#236 Dr. Diane Hennacy - ESP Enigma: The Scientific Case for Psychic Phenomena

Summary

Shawn Ryan Show – Episode #236

Guest: Dr. Diane Hennacy (Neuropsychiatrist, Researcher, Author of "ESP Enigma: The Scientific Case for Psychic Phenomena")

Release Date: September 15, 2025
Main Theme:
A deep-dive conversation centered on the scientific case for psychic phenomena, with a focus on Dr. Hennacy's research into telepathy, ESP (extrasensory perception), remote viewing, savant syndrome in autism, collective consciousness, generational trauma, and the intersection of brain science and extraordinary human abilities.

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1. Episode Overview

Purpose & Direction:
Shawn Ryan invites Dr. Diane Hennacy—a Johns Hopkins-trained neuropsychiatrist with extensive academic and clinical background—to discuss her decades of research bridging rigorous neuroscience with the provocative realm of psychic phenomena. The episode examines both clinical and experimental findings, integrating personal stories and ethical reflections on the future of human consciousness, AI, and societal healing.

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2. Key Discussion Points & Insights

Dr. Hennacy’s Background & Trauma Work

[01:57–06:12]

• 30+ years in neuropsychiatry, Harvard faculty, Salk Institute think tank on consciousness.
• Began with autism, expanded to complex PTSD, especially in women suffering severe abuse:
  • “Some of these women had their own parents...pimping them out when they’re 3, 4, 5 years old. And that’s such a betrayal that it’s really…such a deep wound.” (Dr. Hennacy, [04:16])
• Developed and ran trauma programs, later working with global torture survivors and veterans:
  • "...we worked with asylum seekers and refugees...the genocide in Burundi, Rwanda, the Lost Boys of Sudan, human rights activists...veterans from all the different wars.” ([06:10])

Trauma, Dreams, and the Unconscious Mind

[07:57–18:26]

• Widespread childhood sexual trauma in society.
• Impact of betrayal-based trauma on relationships—patterns of re-attraction to abusers.
• Mechanisms for exploring the unconscious: Dream diaries are essential.
• Decoding dreams: emotions as signposts, dreams as symbolic and layered:
  • “Dreams are really our unconscious talking to us.” (Dr. Hennacy, [13:13])
• Use of dreams as rehearsal for real-life dangers and, at times, predictors of future events, even for non-psychic individuals.

Generational Trauma and Epigenetics

[24:44–28:07]

• Inheritance of the impact of trauma across generations via epigenetic changes.
  • “We inherit not just our genes. We inherit the control switches for the genes…The good news is that we can do things to turn back on genes that were turned off and turn off genes that were turned on.” ([27:05])
• Healing the self beneficial for future generations.

Autism: Rise, Causes, and Gifts

[28:07–38:38]

• Dramatic rise in diagnosis rates of autism (from 1 in 10,000 in the 1980s to 1 in 30 now).
• Multifactorial causes: environmental toxins, EMF, diet, increased C-sections, etc.
  • “The placenta does not filter out chemicals. It actually concentrates them in the fetus.” (Dr. Hennacy, [29:23])
• Autistic cognitive gifts:
  • Superior pattern recognition, visual-spatial thinking, honesty, spiritual inclination.
  • “Many of these individuals...there’s a purity about them, an honesty about them, and there is a deeply spiritual aspect to them.” ([35:40])

Limits of Language and the Roots of Telepathy

[40:12–49:53]

• Language is a limited, linear, and often deceptive communication tool; alternative and more direct forms—body language, unspoken shared consciousness—were once standard.
• Hypothesis: Nonverbal autistic individuals retain a "shared consciousness" due to interrupted separation/individuation at the developmental stage of language acquisition.
  • “They stay in...shared consciousness with the family members. And I believe that we’re all born in that shared consciousness...” (Dr. Hennacy, [42:36])
• Research and neuroscience: Right-hemisphere dominance in savants and nonverbal autistic individuals correlates with psychic phenomena (telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis).
• Inhibition of the left frontal lobe in neurotypical people increases ESP ability (University of Toronto study).

Empirical Evidence & Experiments in Telepathy

[91:49–113:18]

• Savants display knowledge or abilities (math, music, language) with no direct learning.
• Telepathy studies with nonverbal autistic subjects (notably, those able to type responses):
  • Case of Haley: Accurately read therapists’ thoughts and answered unspoken questions under rigorous lab conditions (multiple cameras, visual barriers, sound monitoring, 97–98% accuracy).
    • “I tested her with randomized numbers, randomized words, randomized pictures...under highly controlled conditions...and presented it at scientific conferences.” ([105:12])
• Parental/therapist discovery was accidental, not wishful thinking.
• Ongoing international research—many families independently report similar phenomena.

Collective Consciousness

[53:17–54:14, 53:54–54:50]

• Random number generators worldwide show greater coherence during major collective focus (e.g., O.J. Simpson trial) due to collective consciousness.
  • “If everybody is focusing on the same thing...that creates more of a coherence in that which is just a natural random process.” (Dr. Hennacy, [50:54])

Psychic Phenomena, Experiences, and Spiritual Implications

[60:03–77:34]

• Hennacy’s personal transformation after direct psychic encounter with a hospital patient.
• Adopts a stance: If such events happen and are repeatable, neuroscience must include them.
• Conversation about psychic readings, mediumship, and how such experiences can upend lifelong skepticism.
• Near-death experiences: Dr. Hennacy relates personal NDEs that shifted her from atheism to spiritual seeker.

Mechanisms of Telepathy and Mind Reading

[112:27–119:55]

• Telepathic ability often reserved for close/intimate relationships; not automatic mind reading of everyone.
• Willing connection, mutual trust, and emotional bond appear essential.
• Skepticism/belief act as a filter; observers’ attitudes influence psychic experiment outcomes.

Suffering, Authenticity, and Healing

[139:23–152:01]

• Synchronicity (meaningful coincidences) and intuition as expressions of interconnected consciousness.
• Authenticity equated to strength; living a lie, projecting false selves, weakens the individual.
  • “If you say a lie...you actually are physically weaker...” (Dr. Hennacy, [178:02])
• Autistic telepaths sense inauthenticity and trigger self-confrontation for both children and parents.
• Healing trauma, embracing shadow traits, and committing to authenticity enable greater human potential and societal improvement.

Telepathic Communication among Autistic Individuals

[164:19–170:52]

• Clusters of nonverbal autistic children demonstrate group telepathy: exchanging answers, even orchestrating “cheating scandals” by intentionally submitting identical incorrect answers.
• Experiments conducted with separate rooms, including natural “conversations” and “mind-talking” about topics (e.g., politics).

Out-of-Body Experience, Time Perception, and Precognition

[149:45–159:35]

• Nonverbal autistics often out of body, dissociated—enabling psychic phenomena such as telepathy, remote viewing, time travel (precognition).
• Anecdotes of accurate future events, “future memories” experienced before they manifest.

Auras, Biofields, and Differentiation between People

[203:35–210:04]

• Description of seeing auras; autistic children use aura color to recognize others with psychic ability or safety.
• Communication capability not limited by physical proximity; anecdotal evidence of global mind-connections.
• Out-of-body state, seeing self in third person, and weak identification with the physical body common.

Encounters with Spiritual Beings

[210:04–214:32]

• Autistic children report regular two-way conversations with God, Jesus, angels—sometimes with visual elements.
• Sometimes culture overlays: Hindu children might see Krishna instead of Jesus, suggesting the “core” experience is filtered through personal expectations and symbols.

Ethics, AI, and the Limits of the Machine Mind

[223:00–231:37]

• AI’s ascendancy, inability to truly intuit, and potential dangers in its use for therapy or spiritual guidance.
• Telepathy research as a reminder of unique, heart-based human capacities that cannot be matched by artificial intelligence.
  • “AI is just using algorithms...and there’s no heart in it.” ([226:37])
• Advocacy for the development of intuition as a filter for navigating a world flooded with misinformation.

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3. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

"Some of these women had their own parents...pimping them out when they’re 3, 4, 5 years old. And that’s such a betrayal that it’s really…such a deep wound."
—Dr. Diane Hennacy, [04:16]

"We inherit not just our genes. We inherit the control switches for the genes...we can alter the epigenetics...it's so important for people to really undergo healing of themselves so that they don't pass the things down."
—Dr. Diane Hennacy, [27:05]

"It’s not over diagnosis. No. It’s definitely not over diagnosis. No.”
—Dr. Diane Hennacy, [32:22]

“People who are autistic have a different type of cognitive process. They tend to be superior pattern recognizers…It’s more like pure perception.”
—Dr. Diane Hennacy, [35:40]

"They stay in kind of more of a shared consciousness with the family members. And I believe that we’re all born in that shared consciousness."
—Dr. Diane Hennacy, [42:36]

"Oftentimes people can have psychic dreams who aren’t otherwise psychic."
—Dr. Diane Hennacy, [19:08]

“Our consciousness is actually a field…and that consciousness field can expand and be connected with the greater consciousness.”
—Dr. Diane Hennacy, [59:45]

"If what she did [psychic reading] is real...then any model for how the brain and consciousness work is going to be incorrect if it can’t account for this."
—Dr. Diane Hennacy, [62:38]

“[Autistic telepathic children] are picking up on [inauthenticity] like very, very quickly.”
—Dr. Diane Hennacy, [200:21]

“Telepathy is something that involves a mind, heart connection…AI cannot intuit things.”
—Dr. Diane Hennacy, [226:37]

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4. Timestamps for Important Segments

• Dr. Hennacy's Clinical Background & Harvard Years: [01:57–06:10]
• Generational Trauma & Epigenetics: [24:44–28:07]
• The Autism Explosion and Hypotheses: [29:05–32:19]
• Autistic Cognitive Gifts: [35:34–38:38]
• Language Limitations vs. Nonverbal Telepathy: [40:03–49:53]
• Telepathy & Random Number Generators/Collective Consciousness: [50:44–54:14]
• Origin Story: Hennacy's Psychic Epiphany: [60:03–65:53]
• Empirical Telepathy Testing with Autistic Children: [91:49–113:18]
• Ethics, Authenticity, and Healing in Family Dynamics: [121:35–125:25]
• Autism, Time Perception, Out-of-Body Experience: [149:45–155:10]
• Telepathic Communication Clusters: [164:28–170:52]
• Seeing Auras, Differentiation, and Global Mind-Talking: [203:35–210:04]
• Spiritual Encounters: Jesus, Angels, Krishna: [210:04–214:32]
• AI, Ethics, and Human Uniqueness: [223:00–231:37]

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5. Flow, Language, and Tone

The conversation balances rigorous scientific curiosity with openness to extraordinary human potential. Shawn is frank, vulnerable, and occasionally irreverent ("I've had my mind read before. It totally freaked me out."). Dr. Hennacy matches with scientific clarity but never dismisses the deeply personal or spiritual—often contextualizing with personal stories, analogies, and references to both scientific literature and mystical traditions.

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6. Takeaway Summary

This episode of The Shawn Ryan Show stands out as a comprehensive and respectful exploration of psychic phenomena through the lens of clinical neuroscience, real-world experiments, and lived experience. Dr. Hennacy’s research—by focusing on the extraordinary abilities of nonverbal autistic individuals—offers a unique, evidence-based window into telepathy, ESP, and the capacity for consciousness to reach beyond the brain. The discussion is framed by empathy, belief in human potential, and an urging for authenticity, healing, and connection—both within families and at the level of collective humanity.

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Further Interest:

• Dr. Diane Hennacy’s book: ESP Enigma: The Scientific Case for Psychic Phenomena
• Podcasts/episodes referencing “Telepathy Tapes”
• Studies on collective consciousness (Princeton random number experiments)
• Philosophical/theological discussions on authenticity, the unconscious, and spiritual development

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Note: For scientific references, experimental footage, and further resources, Dr. Hennacy recommends checking her published works and attending her lectures (near-death experiences, telepathy conferences).

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

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[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

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[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

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[Sean]

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[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

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[Sean]

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[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

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[Sean]

Diane Hennessey, welcome to the show.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Thank you. Pleasure.

[Sean]

I've been looking forward to this one. So we're going to talk about all of your research that went into the telepathy tapes. And then we started going down more and saw that you were into some of the. Researching some of the esp, remote viewing, your book, you know, and all that stuff. And I've interviewed a bunch of these guys and women. Angela Ford, Joe McMonagle, Sean Webb, Skip Atwater, Edwin May. If I'm forgetting anyone, please forgive me, but we've been on a roll with this, and it's just something that caught my attention about probably about two, three years ago, and just a fascinating subject. So I'm really excited to. To have. To have you here. So thank you for coming.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah, thank you.

[Sean]

But. All right, so everybody starts off with an introduction here. Ready? Let me know if I'm missing anything. I'm sure I am. Dr. Diane Hennessy, a Johns Hopkins trained neuropsychiatrist with over 30 years of clinical experience. Served on the faculty at Harvard Medical School. A member of a think tank on human consciousness at the Salk Institute. What is the Salk Institute?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

It's an institute that. It's a scientific institute in San Diego.

[Sean]

Okay.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah, yeah. A lot of famous people have been there named after Jonas Salk.

