She left her body and she's under
anesthesia. Her eyes are taped shut to
protect her corneas and she can see into
the room. Okay, that should be
impossible. She sees the blood dripping
down from the IV containers into her
body. Her blood pressure is plummeting
fast. Then suddenly she feels in the
center of her chest an emptiness and she
realizes her heart has stopped. Then she
sees the man hitting this large red
button on the wall to call the
resuscitation team. And she hears all
the monitors going off. At that point,
she says, "I realize I'm dying." And she
feels herself leaving her body. She says
she's going to the back boundaries of
her awareness and does this graceful
backward arc into the unknown because
she's out. Goes through this incredible
barrier into this sparkling black light.
Suddenly, she is feeling totally
ecstatic. Everything is fine. And she
hears this amazing voice that is like
full of intelligence and love.
>> You must live.
>> And she suddenly feels herself spiraling
back down into the hospital room. She
then becomes unconscious and wakes up
again in the recovery room. She has a
trachea tube in so she can't speak. She
lifts up her hand so they won't speak
and ask for something to write on. They
give her a napkin and she says, "I know
I have a baby girl. I know my heart
stopped. I know my uterus is out because
they had to do a hysterctomy because she
wanted them to know before they said
anything that she knew everything. And
she said from that moment when she came
to in the recovery room, she knew
consciousness was fundamental. She knew
she was not the product of the neurons
in her brain in terms of her own
awareness.
>> Marjgerie Wulos spent 30 years as a hard
materialist neuroscientist. She co-wrote
the standard textbook on motor control,
the one used to train physiootherapists
worldwide. Then at a meditation retreat
aged 30, something happened that her own
textbook said was impossible. She hid it
from her colleagues for over 25 years
until she finally concluded that the
brain does not produce consciousness. It
simply filters it. Since then, she's
gone on to become a worldleading
authority on near-death experiences,
terminal lucidity, and something I'm
personally very skeptical on, telepathy.
Subscribe to the channel to find out
conclusively if tardigrades have
near-death experiences. I'm a
neuroscientist. That's impossible
according to my neurositis theories.
Then how is it happening? Do you want me
to just say that everybody that sees
that is must be, you know, having
hallucinations? I don't think so.
Marjorie, you have a really fascinating
story and academic path, but for the
listener who might not be familiar,
what's the most important context for
them to understand you? Where does your
story really begin?
Well, you know, I should say my story
really begins when I was like maybe
about four years old. And I was talking
to my sister out in the garden of our
little 1acre farm that my parents had.
And I said to her, "If there is a God
that exists, we should dedicate our life
to that God." Now, at four years of age,
I'm surprised at that, but that's what I
said to her. And then my life sort of
unfolded from there. And I should say
that in the 11th grade I had the most
amazing English literature teacher named
Dr. um James O'Neal and he told us about
Plato's allegory of the cave. And if a
listener doesn't know about it, I highly
recommend reading about Plato's allegory
of the cave because it's a situation
where people are basically chained in a
cave looking at a wall and seeing
shadows on the wall and thinking that's
reality. Then one of them is unchained.
He goes up and he has a terrible time
actually going up out of the cave being
blinded by the light. But when he gets
used to it, he says, "Oh my goodness,
this is the world." And then he tries to
go back into the cave and tell the other
people and they don't want to hear about
it. And to me, that is sort of like the
nature of my own early life, but then
also now trying to talk to other people
who are still seeing what I consider
some of the shadows on the wall and not
seeing what's really out there beyond
the shadows. So that was through the
11th grade. And then I went to college.
I went to the university and I thought I
want to study what's really going on in
the brain that helps us see this wider
reality. And what happened is the
professor said, "Excuse me, the brain is
the sole producer of our conscious
awareness and there's nothing more." And
they gave me all the evidence in all my
classes that made me absolutely believe
it. So by the age of like 19 or 20, I
was a materialist. And then I said,
"Okay, if that's the case, I'll just
study the brain and I'll find out what
the brain does." So there we are. That's
my background. And I should say at that
point I felt that most of the people
that believed in a consciousness beyond
the brain were simply weak-minded people
and I didn't want to know about their
work because it seemed irrelevant to me.
But then what happened after being a
neuroscientist at the University of
Oregon for about 10 years at the age of
30 my sister invited me to a meditation
retreat with an Indian meditation master
and I had an experience that basically
turned my life upside down. I think in
French you'd say bulver it turned
everything upside down. And what
happened was that so I was sitting in
this retreat. I was a skeptical
neuroscientist. I was an atheist and we
were told in the first meditation
session that the meditation master was
going to come around and initiate every
individual there and he said it was
going to happen through the swami's
touch. Now clearly I was skeptical being
the neuroscientist that I was but I was
also there for the weekend and I decided
to put my skepticism aside and just be
curious. So what's going to happen? So,
I'm sitting there um in the meditation
room and it's darkened and I'm beginning
to hear him move through the room and my
eyes are closed, but my senses are
otherwise fully engaged. I'm listening.
I'm aware. And when he comes to me, what
I feel is first of all his hands like
right between the eyes on the bridge of
my nose. And then I feel what feels like
a slight mini electrical current going
from his hands, his fingers down into
the center of my chest. And it feels
like this mini lightning bolt of
electricity that goes down and ends
right in the center of my chest, like
parallel to the physical heart, but not
the physical heart. And then I feel this
energy radiating outward, just filling
my whole being. And I would say, "This
energy feels like nectar. If it were a
color, it would be golden. And it feels
like pure love flowing through me and
beyond me." And the words that came to
mind were totally non-scientific. They
were, "I'm home. I'm home. my heart is
my home. It's like I'd finally found my
home in the world and it felt so good.
So that was what happened in that
meditation retreat. And then I went back
home to the university position in
Virginia where I was at the time and the
very next morning I spontaneously woke
up at 5:00 a.m. and I meditated. I sat
up in my bed. I meditated and I have
done that every day since without
stopping because I somehow knew at the
deepest level that actually just below
the surface of my awareness there
simmered this quiet ecstasy and I
touched it in that meditation program
and I knew it was there waiting for me
if I could find it again. And it was
sort of like the the door opens wide,
then it sort of shuts down to only a
crack, but you know the light is still
there. And now you're willing to work to
quiet the mind to find that place again.
And so I should say that from then on I
continued on at the university. I
shifted from Virginia to the University
of Oregon and I kept on doing this
research. But I now began living what I
would call a double life where doing my
neuroscience research in really
rehabilitation of people with motor
disorders like cerebral pausy or stroke
or Parkinson's and I became very well
known in that area. I have National
Institutes of Health grants from the
United States and I also wrote a
textbook this in its sixth edition right
now called motor control translating
research into clinical practice. So I
still when I wear my neuroscience cap
that's how people know me. But the other
side is that gradually over those years
at the university I was doing more and
more meditation practice more and more
meditation retreats and I was going wait
a minute there's a disconnect here. It's
like I'm leading two different lives. My
life as a neuroscientist where I'm
surrounded by skeptics um that are all
um materialists like myself and then my
life of people that have an expanded
awareness that have sort of gotten out
of Plato's cave and they're now up
looking in the light and seeing things
that I never saw before. And so finally,
I guess after about 20 years, I said to
myself, Marjorie, you have to begin to
put the two lives together. And so
that's when in my laboratory I started
doing research on meditation. And I in
fact would find a graduate student that
wanted to work on meditation and we
would then do projects on what's
changing in the brain when you meditate.
Um what changes in different parts of
the brain. And of course one of the
things we found is that the brain
actually becomes much more agile when
you're actually meditating over a period
of time. it becomes stronger in the
sense that it can now inhibit those what
I would call impulses that happen when
something happens you're either afraid
or you're angry or you have a lot of
ensty
and what the frontal loes as they get
stronger can do is simply allow you to
pause when those emotions come up and
say is this really true
is is anger really warranted here well
maybe it's not maybe I could just sort
of relax and listen to my higher self
and respond in a different way so those
are the things we began to learn in my
university setting and I had a wonderful
time doing it and I should say that um
because I had a lots of money from the
National Institutes of Health for work
on stroke and Parkinson's I could also
let my students working on meditation
use the equipment for their studies to
look at actually what's going on in the
brain with meditation so in fact I found
that a wonderful way of then beginning
to combine the two and then finally at a
certain point after I think 30 years of
working at the university I that I want
to go fulltime into doing research on
the nature of consciousness and what can
we really say about whether it's only
the brain that produces consciousness or
whether perhaps consciousness is
fundamental and the brain acts as this
filter to actually reduce the amount of
amazing experiences that are out there
to what some people say is a measly
trickle of what is really available to
us. So that's what's happened in the
last 10 years. And I've been having a
marvelous time doing research on
terminal lucidity, children with
telepathy that are autistic, and um
amazing other experiences like
near-death experiences.
>> I want to share a really embarrassing
story. So I was working with this
company to build a really awesome
science product, and we were using AI to
summarize the entirety of the available
literature and a hallucination crept its
way into the work. It was presented to
me confidently. It sort of fit the
narrative and everything just seemed
right about it. But of course, as you
might guess, it was a complete
fabrication. It actually cost me
thousands of dollars, completely blew up
in my face, and has made me terrified of
hallucinations. And honestly, it's
changed the way I think about AI and
science. That is why for every Giant
Shoulder episode, I use long-term
sponsor of the channel, Consensus.
