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There has never been somebody who is blind who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia.
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When you're going through your training in school in the sciences, the idea that the brain is what creates consciousness, it's an assumption that is treated as though it's a hard fact. We cocreate our reality.
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One of the best ways for a placebo to have the highest amount of efficacy is for it to be a shot given by a person wearing a white coat that after their name says MD in a hospitalike environment.
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You can consider yourself to be post-materialist and have various different theories.
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You don't have to all agree on the same postmaterialist model.
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If you believe that quantum physics is key to understanding consciousness and brain function, you're already a postmaterialist.
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Hello everybody, it's Jim Onessy with yet another infinite loops. Today's guest is Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell.
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She has an incredible CV which includes studying biopysics and neuroscience on full scholarship at Ohio State University, publishing a paper while still an undergraduate at Ohio State on neurochemistry, getting her MD from John's Hopkins University School of Medicine, doing postdoc work there in medicine, neurology, psychiatry, training at the Institute of Psychiatry in London with a renowned expert on autism, Sir Michael Ruer.
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She joined the Harvard Medical School faculty teaching neurossychiatry and worked as the chief psychiatrist at Brockton Multi-ervice center er before moving on to study molecular biology at the University of California San Diego campus during the human genome project. Wow.
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And yet, most of us only know of her because of her involvement in the popular telepathy tapes program, which has caused raised eyebrows among traditional members of the scientific community.
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Today, we're going to discuss all of her work, not just the work on telepathy.
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And I hope you enjoy this episode.
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Please help me welcome Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell.
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So many of my listeners, viewers might be unfamiliar with autistic sants for example.
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Uh so what I'd really like you to do is take us through your journey.
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Uh because as we mentioned earlier, while you are featured prominently in the telepathy tapes, you've been doing research on various phenomenon for decades.
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And I'd really like to hear about that journey not just exclusively although we'll talk about that as well uh about uh the autistic sants and the research on uh ESP and other psychic abilities.
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So my interest in science really comes from the fact that my father was a a scientist with graduate degrees in three different branches of science.
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different branches of science. And so I grew up with this brilliant father who bought us science kits when I was you know even four years old playing with science kits and you know making you know crystal radios and you know soldering together electronic parts you
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know and um you know playing you know playing with uh chemistry you know chemistry kits and and what interested me the most though were was living systems and my my father was a physiologist and um they take me out in nature and I would get you know tadpoles and see them turn into frogs and that kind of thing. So I you know I was a bit
4:01
So I you know I was a bit of a tomboy and I will I I was gravitated towards science as my way of organizing information and making sense of the world and and I loved mathematics.
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That was another thing that you know that really um came easily to me and I enjoyed having the that way of um everything just working out.
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I mean there was sort of a beauty in that that you know when you when you when you're doing math and you and you solve a problem and then you can see how you can apply that mathematics to some system.
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It just for me it was just intuitively you know rewarding.
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And so what happened is is that I wanted to study behavior because I found that to be what was the most interesting.
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And when I discovered that there actually was a field where people were studying that when I discovered physiological psychology and saw that if you had certain brain lesions um in an animal or you removed a certain section of their brain that they would have a behavioral syndrome as a result.
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And I thought, "Oh, well, this is really interesting.
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I really want to I want to map out the brain, understand how, you know, how it relates to behavior."
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And so I put together my own curriculum as an under undergraduate in neuroscience because back then it wasn't even a major.
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And and I got jobs um doing research as an assistant in various laboratories.
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And I was working in um for example a laboratory where I was doing recordings making microelerodes and putting them into the axon of a crayfish and recording the action potential the the electrical you know activity that was going on and then seeing what happened
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if I altered the solution and put in some you know some known pharmaceutical for example that would have an effect on say calcium um channels And that was really, you know, interesting work to me, but I didn't really want to continue doing experiments on animals. I really um, you
6:12
I really um, you know, the thought of doing experiments on cats or, you know, anything like, you know, I could do it on crayfish, but I couldn't I really couldn't see myself doing it on, you know, on animals that I that I regarded as pets.
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And so, and I realized that what I was most interested in was human consciousness.
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And I had several professors say to me, "Well, Diane, you know, funding in science is really challenging anyway."
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And you you really have the the kind of um you know, you have the kind of grades and everything that you could get into medical school, you really should go into medical school instead.
6:48
And I thought, well, you know, that makes sense.
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I I I knew that there were neurosurgeons that were mapping the brain and doing so.
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brain and doing so. Um well you know the the patient would be con would be awake and the the brain itself doesn't have any pain receptors and so they were they were before exercising a piece of tissue from the brain they would be doing
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recordings stimulations and recordings to see you know what that area of the brain was involved in and and so I saw it as a way of kind of doing the research I was interested in while being able to help people and so when I initially metriculated at John's Hopkins Medical School. My plan was to become a
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My plan was to become a neurosurgeon.
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But what I discovered was that how neurosurgeons spent their time was relatively boring compared to what neurossychiatrists did.
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neurossychiatrists did. And I thought you know what, you know, I would be able to by going into neurossychiatry, I'd be able to really spend more of my time talking with the patient and finding and exploring their consciousness that you
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know what their reality is um through interviews and then I saw that brain brain imaging technologies were just starting to come on board and I thought that would be the approach and and I I just really love talking with people who whose reality was just so different from mine. I I just thought that was a
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I I just thought that was a wonderful thing to explore.
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And I was really interested in these sort of syndromes that had that were mysterious that really had no explanation for them at all.
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And when I met Oliver Saxs, who was a hero of mine, I I loved his work.
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And I I met him in 1986 and read his book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
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And in that book, he had this um he had this description of these twins who had been institutionalized who were autistic and they couldn't do basic things.
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I mean, they they they couldn't take care of themselves.
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They couldn't even do, you know, basic arithmetic.
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even do, you know, basic arithmetic. And yet at the same time they could generate prime numbers in six digits and they would as a game they'd back and forth say you know the the consecutive prime numbers to one another and there's no real good algorithm for prime numbers and Alder Saxs went and found a prime
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number table and came back with an 8digit prime number and said the prime and said that to them and they just you know within within like a minute or so they started giving eight digit prime numbers that were consecutive and then they did it with 12 digits and they even did it with 20 digits but the computers at the time in the 60s could only calculate it to 12 digits. And so here they were
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to 12 digits. And so here they were exceeding computer capacity at the time generating prime numbers only they said they weren't deriving them they just saw them just was a pure perceptual experience and I thought wow okay I
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really want to understand this and and so that's that's what got me interested in sants and that mean there are these case reports of sants throughout you know oh I'm going back you know hundreds of years actually where you you'll have a
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child who for example they never went to school and and suddenly they're able to solve complex mathematical problems or they might know a language they never studied or they might be able to play a musical instrument without ever having trained and I thought wow that is so
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similar to what people who say that they have psychic abilities that's so similar to you know it it's another example of somehow accessing information that like you don't think that this person should have access to that information. I mean they weren't
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I mean they weren't they weren't exposed to it.
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So how how could they know that?
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And so it made me really interested in you know what, you know, what is it that savant syndrome can tell us about the brain and consciousness?
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And I thought if I could figure out what was going on in their brains, then then that would be kind of like the Rosetta Stone for understanding um the brain and consciousness in general.
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That absolutely fascinating.