[Sean]

Okay. An integrative medical doctor, psychotherapist, and public speaker who bridges ridiculous rigorous science with explorations of extraordinary human abilities, including psychic phenomena. Author of the ESP Enigma, the Scientific Case for Psychic Phenomena, a book that examines the neuroscience behind ESP and telepathy. A pioneering researcher known for studying telepathic communication in nonverbal autistic individuals and savants. A co founder of Human Rights Initiatives, a student of ancient wisdom traditions and an advocate for expanding our understanding of human potential through evidence based inquiry. The primary expert whose research was featured in the Telepathy Tapes podcasts. Am I missing anything?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Oh, there's. There's a lot more. I mean, I've. I've also done a lot of work in ptsd.

[Sean]

Have you really?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Oh, yeah.

[Sean]

Oh, man. Well, we should definitely talk about that because we talk about that more than any other subject on the show.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Oh.

[Sean]

So, yeah, you know, when I started this, it was all. I don't know if you know much about me. I was a former Navy SEAL and CA contractor. And so when I started this, I was bringing on all my colleagues and talk about their life stories. And we always end with getting over pts, traumatic brain injury, stuff like that, and we explore lots of different avenues to try to get out of that. Out of that pattern. And so, yeah, I would love to chat with you about that stuff at the end. What got you into ptsd?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Well, when I first went into private practice, autism was so rare that when I hung my shingle and said, I'm a neuropsychiatrist with expertise in autism, there wasn't enough of it to fill my practice. But what happened was, is that there were all of these women who had been sexually abused as children who were really frustrated by their experience with the psychiatrists that they were seeing who didn't really understand their, you know, really didn't understand why they were so traumatized and just wanted to medicate them. And I quickly gained the reputation as somebody who would actually approach them with compassion and care and really try to help them. And so what happened is that I became an expert on severe trauma because, I mean, some of these women had their own parents sort of sending them off to have sex with strangers. I mean, basically pimping them out when they're 3, 4, 5 years old. And that's such a betrayal that it's really. We can live with the trauma from a natural disaster like a hurricane that comes moving through or an earthquake, because we, you know, we, you know, that doesn't really. I mean, it traumatizes us to lose loved ones and et cetera. But when you have a trauma that's a betrayal by someone that you innately are supposed to be able to trust, it's just such a deep wound. And so I started working with these women and created a program for a women's center in Chula Vista.

[Sean]

Man, good for you.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

And really helped tremendous number of women. And stopped doing that when insurance companies started altering inpatient psychiatry and they started just wanting it to become more like a revolving door. And I said, no, I'm not going to have my name attached to something that is not, you know, consistent with the kind of values that I have. I mean, I only put my name on something that is top notch. But what happened was, is that I had this expertise in ptsd, and I was approached by somebody who asked me if I would help create a program for Survivors of Torture Incorporated in San Diego. And that was. They were just starting up, and so I agreed to help them with their program. And we worked with asylum seekers and refugees from all around the world, including people who were from the genocide in Burundi, in Rwanda, the lost boys of Sudan, human rights activists who had been tortured in Islamic countries like Iraq, et cetera. And then in addition to that, I also worked with people who were veterans from all of the different wars. And. And I didn't do that at Survivors of Torture. I did that just in my own private practice because there were a number of people who were veterans who were not getting their benefits because there was such a long waiting list for them to be evaluated by somebody who could evaluate them for traumatic brain injury and ptsd. And so I agreed to. To do. To do that as an independent contractor. So I've heard it all pretty much.

[Sean]

Wow, you've explored some serious dark territory.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

I have, yes.

[Sean]

You know, I mean, we're going to get into the telepathy stuff, but. But, you know, I've interviewed countless. I didn't realize how prevalent sexual abuse was, especially in kids, until I started this show. And like I mentioned, we do a lot. A lot of life stories here. And, you know, some of them have come out on the show and said it. Some of them have told me after the show that things have happened when they were kids and they didn't want that out there. And I'll bet It's close to 50% of the people I've interviewed have experienced some sort of sexual trauma as a child. Now you're talking about three to five years old. So what I want to ask is if there are any. Which it doesn't sound like. I mean, if somebody's going to pimp their kid out like that, it's going to happen multiple times. But have you worked with anybody that had a single experience at that age, an unfortunate experience like sexual trauma in a single experience? And if you have. I mean, do they. Do they. Obviously they remember that, but, I mean.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Well, I've. I've worked with people who've had the single experiences as a teenager.

[Sean]

As a teenager?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah, yeah. The ones that had the experiences when they were really young, it generally was a repeat experience.

[Sean]

Is that their first memory?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

I wouldn't say it's their first memory, but I'd say it's their most vivid.

[Sean]

Man, that's sad.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

It's very sad. And what happens is that it makes it really, really difficult to have normal relationships.

[Sean]

Yeah, I see that a lot. A lot with women that have been through something like that, who are adults now. And it seems like they get attracted almost to the. To that type of a person. To an abusive type person.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Absolutely. I mean, it's really been something that I've observed over and over again where there'll be these women who were sexually abused as a child, and then they marry somebody who ends up sexually abusing their own children. And yet when they marry this person, they don't have any suspicion at all that this person would do that somehow. It's like people can be like a magnet, almost like telepathy, like some type.

[Sean]

Of telepathy, some type of communication that they don't even understand that's happening.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Well, what's interesting is that. Yeah, it's almost like people have a radar system that's unconscious. I mean, like, they say that, for example, if you had a party with a bunch of people in it that were single, that the sadist and the masochist will somehow find one another.

[Sean]

The what?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

So somebody who's a masochist and the person who's sadistic, they will somehow find one another. It's as though they're like two opposites. You know, two ends of that polarity are really on the same continuum, and somehow it's like they gravitate towards one another. I mean, a similar phenomena is that, like, I noticed when I was doing inpatient psychiatry that people who were people with the same diagnosis would gravitate towards one another. And if you had, like, a mixed unit, you would find that people who, for example, were depressed would be. They'd find one another and they'd be talking with one another. And the people who had a personality disorder, they'd be with one another. And the people who were schizophrenic, they'd be talking with one another. And people who are bipolar, they'd be talking with one another. And that sort of birds of a feather flock together kind of a phenomena and so there's some kind of unconscious process in which people are just attracted and attract to them. And I think that the solution to that is for us to really explore our unconscious. Because if you can take that which you're not conscious of and bring it to conscious awareness, then you have more mastery over it. And you don't fall into some of these old traps that you do. If you're just sort of ignoring something or you never even allow it to enter your awareness.

[Sean]

Two questions to come out of that. One is about generational trauma. We'll get to that in just a second. But you had mentioned exploring the unconsciousness. How do you do that?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Well, one of the ways is to keep a dream diary because our dreams are really our unconscious talking to us.

[Sean]

How so? I mean, I've had some wild dreams. Wild dreams that make no sense or, you know, when I dream, I'm fascinated with dreams. Don't dream a whole lot. But I mean, so what is a dream? I mean, you know, you have these dreams and it's like one minute you're in a street fight, and then the next minute you're eating pizza with your family. And then the next minute you're, I don't know, on vacation, going to sp. Like, what I'm kind of saying is you get these dreams that seem to last. Sometimes they seem to last all night, but you can't. When you try to. When I try to describe it to my wife, I'm like, I don't know how we went from this scenario with these emotions to something completely different and a whole nother scenario with a whole different set of emotions into. I mean, you're happy, you're angry, you're sad, you're sorry. Dreams that maybe, I don't know, you got in a fight with your wife, or your wife cheated on you, or, I mean, or you're mad at your kid. I mean, it's. What I'm saying is you get like this movie, if you will, in your dream, but it doesn't flow. And so it's all these different subjects and emotions and scenarios that all happen within one dream. Why does that happen?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Well, it's during our dreaming state that we're really trying to process emotions and lay down memory. And so when you're. For example, some people have recurrent dreams. And I pay a lot of attention to somebody's recurrent dreams because that's something that you're really, really trying to work through. And dreams are. Some people's dreams are more transparent. It's more obvious what the dream is really about if you apply it to what's going on in their waking life. But other people's dreams are more encoded in symbols, and the more deeply encoded they are, the more it is that the person can't really face it face on. And so it's like you're dealing with it in code first. And then as the layers come off, you're able to see more about what the dream really is about.

[Sean]

Could you go into a little more detail on that? I mean, how do you decode a dream?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Well, it's something I've done as a skilled psychotherapist. How do I decode it? When I listen to the dream, I want to know what emotion. First of all, what emotion came up in the dream? Okay, so let's say somebody said, oh, I felt really sad or I felt really scared. And I'd say, okay, is there anything that's going on in your life that feels or that you've been thinking about lately that feels at all like that emotion? I mean, you know, that would be an echo of it. And they say, oh, yeah, I had this anxiety dream, and I'm feeling a little anxious in my new job, or I'm feeling a little anxious because my wife isn't acting the same way, and I'm wondering if something's going on. And then you just keep exploring that and. And you get into what in your life is similar to this. And then it just takes you down this pathway where you start to realize, oh, now you're thinking about this. But actually your dream is about something that happened to you before. So let's say that a person has an. A dream in which they're very anxious. They say, oh, I've been wondering if my wife's, you know, having an affair. And then you get into, oh, this person was married before and their wife did have an affair. And then you start to unpack that. And so it's. And there's certain things that become, you know, just become obvious that that's what they are. I'm trying to, like, an example of a dream for, like, you know, there was a time in my life when I would have a dream in which I'm driving a car and the brakes don't work. Okay, now that is a dream where it just feels like you don't have control over your life. It's like, well, what's going on in your life that you don't feel control over? That's. That. That's a good example.

[Sean]

Okay. Yeah, it's just interesting Because I have, like. And, you know, I have, like, zero fear that my wife is going to cheat on me. But it's just. And that's just one example. But I may have a dream where I lost my son at the store and I think he got kidnapped. Or I have a dream where one of my best friends killed somebody and am I gonna help him hide the body or. You know what I mean? Like, it's just like, wazoo shit that just pops in my head. And it's like, what does this have to do with anything? Like, I don't have a fear of that. I don't know why I had a dream about somebody kidnapping my kids at Walmart.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

It may be, to some extent, it may be that you're trying to process things that aren't personal. In other words, we hear in the news all the time about these horror stories. And so then what happens is that there's this human tendency to then try that on as a way of just trying to reconcile that we live in a world in which these kinds of things are even possible. And so sometimes our dreams are like a rehearsal. It's sort of we're trying it on so that in case something like that did happen, that we feel prepared for it. It's like, you're a former Navy seal. You had to try on scenarios, and you're training for combat. And so some of these things may be just. It's not that you have a fear of it. It's that you acknowledge that we live in a world in which those kinds of things can happen and that you have a need to feel prepared. And what's fascinating is that dreams oftentimes are places where people who normally aren't psychic or don't consider themselves psychic can actually have these experiences that are precognitive or telepathic. And I remember reading this account once of this dream that somebody had in which they were working in a. They worked in a chemistry lab. And their eyes. A chemical went into their eyes and it was going to destroy their eyeballs unless they went over into the. Get their eyes washed. We had these places, stations where you would go in case something like that happened. And he had a dream of that happening to him. And then recurrent dream of that happening to him. And then years later when it happened, he was able to get to the station faster because he had already rehearsed it in his mind. Wow.

[Sean]

Do you think that. I mean, do you think some dreams are a representation of your true self? And so where I'm going with this is. I'll just bring up some more examples. I'm just curious of your thoughts, but, I mean, you know, when I was in the teams and contracting for CIA and all this other stuff, I mean, I would have dreams where we'd be in the middle of a gunfight and I would rise to the occasion, and I would be, you know, doing everything I'm supposed to do. Heroic actions, all this other stuff. And then I might have a dream where I cower away and I wake up and I'm, like, ashamed of myself. Or, you know, or it could be a street fight where, you know, I. One dream, I. I don't know, defend my family, you know, from some type of an assailant. And then I may have another dream where it's, you know, not the exact same scenario, but it might be a similar scenario, and I didn't defend them. And I'll wake up from some of those feeling either proud of my actions or ashamed. And if. If I'm ashamed, then I'm like, you know, if I wake up and feel ashamed from it, I'm like, man, is that. That's not who I am? Or it could be anything. It could be, you know, it could be, I don't know, a dream where you do something bad and. And then. And then you think, oh, man, am I. I don't. I'm not capable of doing that to somebody. Why would. You know, I've never have done anything like this to somebody, you know, and. And I always would like to think that, yeah, I'm gonna stand up for my family or for my friends or for my, you know, when I. In my other life, you know, my former colleagues and battle. And so, I mean, so where I'm going is. Do you think. Do you think dreams are a direct representation of who you are.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

In this case, about you? I would say you must have a very, very highly developed superego. And what I mean by superego is your conscience. You're somebody that holds yourself to very, very, very high standards. And so part of how we hold ourselves to high standards, principles is that it's this. It's criticism reward, criticism reward. It's like. So what you're doing is. It's like you're being hard on yourself to keep yourself in line. And you would never do some of the things that you feel shameful about in your dreams. You would never do those things in your waking life.

[Sean]

And.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

And part of what keeps you along that sort of straight narrow is that you're always reminding yourself of how you would feel if you didn't, and it keeps you on task.

[Sean]

Interesting, interesting. So it's like your subconscious.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

That's what I mean. It's your unconscious. It's your unconscious that is, you know, that's at play here. That's why I was saying that dreams are really about our unconscious.

