How to build a trippy meditation chamber, from PopSci 1970 archives

"The Meditator," a personal isolation tank fashioned from 12 pentagons decorated with photo collages. "You may find the sensation akin to that mystical communion with nature that you experience when alone in a forest," according to Popular Science writer Ken Isaacs in November 1970. At popsci.com, they've republished a photo gallery with enough detail that serenity-seeking DIYers in 2012 can once again roll their own.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

MORE: 1970 • 1970s • meditation • popsci • scifi • seventies

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Samuel Slaton

Reminds me of Coverdale’s hermitage in Hawthorne’s “The Blithedale Romance,” except less leafy and tree-toppy.
Sparrow

Looks like something for old school D&D players to roll their own.
hyph3n

Wondering what the wife or girlfriend is thinking? My bet: “Get this the Hell out of the living room!”
lorq

“…or you may find the sensation akin to that of slowly slipping into madness.”
Nash Rambler

I know the first subject I’d meditate on. ”Why the hell did I build this thing?”
http://halfbakedmaker.org Robert Baruch

What they don’t say is you have to fill it with pot smoke to get the effect. And then the photos on the walls may not be necessary.
http://twitter.com/dailyrev Brian Donohue

Made my own about 25 yrs. back when I was first learning Rinzai Zen. Took the lazy man’s route though: framed it 8 X 8 X 8 with wood (so I wouldn’t have to cut the stock); wrapped the frame in this thick, dark purple felt with a velcro-edged opening. Then I loaded the inside with candles, incense burners, zabuton cushions. Slept a lot in there, very comfortable in winter. As for meditation, I’ve since found out that ordinary life provides a better setting than my old purple sanctum: http://taoofwalking.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/of-reflection/
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=665783091 Christopher Vena

looks familiar…
Nadreck

“My faces are many; my sides are not few.
I’m a dodecahedron …and what are you?”
- The Phantom Tollboth
http://www.facebook.com/people/James-Agenbroad/100002463876063 James Agenbroad

I prefer his micohut myself http://books.google.com/books?id=WZ6okH8FCs4C&pg=PA88&lpg=PA88&dq=%22popular+science%22+microhut&source=bl&ots=kgmenJDlib&sig=RTlL1FOc-v8dG1hsk77hSRCrce8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=EnJkULeXFNOP0QHKzIHADA&ved=0CDUQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=%22popular%20science%22%20microhut&f=false
http://www.facebook.com/Skibble.Sinead Sinead Dowding

;-; the link to the gallery is not working.this makes me a sad panda.
Robert Cruickshank

“Machine screws pass through predrilled panels into washer and wingnut.”

That’s no way to talk about your dad.
http://voidstar.com/ jbond

Retro-futurism. Try Roger and Martin Dean’s retreat pods. http://eohlsson.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/i-pod-you-pod-we-all-pod/
esquire

“Mitt, honey, it’s time to come out of the meditation chamber. You’ve been in there for 27 hours straight.”