★ fundable
This program treats the Seth Material as a source of hypotheses, not as doctrine to be validated. Lead dossiers are AI-compiled from the corpus with a book-and-session citation after every statement; literature reviews are AI web-search summaries whose references were all DOI-verified against Crossref; the agenda draft is an AI synthesis. None of it is Seth's original text, and none of it represents scientific consensus. English fields are machine-translated; the Chinese text is authoritative.
Seth sources (book §session)
Adjudicating experiment
Randomly assign approximately 180 participants to three forms of duration-matched instruction: “moving around objects and imagining walking,” ordinary visual imagery, and active relaxation. Provide 4 weeks of training and assess imagery vividness, source memory, reality monitoring, and objective spatial tasks before and after training and 1 month after completion. Also record images that arise spontaneously without prompting during each session. If participants claim to see actually occluded surfaces of objects, reveal randomly selected hidden patterns only after reports have been sealed and use blinded scoring. Project duration: approximately 9–12 months. Distinguish increased image clarity from increased accuracy regarding unknown information.
Suggested paper title
Guided Object-Centered Imagery, Spontaneous Visual Experiences, and Reality Monitoring: A Randomized Controlled Study
What it would overturn
Simply producing vivid visual imagery would not overturn mainstream assumptions. Only reliable identification of unknown, occluded information would challenge the assumption that imagery content derives from existing representations, inference, and available sensory input.
Candidate labs / funders
Nadine Dijkstra，University College London，Imagine Reality Lab; Stephen M. Fleming，现实监测与元认知研究; Chris A. Roe，英国北安普顿大学，异常体验研究
Specificity of Seth's formulation
The exercise procedures are relatively specific and reproducible; however, “the operation of the inner senses” provides no additional predictions that distinguish it from ordinary visual imagery, states of absorption, or reality-monitoring biases.
Note
The untested label applies to Rob's specific account and the proposed explanation of its mechanism. There is already support for the ability of people in general to form vivid imagery, but this cannot retrospectively validate this particular case, nor should a clinical diagnosis be made solely on the basis of the word “apparition.”
Evidence (1, DOI-verified via Crossref)
Cite: Future Mind Institute, Seth Material Research Agenda, claim esp-12, https://www.seth.org.cn/en/research/claims/esp-12