[Sean]

Interesting, interesting. All right, let's go to generational trauma and. Or cycles, you know, back to kids that have been, you know, had horrific traumatic events happen, you know, sexual sexual abuse, physical abuse. I mean, how does somebody break that cycle that plays in their head over and over and over?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Well, one of the things that's interesting about generational trauma is that people can have. They can express it without ever having been exposed to the generations that actually had the experiences. So what I mean by that is that there are individuals who were adopted, who were the children and grandchildren of people who were in the Holocaust, and even though they were adopted at birth, had no, you know, exposure to parents who were traumatized by what happened. The child was anxious from the get go. And one of the theories about what this, you know, what the cause of this is or how this happens is that there's epigenetics. As a result, we inherit not just our genes. We inherit the control switches for the genes. So the genetics, the genes that code for proteins, are only about 10% of our chromosomes. The other 90% of our chromosomes are thought to be what really controls the expression of those genes. And so certain genes can get turned on and get turned off. And so what's happening there is you're inheriting this sort of, you know, for lack of a better word, it's almost like a memory without it having, like, you know, an actual memory. But, I mean, you're inheriting that. Well, the good news is that we can do things to turn back on genes that were turned off and turn off genes that were turned on. We can alter the epigenetics.

[Sean]

You can do that?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Oh, yeah, we can do that. Absolutely. I mean, that's our, you know, things like our diet, things like psychotherapy, you know, things like you know, just doing meditation, doing, you know, doing all of these different sort of practices actually changes our epigenetics. And we can then pass that down to the future generations. It's one of the reasons why I think it's so important for people to really undergo healing of themselves so that they don't pass the things down. Because even if you're really being careful about what you say or what you do, et cetera, our children, if we haven't really worked on certain things. They still can inherit some of what we haven't processed yet.

[Sean]

Interesting, interesting. Another random question about autism. You know, you had mentioned that at the beginning of your practice, you were really focused on autistic people and that there wasn't. There wasn't enough of that to fill your practice. Well, I don't know when that was, but let's fast forward. You know, it seems like I wouldn't say autism is exploding, but the numbers have gone up. Is there something that we as a species is doing wrong? Or is it an over diagnosis? Or have doctors picked up on other signs that are. Is the spectrum widened, you know, to where, you know, there's different levels now? I mean, why are we seeing this rise and.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Well, when I first started studying autism, which was back in 1986, 1987, it was only about one in 10,000 children, and now it's one in 30.

[Sean]

One in 30.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

One in 30.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

And what we have to realize is that our brains are still developing throughout childhood. And we've introduced all of these artificial factors into our world without having really studied what effect they might have on brain development. Everything from an increased C section rate, ultrasound during pregnancy, changes in the diet, which change the microbiome, which we know plays a huge role in neurotransmitters. Also, we've introduced all of these WI fi and various electromagnetic fields that are not natural to the earth. There's all of these chemicals. I mean, when babies are born, there's tens of thousands of chemicals in the umbilical blood. And so they're being exposed to all these chemicals. And one of the things that a lot of people don't realize is that the placenta does not filter out chemicals. It actually concentrates them in the fetus. Just one of the reasons why I'm a big proponent of women who want to become pregnant undergoing some kind of just cleansing, you know, some kind of detox. I mean, it's not. It's not really enough to just not take anything during your pregnancy. I mean, you really need to, you know, all of the beauty products, you know, nail polish, you know, makeup, you know, all of these just artificial chemicals. We absorb them through our skin in. And so I think that it's really. It's a matter of, you know, we've introduced a lot of things into the world that are. There's no putting the genie back in the bottle, okay? And so what we need to do is we need to find ways in which we can optimize our health and keep those things that we feel are essential and those things that are not essential, such as like for example, use of glyphosate and so much of our agriculture, I mean that's a known toxin and it's not only toxic to our system, but it also is toxic to our gut bacteria. So anyway, so there's so many factors that are at play here and it's one of the reasons why it's been hard for anybody to pinpoint that it's one single factor because it's really probably multifactorial.

[Sean]

So it's not over diagnosis?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

No. It's definitely not over diagnosis. No.

[Sean]

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[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Absolutely.

[Sean]

What are those aspects?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Well, one of the things is that people who are autistic have a different type of cognitive process. They tend to be really superior pattern recognizers, which is, you know, they're able to connect the dots, they're able to see the associations of things. Some of them are visual spatial thinkers, so they're able to process things. And once again, it's relational, but it's different from pattern recognition. So an example would be. So people who are visual spatial thinkers make great engineers. They can design something in their mind and manipulate it within their mind before they even build it. They can sort of debug all of the problems. Nikola Tesla was somebody who could do that. And so that type of thinking is extremely efficient at solving a lot of problems versus verbal thinking, which is what most neurotypical people are, is they think in words, they think in language. And the problem with language is it's very linear and it also can be very, very circular. So you just go looping around in the same thoughts. The other thing about language is this language can also be very deceptive. We can talk ourselves into, or talk other people into believing something that isn't true all through language. Whereas with these other processing styles, you know, the right brain processing styles, it's more that you just, it's more like pure perception. It's more of a, that you're. And it's harder to be deceived because you can just, you're seeing how things plug into everything else as opposed to just following a sort of a linear logic train that somebody is leading you to wherever they want to lead you. Those are just some of the gifts. And then there are many other gifts. I mean, many of the individuals that I've worked with who are autistic, there's a purity about them, there's an honesty about them, and there is a deeply spiritual aspect to them. So there's many, many gifts and many of the mothers of these children are delighted that they have an autistic child. They get upset if somebody says anything that suggests that they feel sorry for them.

[Sean]

I mean, it's interesting too, because, I mean, you see so many ultra successful people and you know, for example, in the tech world, you know, that are tech giants who appear to be very much so on that type of a spectrum. Or I mean, you look at something like. Have you ever seen that movie the Big Short? I think his name is Michael Berry. He's the one that called the 2008 crash of the market the economy. And I mean, you look at, you know, in the movie, it looks like they portray him as somebody who would definitely fall on the spectrum. But. And I mean, you know, for somebody, it's just. And everybody thought he was crazy, you know, and then bam, market tanked and it's like, shit, the guy was right. But I mean, you see it all over the tech world and it just seems like, you know, some of the most fascinating innovators in the world all seem to kind of fall in that type of category.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah, yeah. It's kind of funny because when I was in college, there were the sort of the engineering types that were, you know, they were called, you know, nerds, you know, and they had the, you know, pocket calculators and, you know, they were, you know, kind of people made fun of them and then. Well, those kinds of people are now the crypto billionaires.

[Sean]

I know that's.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

And have all of these gorgeous women, you know, just lining up to be with him. So, you know, it's. Talk about revenge of the nerds.

[Sean]

That's a good way to put it. But it's, it's. I mean, it's an interesting, very interesting subject to kind of dissect. And so, I mean, you were talking about language. And I remember when I interviewed. I mean, language seems to be a very inefficient way to communicate.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Absolutely. I mean, I think that's one of the reasons why more and more people are losing their tolerance for reading. They'd rather watch a podcast like this.

[Sean]

I had a conversation with Joe McMonagle about, you know, how does this happen? How does remote viewing, ESP abilities, How do they come about? You know, I think he had mentioned that he thinks that we all have it, but we all can't tap into it. And so he went on and this is just a theory, you know, I don't think there is any science behind this. But. But he did bring up a good point. And he talked about at the beginning of humanity, he's like, there was no language. He's like, if you look at animals, they're able to communicate extremely efficiently without words. And he goes, you know, at the beginning, this is how we communicated was body language. It was. You really wouldn't have to do much, maybe grunt, point at something, you know, but you could read each other and communicate a lot more efficiently. And then when we started traveling in groups and that it would be, you know, then we started to introduce language. And he goes, language is actually a very inefficient way to communicate. There's a lot of opportunities for miscommunication or, or, you know, you insert sarcasm and all this other stuff. And, And. And I. I just found that to be very interesting. And. And, you know, he went on to go, you know, through tech, through social media. We're looking at a phone, we're looking at a tv. He's like, we're not accessing, you know, everything that our brains were meant to do. And it's been, you know, kind of a. If you look at a graph, you know, he's like, it goes down, you know, and so I'm just curious what your thoughts are on that.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Oh, absolutely. That language. So. So one of the things that I think plays a huge role in why these autistic individuals that I do research with, why they're so telepathic is that they underwent a regression. Most of them underwent a regression between the ages of one and two and a half years old, right when they were acquiring language. And that's also the time period when we undergo developmentally individuation. Separation. In other words, people talk about the terrible twos, the terrible threes. And part of that is because you have. The toddler is trying to assert their independence from the parent, and they say no to everything, even if it's something they want. Right. And so it's because they're just wanting. They're testing out their ability to. To have free will. And so what happens, though, with these autistic individuals is that they regress during that time period when they're acquiring language, and they're becoming more autonomous from the parent. And so they become more and more dependent upon the parent for a lot of basic needs. And so they never go through the separation that those of us who are neurotypical go through. And so they stay in kind of more of a shared consciousness with the family members. And I believe that we're all born in that shared consciousness and that that's part of how we acquire language. In the first place. I mean, if you think about how magical it is that a young child can pick up language and know what it is that people are talking about, I mean, it's really quite remarkable. I mean, when you meet some of these children that, you know, there are some children that at the age of two, they can speak in full paragraphs and it's like, how do you take these sounds that you hear? And the sounds from everybody sound slightly different because we all have different voices, people have different accents, et cetera. How do we take that and convert it into actual concepts? So I think what happens is that we all have that shared consciousness so that we pair those sounds and the patterns within them, which is the information, we pair that with whatever it is that the person who's speaking is thinking. And then as we develop language, then we, you know, that the telepathy goes underground and it's really more of our default kind of, you know, proto language, if you will. One of the things that's interesting is that if you look at brain development when we're born, there's a pathway for language that's intact, that it's what the pathway that's called the ventral pathway that's involved in the understanding of language. And it's not until we're 7 years old that we've completed the development of the dorsal language pathway, which is the pathway that enables the expression of language. And that's the pathway that gets disrupted in these children who regress during those first couple of, you know, first few years of life. And that pathway is connecting the front of the brain in an area called Broca's area, which is the expression of language. And the expression of language is not just speech, it's also the ability to write or type. It's also the area of the brain that's involved in the use of tools. And so by having that not get hooked up to the part of the brain that's involved in the understanding of language, it makes it hard for people to express what they already know in these individuals. Now what's interesting is that, and this is all on the left hemisphere. That's basically that, you know, that language is for most people, right handed people especially, it's encoded in the left hemisphere. What's interesting is that one of the reasons why I thought that autistic individuals might be the ones most likely to show us that ESP is real is that I realized that their brain activity when they're in their waking state is more similar to our functionality when we're in Dreaming sleep. And as I mentioned earlier, oftentimes people can have psychic dreams who aren't otherwise psychic. And if you look at the, you know, what's going on, the activity in the brain during dreaming sleep, what you'll see is that the right hemisphere is dominant and the left hemisphere is quiescent and the frontal lobes are quiet. And in children, our frontal lobes aren't as fully hooked up to the rest of the brain. Okay. Which is why we're all kind of ADD when we're little, because our frontal lobes aren't hooked up so we don't have impulse control or we can't think of the consequences. And in these autistic individuals, they have all of these right hemisphere skills, as I mentioned, their cognitive processes are more right hemisphere based and a lot of savant skills are right hemisphere. And their deficits are left hemisphere language. And so they have this kind of reversal of brain functioning when they're awake from what we have when we're awake, but that we all experience when our dreaming sleep. And so I made this hypothesis over 20 years ago that autistic individuals might be the ones who'd be the most likely to express esports. And I knew that a lot of savant abilities were very similar to esp. Well, what happened a couple of years ago is that the head of neurology at the University of Toronto, Morris Friedman, did an experiment in which he inhibited the left frontal lobe of individuals who were just neurotypical individuals. And he found that that enhanced their abilities for telepathy and for psychokinesis, which is the ability of the mind to affect the material world.

[Sean]

Like spoon bending?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah, like spoon bending, yeah. So that's, yeah, yeah. So that's the reason why I think that these autistic, these non speaking autistic individuals, I mean their brain activity is consistent with what that study shows.

[Sean]

Have you seen psychokinesis in real time?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

I've seen people able to affect random number generators, which is a form of psychokinesis. And I, but I haven't in real time, I haven't been to a spoon bending party, but I know a lot of people who have, I know a lot of people who've bent spoons.

[Sean]

What do you mean by, sorry, what did you call it? Randomized numbers?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Oh, a random number generator.

[Sean]

How do they affect that?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Well, so a lot of random number generators, how they operate is that it's basically based on radioactive decay which is a random process. And we know that, you know, there's just a certain, you know, we have a lot of data on. On what that looks like. Okay. And it's just random. There's. There's no predicting any of it. Okay. And so if you have a random number generator, it's just measuring that radio act of decay. But then you say to somebody, okay, I want you to now influence that so it's less random. And then you just measure the output and you see that it has shifted towards something that's more coherent. There were experiments that were done by Roger Nelson and others at Princeton in which they had random number generators all over the world. And what they looked at is, what effect does collective consciousness have on those random number generators? If everybody is focusing on the same thing, if everybody is simultaneously having the same thought, does that create more of a coherence and that which is just a natural random process? And what they found was, yes, indeed it does. And how they did the experiment was that they had all of this data, these random number generators, just putting their output out, and then they looked at time periods when a high percentage of people were focused on the same thing. So what would those things be? The O.J. simpson trial. So many people were tuning into the O.J. simpson trial that there was increased coherency in the random number generators. Wow. They did this for many, many big events like that.

[Sean]

Wow. How do you describe collective consciousness?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

How do I describe that?