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And um tell us tell me a little bit about how neurossychiatry differs from like traditional uh schools of uh psychiatry.
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Uh obviously the ancient ones of Freud and Jung and then all cognitive behavioral therapy and all of the various schools that have emerged since then.
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Specifically neurossychiatry uses what type of methodology to help the patient?
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Well, so first of all, let me say that the chairman of my department of psychiatry at at John's Hopkins was a neurologist before he became a psychiatrist.
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So the way that he taught us psychiatry was actually from a neurologist perspective.
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And so what does that mean?
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Um well at the time that I trained in psychiatry most of the departments in the in the country were still um fairly psychoanalytic in their orientation.
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Whereas Paul McHugh was teaching us about these syndromes that he knew as a neurologist that most psychiatrists never even hear about.
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So to give you an example uh there's a syndrome called Charles Benet syndrome and Charles Benet syndrome is where you have somebody who is losing their eyesight and because they're losing their eyesight they actually start to hallucinate.
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and they hallucinate in a way that is really interesting.
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Uh I I had this patient who came in to see me who um she had been calling her landlord complaining on a on a daily basis because she saw all these people walking around in her apartment and she thought her landlord was subleting her apartment without her permission.
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And it was just that she was hallucinating people. Then she'd see Yeah.
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she'd see somebody sitting over there on her sofa and and it was as real to her as a person, you know, you had a a person that all of us would say, "Yes, there's somebody sitting on your sofa."
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And to her, there was definitely somebody sitting there.
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And the reason why that's important is that you you typically if you think somebody is hallucinating, you you put them on an antiscychotic and and the hallucination goes away.
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But if they have Charles Benet syndrome, their hallucinations are not a result of something, you know, um that would be corrected by putting them on a drug that blocks dopamine.
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their hallucinations are a result of their going blind.
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And so what you try to do is you try to see if there's any way in which you can improve their vision.
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Um so so that so that's what I mean by um neurossychiatry is that there are all of these quirky syndromes like that that give if you when you hear about them they give you a sense of how the how the the brain and and it sort of is our interface and and and gives you an idea of um yeah just how it all works.
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Whereas most psychiatrists are are look at that time were looking more at psychological explanations for things.
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And I mean you would have people that um like even you know would do you know psychotherapy for schizophrenia for example.
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You know people would be um institutionalized for a whole year for psychotherapy for schizophrenia.
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And so that was such an opposite way of of thinking about things than how a neurossychiatrist does.
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Um, and so that's and that was really what I was most interested in.
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And it it it seems to me uh there's a theory that I find interesting uh about uh schizophrenia uh where essentially they assert that it might be a form of filter failure.
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In other words, um if you I if like all of the perceptions that are hitting a neurotypical's sensory uh organs, we we we cancel out or negate out like 99. 9% of them, right?
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And and the brain attempts to build a co cohesive understandable view of what's out there.
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And that if that fails and you get all of the perceptions coming at you at once, you get all those people walking through your apartment that you think that your landlord is is uh subleting.
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But it also leads to this idea which seems to be the the the uh the flash point if you will between traditional uh scientists uh or traditional materialistic schools of thought and and what you think and others like uh in varying degrees uh like Rupert Sheldrake uh like uh professor Penrose etc that consciousness maybe doesn't exist within the brain, right?
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In other words, uh Nicola Tesla, very famous uh inventor who wrote an entire book about how he didn't come up with any of his ideas.
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He just gra, as he put it, grabbed them out of the ether or saw them in the ether, which would be very consistent with what you're saying about the uh the sants that are able to just like look up and and see the numbers. Am I correct in that?
17:33
Uh is that is that kind of the the main point of disagreement here that the traditional scientific view that most memories most of consciousness is stored materially in our brain right in in the neurology and neurosircuits of our brain and and then there are other theories that it is stored externally.
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Um, and the the the view seems to really cause quite a bit of heat and I don't know how much light.
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Maybe it maybe help me with that.
18:12
Well, there's several things I want to comment on.
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One is um something that I find really interesting is that there has never been somebody who is blind who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. And I did not know that.
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That's really interesting. Yeah.
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And so these are like so what I do as like a neurossychiatrist is I take these things like that.
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I take all of the these are all like data points for me that that I lay out there to try to understand, you know, oh that's a clue and that's a clue.
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And so the the what I've come to conclude is that we have two basic systems, two two basic um modes of operation uh you know by which you know we use the brain. Okay.
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And one mode is that we have we have these sensory organs, specialized sensory organs like the eyes and the ears um that that pro provide information.
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And you have parts of the brain that are dedicated to analyzing the information that that comes in the form of light or in the form of vibration for example.
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Um and that that information this that sensory information is the information that really is orienting us into sort of the here and now.
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Then we ha and that's what our during our waking consciousness that's what we're all consumed with.
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Then you have when we're in dreaming sleep you have you know the you have a lot of the brain is actually quieter.
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Okay, that you know the frontal loes are you know are less active.
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Um the left hemisphere less active and the right hemisphere are dominant which is the opposite of what it is when we're in our waking um time.
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And so in dreaming sleep though there's this reality that we're living in that doesn't operate by the same rules.
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we uh we can experience impossible things in that dreaming reality and um and we don't even question it.
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And it's be it's because that that that system that would question it it you know is shut down and and we're getting visual imagery in our dreams and yet our eyes are closed and the and so where is that visual imagery coming from?
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And the visual cortex, which is what processes our visual imagery when we're we've got our eyes open, is still very active.
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So, so it's playing a role in in processing information.
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But the idea is where is that information coming from?
21:19
And what I think happens with somebody who is what gets labeled schizophrenic is that those two modalities are bleeding into one another.
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Just like in a lucid dream, you can have a person be dreaming and then suddenly they realize, oh, this is a dream and and I can actually change how this dream goes.
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I can actually take control and and play around with reality within the dream world.
21:54
Well, so that's what a lucid dream is.
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And and what can happen in with somebody um who gets who doesn't have you know what you're calling the filters is that some of that dream reality can start to be um superimposed on our what we think of as the real reality.
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Another example of that well a good example of that is sleep paralysis.
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And so sleep paralysis is um an instance where you have this sort of um uh superimp imposition of the the dream reality onto your waking life.
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And and when when we are in dreaming sleep, we our body is paralyzed.
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Um and that's so that we don't act out our dreams. at.
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And so sometimes when we're in a dream, we, you know, we we unconsciously know we're paralyzed and that's why we're like we're trying to run away, but we we can't run away.
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Um, and you know, sometimes you can have somebody who wakes up, but their brain their their that system is a little bit out of phase and so their body is still paralyzed and maybe the only thing they can do is maybe blink their eyes.
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And, you know, it can last anywhere from, you know, less than a minute to last several minutes and then, you know, it eventually goes away.
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Um but during that period of sleep paralysis people often times hallucinate and you know typically the the hallucinations have a um it's called a little you know like little people you know form you know and and it kind of almost like little cartoons or whatever you know that that that's common way that it can express itself.
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So, so what I see is that with people who get labeled as being schizophrenic, it's it's that they have this this this blending together, but they're not not they're their bodies aren't paralyzed.
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They're, you know, they're walking and talking and and and everything else.
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So, when somebody's blind, they're they're not having uh they only have the they only have the reality that's not generated by the visual from their eyes.