Consensus searches 220 million
peer-reviewed papers first, then uses AI
to synthesize the results. Every claim
links to a real verifiable study. It's
the difference between asking an AI to
remember science from memory, which is
where hallucinations creep in, and
actually get it to verify from first
principles that that is actually what
was said. I'm personally obsessed with
the deep search function because it
presents consensus across the whole
literature, not just one confidently
stated perspective. Where studies agree,
where they conflict, where the gaps are,
even how the research has evolved over
time. It flags studies for this episode
that I just simply would not have found
without it. Lately, they introduced an
MCP integration with Claude, and this
has exploded my research workflow. It
basically means the two systems can talk
to each other. I put my podcast
transcripts into Claude and it contacts
Consensus and pulls a full list of
verified citations and papers from the
conversation. The way that I've started
thinking about it is that Consensus is
like Claude's direct supervisor. It
makes sure it actually does its damn job
and isn't just slacking off and being
lazy. The two working together is where
you unlock insane research capabilities.
The link is in the description. You can
access a full month completely free. It
supports the channel. consensus are
awesome. Again, that is link in the
description completely free for a month.
So, you have really no reason not to try
it out. Now, back to the episode.
>> Wow, what a story. Incredible. You tell
it so well. That's it's amazing. I I've
had the joy of speaking to a number of
say materialists converting to some form
of idealism, some flavor of
consciousness being fundamental. And it
seems to be at some moment in their
life, they experienced something that
just hit a wall in this materialist
reductionist framework. They couldn't
explain their own experience using what
they read in the textbook in college.
And often times it's psychedelics,
sometimes it's meditation. I'd say it's
more often than not psychedelics because
that can sort of just blast you there
right away. Whereas meditation, it
usually doesn't happen on like the first
time, right? That's why your experience
is quite interesting. You know, you
might hear that someone starts a
meditation practice and they get nothing
from it for a while and they're kind of
slogging through and then eventually
something happens. But you had this
experience where you were skeptical and
then almost right away as you as you
mentioned the swami touched you and then
you felt something that you just
couldn't immediately could not explain.
Do you have an explanation for that now
in your new consciousness ontology? How
do you think about what that experience
was? What caused it? I'm curious now,
decades later, how you think about that
experience, that moment.
>> Yeah. Well, in fact, I have found that
when you look at spiritual awakenings
across a large group of people, and I
should say I have a couple of papers now
where I've interviewed people with
spiritual awakenings, you find out that
in fact they occur in a variety of
conditions. And in fact, one of the
conditions is when they are with a
person who has had an amazing um
awakening themselves in the past and is
a really what I would call an evolved
spiritual person. And it's as if
something in them allows a transmission
of energy that can literally awaken you,
which is what happened to me. And so,
having heard that, I think, oh, well,
that's interesting. But the other thing
that's very similar is when people have
a near-death experience. And once again,
the brain is stopped. Their EEG is
flatlined when the doctors are looking
at it in the hospital. But the person
leaves their body. And in fact, they
encounter often a being beyond this um
realm. And this being is full of
exquisite love. Um they see incredible
light. They feel totally at home. That's
their word again. I'm home. And then
they're told, "No, no, no. It's not your
time. Get back in that body." And they
have to do that. But their life, like
mine, then is totally transformed. It's
a literally a 180 degree shift. And in
fact, you may know the word the person
Jeff Krypaul who's been talking about
that. He wrote a book called The Flip
about people like myself. So if you
haven't, I highly recommend his book,
The Flip, and all of his research
because literally something happens in
us and we go from this body mind complex
that is full of filtered information and
we only see through the five senses and
then something happens. something is
shifted inside of us and these other
what I would call these inner senses are
awakened. So with an NDE people begin to
have for example mental telepathy with
other people. They know what the other
person is thinking. Um they often have
precognitive experiences and often they
don't want this. They didn't ask for the
NDE. They didn't ask for all these extra
um abilities but in fact there they are.
And I think in one case there is a
beautiful story in fact that Jeff Krypaw
tells of a woman Elizabeth Chrome that
had a near-death experience when she was
in fact walking across a parking lot at
a Jewish synagogue in a thunderstorm in
Texas and she was struck by lightning.
And of course she her body was down on
the ground and she left her body. And
when she came back because she was told,
"Okay, you know, you need to come back."
She came back with the ability to
actually know what was wrong with other
people when she looked at them. She had
these experiences of what was deeper
inside of them that they even knew. And
she began to have precognitive dreams.
For example, when in the United States
the um I think it was US Airflight
actually I think they hit a couple of
geese something like that in the sky
after takeoff and they they lost their
engines etc. And the pilot was able to
maneuver them so that they actually
crashed into I think it was the Hudson
River. And there was a photo taken
afterwards of all of these people on the
plane's wings. She saw that in a dream
before it happened. And she actually was
able, because this had happened to her
earlier, to write her an email so that
she could timestamp the dream time and
what happened and write down what she
saw in the dream. And then when it did
happen the next day, she could document
that she actually knew that in advance.
Now, she didn't like that. She wanted
that to go away because it's awful to
know about tragedies before they happen
and because the government is not going
to want to listen to you because they'll
think that you were the cause of it
because people shouldn't be
precognitive. But so those are the
things first of all that do happen with
spiritual awakening. So NDE's my own
spiritual awakening they call that in
India in fact shocktipot which simply
means the descent of grace or energy or
power into you from in fact either
spontaneously or through another
individual and then of course as you say
there are the people that have
psilocybin experiences and that
psilocybin experience can also just
shift you 180 degrees and it's like oh
my goodness I never saw the world in
this way before and I should say it also
can happen spontaneously. Um because I
wrote this article and interviewing all
of these scientists and academics, some
of them say that it happened in the
middle of the night. Um, for example,
whether it's with a dream or waking up
in the morning and suddenly they see the
world filled with light and it's not
that it stays there forever, but again,
it's like that there is a crack in the
door to the other side of existence and
it's wide open for a while and then it
begins to close down, but it never
closed down enough to keep you from
really believing it was real. And now
you want to find your way back and you
want to learn what on earth happened.
So, I think that's fascinating. what is
going on inside of us. And I just want
to add one more thing because it relates
to the work I'm doing now with children
with autism who are non-speaking and
they are also telepathic. And in those
cases with these children, it appears
that they came into the world with these
abilities. But it never shut down in
them like it shuts down in most of us.
So, when I've been doing interviews with
these children and their parents, what
the parents say, I say, "When did you
first discover your child was
telepathic?" And the parent might say,
"Well, you know, when he was about six
years old, and I was trying to hide the
Christmas gifts, and I couldn't hide
them from him. He always knew where I
put them." But then when you ask the
child, they say, "I've always been
telepathic. I've always known what my
parents were thinking. I came into the
world this way." So, I think that's an
interesting phenomenon, too. It's not
that there's only a spiritual awakening
or some other event like an NDE, but
some people actually come in wide open
and most of us perhaps come in more wide
open and then gradually through whether
it's learning language and I will talk
with you about that later on. Like our
conceptualization,
our seeing the world word through the
world through our words and our concepts
actually begins to carve out a small
portion of the world related to our
conceptuality and all we see is our
concepts of things. So when I think dog,
I see dog as a particular concept. I
don't really see the real dog in front
of me so to speak. So that's one of the
interesting thing neuroscientists are
talking about that in fact that part of
the brain, the left part of the brain
that is so linear is actually keeping
you from seeing the broadness, the
holistic version of the world in front
of you because it's been divided up into
the little pieces of our concepts, our
narratives.
>> So much to cover there. Okay. So, so, so
I'll I'll be I'll be completely
transparent. So, I struggle with with
some of this, right? I mean, I'm a I'm
an open-minded skeptic. Um, a lot of my
guests come on and say totally wild
ideas. So, I'm not dismissive of
anything out of hand. You know, like
leading theoretical physicists are
making the wildest and craziest claims
about the universe possible. And for
some reason, we kind of give physicists
the past. They're allowed say nonsense
about the universe that makes no sense
about extra dimensions. Yet, we hold
biology and consciousness to a stricter
sort of rule book. So, I'm trying to be
open-minded about this, but I want to
know where the guard rails are. How can
we tackle this stuff rigorously? So, if
we go let's go through this one by one.
I definitely want to get to the
telepathy tapes later. I've have loads
of
>> loads of thoughts on that and I've
spoken to a bunch of people on it. I do
find it fascinating. I have my concerns.
But let's let's tackle the first one.
Let's go to near-death experiences
because I think there is super
interesting stuff here. But I want to
know how can it be studied rigorously
because there's anecdotes galore, right?
And anecdotes are not to be dismissed
and thrown out. And I think the
individual human experience is very
important, but it's not data. So I'm
curious, how do we tackle these things
rigorously? How do we approach them with
a real scientific lens? And that doesn't
mean materialist and reductionist. It
just means rigorous data, experimental,
testable claims. What are your thoughts
on that?
Yes, I I want to say that in fact before
I began to look into these things when I
was now a professor and I'd been um like
exploring um consciousness for a number
of years, I never once looked on PubMed,
which is the United States database from
scientists on all sorts of scientific
phenomena. I never typed in neardeath
experience to see what was out there.
And I would imagine that most of the
skeptics have not done that either
because like me they do not believe it
is possible. So why would I look at an
article on NDEs? So when I finally did
that I then discovered that Pim Vanlom,
Bruce Braayson, Sam Parnia, these MDs
from um universities, for example,
University of Virginia with Bruce
Grayson, Pim Vanl, a network of 10
hospitals in the Netherlands. Um uh San
Parnia is again upstate New York um and
maybe now I think at New York University
doing research on near-death
experiences. They are doing the gold
standard of research on near-death
experiences. So I have a hard time with
the skeptics say it's only anecdotal. So
here's the example. So Pim Vanl says
okay on a particular day in I think it
was maybe like the late um 1990s or
something like that they're starting a
study in 10 hospitals in the ne
Netherlands they're bringing in every
person that has cardiac arrest into
their study and if they survive they
then ask them afterwards did anything
unusual happen during your cardiac
arrest and they found that something
like 25% of the people said in fact yes
they did And then they tell them the
story and then they see if it can be
corroborated by this hospital staff that
were in the room when they had cardiac
arrest. And they find that in fact it is
corroborated. And I think the one
example that Pin Vanlommo gave in this
2001 article was this man that had been
found in a field comeomaosse. So he was
unconscious. Um he had been comeomaos
for a while. Once a passer by found him.