[Sean]

Yeah.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

What I would say is that. So all of us are basically, I would say we're differentiated consciousness in terms of, you know, we're each our own individual consciousness, but we're still connected or capable of being connected to a unified consciousness. You know, all. You know, there are people who have these mystical experiences that say that they realize everything is all one, you know, that it's all unity, that we're not separate. Okay. So that's. So that consciousness, where it's like you go up to whatever you want to call it, source, whatever you want to label that, it's all of our higher consciousness, all collectively together.

[Sean]

I've had that experience of unity consciousness. Yes. All as one. It was a psychedelic experience. 5 Meo DMT. And it was a very profound feeling.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah, yeah. So you were going from the more differentiated individual consciousness to the collective. And we all are capable of that. It's just that some people need to have, you know, a chemical push. Why.

[Sean]

Why do you. I mean, what happens in the brain when I. When that happens on psychedelics?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

What happens in the brain? Well, I don't know exactly what. When you say what happens in the brain, I don't know exactly what's happening. I mean, it's something I want to study. I think of it as, for example, think of it as being like a we. So are you familiar with the concept of the biofield?

[Sean]

No, I'm not.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Okay, so all living, all living systems have a field around them, okay? It's an electromagnetic field, okay? And within that is plasma and it has a toroidal shape and the torus is. It's sort of like a donut, okay? And it's a self reflecting system. Think of the. If you've ever looked at an electromagnetic field that you know, or looked at the field around the earth, okay? It's toroidal and it goes loops around like this, okay? And we spend most of our time in our individuated consciousness focusing on just the sort of the information that's within that's coming to us from our sensory system that's informed by our sight, our hearing, you know, et cetera. That is really our local, you know, here and now, senses.

[Sean]

Okay?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

But what happens is. So that's only some of the information that's within that toroidal field. I believe that that field contains information that is relevant to us here. But out on the outside here, it's getting information from elsewhere that makes sense. It's like a. Think of it as being. There's our inner process, okay? There's what you experience internally that feels more private, okay? And when we go, and that's local consciousness, but when we access non local consciousness, like what the remote viewers are doing, it's like our conscious awareness shifts from paying attention to just the readout from what our senses, our local senses are telling us to shifting to the. I think of it as the outside of that Taurus. It shifts to that which is not informed by our senses anymore, but is actually informed by the greater field, okay? So I don't think of consciousness as being confined to the brain. In fact, I think of consciousness as being something that the brain navigates.

[Sean]

Okay?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Like we all have, you know, we all have like smartphones nowadays. And so we use our smartphone to connect with other people and to surf the Internet. And the information isn't contained within the smartphone. The information is contained within the field. And so I think that our brains and consciousness work similarly, that our consciousness is actually a field. And there are some psychics who actually.

[Sean]

See these fields like a cloud, like a collective cloud.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

They see it like they see. Well, they also will see, like your field, okay? There are people who see auras. These autistic individuals I work with, they see auras. So they see your consciousness field outside of you. And. And as I said, the brain is really what navigates that. And that consciousness field can expand and be connected with the greater consciousness.

[Sean]

Very interesting. Very interesting. What got you so interested in telepathy and espresso? What was the thing that kind of brought you down that road?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Because I started out as a neuroscientist and very much in the materialist, reductionist model. And things changed for me when I was on faculty at Harvard, and I was called to do an evaluation of this woman who wanted to sign out of the hospital against medical advice. And that was my role there at the hospital, was to do psychiatric consults on the medical and surgical floors. And I went in to see this woman, and the staff had already determined that she was mentally ill because she said she was seeing ghosts and that she was psychic and wanted to leave. And in my training, that's what I was taught is a sign of somebody being psychotic. And when I went in to see her, one of the first things she said to me is, oh, I'm seeing all this ghosts. And it's, you know, freaking me out. I really want to leave. I said, well, yeah, I imagine if there's going to be ghosts anywhere, they'd be in a hospital. A lot of people die here. And she goes, yeah, she goes. And she goes, and I'm also psychic, and I know my tests are going to come back. And back then we did blood work in order to find out if somebody had had a heart attack. And it took a day or two to get the results back. And so we didn't have those results back yet. And she said, so I want to leave. And I said, well, you know, I really love to talk to you a little bit more about this. And I really wanted to just gain her cooperation to stay rather than just sign the paperwork and commit her to stay. And she looked at me and she said, I'm getting a really good reading about you right now. Do you mind if I tell you what I see? And I said, yeah, sure, you know, go ahead. You know, I just thought it was really interesting that she would say that. And I thought, you know, it's good. I love to build rapport with people. And I said, sure, you know, go ahead. And she goes, wow. She says, I'm seeing your aura, and you've got this white light around you like Jesus. And I'm going, yeah, I'm right. And she says, and I see that you have a husband who's a chemist, and he's applying for A job right now in two different cities. And I was like, my husband was an MD, PhD biochemist, and he was applying for a postdoctorate in two different cities right then. And I was like, oh, really?

[Sean]

That got your attention?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

That got my attention. And then she said, I said, well, what cities are you talking about? She says, well, in his heart of hearts, he wants to go to one of them, but you're actually going to end up at the other one. And now she had my curiosity because he and I had met when we were medical students together at Johns Hopkins and he was 13th generation Baltimorean. I knew that that's where he wanted to, he really wanted to go back there. And the other place he was applying was ucsd. And I said, well, what city are we going to end up in? She said, well, name some cities. So I named about 10 cities. And she goes, san Diego, that's where you'll be. And she said, and you'll have a daughter while you're there. And she just started telling me all of these things about my current situation and my future that there was no way she could know. And I was able to talk her into staying because she really liked me. And she said, well, if you come back tomorrow, I'll stay. And so she stayed. Her test came back normal and she left. And we went on to move to San Diego and I went on to have a daughter. And it was one of those things that just. It was one of those things where it was so life changing because I went into this field wanting to understand the brain and consciousness. That's why, I mean, originally when I went to medical school, I was going to become a neurosurgeon because they were the ones who were mapping the brain by, during surgery, by doing recordings from the brain and stimulating parts of the brain during an operation because they wanted to make sure that they didn't remove areas that somebody needed for functioning. So if you're, if you're doing neurosurgery, you really want to know for this individual and everybody's brain is slightly different. You want to know for them what their functionality is. And so I thought, oh, this would be a good way to map out the brain and do good in the world. So my goal was to understand the brain and consciousness and how does it all work? And I thought, if what she did is real, and I knew it was real because it was, I experienced it firsthand, then any model for how the brain and consciousness work is going to be incorrect if it can't account for this and so I started doing research to try to find, you know, has anybody else reported these phenomena? And in 1995, when some of the remote viewing work started to get declassified, that really, you know, piqued my interest again. I said, oh, look at this. Military intelligence funded this kind of research for a long time.

[Sean]

Yeah.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

And they had some really fascinating results. And so that. It was after that that I decided that I was going to put my own energy into trying to figure it out.

[Sean]

That's interesting, you know, that that happened. That happened to my wife before. And she recorded it. This is before we ever met. We didn't even know each other. And. And several years later, I. What did we do? We did. We did something and we got connected to, I don't know, somebody that was like, you should try this. And I tried it and recorded it. And I was like, you know, I'm not really buying into this. I mean, he was like, oh, you've seen explosions? And I'm like, I'm a Navy seal. Of course I've seen explosions. Try again. And I mean, I wasn't open to it, you know, at all. And I am a Christian, so I'm getting a bunch of about this in the comments, but whatever. It is what it is. And so me and my wife started talking about it, and she was talking about. She was talking about an event she went to in New York. Who's the big medium there? The. Do you know who I'm talking about?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

John Edwards?

[Sean]

No, it was a woman, I think.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Oh, the Long island medium.

[Sean]

Yes, she was taught. We. We just had like a dinner conversation about this, and she started telling me about the Long island medium. They went to some type of a show there, and. And there was this woman there. They were like, oh, I'm getting these messages, and all these people raising their hand like, no, not you. No, it's not you. It's not you. And she went on to say some other stuff, and she's like, no, that's not it either. And she goes, this. She goes, somebody in here. I can't remember exactly how it went, but basically it was like this person misses so and so, and he wants you to know everything's okay. And he knows that you go into the closet and spray your dad's old cologne so that you can remember him. And the woman that went there with my wife broke down, bawling, was like, I can't believe that this happened. And then she had spoken to a psychic long time ago, years before we met. And the woman that gave her the reading gave her my initials, says, you're going to marry somebody with the initials, you know, my initials, and then you're going to move to this place, which we wound up moving to. And she said, I don't even, she didn't even remember it actually. She was like. We were talking about having the fact that she had done that, that she had talked to a psychic. And I was like, this is crazy. What, I don't believe in any of that stuff. And then she's like, actually, I think I recorded it. So we dug through her computer and pulled it up and sure shit, she was like, I don't even, I didn't even remember this, but she's in there and called out my initials, said, we're going to move, you know, to Tennessee, and said some other stuff that's actually happening right now. We're in process. Right. I don't want to go into it because it's private. But, but she had called like all these things. And I'm sitting there like, I'm like, you didn't even, you didn't remember this? And she's like, no, she's, she's like, I didn't remember it, but here it is. And, and that really kind of like opened my mind to it. And I was like, oh, shit. Well, maybe there is something to this. And then, you know, then the rest is history. That's when I started bringing in people, remote viewers and psychics and stuff to, to, to hear their stories and try to understand how it works. Still no idea how it works. But, but. So that led you into, I mean, did you ever do it again before we move on?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Ever do what again?

[Sean]

Have you ever had another reading?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Oh, well.

[Sean]

So.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

When I met Gary Schwartz from the University of Arizona at the time, and this was back in like 2004, 2005, he was doing research on mediums and he said to me, have you ever had a reading by a medium? And I said, no. And he said, well, I'm testing these mediums and I want to certify them. And so I need somebody independently to just look at them. Would you be interested in a free reading? And I said, oh, okay, sure. And so this woman called, we had a set up phone call and she called me and she said, this guy named George is so excited to talk to you. And I said, George? And she said, yeah, he's your grandfather, isn't he? And I'm like, no, I don't have a grandfather named George. And then she said, oh, well, he's pretty insistent that, you know, he's here to talk with you. And I said. And then I thought about it for a second. I thought, well, wait a minute. My daughter's father's father was named George, and he had passed over. And I said, could it be my daughter's grandfather? And she said, yeah, that's who it is. He wants to tell you a few things. Oh, that's interesting. And then the next person that she said showed up was my grandmother, Minnie. And the way she described her was just totally consistent with my grandmother. She described her as somebody that would follow you around with like, a Windex bottle and wipe up, you know, any, like, little fingerprints and whatnot. That was exactly my grandmother. She was very, very, very fastidiously clean. And so I thought, well, you know, that's interesting. So. So. And then one of these autistic individuals that I do research with recently just spontaneously told me, you know, he got a reading on me, and I was like, oh, you know who's here? And he says, well, it's your half aunt. And my father had a half sister. And I thought, well, that's interesting because not. That's a very specific thing to say. And most of us don't have that half aunt. And then. And then the other person that she said showed up to say something to me was my. She said, your grandfather by marriage, and his name is Harold, and my step grandfather's name was Harold.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

So I really think that what's happening now is that people are having so many. Whether it's television shows like Long Island Medium or, you know, what these autistic individuals are telling the world. I think what's happening is that people are being shown that we are more eternal than we realize we are. That so many people are terrified of death because they think that that's it. They think that's the end, that they bought into this very atheistic, materialistic model that tells us that all we are, you know, the only thing that's real is that which we experience with our five senses, and that when we die, we die, and that's it. And I think that we're living in a world now where we see the consequences on a daily basis of such a toxic materialist model. It's taken us away from a spiritual life. And so I know that a lot of people are raised in Christianity and think that some of these things are works of the devil or evil or whatever, but what I feel is that we were warned against. In the Bible, we were warned against putting our faith into people who are Practicing occult sciences for good reason. Okay. Because those kind of people can have way too much influence over us. And so then, you know, you have to trust that they have good intentions. But it's important we don't throw the baby out with the bath water. And what I mean by that is that the people who are now showing us these things now I think that they're showing them to us not because they're evil or demon possessed, but because we need to be reminded that we are more than just this flesh. We need to get back into a more spiritual way of being. And these children that I work with, they say that they're in communication with God and Jesus all the time. So it's. I mean they would very much say that they're Christians, you know.

[Sean]

What do you think happens when we die?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

What do I think happens? I think we join that unity consciousness until it's time for us to differentiate again. Or maybe we get to stay up there.