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So, they're not getting two different realities.
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They're just getting one.
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The uh I've I I've actually had that experience once in my life with the the paralysis.
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Uh when you having a lucid dream, it really freaked me out.
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Uh and as you said, it totally dissipated after actually probably just a few minutes.
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Uh but I remember waking up and being kind of like, "Oh, I can't move. Did I have a stroke?
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did something go vastly wrong and then of course it it went away pretty quickly.
24:56
Um so with all of these anomalies and and what the uh telepathy tapes which is the very popular uh podcast on autistic sants and and their ability to communicate seemingly with uh random number generators etc. Why the the brewhaha?
25:18
Why the stru and what we were chatting earlier seems like almost religious fervor on the school of what what I call the citadel of science which is still ruled pretty much by the materialist worldview that everything is material and and that there is no out there out there uh in terms of things like communication etc.
25:49
Why is that hap wh why on this particular issue?
25:51
Well, they'll leave the quantum theorists alone to sort of like David Deutsch I love basically says hey if it doesn't uh violate the rules of physics it's true.
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Um now that's pretty bold statement but they kind of leave him alone over there.
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They leave well they didn't leave um Rupert Sheldrake alone but you get my point and and you made a very interesting observation that I'd like you to share again with our with our viewers and listeners.
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So well when it comes to physics um you know I mean when you look at Einsteinian physics and and quantum physics they they describe such a bizarre world that a lot of physicists themselves say that they don't really fully understand and um and yet you know there's this
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mathematics behind it that really um you know that people say well we know it's true because look the mathematics all leads us there and the vast majority of people don't really feel like they really have any expertise to even comment on that. And so so they don't
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And so so they don't and um and so there's this permission that physicists have to really think outside of the box and you know and a lot of their theories are just so um they're just so different from the reality that most of us ever you know interface with that it's sort of like it it's it's not infringing upon what we consider to be thing that we can even comment on.
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Whereas most people have their own theories of human behavior and and of of what is possible and you know most people there's sort of this uh amateur psychologist or sociologist and they they realize that people can be fooled that that they can be duped.
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And people really hate to feel like they've been made a fool of.
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they they would they would rather um if they've been lied to and they bought the lie, they would rather attack the person that tells them they bought the lie than then than than to discard the lie.
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And and and so the and the more often something is repeated to you and the earlier it starts being told to you, the more it becomes um just one of those, you know, truths that you can't attack.
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And so it's so when you're going through your training in in in school in the sciences and you you start talking about the brain, it's like the idea that the brain is what creates consciousness.
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It's just it's one of those such it's such a it's an assumption that is treated as though it's a hard fact and it's just like don't even go there.
28:45
I mean, you know, like really, you know, you know, that's kind of the reaction that you get, you know, it's just like it's like the whole field of neuroscience is built upon the premise that the brain is what creates consciousness.
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consciousness. That's that's that's the way and and so it's like how can you uh how can you undermine the very foundation of an entire field that everybody has built their you know their own com you know their own particular um research is all predicated on on you know this these basic fundamental um
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beliefs that as I said are treated like facts and so so I think that that's why it gets so vehemently attacked So the planted axiom of something that isn't true just being assumed to be true uh beds uh the efforts to go uh closer to the frontier of what actually might be happening. I kind of think of I
29:45
I kind of think of I understand the whole idea about people not wanting to be fooled.
29:50
Everyone knows the story of Clever Hans, the horse, uh, in the early 20th century in Germany, I believe, where its trainer was unconsciously, so not not intentionally doing uh, a signaling to the horse, but they later believed that it was his signaling when the horse would do math.
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uh and you know it would pound the its hoof and then he would do a subtle movement that the horse horses being very intuitive like if he was doing it with a mule it probably wouldn't have worked.
30:23
uh but horses being more intuitive.
30:26
So they see that and they're like, "Oh, that's just a trick."
30:28
like, "Oh, that's just a trick." I mentioned to you earlier I used to do uh I was a professional magician and I did a lot of psychic uh what we call effects um and actually stopped doing them because uh there was certain group of
30:44
people who were absolutely convinced that I was a psychic and I would literally sit with them and I would say no no no this is an effect and here's how it works and and they would sort of argue with me that no no no you don't understand, Jim, you really are a psychic. And so I I because I felt like
31:01
And so I I because I felt like I was misleading them.
31:04
Uh I actually stopped doing that.
31:07
Um and yet then you also look at things like Semlow Weiss who did the experiment with handwashing in Vienna.
31:17
Uh doctor male doctors at that time in history it was seen as unmanly to wash your hands.
31:23
And so Seml Weiss noted that all of the women giving birth that were attended by male physicians were dying at a much higher rate of child bed uh bed fever than those that were uh attended by a female midwife.
31:41
And so he listened to all the thesis why this might be true.
31:45
One was that it was because the priest was ringing the death bell and so they died by association.
31:53
And so some said, "Well, that's easy to test."
31:55
He had the priest stop ringing the bell and the women attended by the men continued to die at much higher rates.
32:03
But then he instituted a handwashing procedure and suddenly all of the women's death rates went right down or very close to those that were being attended by the females.
32:16
But the tragedy here was that Semowise was arrested for a political demonstration that he was uh taking part in.
32:24
Lost his position and his replacement even looking at the data, right, that showed male doctors start washing hands, mothers death rate declines precipitously, right?
32:37
And it was not just a small n equals 1.
32:40
It was a pretty big number.
32:43
basically said, "This is nonsense.
32:45
The why why should we be washing our hands?"
32:48
And they stopped and women went back to dying at the much higher rate for something like 70 years.
32:57
And so you're confronted with these sort of two conflicting problems, right?
33:02
where on the one hand people really don't want to be fooled but on the other hand you let social mores and things like the male attitude during semileis's era dictate actual people's lives are being lost because of social mores.
33:16
How does that affect this type of research?
33:22
Well, um, let me let me just say that one of the one of the reasons why you have scientists reject what is really obvious data, you know, which is what you're talking about, is that it doesn't fit their theoretical framework.
33:38
And so we needed germ theory.
33:42
theory. And once once we had germ theory and people could you know had microscopes and you could actually see that they're you know these you know organisms that you know that um we we can't see them with the naked eye but that you know we we you were still able to validate them you know with with an instrument um that aids the eye then it's like oh
34:04
okay suddenly it's like oh okay well yeah you wash your hands and you you know you have fewer germs you know and so okay that must be related And so how how this relates to my work is that I I mean I I first discovered that these children were um um being you know reported as being capable of reading minds um you know over a dozen years ago. And I I tested this girl, did extensive
34:34
And I I tested this girl, did extensive testing with this girl named Haley who was able to type into a an iPad like device on her tabletop, okay?
34:47
And just type directly into it.
34:50
And so when people see the experiments that are done with the letterboards that um Kai Kai Kai Dickens has included behind her payw wall and the telepathy tapes um and they say well you know this looks like clever Hans you know that with the letterboard.
35:10
How do we know that the letterboard's position isn't giving some kind of you know unconscious queuing?