They brought him into the hospital. He
was still in a coma. They were doing um
cardiac resuscitation because his heart
had stopped. So there was, you know, no
EEG in the brain. The heart had been
stopped for a long time. Um they they
took a long time to begin to get the
heart going. And he even says he was
aware the entire time and he was worried
they would give up on him. Now at one
point after they he was brought into the
emergency room, a male nurse discovered
that he had dentures and they needed to
take those out so they could really do
putting tubes down his throat and things
like that. They took the dentures out.
They put them into what they call a
crash car and there they sat. Now the
man then w finally recovered after I
don't know 90 minutes and the next few
days he um wanted to know um he wanted
his dentures back and so the nurse
happens to walk into his room who took
the dentures out and he said you're the
one that took out my dentures and you
put them in this crash car and it showed
exactly where it should have been. And
the nurse was flabbergasted because the
man under cardiac arrest, coma, no way
he should know that and he knew
everything. Now I don't call that an
anecdote. That was in a study that was
basically a prospective study where
everybody that had cardiac arrest was
brought in. Some of them died um you
know others may not have been able to be
communicated with but of those they have
beautiful evidence about things like
this. So why are we still saying it's
all anecdotal? That's my frustration
right now because Bruce Grayson has done
the same thing. Sam Parnia has done the
same thing. They have these beautiful
examples. So we have these prospective
studies and then on top of that we have
people that weren't in a study and in
fact I wrote a paper on one woman Payton
who is an MD who had cardiac arrest
herself during the birth of her third
child and she was an atheist beforehand.
I mean talking about a complete flip as
Jeff Priel would say. She was an atheist
beforehand and she was about you know in
her 20s when this happened and it was a
risky pregnancy and so they decided to
keep her on bed rest beforehand in the
hospital since she worked at the
hospital and then when in fact they were
trying to do a C-section. What happened
is that she um basically bled out and um
she left her body and she said all of a
sudden at some point she's under
anesthesia. Her eyes are taped shut to
protect her corneas and she can see into
the room. Okay, that should be
impossible. And she's an atheist. She
sees into the room. She sees the blood
dripping down from the IV containers
into her body and she suddenly hears the
anesthesiologist say to the surgeon,
"How far are you along?" She said, "Your
her blood pressure is plummeting fast."
She hears all of that and then suddenly
she feels in the center of her chest an
emptiness and she realizes her heart has
stopped. Then she sees the man um
actually going to the wall and hitting
this large red button on the wall to
call the resuscitation team and she
hears all the monitors going off. At
that point she says, "I realize I'm
dying." And she feels herself leaving
her body. She says she's going to the
back boundaries of her awareness and
does this graceful backward arc into the
unknown because she's out. And she says
then she actually goes through this
incredible barrier into this sparkling
black light. And she said suddenly she
is feeling totally ecstatic. Everything
is fine. And she hears this amazing like
voice that is like full of intelligence
and love. And she then hears the voice
say, "You must live." in like this
thunderous sound as she suddenly feels
herself spiraling back down into the
hospital room. And then when you read
her story, because we've published this
in the journal Explorer, she then is
watching as everybody is trying to get
her heart going again. And she even
tries to help the people that are
putting needles into her like um elbow
saying, "No, no, no, go to my wrist
because you're not going to get it in my
elbow." The elbow had collapsed. The
vein had collapsed. And then finally,
this white-haired surgeon comes into the
room, weaves his way through all the
people, comes to her side, takes his
hand, which doesn't even have a glove on
it because he's been rushing in, reaches
into her blood-filled abdomen, finds the
aorta, clamps it shut, and she says
that's very painful because she's now
back in her body. And in clamping it
shut, he gets the blood going again
because that's what all the blood was
leaking out. and she then knows that
she's going to be living. Now, at that
point, another nurse whispers in her ear
that the baby has survived and
everything's fine. She has a beautiful
girl. She then becomes unconscious and
wakes up again in the recovery room. Her
husband, who's also an MD and an
atheist, and all the other nurses and
doctors are surrounding her. She has a
trachea tube in so she can't speak. She
lifts up her hand so they won't speak
and asks for something to write on. They
give her a napkin and she says,"I know I
have a baby girl. I know my heart
stopped. I know my uterus is out because
they had to do a hysterctomy." Because
she wanted them to know before they said
anything that she knew everything. And
she said from that moment when she came
to in the recovery room, she knew
consciousness was fundamental. She knew
she was not the product of the neurons
in her brain in terms of her own
awareness. So again, a complete flip.
Now is that an anecdote? All the doctors
corroborated everything she had said. So
there we have to be careful. I would
call that a single case study that was
actually carefully researched and that
wasn't within a a complete um
prospective study because not all of
those deaths happen in prospective
studies during a particular timeline in
a particular hospital. But so there's my
concern about the skeptics. It's like
just be curious and look at the data
carefully and then talk to the people
that are doing the research, the MDs
that are were skeptics when they started
and are no longer skeptics and say,
"Well, what can we do to make the
skeptic
actually believe by maybe doing some
tests together?" Now, I'll also say
something to you because the skeptics
will then bring this up. They will say,
"Well, you know, we did suggest that
they put some numbers way on top of some
big piece of equipment at the top of the
room." And I think nobody's really seen
those numbers in all of these various
studies that we've done. And it's like,
this is the point that needs to be made
about almost all paranormal experiences,
meaning not through the five senses.
When a person leaves their body or has
an experience like that, this is an
emotional state for them and they are
focused on things that are emotionally
salient for them. They are dying and
they're really interested in things
unrelated to numbers that are like a a
five-digit number on the top of a piece
of equipment at the top of the room.
They're about to visit their grandmother
on the at the side or they're actually
going down the hall and hearing what
their parents have to say because their
parents are concerned about the fact
that they're dying. So when the skeptic
says, "Excuse me, we're throwing all of
that out because they didn't find these
five-digit numbers." I'm thinking, are
you aware of context? that context is so
important. So there is my impassioned
plea for the skeptics to be a little bit
more curious and open and not just put
this out of meaning. And I'll give you
one more example. So I was at a
conference in Porto, Portugal put on by
the Beall Foundation of end of life
experiences just in early April and they
decided this year to have people on the
stage giving talks that were both the
materialists and the post-materialists
in the same day. So we had to listen to
each other and so one of the women get
up and is talking about near-death
experiences and all of the data that I
have just told you about and more. And
there's the materialist neuroscitist
that doesn't believe in these and says
it's all part of the brain dying. And
when they get together afterwards and
the woman who's given all the evidence
for the fact that these appear to be a
real credible phenomena talks to the
other woman, what does the woman say
when she's um talking about a particular
um case that is absolutely shut tight as
far as I can say? She's saying, "I'm
sure they just didn't look at it
carefully enough." That was the
materialist answer. Well, they just
didn't look at it carefully enough cuz I
know it can't be true. And I'm saying,
really? What will convince you? I mean,
I I keep wondering if she were there and
looking at all the data herself, would
she then be able to believe? So, it Yes,
I I am passionate about this. What can I
say?
>> No, I I find it fascinating. It's super
fascinating. And I'm really not
dismissive. I think there's something
really anomalous going on. I don't have
an explanation, right? I'm not willing
to say that that is just brain dying,
some mixture of hypoxia and chemical
reactions. I think that's probably
contributo in some way. I don't think we
fully understand why, but I think it's
probably contributing. And but I don't
know. Um I think episode one of the
giant shoulder I would have been like I
you know I I've gone through my own
materialist sort of recovering
postmaterialist. I'm not quite at
consciousness as fundamental. I sort of
identify as a biocsychist. So I tend to
think that consciousness is a property
of all biological life. That's where I
am at the moment. Although I'm getting
more radical day by day. And I'm wanting
to entertain more of these conversations
because you can't just apply our limited
view of materialism and reductionism to
everything because that runs straight in
the face of so many things that are
happening at the moment. I've been
having a bunch of conversations about
about DMT and you just can't explain
that stuff through neurochemistry and
through pharmarmacology through common
normal neuroscience does not get you
there. So you have to entertain these
ideas but you do have to entertain them
with I do think there of course there's
a hefty a healthy amount of skepticism.
You know one thing that I and I think
your point is also very valid about them
not seeing the numbers in the outer body
experiences when they're levitating up.
I think it's totally it's totally fair
to say that they're probably not focused
on that. They're I that's actually, you
know, a reasonable objection. I think
it's I think it's very clever study
design though that they're trying to do
because that's really rigorous, right?
If someone can give you the number, it's
like that's that that's the kind of
science that I I think your objection is
valid, but I do think that we should be
doing more of because I mean, what the
hell is the materialist going to say to
that? a person knew that there was a 6,
seven, seven 12 feet up on top of the
shelf, you know, like that would be
insane. That would be so cool. And we
should
>> see, but I bet even if one person found
it, they would say, well, that's still
an anecdote because it wasn't 15 people
doing it repeated times in laboratory
conditions. And I think there is that
tension between the two sides.