[Sean]

Interesting. I interviewed this guy, John Burke. Have you heard of John Burke? He went around and did. I think he interviewed over 1500 people with near death experiences and found the commonalities. And this is all Christianity based. And he found that subjects were from all over the world, all different religions, had no contact with each other. And he would just go and document every single one of them and then found all the commonalities that had to do with Christianity. And there was an overwhelming amount of them that had some type of an experience with Jesus or God or visualization of heaven or the white light. And some of them having communication, some of them didn't. They even had hellish near death experiences where the subject went to hell and was saved. And so, I mean, have you dove into near death experiences? Does that.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Oh, absolutely. I'm fascinated by near death experiences. In fact, I've had a couple myself. That you've had some. Yeah, I mean, not the full blown experience. What I experienced is that when I was about 13 years old, I was in a canoeing incident where my brother, I never was taught how to swim. And my brother and his friend thought it'd be funny to tip over the canoe when we were in the river. And I couldn't, I couldn't make it to shore and I just started sinking. And I remember having a life review. And I also remember having this, just this sense of peacefulness which, I mean you would think that somebody who's drowning would be terrified, but there was just this sense of peace and just acceptance. Well, so see my life before my eyes and then the Next thing I know, I was rescued. And then when I was applying to medical school, I was walking across the street. I left the chemistry building, and I was walking across the street on a rainy day with all of these applications in my hand for medical school, and I was hit by somebody. And the next thing I remember is coming to several hours later after having been unconscious on a neurosurgery floor. And when I came to, initially, I thought that I was having a dream that I was a patient in a neurosurgery suite because I was applying to medical school to become a neurosurgeon. So I thought, oh, isn't this an interesting dream? And the doctors are like, you're not dreaming. You know, you were in an accident. And so they kept me in the hospital for observation. I mean, they're coming in the hospital. They're coming in and shining the light in my eyes, you know, every hour and taking my vital signs. And they're monitoring me very, very carefully because they were very concerned about me. And I'm there thinking something is very different. I don't know what to make of this feeling. I was just like, what is this feeling? How am I different? I'm like, oh, my God. It's that I believe. And God. See, I was raised an atheist. My father was a scientist. I didn't even know about religion. I. I'll back up a little bit, and then I'll continue my story. I mean, my father. My earliest memories were at Hanford. My father was one of the top scientists in studying plutonium and showing that it was harmful to wildlife and helped to end the nuclear testing that was being done in the west, out in the open. And then it was after that, he went to University of Washington, Seattle, did his postdoc in cardiovascular physiology, and then eventually became the head of the artificial heart program at Battelle Memorial Institute. And he was an atheist and wouldn't let our mother. You know, my mother was spiritual, but he wouldn't let her take us to church. So I was not raised with spirituality at all. And so fast forward when I'm applying to medical school, but I was always a good person. I mean, I worked for, you know, charities. You know, I was. I was a Girl Scout. You know, I always wanted to, you know, help humanity, you know, in whatever way I could. And so I'm come to in this, you know, neurosurgical floor, and I'm like, I feel different. It's like, I believe in God. I'm like. And then I'm like, what you know, and I'm like trying to think about the last memory I had before ending up in the hospital. And I remember, you know, and I remember just stepping off the curb, okay. And then I'm taking my memory back. And then I remembered the conversation I had the night before. And the night before I was in this math class. I was taking an upper division math class just because I love math and it was fun to do. And this woman sitting next to me says, where are you applying to graduate school in math? And I said, I'm not applying to graduate school in math. She said, you're not? I said, no. And she said, how could you give away God's gift? You're so gifted at math. And I said, you believe in God? You've gotten this far in math and you believe in God. And she said, you've gotten this far in math and you don't believe in God. And we had this fascinating conversation. And then I said to her, well, I wish I believed in God. And so I come, I'm playing this back in my mind. And then I had to realize, I'm like, oh, my God. Last night I said, I wish I believed in God, and now I believe in God. Wow. But I had no framework for understanding that. I didn't have a clue. And so I went on to. I got into medical school, went through all my training, but just like that patient at Harvard that I mentioned, that it was like, oh, I've got to understand, you know, esp. There was also, because of that experience that I had where I believed in God, I became a spiritual seeker. And I studied. I read the entire Bible. I studied Eastern spiritual traditions. I was basically looking for universal truths because I wanted to have a framework to understand what is even meant by God. And that belief in God never went away. In fact, it's just gotten. It was more of a knowing rather than a belief. But with no memory of those several hours that I was unconscious. So I have no idea, you know, where I went, what I experienced. And I've had to fill in the blanks, fill in, you know, fill things in on my own. And so it makes me wonder what happened. Maybe I had the full blown experience. And so I spoke with Phyllis Atwater, who is Skip Atwater's daughter, and she's an expert on near death experiences. In fact, she studied thousands of cases. She's had, I think, three or so of her own. And I'm actually gonna be a keynote speaker at the association for Near Death Studies conference in Chicago in a week.

[Sean]

Oh, Interesting.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah. Yeah. And so anyway, so Phyllis Atwater told me when she heard my story about being knocked unconscious, she said, oh, that can bring about the same results as a near death experience. And the reason why I was having this conversation with her was that I attended one of her talks and she put a list up on. She put a slide up with a list of all of the sequelae or the aftermath of having had a near death experience. And she listed, I don't know, it was like 20 things and like 16 out of the 20 applied to me and they had all started after I had this head injury. And, and then when she said to me, oh, yeah, no, you're going to have a lot of the same consequences as a result, I thought, okay, now I'm really interested.

[Sean]

I'll bet. I'll bet. Wow. Thank you for sharing that. Let's take a quick break.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah.

[Sean]

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[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Well, initially I was really interested in savant syndrome, which is something that's been described in the literature going back well over 200 years. You know, this is where you have an individual who knows things that they've never been exposed to. For example, there was this boy back in 1804 who was. He was five or six years old at the time, and he was just in the field with his father, hadn't been to school yet, and he started saying these mathematical equations and solving them, and he hadn't been taught math, and he was accurate in all of his solutions to these mathematical problems. And so the father took him literally on a. On a tour back then, and he was written about. But. And there have been other cases like that. So, for example, Oliver Sacks, who was a neurologist, who. He was the person who was. One of his books was the movie Awakenings, which was about severe Parkinson's disease, where people were frozen until the development of L dopa, which then unfroze them and they went from being like statues to being capable of moving. Well, he also wrote a book, the man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat came out in 1986. And I got to meet him shortly after he wrote that book. And in it he describes these autistic young men who were identical twins who were institutionalized, who could. They could spit out prime numbers and they couldn't do simple arithmetic, but they could give you a six digit prime number, and then the other one would give you the subsequent prime number. And they'd go back and forth in this game. And Oliver Sacks tested them with prime number tables and was able to determine that they were accurate in their prime number generating skills to 12 digits. And then he had them do it to 20 digits. But the computers at the time couldn't.

[Sean]

20 digits?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

20 digits. Even though the computers in the 60s couldn't do past 12. And they said that the numbers just appeared to them. They weren't calculating it, they weren't deriving it. And there aren't really that many good algorithms for determining prime numbers in the first place. I mean, you have to literally go through and do all of the division. You have to see, is there anything that this number can be divided by besides itself in one. That's the definition of a prime. And so be able to just spontaneously.

[Sean]

20 digits.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

20 digits, yeah. And they could do calendar calculation, which is another Savant skill, where they could, if you told them any date going, you know, back in time, thousands of years or into the future thousands of years, they could tell you what day of the week it would be.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

And the answers just came to them. And so when I first heard about savant syndrome and I thought, well, this is something I really want to study, but it was really, really rare. And it's found most commonly in people who are autistic. And in fact, they estimate that about 10% of people who are autistic have some savant skill. For some of them, they have a musical ability where they can just sit down and play instruments without having to have the same kind of training as someone else. Or they can acquire languages very easily. There's a famous savant, Daniel Tammet, who, He can speak 11 languages. He learned Icelandic in one week?

[Sean]

In one week?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

In one week.

[Sean]

Full fluent.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

And he couldn't recite PI, which is a non repeating number. Yeah, he can recite it to 22,500 digits.

[Sean]

Are you serious?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yes. And he says that it's not that he memorized it, but that he just sees it like a ticker tape parade in front of him. And each number has a different color and shape associated with it. So it's a condition called synesthesia, which. Which almost all, if not all of the autistics I work with have this synesthesia where they'll put a color around a number or a letter. And there's something about synesthesia that makes for superior memory.

[Sean]

What do you mean? They'll put a color around, like in the image in their head will be highlighted with a particular color?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah, so there's two types of. Two general types of synesthesia. And in one type, it's what's called the projecting type, where you actually, out here in your physical space, you actually see it and you can't not see it. In other words, it's a constant accompaniment of that symbol. Okay. So they just. Whenever they see a letter, and it could be in any font, whatever, you know, it's totally independent of that. It will always be that color. For some it's numbers, you know, but for some people, it's that they'll associate, say, you know, like a sound, like a note with a color. It could be any of the senses. And there are other. So sometimes it's projected out here and you experience it as existing out here, and at other times you experience it internally. And that's what's called associative synesthesia. So it happens both ways, but it's.

[Sean]

What do you mean? It's outside. Like it's projected into their. They see it. Like, if I'm looking at you, I see.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah, yeah. They'll literally, it's like it's superimposed upon, you know, if you. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Versus the vision that we have more internally where it's more of an imagined.

[Sean]

It's not their imagination.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

It's not their imagination. No, no. They experience it out here.

[Sean]

Wow. Have you seen this in your studies?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Well, I've worked with people who have synesthesia. I myself don't have that form of synesthesia, but it's. It's. It's a fascinating phenomena. And so I. So I was interested in autistic savants and I wanted to understand, you know, how, you know, what does this tell us about information? You know, what does this tell us about memory? And so I was invited, after I wrote the ESP enigma, I was invited to go to India to evaluate several autistic savants over there. And the person who invited me told me that they also had esp. And so while I was over there, I was testing this one boy for science knowledge. He hadn't been to school. He was five years old. He hadn't been to school. He was a non speaker. And yet his mother said, he knows all of this information about science and wants to be a science scientist. And so I was asking him these questions and he was giving me answers that were very, you know, accurate. And I was asking him math, you know, that he hadn't studied. And he was, you know, typing onto a keyboard the answers to these things. And I was thinking, okay, well, you know, he's a mathematical, you know, savant. But then what happened was, is right before I was leaving, the person who invited me over said, oh, by the way, he's also telepathic. All of them are. And I. And he said, then they're telepathic with one another. I'm like, what? You know, you're just telling me this now? It wasn't, wasn't at the time that I could test it. And so I. So when I got back to the United States, I was interviewed on various podcasts and whatnot. And I mentioned that I wanted to study telepathy. And within months, I was contacted by a family who had a daughter that they said was telepathic. And they asked me if I would be interested in evaluating her. And the story behind how they discovered that she had this ability to read minds was that she was basically being assisted in the home with her homework by these therapists that would come in and do homework with her. And she was non speaking, but she was able to type independently into a talker. It's like an iPad that has an electronic voice. And they discovered that she was really, really good at math. And the father knew about savant syndrome and he thought, oh, she's a mathematical savant. And, and so the therapist was working with her, doing these complex mathematical problems, you know, asking, you know, what's the cube root of like a six digit number and things like that. And she would just do it in her head. And then one day, the calculator that the therapist was using, that was of course always out of Haley's sight, that calculator died on her. And so she switched to a different calculator. Calculator. And the answer was given to her in logarithmic notation. And Haley gave the answer in logarithmic notation.

[Sean]

What is algorithmic notation?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Logarithmic notation. Best way to think about it is that it's a. We tend to think of numbers as a six digit number, and that's in base 10. Well, think about, if you change it to a different base, like a base 2, the number's going to look different. That makes sense to you. It has to do with a different way that you just, just write down the number.

[Sean]

It's not clicking. It's not clicking for me.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Okay, let's see if I can explain. Okay.

[Sean]

I'm not a savant.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

I know, I know. And, and, and, and think of it this way. Okay. If you have an, if you have a number like 1322. Okay, so that's one. Okay. Plus 300 plus 20, plus two. Okay, well, if you were to switch that to a different base, then that number would look very, very different. Okay. Because if it's like to base two. And I don't want to take the time to do the calculation in my mind right now, but if you, if you put it in base two, then the number is going to be much larger because each one of those numbers represents a different unit instead of that two being two twos. Do you understand what I'm saying?

[Sean]

I think so. I think. Are you saying that the number would look like 1,000 plus 300 plus 20, plus 2. Is that what you're saying?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

No, what I'm saying is that if you change, you're changing each one of the units that each one of those numbers counts for.

[Sean]

Okay.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

So if you have 1,000, okay, that's 10 to, that's 10 cubed.

[Sean]

Okay?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Right.

[Sean]

Okay.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

And so it's more putting it in that kind of notation, okay, 10 cubed plus.

[Sean]

Then it's 10 to the power this to the power this to the power to this to the power.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

That's right. And so that's what's meant by exponential notation, is it just has to do with how it's notated.

[Sean]

Okay.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

And so it's the same number, but it looks very different than.