35:18
Um what I say is that if that was the only way in which I had seen these reports um if that was the only circumstance under which people say mind readading is occurring then I'd say yeah well you have a point there we would need to really analyze this you know but maybe use AI to analyze the the board position
35:44
or something to see if there's any kind of pattern there which the pattern would have to be far more complicated than Hans in the first clever hanss in the first place because counting all you need to do is just inadvertently send a signal to stop counting when it's the right number of you know um strikes. Whereas with, you know, going from, you
36:04
Whereas with, you know, going from, you know, one letter to another or one, you know, number to another where the the person is just going beep beep beep beep beep like this and the letterboard isn't moving anywhere near um like that.
36:14
The letterboard isn't moving like this.
36:17
And so it, you know, it makes it less likely.
36:21
Um but I but I've seen these children I've seen them type independently into an iPad.
36:27
I've seen that some children are even able to write it.
36:32
Um it's just that not all of these parents and children want to be part of a documentary.
36:39
And and the other thing is is that for a lot of these parents and um and teachers that report this phenomena, they didn't discover it through the letterboard.
36:48
How they discovered it was something else.
36:51
They they might have had a thought about something and the child responded to that thought.
36:56
that thought. Like for example, this one father said that he was in the laundry room wondering what happened to his blue shirt and then his son came in with the with the blue shirt handed it to him and you know or you know examples like that or you know or a child who um was
37:16
uh you know basically after a parent comes home a child types onto their letterboard something like um well gee you know you you almost got in an accident, you know, you know, and asks them, you know, ask them about that and they're like, "Gee, how did you know I was kind of an accident?" And it's not
37:34
And it's not them trying to get the child to do a telepathy test.
37:37
It it it it just comes out where they're like, "Well, wait a minute.
37:42
Are you reading my mind?"
37:42
And then the kid goes, "Yeah, I'm reading your mind."
37:44
You know, and then and then they they start testing them and say, "Well, let me test."
37:48
And then they're like, "Oh my gosh."
37:49
And it didn't fit their worldview.
37:52
and and so they contact me because they are in shock and they go on the internet, they do a search, they see that someone with my credentials has actually been uh investigating these reports for a long time and they contact me.
38:10
And so, you know, to use AAM's razor, you you want the simplest theory to explain things.
38:15
And if you if what you're saying is the clever Hans thing, that is not the simplistic theory because it doesn't explain all these other cases and examples.
38:26
So, so on on that the there seems to be in in my research before uh uh having this discussion with you, it there seems to be a great deal of um nitpicking on the specific sort of like you said the letter board or a variety of things.
38:47
How could you design a uh a a method using the scientific method like that would that would be able to avoid those kinds of what what I would view as pretty easy criticisms.
39:04
Oh well, you know, it's because of the board or it's because of that.
39:09
How can you take like the anecdotal data of here's your blue shirt?
39:14
Like that's very powerful when you hear that.
39:16
But then how do you that's n equals one, right?
39:19
And and how do you do it in a more uh consistent manner that others can reproduce?
39:32
Well, so and and it's well, let me let me say first of all, I mean, what people want to see is separation between the individual who knows the answer and um the individual who's supposed to be typing it or um and so in many of these cases, the the child is so in, you know, they're so attached in a kind of a psychological emotional way to the person who they're dependent upon for practically everything.
40:06
You know that, you know, their their parent.
40:08
Um, and and you bring in strangers and they they they don't the last thing they want is to be in a separate room from this, you know, with all these cameras on them if it's for a documentary and and all of these people like, okay, you know, perform, you know, and then you're supposed to also take away the person that is their source of comfort.
40:29
um it that that just doesn't fly.
40:29
And and so um so what I'm doing is I'm uh looking for cases and I have some that um I'm working with in which you have more than one person who can be a communication partner with them.
40:47
And so but they have to have a bond with anybody who's a communication partner.
40:53
It it it's interesting and I it they they it needs someone if they're using the letter board, they need someone to be holding the letterboard.
41:03
They will not allow you to put the letterboard in a stand.
41:05
Um they they they they really want someone to be there holding it for them for whatever reason.
41:12
Um but um you could have one person who who is a communication partner with them doing that and another person that um knows the answer and and get the separation that way.
41:24
Um and then the other type of experiment that I'm doing since that these children report and and so do their parents and teachers report that they are able to read each other's minds that what I'm doing is I'm I'm separating them and they each have the person that they're really comfortable with as a communication partner um helping them to to to demonstrate you know what it is that they're communicating back and forth between them.
41:54
So, so, so I think that that's the way to do it is when we we have these individuals in which we can um uh allow them to have their their communication partner right there.
42:07
Doesn't matter if they're using a board or not, as long as the person holding the board isn't the one who knows the answer.
42:15
And why would this not be a universal thing?
42:19
thing? like why would neurotypical people be unable to do this well whereas you see the phenomenon much more profoundly and explicitly in what we're in so well I' I've given that a lot of thought you know I've thought about you know
42:38
what you know what is it that is a um because it's not just autistic individuals who have some of these experiences it's just that they're the ones that I think can demonstrate it to the extraordinary degree that people want to see. I mean people there's a lot
42:50
I mean people there's a lot of research that that um has been around for over a hundred years on on telepathy and um you know and it and it still hasn't changed the yeah change the paradigm and a lot of it is because it's statistically significant but it it but it's not as compelling as seeing you know just you know this kind of 97 to 100% accuracy that you that you see with these kids.
43:17
Um and so I started thinking though about you know what is it that's the common uh denominator common theme among all these people who have these you know abilities and it and it appears to be that they're able to experience their consciousness is outside of the embodied perspective.
43:40
And in other words, they are either able to have an outof body experience at will, which is what people call astral projection.
43:49
I mean, there there's various places that teach that.
43:53
Um, some of the people who were remote viewers for, you know, Stanford Research Institute like Engle Swan did astral projection.
44:03
Um you have people who were traumatized starting in early childhood 2 three years old and that's an age at which if you're severely traumatized you disassociate very easily as a way of escaping the pain and those people seem to have more of these abilities as well and I think it's because they they have the ability to disassociate their consciousness from that embodied experience.
44:29
um people who had a near-death experience or an outof body experience spontaneously because of using a disassociative like ketamine or nitrous oxide.
44:41
Um they also once they've had that it's like it breaks the psychological barrier that that makes you just think of yourself from the embodied perspective.
44:52
embodied perspective. and and these autistic children when I thought you know they can't their bodies are so problematic for them to control um you know on a you know sensory motor issue and and and a lot of them have proprioception issues and I thought you know I wonder if they spend a lot of time outside of their body and when I asked one of them that he lit up and he's just like someone finally get
45:21
that he was just you know he started talking you I started typing about it and then you know since then I've had several of them you know spontaneously say that and so so I I I really think that that's that's what it is is that
45:35
they um they never really bought into this idea that all we are is our you know the self is our body and that the only um the only way to access information is through our you know direct sensory means. And uh the other one that would add to
45:53
And uh the other one that would add to that list would be psychedelics probably.
45:57
Uh a lot of people have those types of experience while uh under psychedelic uh influence and and which also leads me to the question is like as you were talking uh about them and the and their bond with the caregiver I let me full disclosure here.
46:21
I'm a quantum uh uh science uh geek, but strictly layman.
46:25
I I I'm just an afficionado.
46:27
And I was thinking, well, maybe that's because they're quantumly entangled with the uh with the caregiver and you know that that is a whole different thing in the theory of physics, but it it could port over here, I think, uh with with people actually minds being quantumly entangled with one another, right? Oh, yeah. I mean, well, yeah.