>> Yeah. Yeah. And I want to mention one
other thing because um I've interacted a
lot with Bernardo Castro recently and
you probably have had him on your
program and I've been trying to my
emails. I've been trying
>> he's busy. So he does have a wonderful
podcast right now um together with a
number of people on Tuesdays at my time
in the morning and I have been attending
those and at one point he and I then had
a conversation when he saw that I was
attending he said well Marjgerie let's
really have a real conversation you and
me together and so we did that and one
of the things he said when I was telling
him about the near-death experience
research he said well you know I've
always tried to find what is the word an
epicycle a way to explain it by putting
another epicycle like they used to do in
the mythological m ages. Um that if I do
enough things I can convince myself that
it's not real. But he said, "When I know
that people with an NDE can actually see
360 degrees around them without sight
and that they also can actually talk
about something where no other person
was present, like they had the NDE um in
the woods when lightning struck them and
they left their body and they can tell
you everything after the fact that was
all later corroborated. But it wasn't
because they were reading somebody's
mind while this was happening. Another
person wasn't with them." He said, "I
have to say that my I my analytic
idealism begins to fall apart." And he
said, um, I then would have to go like
to straight idealism. But he said, um,
in other words, naturalism is how he
defines his analytic idealism. But he
said, psychologically, I can't go there.
>> That bothered me psych. He said, I would
have to give up what I'm doing and
become a computer programmer full-time
if that were true. And that made felt
enstically
I can't go there. So there is this
there's the humor about being a human
being. We have certain things that we
just don't want to deal with. So
>> would you mind laying out Bernardo is
amazing. I just finished his book
analytical idealism in a nutshell.
Fantastic. Absolutely loved it. Great
book. Um, would you mind laying out
analytical idealism as a set of ideas?
And then I'm curious how that compares
with your current ontology of
consciousness. Is it very similar? Is
there ways where are there places that
use diverge? If you wouldn't mind laying
that out because I'm super curious about
this.
>> Sure. So for Bernardo's analytic
idealism again, he is saying that
consciousness is fundamental just like
me. So we're exactly the same on that.
And then what he says is that basically
when we take on a body, what happens is
that we then are taking on what he would
call dissociation from our real identity
that so our real identity is infinite
awareness and then you become embodied
and now you identify with the mind body
complex and so he calls that
dissociation.
um basic um meaning I mean basically
what happens is that we now believe I I
believe I'm different from you. I
believe I'm different from the other
people. And this process then allows us
because of filters on the brain he
believes also in filters on the brain
being the main problem that we have um
that we are separate. But then he says
he gives this beautiful analogy of
people with multiple personality
disorder that basically those people
that are you might call it schizophrenia
in a certain sense they have multiple
personalities inside of them and um so
they think they're one person one time
one person another separate but then
when they are quote unquote healed by
the psychologist or psychiatrist the
therapy now that dissociation becomes
one and now they are one particular
person and he says it's like what
happens is that there were boundaries
inside of
that they couldn't really cross before
and they switched from one to another
but then the boundaries become permeable
till now all the personalities become
one and then he says what happens to us
in meditation or an NDE whatever these
different um phenomena is that the
boundaries between us and the rest of
the world become permeable and so we
begin to realize oh my goodness I'm much
more than this individual Marjorie so
that's what he's saying and I totally
agree with them whatever I talk about
consciousness, I start with Bernardo
Castro and that whole point of view that
we're just seeing through um the limited
lenses of our five senses, but as he
says, those are like the dials in an
airplane um cockpit that tell you about
wind speed and elevation, but they
aren't what's really out there. And so
he says when you can get rid of these um
filters of the five senses and
everything else, then you could see much
more. So we are right on the same page.
The only difference is that he then says
he subscribes to naturalism which is
really what I call materialism with a
different name. Meaning that um
basically consciousness then in effect
basically decided to create this
physical reality and then in doing the
creation of physical reality. It starts
at the bottom of atoms and evolution is
the primary way that we evolve as human
beings and we work our way up um to you
know higher and higher levels of
consciousness. But he still has that
feeling that the brain is obviously very
important but it it's I don't know that
he understands the mechanism either.
I've asked him and others have too,
could you create your own understanding
of what's really going on between
consciousness is fundamental coming down
into all of this and then um all of the
things that are going on with human
evolution and he says I no it's not what
I'm going to do but so other people like
Federico Fine and I don't know if you've
talked to him that again I good friend
of Fed Rico Fines is trying to do the
same sort of thing and they're both
coming from idealism but Fine is not the
naturalist trying to say that it's all
happening just through evolution. And
you know, I don't think that evolution
is wrong. I just think that it's a
mixture. It's sort of like the brain is
is there for a purpose. But there's a
mixture between um consciousness is
fundamental and what I would call our
inner senses contributing to our
awareness and our senses contributing to
our awareness. I don't understand the
mechanism. Um when we start talking
about terminal lucidity, I'll say I
don't understand the mechanism. All I'm
saying is that there is incredible data
that shows that terminal acidity is real
in persons that have a brain that is
filled with holes from Alzheimer's who
are now totally clear in the last
minutes to hours of life. And I'm saying
I'm a neuroscientist. That's impossible
according to my neuroscientist theories.
But then how is it happening? Do you
want me to just say that everybody that
sees that is must be, you know, having
hallucinations? I don't think so. So, I
think it's one thing to have the the the
data and another thing to have a
mechanism. And I'm not I don't have to
have the mechanism to believe the data.
>> Totally. And I think that's fair. We we
just do not have answers to lots of
these things. I think with terminal
lucidity, one of the things that I
personally struggle with is separating a
genuine increase in cognitive ability
and a sort of generous interpretation of
a few coherent words from a grieving
family, if you understand me, which I
think you would agree is probably what's
happening in at least some cases, right?
There's like a coherent string of words
that that sounds really good and then
you have a grieving family that really
want to attach meaning to that. um how
many cases of terminal lucidity is that
because obviously in this case we it's
always secondhand accounts right oh my
my grandfather my father my mother they
had this moment of lucidity so there is
a real interpretation a secondhand
interpretation there this is what I want
and I'm not I'm not dismissing terminal
lucidity when I say that I'm what I'm
saying is I think some percentage of of
cases are probably that right would you
agree that like not all of them are
probably some anomalous really anomalous
thing probably some of them are that was
a generously interpreted coherent
sentence.
>> Yeah. You know what I would say is that
always in fact with any medical
condition when there is an observer
trying to understand it there is going
to be interpretation and there will be a
continuum as well. So I would say with
terminal lucidity having now done the
study with Bruce Braayson, Michael Nom
and other people that are well known in
the field that you would see along the
continuum of the people that report it
to us and remember the people that are
reporting this on questionnaires and
your listeners could actually go on the
website and fill out a questionnaire if
they had a had witnessed terminal
acidity. We are basically giving the
witness like about I don't know 30 or 40
questions and the witnesses are doctors,
hospice nurses, um other caregivers and
of course family members as well. But we
are dealing with in many cases medical
personnel that see this every day. And
so I don't think they're just
emotionally tied to that person and
saying, "Oh my goodness, you know, my
relative is back. Isn't that wonderful?"
And etc. So they are much more objective
in what they're seeing. And yet the
stories that those nurses and doctors
and other caregivers tell us are amazing
to me. So, um,
>> do you have any of those stories? I'd
love to do give one or two case because
I'm really I'm really interested in in
the experience. So, I love hearing the
stories like I and I don't I'm not being
too dismissive of anecdote there. Like I
really am interested in human
experience. So, if you have one or two
of these cases Oh, sure. We so just as a
background we have received a a grant
again from the beall foundation. In fact
when I was at that conference we were
reporting on the terminal lucidity in
children as well as adults because
children also have the same phenomenon
when they're dying of like an autoimmune
disease um cancer and things like that
where they've gone into a coma and then
they come out. So I'll share you a
child's one and then I'll show you some
adult ones and so you'll get a flavor of
some of them. And this one was reported
by a doctor and it was a doctor at the
University of Virginia. So that's I
think what can you say? So here's the
here's what the doctor said. This is a
this is a three-year-old girl in her
last days with her family and she has
this complex progressive immune system
disease and I'll name it for you. It's
hemophagic lymphohysteiocytosis
leading to severe inflammation in all of
her organisms. So that's what she's
dying from. And she was no longer
speaking. She was no longer eating. She
was no longer responding to her parents
or providers. Okay, that's the state she
was in. Now, after nearly two weeks of
intense conversations in this condition
by the doctor, her parents, and a
Catholic priest, and more rapid
deterioration in their daughter, the
parents agreed to a modified do not
resuscitate status change. Now, that's
hard for parents of a kid,
>> right?
>> That evening, the little girl
miraculously awakes and she asks for her
usual comfort items, and that is a Lion
King movie, her parents, her toys, and
food. And she has multiple conversations
with her parents that evening and with
the bedside nurse. And the bedside nurse
and the parents say, "These were like a
miracle." And during the conversations
with her parents, she reviews all the
important people in her life and she
prays for them. And after several hours,
she asks to go to bed. And over the next
24 to 48 hours, she never awoke again.
And she ultimately dies peacefully of
cardiac arrest in her parents' arms.
So
um the doctor was absolutely astounded.
I mean, it's like, and I think what I
want to mention about this one, too, is
that Bruce Grayson and Michael Nom had
actually reported a quote unquote
anecdote of something like this in the
literature from the 1950s, where again,
a child is dying of cancer. He's 5 years
old. He's been in a coma for at least a
week, if not longer. And again, they're
wondering with their um minister what
they should do. He's lying in bed
totally in a coma. And finally, the
minister says, "Why don't you tell him,
even though he's unconscious, that it's
okay for him to go, that you are not
going to hold on to him any longer?"
Again, a 5-year-old. He then wakes up.
He thanks them for all their love. They
have a beautiful conversation together,
and then he goes back into a coma and he
dies. And it was almost like his being
released
from the parents holding on as tight as
they could to this kid. Don't die that
he finally comes out of the coma and
says goodbye and dies. And and I there
are a number of those again with other
children in hospitals. These are nurses
and doctors reporting it. And in one
case um again what the the children say
to the parent is don't worry. I saw
grandma and she's going to go across
with me. She's going to take care of me
going across. They are telling things
that the materialists just throw out.
But the kids find this very meaningful.