[Sean]

You see, a very complicated way to write 13, 20.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah. Yeah. It makes it much more complicated. Right, right. And so if she was just doing the calculation in her head, why would she switch it to exponential, which is even more complicated? That's like adding another layer onto it. Why would she switch it to doing that when you know. And so the. The therapist is like, wait a minute. You know, why'd you give it to me in exponential notation? She's like, are you reading my mind? And then Haley goes, yeah, I am. She said, I see the numerators and denominators in your head. And she goes, really? And she says, well, who's my landlord? And she types, helmet. That was the name of her landlord. And she said, what am I thinking right now? And she was thinking of the dinosaur Barney. And she. Barney. And she goes, oh, my God. She's like, you are reading my mind. And she didn't know what to do with this. She was afraid to tell the parents she thought they think was crazy, but she eventually did tell them, and they went and they checked it out for themselves. And, like, oh, my gosh. And then a couple of months later, another therapist who was working with Haley in the house discovered that Haley would make the same kind of mistakes, spelling mistakes that she would make. You know how some of us, like, well, you know, we just always, like, flip certain letters, you know, like, we know it's supposed to be I before E except after C, but we still flip it anyway. Well, Haley was making those kind of experiments that were those kind of errors, just like the therapist would make those kind of errors, and she would recognize the error when she saw it. But, I mean, it'd be the initial thing. She's like, well, wait a minute. Those are the kind of errors I make in spelling. Then she said. She said, hey, are you reading my mind? And Haley goes, yes, I am. And then she said, well, then how do you say I love you in German? Which this therapist had. She was fluent in German. And then Haley typed it out, German for I love you. And she's like, oh, my gosh. And so, once again, she was sort of afraid to tell the parents, but then she was relieved when she told them. And they said, oh, you know, we already knew that. And so this gave me the opportunity to then go and test her under highly controlled conditions with two separate individuals. And she was 97, 97, 98% accurate. And I tested her with randomized numbers, randomized words, randomized pictures, and had a barrier, a visual barrier between her and the therapist and filmed it all with cameras, you know, all around the room, you know, five cameras and covering all sides and up above so that, you know, if any kind of, you know, just to make sure that if anybody wanted to examine the footage, they could see, you know, whether or not there was any kind of cues or whatever had had them microphoned so that if there was any, you know, even slightest little, you know, sounds that it all get picked up and presented it at scientific conferences. And people were blown away by it. But people, people didn't quite know what to do with it. I mean, this, this was over 12 years ago that I did those experiments. And since then I've done experiments on, oh, I don't know, probably, you know, probably at least 20 different autistic individuals. But many of those were virtually. But, but half of them were in person.

[Sean]

What are some of the other experiments you've done? Are they all the same experiment with different people?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Well, because this claim of telepathy or mind reading is so extraordinary. I mean, people want to see that. Oh, you know, is this something that you can reproduce? They want to see it done with other individuals under different conditions. And so, so I've continued to do research with other individuals. I've been contacted by probably at least 100 individuals all around the world with the conviction that their child is reading their mind and wanting to know what to do about it. Because each one of these people, they were shocked by it. That's why they reach out to me is that they're, it's not that they were trying to bring, you know, cultivate this in their child or that it was something that was part of their, you know, new age belief system or anything like that. It was that they just stumbled into, onto it, just like these two therapists stumbled onto it. And then, then they're, and then they're shocked and they're like, okay, well what do I do with this information? And then they, of course they do a Internet search and my name would pop up and they're like, oh, there's somebody with these kind of credentials who's actually studying this. And then they contact me. And I was supporting this research out of my own private practice because this is such a controversial area that it's not easy to get funding for. And I just thought it was easier for me to just pay for my own expenses to go and visit these people and test out these cases. I mean, what's exciting now is that I have other scientists who've been reviewing my video footage of these experiments and, and they're convinced that this really is indeed mind reading.

[Sean]

Wow. I mean, that is fascinating and scary at the same time. I've had my mind read before. It totally freaked me out. I mean, it's your most private whatever. I mean, that's, that's, that is, I mean, what goes on inside your head is the most private thing that you could possibly, you know, fathom.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah, yeah. Now, let me just say it's alarming. Let me just say that these, the autistic individuals don't want to do mind reading with complete strangers.

[Sean]

Is it something that they have to put effort into, they have to concentrate on it? Or is it like the numbers that we were talking about earlier that are projected over the top of their vision where it's, I mean, is it just. Do they automatically pick up on it or do they have to concentrate, put effort into? All right, we're going to do this. I'm going to read your mind.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Well, it's possible, but that there are some who might just not have any control over it and it might just be something that they just experience. I really don't know. I can't rule that out as a possibility. But I do know that the individuals I work with, they are protective of themselves as much as anything else. In other words, they don't want to merge their consciousness with just anybody. And so they have to like you and trust you to want to do that.

[Sean]

Okay.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

It's like a boundary issue. You know, just like you might feel violated to have somebody enter your psychological space and read your thoughts. Well, not everybody wants to enter your thoughts.

[Sean]

That's good to know.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

You know, and so there's this, so there's this sense of, you know, personal space that, you know, that, you know, that we have. And they want to, when they love somebody, they want to merge with. I mean, there's this tendency when you love somebody that you want to merge with them. And there's all those love songs and not about how two hearts beat is one and whatnot. You're really wanting to be in sync with someone. And so these autistic individuals have their mind reading abilities, show up in the context of somebody that they really feel bonded with and somebody that they spend a lot of time with. But what's interesting, though, is that one of my research colleagues who was a total skeptic about all of this, and he was raised Catholic, and he also was a devout Catholic, and he also was like, oh, you know, my family better not think that I'm doing this, because this is like forbidden territory. He was curious and wanted to witness one of my experiments. And he, after seeing it, he was like, oh, my God, this is real. He's like, what do I do? This. This really is real. And it was sort of freaking him out. And he said to this girl, Lidu is her name. He said to her, can you read my mind? And she said, mm. And he said, okay. He said, what am I thinking? And he typed a word, put it into his phone, showed it to the camera, and then shut his phone off. And then she typed the word. And then he totally was untimely. But it was one of those things that she really liked him, felt. He really, I mean, she could feel his appreciation for her. She could feel. I mean, he truly was having this heartfelt.

[Sean]

It's like a supernatural instinct.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah, yeah. And so he was just feeling very, very, you know, close to her. She felt close to him and he was able to, you know, have her read his mind. Now what's interesting is that I've seen people who've witnessed one of my experiments who go from, oh, you know, I didn't know this was possible, to, oh, now I'm convinced it's possible actually start to have some of these experiences themselves. So what's interesting is the degree to which our belief system filters out what we experience. If we don't believe something is possible, we're less likely to experience it. And this has been one of the confounding variables in parapsychology research, because if you have people who are parapsychologists who believe in this stuff because you've already had your own experiences or had other experiments that you've witnessed, then you're more likely to actually have favorable results. You really actually have more favorable results. This gets back to that sort of psychokinesis thing that I talked about earlier, where our thoughts can have an impact on the outcome of things. But similarly, if you're a die hard skeptic that you're just like, you cross your arms and you're just like, show me, and I don't believe in this stuff, then it may shut the whole experiment down. And in fact when we were filming the telepathy tapes, there was this. One of Kai's camera crew was a die hard skeptic and there was a short period of time there when we weren't getting the kind of results we were getting before. And so Kai asked this person to leave. Just go out to your car and cut us some space. And then the experiments started going well again. And so it's fascinating to think about how it's like how powerful our consciousness can be in kind of shaping the reality we experience. And, and I think that that's really, really, really important for people to contemplate. I mean there's, you know, people talk about the law of attraction, which is, you know, this idea that, you know, if you're, if you're thinking about something or you want something, that you may attract that into your life and you know it. I mean there's limitations to all of that, of course, but I think a more appropriate law to think about as opposed to the law of Attraction is actually more the law of assumption, which is something that has been written about as well. And the law of assumption is more that check what your assumptions are, check about what your actual beliefs are that you just, that you treat this assumption as a fact when it really is just a belief. And, and if it's a limiting belief, see if that limitation really is a limitation that's just based on attitude or is it a reality based limitation. And if you start peeling away those things that are assumptions that are really more of an attitudinal issue and you start saying, well no, I'm not going to let that apply to me. No I'm not. That's a limiting belief. That's a limiting belief because I had a critical father or that's a limiting belief because I had a teacher at school who didn't believe in me or whatever and just say no, I refuse to accept that and defy those assumptions, you'll actually see that things will go better for you.

[Sean]

I know you're right on that. I mean they say assuming things is a bad thing to do. But I mean with this mind reading, telepathy stuff, I mean, I could see that is a blessing and a curse at the same time. I mean if you're. Everybody has bad or evil thoughts, at least I have a lot of them. And you know, if I had a, a child who could read my mind, I don't, I don't know if I would wish that on somebody. Because you get angry, not necessarily just at the child, you get angry at Your wife, you get angry at the other child, you get angry at friends. I mean, you have, I don't want to call them fantasies, but you know, you have, you have, you imagine yourself doing things to people that hurt your family maybe, or, you know, and I mean to have, to, to have a child that has access into that, I mean, they would see or experience thoughts that you wouldn't want a 5 year old, 8 year old, 10 year old, you know, to, to, to think about. Those could be sexual thoughts, those could be thoughts of violence. Those could be fantasies that you want to experience. Anything, you know, and, and so do they tap into that?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Is that, well, that's, that's one of the reasons that a lot of people contact me as well is it's not only do they go through the ontological shock of wait a minute, how is this even possible? But oftentimes they're going, oh my gosh, I don't want my child to be reading my mind. They're really going, my thoughts aren't always positive. And there's a lot of, it's kind of like, you know, it's being naked in a way that people are more comfortable being physically naked than they are being naked in that way. And so one of the things that happens is that the parents of these children at first have that reaction oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes they go through their own, own spiritual transformation because they have to out of necessity. And what I mean by that is they really do a lot of house cleaning. You know, a lot of what we need to do to evolve ourselves to be good people is we need to be able to look at our shadow, look at that which we don't really want to see about ourselves. So Carl Jung talked about the shadow and if we don't see it about ourselves, we tend to project it onto other people. And oh, I don't like that. Ever notice that, Ever notice that people will say, oh, I don't like her because she's a liar. And you think, well, you're kind of a liar, you're so. Or whatever, you'll see that people will tend to kind of project onto other people that which they don't want to see about themselves. And so when you face your own shadow and look at the things that if you saw it about yourself, you wouldn't like about yourself, you're bringing it to an awareness that enables you to change that about yourself, yourself. If you really don't like that, then why? Why, you know, why? What are you really evolving yourself? Spiritually if you're just keeping the blinders on, saying, I'm only going to look at myself this way, and I'm not going to look at things that I don't want to look at about myself. And so what happens is that these parents will tell you they become better people as a result of their child, and they are so grateful to their child for doing that. And this gets back to something you brought up in the other. The first half of this, which is this generational trauma thing. A lot of these autistic children who are here today say they're here to help evolve humanity. They say that. That they are here on the planet right now because they feel it's, you know, that they're on a mission to help evolve humanity and to help bring us to a different place and to bring us to a place that's more loving, more respectful of life, you know, to actually usher in a time period that's more in keeping with what Christ tried to usher in.

[Sean]

And where do they say that? What would you call that? Would you call that an intuition? Where do they tap into?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Oh, they'll tell you that they talk with God, that they didn't lose connection. There's this idea that when we die in Christianity that we return to source. You know, we go back to be united with God in heaven if we've been a good person. You know, it depends upon, you know, what. You know, what do you do with your free will in this lifetime? You know, there's a certain. There's a certain amount of our path that's just laid out for us, but we also have free will. And what do you do with that free will? And so what we oftentimes do is if we're all focused on self and service to self and not service to others, then we're fulfilling a life that is really just more, you know, it's more secular. Even if we believe in God, you're still really predominantly living a fairly secular life. If all you're thinking about is your own pleasures and what brings you joy without thinking about, you know, you know, the greater good and whatnot, that that brings us. That brings us closer to God. People will tell you that they feel so much better when they're giving. You know, those cliches, it's better to give than to receive. You know, I actually see how people, when they're in a giving space, feel better. And so I think that they're just. They're not disconnected from source. All of us can be connected as well, but we have to look at what are we doing that disconnects us.

[Sean]

Do they have other communication with God, with Jesus, with source, whatever? They're.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah, they talk about being in communication with Jesus. They talk about being in communication with angels.

[Sean]

What kind of communications?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Two way conversations.

[Sean]

Two way conversations. Any specific examples that stick out in your head that you want to bring up?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Well, it's really mainly a message of how we need to be more loving. It really is about that. It pains these autistic individuals that there's so much disharmony in the world. It really does.

[Sean]

It pains me too. Is this free conversation or is this, you know, for example, psychedelics? I have a lot of friends that use psychedelics. It's for brain injury, for PTs, for all that stuff. Talk to a lot of really big successful businessmen and women as well. And a handful of them are very interested in, partake in psychedelics and, and a commonality that I hear, a term that I hear used often is like a download. I got a download to an answer of something that I'm looking for, whether that be personal life, business life, it could be anything. Is that what the, what the conversations are like? Are they like a download or can they tap in at any moment in time and ask a question?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

I think there's a little bit of both. I mean, but definitely they describe having downloads. Absolutely. And there are a lot of parallels between the experiences people report when they take psychedelics and the experiences that these autistic individuals report that, I mean, they're not taking psychedelics, but it's as though their system itself is already running that circuitry that psychedelics activate. And they report being out of their body a lot of the time. Something we call disassociation. And that's something that, I mean remote viewers, some of them do astral projection. They say that they leave the embodied perspective and their consciousness becomes disembodied. Well, these kids describe themselves as sort of being out of their body a lot of the time and very just tenuously tethered to it. Another thing that they report is synesthesia, which, like the kaleidoscope colors that you can experience with various visual symbols or sounds or whatever. So that's something you see with psychedelics. And telepathy is something that people on psychedelics have also reported.

[Sean]

I've heard this, I've heard this as well.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah. And this concept of the hill, which is talked about in the telepathy tapes where you have all of these non speaking autistic individuals who say that they, they meet at a regular Basis at the Hill. And you know, the Hill is not really a physical place. It's a place, it's a realm that you have various mystics talk about. And I've heard people on psychedelics describe that. It's like they go someplace where it's like there are all these other beings there, other individuals there, from wherever, all over, that you just all come to some kind of non physical convergence somewhere. So the parallels are very, very striking.