46:49
I have a brother who's a theoretical physicist and and with expertise in AI and quantum physics and he he and I had this discussion just yesterday about how we're all entangled.
47:03
That's that's the nature of you know that you know that's what modern physics tells us is we're all entangled.
47:06
So really the question really becomes more of given that we're all entangled with one another, how is it that you can selectively choose the individual that you're that you know that individual out of this whole, you know, network?
47:26
How how do you pick that individual that you're and and access just that information?
47:36
Um and and so that that's really more the question.
47:38
So if you were going to present this as a um a hypothesis that you would ask other people to share or or experiment with.
47:51
Um, how how does how does this fit into the paradigm of the classic uh take no one's word for it, the classic scientific method or is some sort of um adjustment uh needed to have a b like I for example, wouldn't it be great if like there were a hundred people doing this research and everyone was contributing that way.
48:21
Is there an underlying protocol that could be widely shared um that would would add much more to the research or am I just being naive there?
48:36
Well, when you say a wide I mean I'm not sure, you know, I mean there's um Yeah, I'm I'm not sure what you you know there's what you mean by a widely used protocol.
48:46
I mean I think I Yeah, I'm not sure what you mean by that.
48:49
Uh, I guess I mean, is there a way is there any art to the investigation?
48:57
In other words, could you hand me a protocol and then me give it to a different uh PhD in in neuroscience and have him or her just using that particular pro protocol duplicate what you've been finding in others like you?
49:21
Um well one of the thing that let me say this one of the things that's fascinating about this research is that the individ there's something called the sheep goat effect within parasychology.
49:37
And what that describes is the fact that if somebody is a diehard skeptic that that walks into a room and just says, um, there's just this is impossible. Show me. I dare you.
49:54
You know, there's just no way.
49:54
Um, it seems to shut this this it their consciousness seems to actually impact the experiment.
50:02
I mean it it's there's this there's this issue of the observer effect and it can work for or against you.
50:11
Um and it's one of the biases within science.
50:14
It it it's that you you can have somebody that expects things to go well and they go well and then you have someone else comes in and they expect things to go poorly and they go poorly.
50:24
And and to me, you know, that that's a statement about consciousness itself, you know, and and belief and that, you know, that we uh that we sort of that somehow there's an interaction there, you know, and and when you think about um the work of John Wheeler, uh who is a physicist who talked about how, you know, the way to think about it is that we cocreate our reality.
50:52
And so you know that you know the act of measurement you know when you have like the double slit experiment where you have you know a photon or an electron that can either act as a wave and interfere with itself and go through both slits simultaneously or it can act like a particle when you are measuring it and forcing it to go through one or the other slit.
51:16
And so it's like if you're not observing it, it acts like a wave and and and just go goes through both.
51:23
And if you're observing it, it acts like a particle.
51:24
And so I think it's a similar sort of phenomenon that's occurring with the sheet goat effect where it's that if you have somebody who comes in there and they're just like there's no way this thing's going to happen.
51:38
that they're they're part of the measuring system and they're they're they're forcing it to go the way that they expect it.
51:47
So you have to have people who are engaged in the research who are open to the possibility.
51:53
They they don't have to believe in the pos they don't have to believe in it but they just have to be open to the possibility.
52:02
Are you aware of the work of Dr.
52:02
John Sarno on the mind body? No.
52:04
So he was a doctor here in New York um who was practicing rehabilitative medicine at NYU um and he was really uh um disturbed by the fact that he really wasn't helping his patients using the protocols of the era and I think this is in the 1950s and 1960s and so he got the idea that a lot of the physical problems that he was seeing the most common were back problems.
52:38
Uh what were were not the result of a physical disease or uh problem but were in fact the problem of suppressed emotions.
52:48
And he he called this tension meioetitis syndrome.
52:51
uh because he noticed in his experimentation that the area of the body the patient was complaining about when investigated seemed to have less oxygenation to it than a typical uh other part of the body that wasn't hurt.
53:12
But as part of his he was amazingly successful.
53:14
He's written several books about it.
53:16
Uh his cure rate was uh very difficult to argue with.
53:20
Um, I myself read his stuff and had some of those issues and just reading his books actually uh cured a a neck that was frozen and that literally I had gone the complete conventional route. They put me in traction.
53:37
They gave me the cortisone shot. They did all of that. No, none of that worked.
53:42
Reading his mind over back pain after seven times.
53:44
The first time I read it, I was like, "This is the biggest pile of horseshit I've ever seen."
53:50
and threw the book across the room uh and then decided well maybe I should give it another go.
53:55
So in other words I was open to the possibility but then Dr.
53:59
then Dr. Sarno himself said that one of the things that he found was by excluding people who were that that person who comes into the room and says I don't care what you show me I don't believe it he he would ex he would he
54:16
would use that as a filter you know u his initial uh diagnosis of the patients if they literally said to him there is no way possible that this could be in my mind he found the same as you were just uh commenting on those patients didn't
54:34
matter like literally he could have be of no assistance to them and so I kind of thought about that as as also adjacent at least to the placebo effect right um in in like I'm fascinated by placeos and it seems that one of the
54:54
best ways for a placebo to have the highest amount of efficacy is for it to be a shot given by a person wearing a white quote that after their name says MD and in a hospital-like environment or a clinical like environment. So I think
55:09
So I think that there's a tremendous amount of evidence that we are in fact cocreating things as we go along and and so I mean we discussed earlier the Penrose Hammeroff theory of orchestrated objective reduction which is microtubils in the brain uh are doing quantum processes consciousness is out here.
55:32
But the the next question I want to ask is like I talk to a lot of neuroscientists and I and I ask define consciousness for me and usually it's they laugh um before giving me their answer but almost all of them say ah you're bringing up the hard problem.
55:55
So it seems to me that we don't right now even have a generally accepted working hypothesis of consciousness.
56:04
Am am I correct in that assessment?
56:06
Uh we don't we don't have a consensus of it.
56:09
I mean people use the word to refer to different things.
56:11
word to refer to different things. um the the hard problem of consciousness is really described as um you know that that that we don't understand how the brain creates consciousness and and and what I argue is that well if you drop the
56:31
assumption that the brain creates consciousness then the hard problem goes away and you know it's like why why create a problem for yourself especially a hard So, so what what what you're at least I'm inferring it's that the it's it's a bit like astronomy uh during the times of Tammy. It was useful, right? Like it It was useful, right?
56:54
Like it was completely wrong.
56:57
Tomy's theory was completely wrong but was very useful in helping navigate etc.
57:02
And then they kept drawing these ellipses around to correct for the problem until Capernacus and others came along and said, "Hey, I could solve your problem really easily.
57:14
Let's just move the Earth here and the sun here and all of the ellipses and everything disappear." Exactly.
57:22
And that's what happened to me when I inverted the question and I said, well, what if the if consciousness is primary and fundamental and not derivative of the brain?
57:34
Um, and what if the brain is just our navigational tool for consciousness?
57:44
And uh that's that's actually been a uh if you if you are a history uh buff like myself, that's not been a terribly controversial point of view.
57:55
If you look at the history of thought uh like Greeks for example had been speculating about that well in the you know thousands of years ago.
58:05
What is it about our view of the scientific method today?