And they're saying, "I'm okay, Mom. Stop
worrying about me."
Damn, that's so sad. You really When you
said for some reason when the
three-year-old requested Lion King, that
actually hit me. I was like that I
actually felt like a really intense
emotion just come over my body where I
was like, "God, that's so sad." I I mean
maybe meaningful for the parents and
meaningful for her and but like God
that's that's cripplingly sad. Yeah.
Absolutely no explanation for that. It's
it's it's bizarre. It's extremely
strange. I I don't know. I don't know
how that's possible. Do you
>> do you do you try and create scientific
explanations for these things now? Like
when you hear that story, are you are
you trying to figure out how a
fundamental consciousness, how idealism,
like how does consciousness being a
property of the universe like how does
that lend explanatory power in that sort
of situation? Like what what do you
really think is happening?
>> Well, you know, I I do absolutely and um
when people ask me for like, well, then
what is your theory? I I play with
different theories. I mean, because
that's partly what we do as scientists.
We could it be this, could it be this,
could it be this? I'll I'll throw out
some that I've thought about in the
past, though none of them seem to like
be a a hard answer to the question. So,
>> one is I'll just put this out because
again, I know my materialist friends
would die. I don't care. Um, I also
study after death communication with
Chris Row and Evelyn Elcesser and others
um in um the University of Northampton
and they have again basically collected
data from I think like over a thousand
people now who have had an after-
deathath communication from the loved
one. Now again like just the terminal
acidity there's a whole range of those
phenomena but in fact they usually have
experiences that involve often like at
least like four or five of the senses
like you know they see the person they
feel the person's touch they hear the
person and some of those are so strong
that you're wondering how could that
happen could this really be a total
hallucination because that's of course
what the doctors would typically call
this sort of thing but I'll give you one
example and then we can just like
brainstorm about it. So in this case,
the man is asleep in his bed. This is in
England with his wife at 6:00 a.m. in
the morning. He hears a knock on the
front door. It wakes him up. He goes to
puts a bathrobe on, goes to the front
door, opens it up. There's this woman
that's facing away from him who is
crying and he asks, "What's wrong? Can I
help you?" She turns around and it is
his grandmother
who died seven years ago. She's standing
in front of him and she's crying because
she says, "I'm so sorry because when
your father died, I totally ignored you
and I felt so bad in fact that um now
that I I just basically cut off
relationships with you and will you
forgive me?" And he says to her, "Of
course, I love you dearly." and they hug
and he feels her in the hug and as he's
hugging her this she becomes like this
bright intense light and he has to close
his eyes and finally he sees the light
begin to fade and he opens his eyes and
there's nothing inside of his arms
anymore.
He closes the door. He walks back to his
bedroom. His wife is there and he tells
her what just happened. Okay, I don't
know what to do about that. I only know
that that's one of the examples and in
other examples from other people what it
happens is that they actually are given
information that they don't know and
nobody else knows from the person on the
other side. So then my here's my
question. I'm the neurosis saying okay
so is it possible that we do have these
energetic bodies that we might call them
that people talk about. So when we leave
this body, does a person still have a
subtle energetic body, something like
that? And can they recreate the
phenomenon of this physical body that
actually feels like um a sensation of
touch or vision or hearing or something
of that sort. And you know what a lot of
people say about this is that we do this
in our dream world every night and we
totally accept it. It's my world. I've
created all the people in it. And
sometimes it's realer than real. And
often in those dreams they can be
precognitive. So we're not saying that
this is impossible. There's evidence for
pre-cognitive dreams that are absolutely
real and accurate. But we created it out
of nothing.
So So then my question comes with now we
go to terminal lucidity. So, is it
possible that again something like that
happens as the person is beginning to
separate from their bodies? That somehow
there's a way that they don't have to
use the brain that is somewhat
compromised because they have
Alzheimer's disease and it has holes in
it. Maybe there's another phenomenon
that can occur that allows this to
happen. I don't know. I mean, so that's
what I'm playing with. That's one
example. Now, I'm going to give you
another example and that is that do you
know Julia Mos her name at all? Anyway,
if you don't Julia,
>> she's doing work with telepathy and with
also um she's written a book with Iman
Faruse called transcendent mind where
she talks about how the mind can be
transcendent of the five senses and it's
published by the American Psychological
Association, a highly respected
association of psychologists. So what
she talks about in that book is
evidence, scientific evidence for what I
would call um telekinesis.
So by telekinesis what we mean is that
in one of the cases that she reports a
woman has the ability um to take um a
glass jar that inside it has something
that can spin but of course the glass
jar is enclosed and like this little
windmill thing that can spin that woman
can cause that windmill thing to spin
with her own intention. That's
telekinesis. You can at a distance
create movement of an object in the
world. That's according to this
neuroscientist of the world impossible.
But there's evidence for it. No
explanation, but there's evidence. So
what we're saying there is that it means
that intention, this woman's intention
can cause an object to move. Okay. Okay.
So, a friend of mine named Robert Maize
at the International Association of
Near-Death Studies gave a talk where he
said, "Look, is this some way we can
really think about um actually changes
um in our brain related to phenomena
from the outside world?" When for
example, you have telepathy from a
person that's dying across the country
and now you know they're dying. Um he
said maybe what's happening is that
consciousness has telekinesis. It can
actually move objects. Maybe
consciousness could actually move the
various um um what I would call them the
various the receptor sites within the um
dendrites of a neuron to actually open
up the channels or close the channels.
If we have telekinesis we could do those
sorts of things. Consciousness could do
that and therefore you could actually
get phenomena to occur as an image in
the brain that consciousness was
creating by opening and closing um
receptor um sites channels within the
dendrites of the brain. So that's a
reasonable hypothesis. And so I'm not
going to throw it out yet, but I'm going
to just have those floating around for
me and maybe somebody will come up with
something even better or some way that
that could actually be applied in a
better way. But there's where I'm going
in my moments of dreaming about what h
how can we put together consciousness
and the physical world and how they
interact.
>> Yes. I mean, it's fascinating. And
again, I I really don't have any better
explanations than that, right? I mean,
like I materialists will probably just
say the people are lying or they told
the story wrong or they're recalling it
incorrectly or there's bias there. And I
think all of those things can be true in
some cases, but they you just can't
throw that at all of the anomalous
accounts. So like even if some people
are you know doing it for attention or
just coming out and saying these things
which I totally believe exists why is it
not also the case that people there can
be just truly utterly strange and wacky
and weird and wonderful anomalous
consciousness that we can't explain that
materialism can't explain. I think both
of those things can be true. I I don't
have I don't have explanations. Um and
that's why I think this is this is so
fascinating. I mean there's also a
really interesting debate at the moment
on like what constitutes as real even if
the brain does create create it does
that make it any less real I was
speaking to a a psychiatrist who's
training as an iawaska shaman in the
Peruvian rainforest and he went in on
his spiritual awakening as a materialist
and had all had these insane Iawasa
experiences where he was attacked by a
demon
and and he sort of simultaneously holds
the position that it was created by his
brain, but that doesn't make it less
real. Like that thing existed. And I
think there's something to that. Um, you
know, I think there's something to that.
It's I think that and that maybe even
can somehow explain some of these
someone that's deceased coming back and
talking to you. I I do think there is a
real sense in which people who die sort
of live on in the consciousnesses of the
people that you know created these
complex models about them. And I know
I'm going materialism again with this
explanation. I don't think it's all of
it but again that's still where where I
where I go to. I think that in a real
sense people that die do live on in our
consciousness in our collective
consciousness. And maybe those
collective consciousnesses keep going
and keep evolving and keep they don't
just end. They keep sort of evolving
like any system and model would. And
maybe those can come to you in a sort of
halfdream state, a sort of, you know, a
halfconscious state. Like these things
aren't hard labels, right? With with
with sharp boundaries. So maybe this
person that that opened the door and saw
his grandmother was in sort of a half
dream state. But that doesn't make it
any less real. It doesn't make it any
less powerful. And it doesn't make it
any less interesting. You know, like
that still makes it
>> Yep.
Well, and I think the point here is what
Bernardo Castro said and the other
idealists say. They say that in fact the
we are infinite awareness. So of course
we can create anything. So why do we
have to make it just the brain creating
it? The point is that yes we can create
anything and all of this is possible and
it's all a a quote unquote dream anyway
but dream doesn't mean it's not real. I
think here's an interesting point for
and I just want to add I have been
studying a philosophy from the 10th
century of Kashmir called Kashmir shism
which really is a nondual perspective on
reality which like Bernardo says
everything is fundamentally
consciousness and then like maybe
Federico Fine it talks about stepping
down that consciousness into creating a
what feels like a concrete reality down
to the five senses and the earth and air
and all of those sorts of things and it
but it's a both And and consciousness as
you were saying exists well it exists in
every living organism but according to
them it exists in also the mountains and
everything because it's a crude form of
consciousness but it's there. And so
it's like well then if you accept that
why are we like trying to put it all
down into the brain? It's like I think
that the beauty is that it's a complex
interaction both ways and it doesn't
have to be an eitheror. It's a both end.
Something I've been thinking about
that's kind of interesting is if you
accept a consciousness being fundamental
ideology, would you not expect a lot
more parano paranormal or sigh
phenomena? Is it not almost a mystery in
your ontology that these these cases
aren't happening all the time? Like why
is my consciousness not seeping into
somebody that I'm shaking hands with?
Why do I not experience these completely
anomalous materialist things constantly?
You know, that's I was I was I was on a
walk today thinking about this. It's
like, you know, I'm not dismissive of
consciousness being fundamental at all.