[Sean]

So these specific autistic folks that you're speaking of, they basically live in that realm all the time. They don't have to take something to switch it on, it's just always on.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Exactly. And so how functional would you be?

[Sean]

A lot more functional, I think. But I mean, so does the everyday, average, common human being. I mean, do we have these abilities? And so, you know, when we're talking about telepathy, I mean, I've had more times than I can count where a coincidence will happen. Where. Here's an example. There was an individual that I worked with at the agency. I hadn't spoken to him in probably over 15 years. And for whatever reason, oh, I was, I think I talked about this on the show at some point in time. But I was looking for like a master furniture maker, woodworker, somebody to make a piece of furniture for us. And this guy had a side project outside of contracting that was he made beautiful like one of a kind furniture pieces. And I remember his name popped up in my head. I won't say his whole name because I don't know where he's at now, now. But I was like, I wonder what Dave's doing these days, you know, And I thought about that on my drive to work. I was like, I wonder if I should reach out to him and see if he would want to craft one of these things. I pull into the office, only like a 20 minute drive. And I pull into my office and I look at my phone and Dave had just texted me. Now mind you, I just mentioned I haven't talked to this guy in 15 years and, and he said, hey Sean, just want to see how you're doing. I don't know if this is still your number. Da da da da da da. Very interested in the psychedelic therapy that you've been talking about on your show and I think it might help me. Could we have a conversation about that? And I was like, what? Like I have not even his. He had, he had not even popped. We weren't close. We had worked together maybe one time, you know, and we go through all these years, he's not a person that pops into my head ever. And it just happened that. That day he had popped into my head. And. And I mean that, to me, there are no coincidences. I mean, I'm sure I wasn't in his head much either, you know, until, you know, the podcast started to get big, maybe. But I mean that. And I could go on and on about specific examples like that, but that's just the first one that popped into my head. So are we able to tap into that? Was that some type of telepathic communication that happened there?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I believe so. I mean, telepathy may not be the best word for it, because a lot of people have certain ideas what that means, but absolutely, it's showing us this interconnection. I had a very similar experience 10 months ago when this woman that I, who used to be the receptionist in the group practice that I was briefly in in San Diego, contacted me out of the blue. First time that she had contacted me in 30 years. And it was my birthday. And what was interesting about her, she didn't know it was my birthday, number one. Number two, I had just told someone about her the week before, and I hadn't thought about her for ages, but this story came up in my mind that made me think about her. And so in telling that story, I brought her up. And then. And when she contacted me, she says, well, the universe has been pinging me telling, you know, meaning, you know, she just, like, she just started getting it in her head of, you know, you should try to get ahold of, you know, you know, Diane Powell, you know, and she's just, you know, she's like, yeah, you know, and so she, you know, she looked me up and found a way to contact me through my website. And it turns out that she has a son who's autistic, and she had had her own psychic experiences with her son. But this was before the telepathy tapes, that she didn't know this. Just before the telepathy tape started. She didn't know about my research and what I was currently doing. And so it's, like, very interesting that. And this was when I knew her. She was only 18, 19 years old, so she hadn't had a child yet. So, I mean, it was just. So, yeah, you know, what do you call these kind of, you know, synchronicities? You know, they're very. They're very powerful when they happen to us. And I think that we, you know, we. They show us that things are not so random as they appear. I mean, that that's a. That. That there is. That there really is more order to the universe than we tend to think that, you know, the way. As a therapist, he's worked with a lot of people who've suffered deeply. One of the things that I've seen is that if people have enough time to really work through things and process things, oftentimes they see that even the things that were horrible that happened to us actually, oftentimes they played a huge role in our development. And people oftentimes can get to the place where they wouldn't want it any other way. Even as painful as it was, they see how that played a huge role in making them who they are Now. Oftentimes, all of the suffering that people have actually drives them to a place of deeper spirituality. Because I've given a lot of thought to why do we suffer so much? Why is that just so common to the human experience? And what I've seen is that it's through the suffering that it forces us to really start asking deep questions. And oftentimes it creates this sort of opening for us to take in a different way of thinking about things or approaching life, that otherwise we would just kind of continue to sort of stumble along, you know, gotta make the donuts kinda, you know, another day, another, you know, and just sort of live this more prosaic, less meaningful life. It's these things that happen that make us stand back and go, oh, okay, wait a minute. What was that? That create this opportunity.

[Sean]

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[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Absolutely. I mean, I think that it could be that when we think about somebody, okay, we're sending out a signal, you know, and it's just like, you know, we think of it this way below the sort of direct perception with our sensors that we have kind of like a radar for certain things. And one of the things that we have a radar for is when somebody is focusing on us, you know, and examples of this are, you know, if somebody calls your name, you might. People can say a lot of different things and you can stay occupied with whatever it is that you're doing at that moment. But when somebody says your name, it's like it grabs your attention. So it's like you always have this little kind of radar out there for your name. As controversial as it is, there's a lot of people who swear by the research supporting the idea that if somebody is staring at you, okay, that you know it, you know, they could be behind you, but they're staring at you and you, you know it. So. And then you turn and you look at them, okay, so there's something about our identifying somebody by name, picture, whatever identifying factors there are. It's like our GPS on that person. Just like the remote viewers were able to use geophysical coordinates and, you know, so many degrees north and, you know, north and south versus east and west, and then hone in on a target and draw it reasonably you know, accurately. It's like similarly when we evoke somebody's name or image, that's like a. It's like a compass needle pointing at them. Okay. And then if we have this like intention, you know, whatever that intention is of, oh, you know, like for the remote viewer, it's, well, I intend to draw what it is I see. Or the intention could be just as simple as the thought of, well, I wonder what, you know, I wonder what Dave's up to these days or whatever happened to Dave, or. Yeah. No, and it's just like a fleeting thought that you have. It's still, it's like, it's like a. It's like a. It's almost like it's a message that's got a error, you know, and then the universe somehow. It's pretty magical, you know, but the universe somehow is like that individual gets that message and it's. All of this is below conscious awareness. And that individual just kind of picks up on it without even knowing why they're picking up on it. And it all feels like to that individual, it usually feels like it is just their idea. Just kind of like, oh, I just had this random thought that I thought I'd call Sean today or whatever. But after you've had these experiences over and over again, people start to trust that, oh, this feels slightly different than what it feels like when I bring up the thought of somebody when the thought of them just pops into my mind. And that's what this woman meant by pinging. You know, it's just like it felt different. And when you start to pay attention to those things, you're getting more in touch with your intuition. I know for myself, and I've heard this from many individuals, that when you have a certain thought that comes in, it's like people say it's a little voice or whatever. I mean, it's like that says to do something. You pay attention to it. Because that little voice could be what makes you just all of a sudden decide, oh, I'm not going to change lanes. And then, and then a truck whizzes by. Or, you know, and you realize, oh boy, you know, I was about to change lanes and then something in me stopped me, you know, or like I had it with my computer, you know, I just, you know, I was like one day, you know, I was just like, oh, you know, you haven't backed up your computer for a while, you know, you better back it up. And it's like, eh, it was an inconvenient time to go and you know, do what I need to do to back it up. But I just paid attention to that. And then lo and behold, my computer crashed later that day. And it's a good thing I had backed it up.

[Sean]

But you hear a lot about this with people going on planes too. I had a weird feeling I didn't want to get on the flight. Then the plane crashed or lots of stuff like that.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Right. And so there's somehow there's like a little intuition there. So in all of this is, it's not in that sort of analytical, left hemisphere, logical way of processing things. It's coming from somewhere else. And we become so head centric that we tend to ignore any information that's coming from feeling or this or that. And I think that's a mistake. We need to learn how to, how do we have it all work together? I mean, sometimes our feelings are. If we have an anxiety issue, we can't trust all our feelings because sometimes those feelings might not be really associated with what's going on the here and now. It could be really a feeling that's a carryover from something, you know, from another time. You know, we hit. But you know, that's where your analytical skills can enter in and go, you know, is this, is this an appropriate, why am I feeling this now? Is this appropriate to, you know, what's going on right now? So that's one aspect, but there's also just this intuition that's just more of a, you know, just something tells me and you don't need to know what that something is. Somehow you're getting information that's non local and it was important enough that it entered into your awareness.

[Sean]

Do you think that, I mean, it sounds like this is a lot more prevalent in folks that have autism and so are they able to. A lot of times when I see signs or something like that happens, things are slow. I'm able to be more into the moment and it's almost like maybe I'm able to organize my brain at the time and compartmentalize certain things. Whereas when it's busy and a lot of things are on my mind, maybe they're bothering me, maybe I'm stressing about them. Maybe there's a lot of business happening. Maybe there's a lot of stuff going on at home and I'm not, I'm not, I'm always thinking about the future. That's, that's, that's a problem that I have. I'm just always thinking about the future and planning and making moves and whatever. Right. And so what I'm wondering is, are autistic people able to organize their brains and thoughts and compartmentalize certain issues, problems, you know, things that are going on in their lives and completely separate from them to where that they live more at the moment? That's. That's not a thing.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

No, no, they're not. They're not real good at compartment. I wouldn't say they're good at compartmentalizing at all. I mean, they spend a lot of time in overwhelm.

[Sean]

Okay.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

You know, think of them more as not having much in the way of filters.

[Sean]

Oh, God.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the things about autistic individuals is also that they're experience of time is different from ours.

[Sean]

How so?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

They feel that we are very, very slow. They are operating at a much faster mental speed. And one of the things that's interesting is that, I mean, the spellers are, you know, painstakingly slow sometimes, you know, in terms of how long it takes for them to get a thought out. But there's a huge contrast between that speed, which is slower than we would go, and the speed that they're running on. They'll tell you that they're just. This helps them to slow down enough to actually connect with us. It's like they can't. It's hard for them to be in that middle ground. And. And we have experimental evidence that their concept of time, not only do they report it is different, but we have experimental evidence that they experience it differently because of something called the flicker fusion frequency. And what that is is that it's the. So if you have a light. Okay, this light is not constant. Okay. It's flickering. Okay. But if it's above a certain frequency, we experience it as continuous. Continuous. So the flicker fusion frequency is the frequency threshold at which you don't experience it as continuous. And theirs is different than ours, really? Yes. So it's. Yeah, so it's. And if you think about it, in altered states of consciousness, we experience time differently. In the dreaming state, you can have a dream that only lasts two minutes, but it covers stuff that you couldn't do in two minutes. It could cover. Would take hours for that whole thing to. But it's condensed down into two minutes. Another example is when we've got a huge adrenaline surge because of some emergency that's come up. Time dilates. And we can do in 20 seconds what would normally take us 10, 15 times that amount of time to do. Okay. And so our perception of time unfolding the way that we, you know, it's how we experience it. Our perception of time is really a product of brain functioning. And we know from Einstein that it's an illusion that it's not that it just only goes in one direction. And in fact, there are physicists who say, who talk about something called the block universe, which is really that the past, present and future all coexist. So it's though that like the movie's already in the can, you know, and then we're just only seeing it frame by frame. And this is something that philosophers and physicists debate is not only, okay, is there this evidence that past, present and future all coexist? How dynamic is it? Because there are physicists who will say that just because they all coexist doesn't mean that the future is predetermined. And there are even people who say that the past isn't predetermined. You know, it's not already determined either. So there's all of these things that come out of these models within quantum physics that are. I mean, they're really hard for your average person to wrap their head around. But it's because of these phenomena where you have people who claim to time travel, which these autistic individuals claim to time travel. It's because of individuals like that that we see that there might actually be some human experiences that validate some of these things that, you know, came up from theories that are over 100 years old about the nature of reality.

[Sean]

How do they experience time travel?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Oh, they, a lot of these individuals are very precognitive. They'll have experiences something that hasn't happened yet. And one of the best examples is this young woman named Elsa who was in the telepathy tapes. And she had this vision that her father was slipped on ice and broke his hip and ended up in the hospital. Well, at the time they were living in Arizona and that didn't look like that was a very likely possibility. But then what happened is within three to four weeks he was on a business trip and he slipped on ice and broke his hip and ended up in the hospital.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

So she had that experience before it already happened. And something that Phyllis Atwater, who I mentioned earlier, who's the expert on near death experiences, but one of the things that she's written about is something called future mem and future memory is she's had experiences of this herself. And people can have these experiences on nitrous oxide. You know, laughing gas can sometimes bring about this where you literally go to some point in the future, experience something, and then come back into, you know, this time period. And, you know, and you're only gone for, you know, seconds, you know, at most, in terms of, you know, and so you're not. You're. You're aware of the fact that something's happened because she describes it as. There's like this, you know, like scintillating, you know, lights, you know, there's like all these visual things she sees first before you shift, and then she finds herself somewhere in the future in her life, and then that closes up and then she's back. And this. This time period when that future event comes around, it's not just deja vu. It's not just that individual going, oh, this seems familiar. It's literally, oh, I'm here now. Okay. And you know exactly what people are going to say, who's going to walk through the door, everything. And so it's like you saw a preview of that section of the movie reel in advance, and now you're there. And it's something that. She has many, many, many examples of this. And so that's. I'd say the predominant type of time travel that these kids do is really more into the future rather than into the past.

[Sean]

Have you seen this actually happen, personally, throughout your studies, have you seen any incidents?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Well, I've just heard anecdotes, but one of the things that I want to do is I want to test them for precognition. I've seen people email me with a prediction and then email me later with, okay, that prediction. See, I told you that kind of thing. One of the problems about precognitions, though, is that usually for people who do this kind of time travel, I mean, time is so. I mean, time is a strange concept to them. And precognition doesn't really give you. It's not like there's a calendar date that comes along with it so that you know exactly when it's going to happen. So you don't. So when Elsa had that vision of her father, I mean, she didn't know if it was going to happen, you know, in two weeks and two years. You just don't know. And so it'd be nice if there was a timestamp on it, but generally there isn't.