58:09
Because the way I look at the world is the truth ought to be predictive, right?
58:15
In in other words, look for look for uh use.
58:22
Don't don't get hung up on your theory or your structure of doing, you know, like if it doesn't do follow this particular path, then we're just going to reject it, right?
58:34
Is there who who right now what other people, researchers, etc.
58:37
are doing sort of cutting edge work on this that is similar to your own?
58:46
Um well I mean there there are quite a few there are quite a few doc you know doctors scientists who've come to the same conclusion that I have that you know there there's a growing movement of people that are postmaterialists and so um so for example I mean there's this scientific academy now that I was um one of the people that helped to found it at titled the you know the Academy for the Advancement of Postmaterialist Sciences.
59:18
And you can consider yourself to be post-materialist and have various different theories.
59:25
You you don't have to all agree on the same post-materialist model.
59:28
I mean, if you if you believe that um that quantum physics is um is key to understanding uh consciousness and brain function, you're already a post-materialist. Okay.
59:46
So, that's that's like the entry level.
59:52
And and so and then and then once you once you enter into that then then you then you start to find that oh you know then you start exploring because that's that's how I was originally approaching the whole savant thing.
1:00:03
I was thinking okay it's it's obvious that these savants what they're doing is in solving some of these um you know like prime numbers or generation or whatever it is they're solving that it's as though they're considering all possible answers at once and then just collapsing it down to one.
1:00:27
kind of like how an advanced quantum computer would where you where you you know as opposed to a a digital computer.
1:00:35
And so that's how I was originally thinking about it.
1:00:37
Um but then but then I started looking at things like um telepathy and you you you can't explain it by you know just looking at you know quantum physics is applied to the brain.
1:00:54
I mean it it it's harder to model it that way.
1:00:56
And so it was when I started really thinking about consciousness as is primary and fundamental and that the brain as I said is a navigational tool.
1:01:09
And so and what do I mean by it's a navigational tool?
1:01:11
Let's just break it down into some of the you know things that we know about brain function.
1:01:16
So, and these are things, you know, some of this I talk about in my book, the ESP Enigma, um, which really, you know, it provides, um, it it provides, you know, sort of a a user friendly description of things like quantum physics and string theory and and chaos theory and whatnot.
1:01:34
that that really um is using what is accepted scientific theory but saying okay let's apply this to really thinking about about consciousness.
1:01:47
Um so if if we look at the brain um one of the oldest um areas of the brain um is the the hippocampus and the the hippocampus is our it contains our GPS system. Okay.
1:02:07
you you have cells in there that that um start to, you know, that respond to um our location in space, you know, our location in place.
1:02:21
Um but they also have a grid of um of our environment.
1:02:24
And so like so big cats will that those th those those grid cells will start that that they'll start being activated if there's an animal within their territory.
1:02:39
So it's so they they have they have a sense of their territory that's mapped out in in their hippocamp you know the campus plays a role in that mapping and then when in in this you know what you think of as the external reality when there's an animal in that they get a signal. Okay.
1:02:57
Um and and then there's also these cells that um take into account what your head position is as well.
1:03:03
So these so these are so so these are so these are um so this is the internal GPS.
1:03:11
Well, there's also another function of the hippocampus and that is for mapping out memory, you know, which is, you know, so you know, we also have a a temporal map for our life, you know, that that the hippocampus plays a huge role in.
1:03:28
So, and then I think of the frontal loes um as being more like our um our steering mechanism, you know, that you know that where we um where we put our focus, where we put our attention.
1:03:46
And so so if you if you think about so if you think about the brain that way as that we have this you know spaceime that we're trying to navigate okay and and and and some of these abilities that we call sigh that are really just about navigating spaceime that's non-local.
1:04:14
um you know I think I think it involves these systems and one of the things that um one of the things that meditation you know people talk about oh meditation as a tool for um developing your side abilities.
1:04:31
Well when we when you're doing meditation it's not just about quieting your mind although that plays a role because you're because a lot of our thoughts are just noise.
1:04:39
it it's just us playing a a recurrent tape of of useless nonsense.
1:04:46
And if you can quiet that down and then the second component of meditation is focus and and really have more and more and more of a laser focus.
1:04:59
Then you can then then you can hone in on that which you're wanting to connect with.
1:05:05
And so that and that's what when when I was saying earlier about how we're all entangled, we're all we're all entangled with one another.
1:05:14
And I mean, you know, we're in this sea of entanglement.
1:05:18
The question is, what is different about those individuals who seem to be able to navigate that sea of entanglement and zone in right there?
1:05:28
You know, the the remote viewers who could use geoysical coordinates and go, "Oh, boom.
1:05:32
Okay, I see what's, you know, I see that secret, you know, Soviet, you know, um, facility or I I see that downed plane, you know, in the jungle and I can tell you exactly where it is.
1:05:44
You know, they're they're using that laser focus ability to navigate spaceime to get through all.
1:05:54
So it's using entanglement but it you also need the ability to navigate that entangled universe and that is what fascinates me.
1:06:03
Um again look look for use not meaning as much.
1:06:07
What other ways exist right now for for people to who are interested and open to this like are there are there methods you mentioned meditation uh I think I love sensory deprivation tanks lily tanks they're pretty amazing uh because I I have tried and tried and tried traditional meditation and not as great at it as I could be but lily tanks they're they're they're pretty cool.
1:06:36
Are there other methods that people could improve these types of uh abilities?
1:06:44
Um well I you know I I I think that um training you know just just I think I think so much of it is training and developing your focus you know and there's different types of meditation some people do kundalini yoga you know and and they de develop these abilities through that um uh so um yeah I you know I don't I don't I wouldn't say that there's um a single route there.
1:07:15
Uh I I think that people have to play around with it.
1:07:18
Um the first thing is for people to believe it's possible that this and then the second thing is to learn how to shift your your your awareness to gain mastery over where you put your awareness.
1:07:39
put your awareness. And so you know there a lot of um uh there are a lot of techniques in which people learn you know it's like when you go in for like a relaxation course sometimes that are like well you know focus on you know
1:07:53
focus on your toes focus on you know focus on different parts of your body and what you're doing is you're shifting your awareness to different parts of your body and then and then you want to start shifting your awareness to some space just slightly outside of your body. And um so it's it's it's a
1:08:07
And um so it's it's it's a trainable exercise.
1:08:12
I mean it's something I'm thinking about teaching a course on it.
1:08:15
Um you know on how to develop the you know these abilities because I I think that they're innate in all of us just to you know we we and people have just developed them to different degrees.
1:08:27
That's the part that makes me so interested in it.
1:08:29
And um like if if we could train some of these abilities now that would obviously be pretty impactful for for a variety of things which is why no doubt uh the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union during that period when it was the USSR and communist uh did decades of research on uh these type of abilities.
1:08:58
And and as I was doing my my homework for my chat with you, uh I I'd forgotten about this, but um Hensburgger, the EEG, uh in 1924, he was like called every name in the book by the then prevailing authorities uh on on the idea.
1:09:16
And uh they they said it was impossible, that uh it was absolutely crazy.
1:09:24
And then like 20 30 years it's kind of like the germ theory informed with semlice right other theories came on the line that were like no you know Hans is actually absolutely right and now of course an EEG is part of any annual at least my annual physical um is is something like that needed here or what do you think? Well, I mean, yeah.