I've spoken to many many brilliant
thinkers way smarter than I am that make
really convincing arguments. But is if
you accept that, is it not anomalous
that we don't see more of these
anomalous things? Would you understand
what I mean? Wouldn't you expect this
kind of common
>> and here again interestingly this comes
again from the 10th century as well and
I should say so I wrote a paper with a
man named Ben Williams that is a
Sanskrit scholar Harvard University PhD
in Sanskrit and I'm the neuroscientist
talking about filters and we wrote a
paper that went side by side through
this wonderful ancient manuscript by a
man named Uta that said when
consciousness decided to go ahead and
become manifest in the world it
basically created in process of creating
the world. Of course, our
misidentification with these individual
minds and bodies because that's the only
way we can function normally in the
world is we need to think we're
separate. And the point was that it's
our conceptuality that is actually doing
this. And so, um, he was showing all of
this from this manuscript and I was
showing all this from the neural filters
in the brain. The point is, and Bernardo
Castro says this too, our beliefs create
our reality and we take on beliefs when
we come into this reality. And Bernardo
gives a beautiful example in his book
More Than Allegory, which is my favorite
Bernardo Castra book in which he says
that in order for a mountain to actually
become um subject to gravity, the
mountain has to believe in gravity. The
birds have to believe in what they need
to believe in to be in this time space
reality. We humans all the plants and
animals have to take on these beliefs of
time and space and progression of time
etc and separateness and those beliefs
are so deeply embedded that we can't
change them. So when you're saying why
do you not have these every day because
your beliefs are so deeply embedded that
that's you're not going to see those
things happening around you. And I'll
give you just another example of that
that just came to me as I'm taking more
courses related to this particular
non-dual philosophy. It said that the
more you quiet your mind down into more
and more progressively quiet states of
meditation, the more you begin to see
reality change. And literally, your
reality changes. It's always been there,
but you could not see it. And that's
what the great scholarly sages of all
traditions have seen. The shamans, they
see that other reality. And our
neuroilters because of our beliefs will
not let us see it. So that's why we
don't see it. And I think that some
people say, well, do you have more
synchronicities in your life after
you've had a near-death experience? The
answer is yes, because your beliefs have
changed. And I I think that's
fascinating. It's like, do does seeing
create believing or does believing
create seeing? And I would say yes, it's
a both. And
>> can you explain synchronicities? What
exactly does that mean?
So that was Jung um Carl Jung who
created that in the 1930s4s50s
and it's about events happening that
have no causal relationship. So there's
no way that my having a thought in this
particular moment about something um was
caused by um say some something
happening you know in the outer world
like oh I just saw a bird and I had a
thought about the bird. is that I have a
same thing happening as somebody else is
happening having happened somewhere else
not causally and so they're saying it's
synchronous in time synchronous same
time but without causality so again
there's no way in material reality time
space reality causality that could
happen but it's happening all the time
and then you begin to see these
synchronicities and you're going oh my
goodness how could that have happened
and Jung was seeing them all the time
the more he worked in that area the more
he saw them and then he coined the word
and then it's you know people are saying
them of course all around the world and
some people again say oh it's just your
mind you just made that up as something
that's aausal but it it I'm sure it was
caused by something
>> yeah interesting I learned only today
that young and Wolf Gang Pie who won the
Nobel Prize in physics created a sort of
flavor of idealism together called the p
the young pi conjecture super
interesting it's kind of crazy how many
of these
>> absolute absolutely like next level
radical geniuses actually did believe in
fundamental consciousness. You've
Bertrand Russell, so many others. So
many others. That is an interesting one.
I didn't know that either. Um that it's
funny when you learn about these people
in college and your college is sort of
materially minded. They don't mention
that these people actually did believe
in a fundamental consciousness and
actually contributed meaningful work. Um
Young wrote was it pi one of them wrote
a full book on um fundamental
consciousness but you don't hear that.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. Okay, let's let's
>> they're hanging dust in the libraries.
And here's something I just want to
mention to you. So Kristoff Ko, you know
him too. So I've been interacting with
him. He was at the BL Foundation
conference. We talked for about seven
hours together. And he um so at that
conference I showed him the videos that
we are analyzing carefully according to
for three of the cases of the telepathy
tapes. Kids again what five-digit
numbers from their mother, the mother's
behind them, etc. He l I said just look
at the videos. Be curious. He was
willing. We sat down in the lobby. He
looked at the videos and he was blown
away. And he said, "If this is true,
like it really looks like it's true,
this will turn my world upside down."
That's what Kristoff said. And the
reason I'm bringing that up is that um
sometimes you have to look carefully at
the data instead of like sort of blowing
it away because it doesn't go with your
theory. And um what I I'm mentioning
with Kristoff is this is important
because then when he gave a talk at the
Beall Foundation on idealism and
consciousness, he talked about all the
material things that he knew about
consciousness from his years of being a
great neuroscientist. And then he ends
the talk about his psilocybin experience
and his near-death experience. That's
great. But I said to him afterwards,
"Aren't you going to talk about evidence
for consciousness, not just your
experience?" And I realized that when I
hear Kristoff talk, and I've t I talked
to him directly about this. I said, "You
were just at the University of Oregon
where I've been a neuroscientist, and I
was there at a talk you gave to the
neuroscience department, did you say a
thing about idealism in that talk? It
was all materialism." It's like, why is
that? And he says, "Well, I was talking
to that audience, but
>> yeah,
>> I I want him to be honest about his full
range of understanding to help change
the world." And he's not there yet. He's
not there yet.
>> Let's go to the telepathy tapes. That's
exactly where I wanted to go next. Um,
can you can you lay out sort of the what
exactly they are? If the listener at
home is not familiar at all about the
telepathy tapes, can you kind of walk us
through this step by step?
>> Sure. Um so first of all I should say
the way that I got involved in it was
that I was contacted by Diane Hennessy
Powell who's a neurossychiatrist who's
been doing work with kids with telepathy
for a number of years and she's a a
friend of mine from a lot of the
societies that we're in and um then Kai
Dickens and they said would you be
willing to be on an episode of the
telepathy case and I said well sure and
so what I never I I didn't know about
telepathy and autism that wasn't one of
my areas I done research But so she
said, "Would you please go on the um
site and look at the previous three
episodes?" And nobody asked me to do
that. You didn't ask me to like watch
three of your episodes before I came on.
I was a little bit surprised, taken a
back, but at the last minute that
morning before my interview, I went
ahead and went to the site and as soon
as I started watching, I could not stop.
It was that amazing. And I then watched
like I probably two and two and a half
of the episodes before my interview. And
then when we got on, it's like, "Oh my
goodness, this is amazing." So, I think
that there's first of all that
interesting thing that I couldn't
believe it until I really heard these
interactions and then it's like, well, I
know Diane. I then went to the web to
look up her articles. She had no
articles in peer-reviewed journals like
um you know, I don't know whe Explore or
Science or something like that on this
topic. And so I went to Diane. I said,
"Diane, you've been doing this for a
long time. you have to have articles out
to convince people. Where are your
articles? And well, she is a clinical
neurossychiatrist. Her job as far as
she's concerned is to show this is the
case, but she's not somebody that, you
know, publishes day and night because
she's not associated with the
university. So I said, Diane, let me
help you. I'm I'm a neuroscientist that
loves to write papers. So basically um
she and Marina Wiler who's at the
University of Virginia um another
neuroscientist have formed now a
collaboration where we are now
publishing the data from these three
different um video um tape um data sets
that she had gathered and they're
powerful. So I guess the point is that
that's what got me interested in it. So
then I began carefully going into the
data and what I discovered when I looked
at these videos and we were looking at
them frame by frame where the mother is
in the cameras. They're often two
cameras um where the child is what the
child's doing. In one case they are at a
keyboard hitting the keyboard um with
the words that they believe they're
seeing in their mother's um head behind
them etc. Um we're actually looking at
that and seeing could there be any
sensory leakage? How was it going on?
And I should say what I was finding out
is that with this one child every time.
So I'll just give you an example. So um
the researcher is showing the mother
five-digit numbers behind him and we
might be like 57832. Okay. So she's
looking at that and now he's starting to
hit on the keyboard looking directly in
front of Mid um laptop computer. He's
starting to hit the numbers but he's not
really good at hitting them. But when he
sees the number for example eight, he
says a. He doesn't say though he can't
speak eight but he's at a and then when
he for five he says fu for six he says
su so you're hearing his intention and
he will make mistakes because he he has
apraxia he can't hit the right key and
so he has to then try to hit the
backspace etc but you can see his
intention and eventually he hits the
right key and with the two other kids
they don't have so much apraxia and
they're much much better but we have
those kids you know again the evidence
for those kids so I saw those and I got
really excited. So, we are now writing a
paper up. It's just about ready to be
submitted with another um man, Charles
Yokoyama, who's a past editor of a
well-renowned journal, Neuron, who also
believes this phenomenon needs to get
out and we're hoping that we can get
this into a a credible journal so that
people can really see the data and make
their own opinions. But so, saying that,
I then said to Marina Wether and to
Diane, I want to do more research. I am
fascinated. It's like what I want to say
is that the way I go into new research
is literally because there's this
compulsion from what I would call my
heart that I want to know more. This is
fascinating and I have to know. So then
what Marina and I and Diane have been
doing is collecting interviews, Zoom
interviews with the parents and the
children
of um um the people that have responded
to a social media announcement by Kai
Dens to say um would you be interested
in in being part of a study? And so then
we hear the story of the children and
the story of the parents. And we also
have a 15 questionnaire
asking the children and the parents. For
example, to the parents, when did you
first know your child was telepathic?
And the parents give their answer. And
then we hear the child when when did you
first know you were telepathic? And as I
said earlier, the child says, well, I've
always been telepathic from the moment I
was born. And in some cases, we're even
hearing about examples that appear to be
prenatally. Whatever we want to think
about that. So that is one of the ways
that has happened. And I'll just give
you a little bit of my own interactions
now with these children. So Maria Welch
is a speech therapist that's in Chicago
that's working with a number of these
children in her clinics every day and we
have begun working with her and learning
more about it. And what your listeners
may remember is that she actually has
talked to Kai Dickens too. And we have
talked to her and she said that many
years ago she first found out that the
children that were working with her
seemed to be able to know what she was
doing at other times of the day even
though it should be impossible. And they
would share with her what she had done
at home the night before. And this is a
little invasive in terms of privacy, but
they would mention that. And she then
began talking to different ones and they
all had that ability. And then she asked
them how they were doing that. And they
mentioned the word the hill again. and
that there's this place they go mentally
to communicate with each other and they
call it the hill. And so she thought
that was very interesting. And then
later when she was then talking to Kai
Dickens who had just been in Atlanta,
Georgia and had talked to a young man
named Houston and his mother Katie, um
Houston told Kai about the hill as well.
Now, the kids in Chicago and Houston and
his friends never have talked to each
other, but they both called this place
where they mentally converse the hill.
To me, that's amazing. And they talked
about again who they talked to on the
hill, what it's like, etc. Um, so that
certainly began intrigue me. And then
when I began to actually talk to some of
the kids a little bit more and their
mothers, I just found out amazing
things. And I'll give you one example
again from this one child who's named
Casey. And the reason why this is so
interesting to me is that um I got very
interesting answers from him that I
wouldn't have expected. And so I'm just
going to share a little bit of that. And
first of all, just to for people that
don't know so much about autism. So um
he basically was diagnosed when he was
like three years of age after he had
begun regressing after about 15 months
of age. by regressing mean he's no
longer talking to his parents. He no
longer is giving eye contact to the
parents. He's really like withdrawing
inside his body. So he then is diagnosed
with autism. And then from then on
because he can't write, he can't
communicate, he can't speak. There's no
way for him to communicate with people
around him. So the school teachers
consider him mentally They put
him in a special um ed classroom where
he's just with a few other people but
also can't communicate and he never
really learns anything in school in it
the classroom setting. But then about
two years ago, what happens is Casey's
life changes because his mother hears
about a new program. In this case, it's
called Reach Every Voice, teaching the
kids to communicate through a
letterboard, which is what all has been
happening now with these kids. And
that's what changed his life. And
suddenly his mom said that she was now
practicing communicating with the
letterboard at home. And she said, "He
responded so well to me. and it didn't
take long for him to really open up to
the letterboard. And she said it's been
an amazing blessing because now she sees
all the gifts he really has. And I'm
just going to give you one example so
you can feel what it is like from these
interviews. during uh the final weeks of
Casey's greatg grandmother's life now
and basically Casey spent a lot of time
visiting his great-g grandandmother and
when he was spelling on the letterboard
with his mother he said she said he
suddenly began naming the deceased
ancestors who he said were waiting for
Nana and one of the names was his
greatgrandfather and Casey then spelled
the deceased relatives middle name
correctly even though his mother didn't
know how to properly spell the name. So
once again, I'm saying, okay, what do I
do as a materialist with that? This kid
is only able to communicate through a
letter board. He doesn't know anything
about his great-grandfather that's on
the other side, but he's telling his
mother about this when his nana is
dying. And so, um, can the brain do
that? Yeah. Yeah, I mean I I I can't say
that yes, my brain has created this
illusion for me and this dream for me
and I'm sort of like making this up. But
um I I don't know the mechanism. That's
all I can say. I don't know the
mechanism. But this is typical of these
kids. And when he asked him about
communication, I want to say you one
more thing that I think was really
interesting about the mother discovering
his telepathy. So, what's happening is
now they are on a vacation trip at one
point and he has a brother as well and
they're on the plane riding there and
the mother happens to be listening for
the first time to the Celebrity Tapes
podcast through her earbuds and Casey's
several um seats away with his brother
on the other side of the plane. And that
evening when they arrive at their hotel,
she said Casey used his letterboard to
describe the entire episode she had
heard. And she said, "I was completely
blown away. At first, I thought he was
spending basically he was like sensing
my emotions, but when I asked him about
it, he simply said, I hear it. He heard
it
inside of himself." And so she described
experience after experience. I don't
necessarily have to name others, but you
could see that he has telepathy in
situations where like his father was at
work um like 5 hours away and um some
major incident happened at work that was
sort of upsetting and he then tells his
mother about it at home and when the
father comes home the next day they
corroborate that everything Casey said
was true that his that Casey knew that
was happening at his father's work. So
um how can that happen? I don't know.
Look, I I I would like to share my main
concern with this and it's actually not
about telepathy. My main concern is
about the vulnerable population of
autism, the people on the autistic
spectrum.
>> So, whenever I hear autism being thrown
in, I'm like, initially I'm already
skeptical because it's a great story,
right? autistic people possess this this
ability that other people don't. You
know, it's just autism is in general
involved in so much misinformation
because it it it tells a good story. So,
I'm initially skeptical because these
are vulnerable populations and
struggling parents, you know, really
struggling parents, people that are
going through an emotionally difficult
time, a psychologically tough time. I
know I don't have to explain this to
you. You've been around these people, so
I I totally get that you understand
this. I'm cautious of those vulnerable
populations being taken advantage of
that when Kai Dickens puts out the
report saying we're looking for these
people that every mom and their
nonverbal child is going to be like, "Oh
my god, that's it." And
maybe they fully believe it in their
heart and maybe it's true. I don't know.
But I don't know necessarily why any of
this has to actually do with autism.
like have we ruled out the possibility
that this is just a property of human
beings and that the autism part isn't
like a isn't a story for the sensational
part because I'm way less cautious about
the telepathy thing. I'm like go for it
let's study this but then when autism is
involved I'm like we need to be careful
here I think um and we need to have good
reason to actually believe that it's
associated with autism and I'm not sure
that work has really been done. So I'm
curious on on your thoughts there. So
here I think those are good questions
but here's the reason for it. So I do
you know the name Dean Raiden? Again
Dean Raiden is at NS Institute of Noetic
Sciences. He has been working on
telepathy his entire career and I think
he's probably in his late 60s early 70s
now. The effect that they get in terms
of looking at telepathy um in the normal
population is 5% above chance. That's
all it is. 5% above chance. It's a
little bit higher in really creative
individuals. There's something about
real creativity and also meditation
quieting those filters on the brain that
makes you more able to be telepathic.
But nobody will believe a ch a a change
that is 5% above chance. They have all
sorts of reasons that it's not true. And
these kids it looks like it is close to
a 100% or 100% depending on the child.
That's why Kristoff Ko went, "Oh my god,
this really would change the way I look
at the world if this is really true." So
why that is the case? Here's my own
speculation.
They have not been able to speak and all
of their lives for all the reasons
because they're neuro they have neurode
divergent brains and therefore I believe
their filters on their brains have not
basically become really really loud
compared to the rest of ours because our
fil it's important to have filters on
your brain to communicate normally in
life. I need those filters. So they
don't have those and so they've had
these abilities all their life. Nobody's
known about them until they begin to
communicate and then they find out
they've had them. Another interesting
thing for you to be aware of is the
mothers are very protective of their
children very often. And before the
child comes into the study, they ask the
child, do you want to participate?
And the children say absolutely yes
because we want to let the world know
our abilities. So, it's not a parent
saying, "Oh, you know, I'm guessing that
you have this and and why don't we see
if we can, you know, show it to people."
It's the kids saying, "I know I've had
it. I've always had it, and I want the
world to stop thinking that I am a
mentally no child without
agency. I have agency." That's the big
world word. And so what's happening,
what Kai Dickens has done, which I
believe is not taking advantage of the
children. She is trying to show the
speech pathology world that these
children have agency because they
believe that the parents are the ones
that are creating all this whole thing
and the speech therapists are the ones
that are creating the whole thing by
actually moving the letterboard around
to make it look like the child is
talking. And so what people now that are
doing research like ourselves are trying
to do is carefully in a laboratory
situation show that the letterboard is
not moving. Even if the parent is
holding it and the child is moving to
each letter, there's no way that there
could be a a a mother making this um
response. The only very interesting
issue is that one reason that the speech
pathology people thought this wasn't
real in the past is because the children
had telepathy. So if you give the
therapist a word and you don't show it
to the child and you ask the child to
actually say what a word was given to
them, they they can just as easily say
the therapist word word because they
know that was what the therapist was
given. So, you have to rule that out in
future research to show that maybe some
of the times they were giving the
therapist word on their letterboard was
not because they don't have agency, but
because they have mental telepathy. It's
easy enough to look at that and decide
what's really going on if you're
curious.