1:09:54
So, the you know, the the the story behind the EEG development is really interesting because Hunsburgger had this telepathic experience with um you know, I believe it was his sister and that's why he developed the EEG because he thought that a way of um sort of proving that and that might be part of why he got so much flack.
1:10:15
Um but you know cuz to this day the EEG is better correlated with um you know levels of consciousness or states of consciousness and you know any other tool we have.
1:10:26
Um and I'm going to be using uh quantified uh EEGs in my research moving forward.
1:10:36
Um and because I because I think that um they can be a powerful tool.
1:10:42
But, you know, the way that I'm going to use them is doing simultaneous recordings of of both the members of the telepathic pair to really see how what's what's going on between the two of them as as opposed to um just putting it on the child and and and looking at their brain pattern.
1:11:02
Now, you've also done work with twins.
1:11:05
Tell us a little bit about that.
1:11:07
And do fraternal twins differ materially from identical twins? Um yeah. Yeah.
1:11:17
The identical twins um are um I mean they have the same exact genetics.
1:11:25
Um you know whereas fraternal twins have nothing more in common than just a brother and that you know two brothers or two sis you know two sisters or a brother and a sister.
1:11:36
you know, there's there's um so they only they only share um percentage of their genetics.
1:11:43
Um and the identical twins seem to have more in common with one another um depending upon at at what point they were separated from one another.
1:11:58
So during during embryological development um if you if they haven't separated um by um a certain day I I I forget which day it is it might be day 10 or whatever but within it within a pretty early on then they become Siamese twins and they're conjoined.
1:12:21
Um and so it's like if you if you the later on in that process before uh you would become conjoined that you have that separation it seems like the more they have in common with one another.
1:12:35
And the twins that I find the most fascinating are the identical twins who are raised apart. Yeah.
1:12:43
I I was fascinated uh when I was a young uh guy.
1:12:45
I grew up in Minnesota and there was a a popular uh researcher there who did some amazing work on uh identical twins separated at birth.
1:12:57
Um and finding that like that right down to their favorite uh beverage uh their favorite brand of tobacco that was back when everybody smoked.
1:13:07
uh they they even though they had been separated physically uh they had many of the exact same manurisms, likes, dislikes, etc.
1:13:16
Um you mentioned that you're going to be using um a a new technique.
1:13:25
What's what's what's uh the future for you and your research?
1:13:29
what what are you working on now that is different than either in methodology or in what you're trying to discover or uncover uh than your past work?
1:13:40
Well, as I mentioned, I'm doing the QEGs and I'm doing that in um collaboration with some scientists from the University of Arizona um as part of it and and combining that with some questionnaires to really try to um understand the phenomenon itself.
1:13:56
Uh so what I mean by that is for example if the person who's sending the sending the stimulus you know over to the other one if they're doing it by saying silently to themselves whatever the number or the the the word is.
1:14:20
Um, is the child receiving it as something that they hear or are they seeing it?
1:14:30
Um, or you know, or is it that they just know it?
1:14:33
You know, what what what what is their experience?
1:14:34
Um can you know can the um you know for example another thing would be um you know does it make a difference if they um just say the you know say silently say the word to themselves or do they have to spell out each in their mind spell out each letter as they're trying to transmit it to the child.
1:14:58
So, so just really trying to break it down into, you know, exactly what is what's happening there from their experience and then what shows up on the EEGs as happening.
1:15:11
And because so many of these a high percentage, if not all of them have synthesia, it it it you you can't assume that it if it's being transmitted verbally from one end that it's being received verbally from the other.
1:15:28
I mean, so many of these children have these crosses in their senses.
1:15:30
You know, I was talking with um this child the other day who um hear sounds associated with color.
1:15:41
So, so it's more common to have synthesia where you hear a sound and then see a color associated with that sound.
1:15:49
But this is seeing the color and then hearing a sound associated with it.
1:15:58
and and you you I mean you have over a hundred different types of synesthesia.
1:16:02
So I'm really wanting to explore the different types that these children have and to see how how that plays a role in some of their extraordinary abilities.
1:16:10
I mean we know for example from Daniel Tamut who is a famous autistic soant who can recite pi to um over 25,000 digits effortlessly because he just sees the answers as this sort of ticker tape parade of different um colored shapes because he has a different colored shape associated with each number.
1:16:37
um his his extraordinary memory is is definitely tied in with his senesthesia.
1:16:44
And so I'm I'm interested in and understanding to what degree does senesthesia play a role in the in these children's abilities. Fascinating.
1:16:53
I I know several people with uh synthesia and it is kind of wild when you are interacting with them in terms of what they're seeing and hearing and uh I I find it absolutely fascinating what I I'm I'm also really just I keeping I'm keeping it in my mind your your comment about the theory preventing them seeing it because the theory won't accommodate it.
1:17:17
I'm I'm really fascinated by that idea.
1:17:23
um what other aspects of post-materialism uh would would make up that theory?
1:17:27
Just I'm just asking you to speculate.
1:17:30
Uh because I do find I I'm really taken with that idea that if your theory is is you're adhering to a theory that negates something over here and says, "No, X, Y, and Z are impossible.
1:17:45
Therefore, we're not going to even look at them."
1:17:48
You got to improve the theory, right?
1:17:50
Um, and so what other things would you associate with a with a post-materialist uh maybe new paradigm for scientific inquiry?
1:18:03
Um, well, you know, I think that um I mean there's various there's various theories that fall into that post-materialist camp, you know, and so one of them is this idea that consciousness is primary.
1:18:15
consciousness is primary. And you have a number of people who uh think about consciousness that are what are called um idealists you know or you know kind of like Plato's you know Plato's uh forms and and they really believe that
1:18:33
everything is everything is consciousness everything is mind and and and so you know that you know that is you know sort of the other extreme for materialism and and and I think that there's, you know, there's some evidence for that view that that that everything is consciousness. Um,
1:18:50
Um, it's it's uh it's interesting to sort of do thought experiments with that in mind.
1:19:00
Um yeah, we were we were talking about lucid dreaming earlier where once you realize that you are in a dream and you you can start to play around with what happens next.
1:19:17
Well, what if what we think of as reality is just another type of dream and we can manipulate reality.
1:19:30
And so, one of the ways that I play this game is I'll play solitire.
1:19:40
And when I'm playing solitire, I'll see the cards laid out in front of me and I'll think, okay, if I what is there a single card that if I drew that card next that I would be able to, you know, uh uncover a lot of different cards because if I if I just got that card, then I'd be able to take this card and I'd be able to, you know, if you get the idea,
1:20:07
you know, that that, you know, Um, and so I'll do that and it's it's it's pretty it's pretty uncanny how often if I can think of a card that would accomplish that, that card shows up and and and so it's so I'm I'm not doing anything that defies the laws of probability from the standpoint of um you know, I'm not pulling an extra eight, you know, after I already have four eights out there. I'm not pulling a, you know, a fifth one
1:20:40
I'm not pulling a, you know, a fifth one out, you know.
1:20:42
I'm not I'm not defying any kind of laws by which we understand it.
1:20:46
But I am doing something that is beyond the the you know what you would think is just pure chance.
1:20:57
And and and so then it makes me think about you know you know is there an influence there that you know that we that we can have an influence within you within this realm of possibilities and and and it's a it's a fun thing to play with.
1:21:14
But to me it goes along with this idea that um that even what we think of as reality itself you know is um is an illusion and and and then it's it's an illusion um of the mind.
1:21:32
What fascinates me is uh Schrodener wrote uh the book what is life and is famous for saying that uh when the final analysis is done the number of minds in the universe is one um and of course he of very famous cat fame Schroinger's cat was a thought experiment where the cat was in a superp position state before the observer opened the box uh making the cat both dead alive.
1:22:03
And if you think about that uh for too long, it uh can be uh it can either uh get you really speculating or you can it can get you in the I'm going to put that in the too hard problem.
1:22:19
But I also I I think uh maybe one of the things that I I find fascinating that I've learned from you is I've always been fascinated by quantum um uh physics and and mechanics.
1:22:31
And it it is almost eerie that I'm also really fascinated by the Dao de Jing um and uh by Eastern philosophy because they seem to be merging uh in terms of what the quantum folks I mean right now the quantum folks are are doing the mind bottling mindbogling tests of retrocausality uh which we don't have time to really get into but essentially it means that doing something in the future can actually erase quantum information from the past.
1:23:07
And the problem is the experiments are actually proving that to be correct.
1:23:12
Um, and trying to get your mind around around that is at least for me uh pretty pretty crazy.
1:23:18
Are you I'm sure you're familiar with with those uh that research.
1:23:25
What do you think about retrocausation or um um I I think that our sense of time I agree with Einstein that our sense of time is an illusion.
1:23:39
I agree and I also really I I think of us I like the idea of us living in a block universe in which there's you know the spaceime and we're navigating spaceime but it's not a static block universe.
1:23:52
It's dynamic a and and and and so when you have a dynamic system like that then you can have things like retrocausation.
1:24:00
You know it it's it's it's and and this is what this goes along with the idea that the universe is evolving.
1:24:11
it it it you you can't have a static block universe and um and then still think that evolution occurs and and so so to me I I think that um as hard as it can be to wrap our to wrap it around you know our our minds around some of these concepts um you know there's there's there's good there's good theoretical basis for it And um and I think that it's actually good exercises for us to do.
1:24:44
I mean some of these traditions like in the you know the Japanese would give you these cones that are sort of nonsensical but the act of meditating on some of these the these things that are so impossible to to meditate on actually can help to liberate us from this very rigid linear way that we tend to approach.
1:25:15
um information and and and gives us a more uh um an an expanded view of it.
1:25:22
And I think that's one of the reasons why, you know, those those things exist in the first place is that that, you know, it's trying to expand us so that we can actually imagine something.
1:25:31
And once you are able to imagine it, then you're you're you're you're you're that you're a step closer to realizing it.
1:25:43
That that that the trick is can you imagine it?
1:25:46
And it seems like once we're able to imagine something uh somebody will they'll find a way of manifesting it. Yeah.
1:25:53
That was a famous quote from Picasso that if you could imagine it you could make it real.
1:26:00
And that the first step in making it real was the ability to imagine it.
1:26:03
This has been an absolutely fascinating conversation for me.
1:26:08
I am uh I am just uh it it sometimes I when I go deep on this stuff, it's just like I my wife can always tell she's been like when she sees me at the end of the day, she's like, "You've been really going down a bunch of rabbit holes, haven't you?"
1:26:26
Because it does it's very difficult to like understand that we are all conditioned.
1:26:32
We are all socially conditioned vastly more than we are even aware.
1:26:37
and that you you you when you feel uncomfortable, it's that conditioning pushing back.
1:26:43
I think at least that's a little theory of mine and and that you've got to continually press against it if you want to learn anything new.
1:26:52
Uh because I I I think I agree with you in terms of the world is not as commonly perceived.
1:27:00
uh I'm not smart enough to be able to to figure out uh the way it really is, but at least I I do understand the the idea of consensus reality and social conditioning and uh and and all of that and all the implications for it.
1:27:16
And I really love your phrasing it as if you can't if you don't have a theory for it, you will literally be blind to it until you have that theory.
1:27:26
And and I like the reference to the microscopic world.
1:27:28
uh we weren't tuned into the microscopic world because we had no theory of it because we couldn't look into it.
1:27:34
We couldn't see until the microscope came along and then suddenly we got allowed to tune in and germ theory and all of that and and proceeded to pace.
1:27:46
Um what's next for you in terms of a project?
1:27:49
I know the one you've already described to me, but are you planning a book?
1:27:52
Are you planning classes? What's next?
1:27:56
Yeah, I so I am I am working on I am working on a book that is going to um talk about um how uh it the title of it the working title of it right now is misunderstood and it's about um a lot of misunderstandings you know one one misunderstanding is just how I was misunderstood you know as a scientist trying to you know explore these um sort of taboo areas uh Another is how these autistic children have been misunderstood.
1:28:29
Um and then another section of it is about how a lot of science has been misunderstood.
1:28:36
How we think the brain works I believe is you know full of misunderstandings.
1:28:41
Um and then talking about how we misunderstand ourselves and and put unnecessary limits on us.
1:28:50
Um so that's that's one of the things I'm working on.
1:28:53
um and um working on the documentary with Kai about my research and uh this research as I mentioned with the QEGs um I'm also posting on X and my handle there is Dr. Hennessy hennn a c y. Um it's 41125.
1:29:16
And um and if people want a copy of my book, I uh I'm the only one who has physical copies of it.
1:29:21
So they can reach me through my website and um and and learn some of the scientific foundation for why uh I you know even think this stuff might be possible.
1:29:35
Well, I think it is absolutely fascinating and thank you for uh giving us so much time to discuss it.
1:29:40
At the end at the end of this podcast, we we always ask all of our guests the same thing. Well, we don't ask you.
1:29:46
We actually are going to make you the empress of the world.
1:29:49
uh you can't kill anyone and you can't put anyone in a re-education camp.
1:29:54
But what we are going to do is hand you a magical microphone and you can say two things into it that is going to incept the entire population of the earth, the sensient population and like maybe that's more than humans, but you're you're going to uh uh incept them.
1:30:14
They're going to wake up whenever their morning is the next day and they're going to say, you know, unlike all the other times when I woke up with a great idea and never acted on it, I'm actually going to act on these two things starting today.
1:30:26
What what are you going to accept in the world's population?
1:30:33
Well, what what would I tell them to start doing um right away?
1:30:38
Um, you know, I I think the biggest message is for people to develop a relationship with themselves that is that's a deep connection and a belief in themselves that can really help them to access their their full potential.
1:31:06
and and and a lot of it is about really taking a look at what your conditioning has been. Okay?
1:31:17
and and and and treating that conditioning, you know, like those little voices that say these limiting things to us, oh, you can't do that or and and take that conditioning and treat it like it is the chrysalis that you are going to break out of and become the butterfly and test out your new wings. beautiful inception.
1:31:50
Uh I I love Bucky Fuller's remark that there is nothing about a caterpillar that suggests a butterfly.
1:31:58
Um and we often sometimes limit ourselves and our thinking about ourselves to I'm just a caterpillar and I'm always going to be a caterpillar.
1:32:09
So I I I love those inceptions.
1:32:12
Thank you so much for your time and thank you so much for being on Infinite Loops. Thank you.
1:32:16
Yeah, it's been a pleasure.