>> So, so the I guess the obvious question
then is why isn't there bigger data
sets? Why haven't we really gotten
rigorous at the protocol? Because when
you research this, you kind of hear that
the individual scientists, they're also
sort of doubtful of the data. They're
also a little bit skeptical of the
protocol. They're they're like I I think
I read that Diane is like not still
claiming telepathy because she's like
there is flaws in the protocol. There is
maybe as you say facilitated
communication where there's an obvious
flaw with the person that has the answer
directing the board to the person. So
why don't we just control for this? Why
don't we create the most ironclad
protocol where no the the biggest
skeptic in the world just cannot find an
issue with this and why don't we get a
really big data set and we say like here
it is it's recorded on video everything
is ironclad here it is like skeptic
you're arrosoft like what are you going
to say like why hasn't that been done
>> here's the reason and I think I'm hoping
you can understand this first of all the
children that we're working with right
now are now adults they were children
when they started they weren't even the
whole idea of facilitated communication
um uh these um various um new
technologies didn't even exist when they
were younger. They went through college
through school like until they were like
in the 12th grade not able to
communicate and then their mother finds
this particular um rapid communication
technique. Um all those things were have
just been happening in the last maybe
I'd say 10 years or so. So first of all,
why hasn't it happened before? Because
nobody really knew until people began to
give them this technology. And then what
happened is that there was a setback
when the speech and language association
said, "Wait a minute, there was some
case of some um therapist actually
appearing to manipulate a child in some
way by saying what they they created
what they said the child um was thinking
and therefore there was a lawsuit and
everything was shut down. And that
shutdown state is where most schools are
today. And there's an interesting thing
because there's a difference I've
discovered now in talking to therapists
in schools. If your school system has an
occupational therapist that is in charge
of the special education program,
occupational therapists are interested
in motor control. I was a researcher in
physical therapy like occupational
therapy for many years. They want the
children to be able to become um more um
have their own agency and be able to
communicate. The speech people are
coming from that different perspective
from those lawsuits in the past and they
believe none of this is real. So the
speech people don't want this
communication. They don't want the kids
to learn it because they don't believe
in it. The occupational therapists
believe in it and they're having amazing
things happening in their schools. So
this is the funny thing about our
society and our culture. So this is
newer and this is beginning to happen
more and more. And you know when Diane
Hennessy Powell was actually on I think
this was a an interview with a skeptic
and the skeptic Diane said really put
words into Diane's mouth and she was
very unhappy. I think what Diane was
saying is that we don't know really yet
because we haven't controlled these
carefully. Diane was doing her best in
these three case studies but we can't
rule it out completely until we do. What
you're talking about is very careful
studies. So Diane, Marina, and myself
are going to Maria Welch's clinic in
Chicago, and we're going to have the
children wear eyetracking glasses so
that we're controlling where the
children are looking before they hit.
We're going to have um the therapist,
for example, in a different room from
the child, reading out something in
their mind, and then coming back in and
seeing if the child can on their
letterboard say those things. So, we're
doing exactly what we should be doing
because we're scientists. We care. We
want to know this is true. But it's just
starting. Why hasn't it happened yet?
Diane has been looking at the research,
but she was a clinical
neurossychiatrist.
She was not somebody in a research
laboratory able to spend 24/7 on
research. So basically um yes, the
reviewer was basically trying was a
skeptic and trying to put words in
Diane's mouth and Diane was simply
saying look um I am a scientist. I'm a
neurossychiatrist and I want the truth
as well. And I think that there are
these issues that have to be controlled
for. But I don't think she was saying
that she doesn't really believe it's
real. It's just that you have to give
the proof to show it's the case. If she
didn't believe it was real, she wouldn't
be doing these experiments with me and
with Marina right now and doing
experiments with a lot of other people.
So that's one issue. But the other issue
is that
these children are a vulnerable
population and they have what we call
emotional and physical disregulation.
You cannot turn them into lab rats, put
them in a laboratory, put them in an MRI
scanner to see what's going on in their
brain while they're having a te
telepathic experience because that is
high anxiety for anybody to be put in a
closed um magnetic resonance imagery
scanner. And it's the same way even with
EEG. So I want you to again image you
have an EEG camp on the kid. This is a
kid that has physical and emotional
dysregulation. They're always pulling
things off their head. Even right now as
we're practicing putting on these
eyetracking glasses. The kids may let
the glasses stay on 30 seconds or maybe
a few minutes before they pull them off.
So
this is going to take a lot of work.
Because I mean, I can see the skeptics
saying, "Well, just bring 50 kids into
the laboratory and do all these MRI
things and EEGs and and show us it's
real." And it's like, "These are
vulnerable populations, and we just like
with near-death experiences, expecting
somebody to see a five-digit number on
the top of a cabinet,
you have to deal with the human inside
of the phenomenon." And these humans,
somebody that has just died, has a
cardiac arrest, and is leaving their
body. And these children that have a lot
of dysregulation problems are not lab
rats,
>> right? How many cases would you say are
in your mind verified of this? Are we
talking about tens of people, hundreds
of people, thousands of people? Do you
have any sort of even order of magnitude
for sort of how many people you think
have demonstrated disability?
>> I'd say tens of people have been
actually interviewed carefully. Now, in
terms of the actual experimental data,
we are just collecting data. Diane
Marina and I um with people for example
in Chicago, Maria Welch and others and
Natalia um is another therapist that
we're working with in the Boston area.
So that's all we're doing now. I don't
know if there are other research teams
that are doing this as well. There may
be some like at UCSD. I'm just not sure.
So um each one of the research teams can
only do so much because
these children are um they are
vulnerable populations and you know you
make the point about um well maybe some
um wishful parents want to have the kid
um do this actually
>> say that again
>> like if you're really struggling with
the development emotionally and psych
psychologically of your child and then
you hear that oh my god there's these
kids kids with special powers. Um, and
they they sound exactly like my Ben. Do
you not think that they would wish that
for them because they're struggling so
much in that desperation? They're see
searching for answers. Their kid is
exceptional.
Well, all I can say is that in Maria
Welch's group of people, parents that
are the parents of the children she's
working with, a lot of parents don't
want to be involved because again, it
it's that there's a certain invasiveness
when you do that of the family life and
everything else and and a lot of them
also are religious. They have religious
beliefs that say this shouldn't be
possible and they don't want to go there
for their own reasons too. So, right. So
it's not an easy answer of yes or no in
any of those cases. Interesting.
>> Right. And is there any cases of this in
not in in a totally you know
neurotypical verbal person? Has there
ever been um like what would you say is
a verified case? See, I think there are,
but I think that we as scientists have
not been interested in that because we
have heard about people that from the
time they were young said that they they
had precognition about events, things of
that sort. I think there are probably
case studies about those things. In
fact, I know of a case study right now
that um is very well, it's very well
known in my circle, but it was a man
named Stefan Ovietki who was born in
Russia in like about somewhere lived in
the 1920s originally and then with the
Russian Revolution, he went to um Poland
and he had all of these abilities. He
had telepis and he had mental telepathy,
a lot of those things. Um people, this
was like now during World War II and the
Nazi era. um he interacted with a number
of researchers in Europe um French,
Poland etc. um demonstrating his
abilities to them. There's been a lot
written about that and Stefon Schwarz um
who is um a well-known person looking at
these phenomena has written a portion of
a book about that particular man. So
yes, there are case studies. It's just
that the material world does not believe
it's true and those books gather dust on
the shelves of the materialist
libraries.
So how do you think we change that then?
I totally understand your point sticking
these vulnerable people that you know
the sensory any sort of sensory overload
can be a huge issue for them. We we have
to be very cautious of that. How what
kind of experimental situation can we
set up that is very solid evidence
because again you I think you have to
understand the skepticism on these
claims. They are literally
extraordinary. They are remarkable. They
are extreme. Now that doesn't mean that
we should be dismissive but like it
should be like how do we get clever
about these experimental paradigms like
what what sort of research programs need
to occur um where we could arrive at a
result a data set that even the hardest
of skeptics could look at the data set
and be like look I just I yeah you're
right
>> well I think that's what we're trying to
do in Chicago and so as we say in these
two labs one in Chicago one in Boston I
mean I say labs these are clinics where
the um young adults come because they
can be anywhere from you know like 11
years age. They can be 25 or more
because um they still are needing help
in learning to communicate. But
literally we are having the therapist
for example in one room and the child in
another and then so the therapist reads
the material on a computer in one room
and then they come back and then the
child is going to like um answer
questions about what was just read by
the therapist. So, that's one way that
you're showing that there could be no
sensory leakage because they're not in
the same room when this is happening.
And they basically will be um videotaped
um with cameras like from two different
cameras so that you can see what's going
on around them when they're doing this.
Um again, they eye tracking glasses as
much as they will tolerate the
eyetracking glasses so that as they are
writing on their letterboard, we can see
that the eye is going first to that
letter before the finger goes. So,
there's agency right there. So those are
the experiments that we're doing and I
think anyone else could do if um they
want to do this research if there can be
funding for the research. Once again the
National Institutes of Health in the
United States is not do research um
grants related to these phenomena
typically because they are on the edge.
So you have to find private donors. We
found some private donors that are
helping us fund some of this research.
So it is happening and and I think the
beauty of what Kai Dickens did is she
let a lot of researchers see what was
going on and Julia Mossbridge who was
sort of part of a broader team is
working to help coordinate some of the
research activities so that different
researchers at different universities
and areas can begin to find out what
each other are doing and begin to
collaborate a little bit.
>> Fascinating. Well, I I wish you the
absolute best of luck. I I I really do.
I hope I hope this turns into a program.
I hope you're able to get real funding
and get because it takes it takes
funding to get the right data sets that
will convince people and move the needle
on this. So, I wish you the absolute
best of luck. This has been a
fascinating conversation. I don't have
explanations for, you know, you know,
99% of what you said or even all of it.
But that's that's the kind of
conversation that I want to have. And it
is one where I genuinely struggle on the
skeptic open-mindedness balance, that
tight rope. I don't know how to really
get right in these kinds of
conversations. Um, maybe a hundred
podcast episodes later, I'll be fully on
your team. I don't know. But I really
appreciate your work. I think you're a
great communicator. Obviously, very
credentialized. It's it's it's it's
amazing to have the story of someone
that was, you know, as material
reductionist for so many years, hard
neuroscience program, you know, in motor
wrote the textbook on motor control and
now to be running studies on on
telepathy is a fascinating
transformation for everyone. Um, you
know, I voiced my concerns, but I I
think it's I think it's fascinating. It
it's work that needs to be done and I
appreciate you. I appreciate the
conversation. Thank you so much. It's
been really really enjoyable.
>> Thank you. And I think again as Kristoff
Ko said, if this is real, it will turn
his world upside down. And that's what a
curious materialist has said. So and and
actually he's turning into an idealist.
So I think that there's hope for the
rest of the community as well. So thank
you.
>> Thank you, Marjorie. The Giant Shoulder
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