[Sean]

The reason I'm asking is I'm just curious, you know, what state do they appear to be in while this is happening? And is it a blank stare? They're not there right now. It happens to me a lot. I don't know if it's from traumatic TBIs and PTs. You know, a lot of, there's a lot of times where I'll just be sitting there and I'm not there. And I'm not saying I can do this, and I'm not trying to relate, but I'm just, you know, I know that there are times where I, I, I, I'm out, I'm out in, in my, My wife and kids are like, what the hell's wrong with that?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Right, Right. Yeah. It's basically a checking out. Yeah. Yeah. No, I've, I, I've seen, I've seen them do that. I mean, generally when I'm around, though, they're, they're very attentive, you know, because I'm, I'm there. But, but, but, yeah, definitely. They, they check out.

[Sean]

That's what it's like.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Mm.

[Sean]

It's like they're not there.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah, it's like, hello.

[Sean]

Yeah.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah. And that's what it's like, their conscious awareness. See, that's what we're noticing. When somebody is checked out, you realize that their awareness is not on some sensory input that's here. The awareness has gone somewhere in the mental space, you know, the mental imagination or, you know, but it's gone into something that is not the here and now. And so, so much of this is about where do you put your awareness? Are you so captivated by what is being presented to you by your sensory system that you're just drawn in, or I'm so captivated by what you're having to say that I'm just giving you my every ounce of attention, or do you have a certain percentage of attention that when you're doing something is like thinking, okay, now what, what is it I'm supposed to do right after the, you know, and so a lot of people are walking around with divided attention, and then just think of it as what percentage of your attention is in the here and now, what's right here that I'm attending to versus this other thing. And it's the whole scale from 0 to 100%.

[Sean]

Wow. What is deja vu? You had brought that up.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

It's this feeling that you've already seen something. Vu is from vision. In French, deja already. So it's like, I already saw this, you know, like, oh, I've been here before, or, oh, I met you before, and in fact, I met you here before. Oh, this feels so familiar.

[Sean]

And we all experience that.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

We all experience it to some degree. And it's something that people who have temporal lobe epilepsy, which, I mean, the temporal Lobes are the section of the brain that's like on the sides here, you know, right along here. Okay. It's interesting that it's called temporal lobe, you know, because tempus is time. And the temporal lobe, if you have seizure activity in it, you can have people that go on fugue states. So a fugue state is where you have somebody who just. They're not there, they're checked out, and yet they can engage in almost like sleepwalking. They can engage in all kinds of complex activities. They can buy it. They can even go to the airport, buy a ticket, get on a plane, fly somewhere, book a hotel and be staying there and then three days later go, how did I get here? Have no recall of any of that. So that's called a fugue state. And people with temporal lobe epilepsy can have that? Well, people who have a little bit of temporal lobe issues can also have a lot of deja vu experiences. So there's something about the temporal lobe that if you have abnormal or excessive activity in it, that it really kind of takes you out of the here and now, kind of puts you into some, you know, just non local consciousness.

[Sean]

Interesting. How are they commuting? How are they communicating with each other?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

They say they communicate telepathically with one another. All of them the autistic individuals? Well, all of the ones I work with report that. So I can only, I can't generalize to. I mean, there's a lot of non speaking autistic individuals in the world. I mean, we probably have a million in the US alone. And where I get that number is that about 5 million people in the US are diagnosed as having autism now. And a quarter of them are non speaking. So that's quite a few individuals. And I'm only currently working with maybe three or four dozen or ones that I'm in regular contact with. So that's a tiny, tiny percentage. So I don't want to generalize from them to the entire non speaking autistic world. But the ones that I'm working with who are, it's self selected. It's. Their families contacted me or their teachers contacted me because they said, this kid's doing the kinds of things you research. And so I want you to meet my kid and tell me what you think and help me deal with whatever's coming up for them as a result of it. So I really, like, I have no idea, you know, how many are out there, but I do know that the ones who contact me, they say that they're in contact with other non speakers and they'll, many of them will say that all of them can. But I, I mean it's, it's really, there's, there's a lot more to be explored.

[Sean]

But you've seen this happen. You've seen them communicate with each other.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah.

[Sean]

Can you describe some of the research that you've done on this?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Well, so there are these individuals. So some of the, so there are these clusters. The ones that I find that the most compelling evidence for really are the ones who already know one another. I hear these anecdotes about there's someone named Peter in Florida who's in contact with somebody named Ian in Ireland. That kind of a thing, you know, but it's just like, I mean, how do I know? You know, can't prove it, how do I. But what I've heard is from teachers that work with these students on a regular basis, I've heard them tell me about evidence of telepathy within these kids. And so one of my favorite stories comes from this cluster of kids that are in Florida and they've known each other. They're all minimally or non speaking autistic individuals. There's about nine of them. And they've been going to this school and have known one another for about seven years. And one day at school they were doing, you know, they were doing math tests, okay. And all of the kids were scoring 100% on the math tests. And one of the teachers got kind of suspicious and was just like, you know, they're not all this good at math. This seems a little bit suspicious here, you know. And so she found out that, you know, that these kids, that they were all, they knew that Emma was really good at math and so they were just cheating by, you know, telepathically seeing. Well, what is, how's Emma answering these questions? So one day Emma decided that she was going to prove that that's what was going on. And so she purposely put false answers to the math questions there. And then all of the rest of the class gave the same wrong answers.

[Sean]

Are you serious?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah. They call it the cheating scandal and everybody laughs about it.

[Sean]

But wow, what kind of scenarios have you engineered for this?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Well, so I've also had, there's another cluster of kids in Chicago who've been working with a speech therapist there. And so I had her put them in separate rooms and, and asked her if she could have one of them send a random stimulus to the other one. And so I just have some preliminary data on that. Some of them were able to do that. Some of them find that too boring or they don't want to do that. So instead, what Maria said is, it'll work better if we make it more organic and make it more of a conversation. And I said, okay, well, give me an example what that looked like. And she said, well, so for example, this one boy, Ryan. Ryan said something about politics to this boy Akhil, who was in another room. And then Akhil answered back about. And they started back and forth talking about politics. So the one boy said how much he liked Trump, and the other kid said, yeah, he didn't care for Democrats either. So it was kind of like they were having this discussion back and forth telepathically. But rather than wanting to do the whole, you know, well, here's a random number and can you send it to your friend?

[Sean]

Geez, I mean, what do you. What. What's going through your head when you are researching and you see these phenomenons happen?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Oh, it just. Just makes me want to dive in deeper because, I mean, I. It's like every, Every. Every question that I've had that's gotten answered, only it's gotten answered with more questions than I have that I want answered. And so it really, I mean, it's just endlessly fascinating.

[Sean]

What kind of questions do you have?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

What kind of questions do I have? Oh, well, I'm wanting to know, you know, I'm really wanting to know, you know, the kinds of things that you're asking, you know, like, you know, how do they experience the world? I mean, I really want to know what it's like to be in their mind, number one. And then I want to know, what is it that is, is there something that we can measure objectively that will validate some of these things beyond just. Okay, so it's interesting that we have this sort of evidence for telepathy or whatever, but what is. What is going on? Can we measure, for example, differences in their biofield? There's this device that's called a biowell that was invented by a Russian scientist that reportedly measures this biofield I told you about. And. And it also gives a reading of the chakras, which are talked about in Eastern traditions. And each one of these is just an energy center. The way to think of it, like a vortex of energy. And the chakra that people in Eastern mysticism talk about being associated with psychic abilities, things like telepathy is the third eye, you know, the sixth chakra. Okay. And I, I tested the biofield of this one boy during telepathic communication. With his mother. And that chakra and the throat chakra, which is the communication chakra, were two and a half times deviated from the midline, but just during telepathy. Okay? And so that, to me, is very interesting information because it really does provide some evidence that these ideas of biofields and energy centers, each of which is devoted to some other sort of aspect of our consciousness, if you will, we've got the heart chakra, you know, which is associated with, you know, the feelings of the heart, you know, the solar plexus, you know, the root chakra, which is our sense of. Root chakra is our sense of, you know, groundedness or, you know, belonging. You know, each one. Each one of these is like a different aspect of ourselves that ideally are all kind of singing together in harmony, you know, but that can get. We can get out of balance. You know, people can. People can be, you know, if they don't have a solid grounding, then it's more problematic for them to be having these sort of psychical experiences because they're not grounded. So they're. I mean, you know, there needs to be a way in which they're. All of these things are working together in a coherent way. But. But in order to prove that those things that are thousands of years old, this idea of there being chakras and energy fields, and it's across different cultures, I mean, Native Americans believe in them as well. And so proving those, and then understanding what do we do to bring those more in harmony with one another? Because what I'm really, really interested in is how can we help be our fullest potential in a way that is removing the impurities and restoring the harmony to our own biofield so that the body, in its innate wisdom can heal itself rather than having this model of healing that's imposing something, something on somebody saying, you know, let me, you know, let me give you this medication that really just manages symptoms instead of that, how do I bring you back to your divine blueprint that has had all of these, you know, insults to it, you know, whether it's toxic chemicals or, you know, you know, or, you know, EMF or it's, you know, or just all the psychological baggage that we accumulate as a result of, you know, living in the kind of world we live in today. And how do we clear all of that out? Restore harmony? Because if we ourselves, because the only thing that we really have control over is really ourself, and if what we do is we start really trying to do a really good job of being the best, that we can be. What I see happen is there's a ripple effect that if I'm in a really good space and harmonized, I have that effect. I kind of have that effect on other people around me. I see that if I'm in a good mood, it's easier to get other people to be in a good mood, and then those people then are in a good mood, and that can bring on a good mood for a better attitude, mood for the people around them. And so if we all focus on that which we have control over, instead of putting our consciousness to something that disempowers us, makes us feel helpless, makes us feel like, what's the point? If we stop putting our energy there and start putting our energy into, well, what do I have control over and what can I do and how can I make things better? Then we start to bring about more harmony. And that's associated with health. We know that our attitude and our mental health has a huge impact on our morbidity and mortality from a whole host of conditions. So what I'm wanting to see is how do we facilitate people in that process? And I see these autistic individuals as being. They're like the canaries in the coal mine. They're the sensitives who are showing us that. They're showing us, in a more extreme way, the good and the bad of everything. And we can learn so much from them. But there's ramifications for everyone.

[Sean]

Be careful what you project.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Be careful what you project. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. But don't stop being authentic. That's the thing. It's like, be authentic. And see, for some people, they don't know how. It's like they want. They want to be this person. They're like, but I'm not that person. So then they go out of authenticity. And when you go out of authenticity, you're actually going from a place of empowerment to a place of disempowerment. I don't know if you know much about kinesiology, but I don't know anything about it. Yeah. So kinesiology has something called muscle testing in it, okay. Where if you say. If you say a lie, okay, you actually are physically weaker if you're saying, like, if you were to. If, like, you can test somebody, okay, and you and you and you. It takes less force to move their body if they're. If they're in a place of being disingenuous. And so kinesiology is this art of what's called muscle testing. But, I mean, people do it like this as well. You can put your fingers like this and then say something. We'll try it. I mean. I mean, what the heck. Try it. Say something. So try to hold these together and then say something that's true and say something that's false and see if you notice a difference in your strength. And what people do is they'll oftentimes test. Use it as a way to test what they really believe. Because oftentimes there's like, this is what we really believe. And then there's what we say we believe or tell ourselves we believe because that's what we should believe. And so, anyway, so there's a book by someone named David Hawkins called Power versus Force. And he talks about how instead, with power, the idea of power is that you're just asserting power over something. It takes a lot more effort to assert power over something than it does to just create a force field that brings it about. And our state of consciousness and our state of authenticity plays a role in how powerful that force field is.

[Sean]

Interesting. Why do you think so many people struggle with authenticity?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Oh, I think people want to be liked and accepted by other people. And there's this belief system that if I showed you who I am or what I really think, you might not like me. Now, what happens is when somebody is afraid to say what they really think, show who they really are, what happens is that you actually, if you do that and you are authentic, you give permission to the other person to be authentic, too. And oftentimes that creates this, the strongest bond, because it's like, oh, my God, you think that too? Oh, we said that. We're not supposed to say that, but we think that, and we said it. And you know, hey, I love you, bro. Cause you now know I don't have to hold back from you. There's a price we pay when we have to hold back. And then there's always this. Well, it's limiting to the heart because it's like, okay, well, now you're acting like you like me, but is your liking of me conditional? Is it because I say what you expect me to say, what I'm supposed to say? Or do you like me because, hey, you know, I like you? We may be different in this way or that way, but it's okay. I like you because I respect the fact that you're comfortable in your own self and you're a good person. You're not trying to hurt anybody or whatever.

[Sean]

Man, I feel so bad for people that have not found the ability to be authentic because they're projecting a complete false reality, a characterization. And I see this a lot in the veteran community with over embellished war stories, flat out lies. I mean, projecting a certain attitude. I'm a tough guy or what, you know, whatever it is. And I look at that and I'm, you know, and I fell into that, you know, long, long time ago. But I, what I think about myself is I'm a very authentic person and I don't waver. And I see these people that it could be anything but, you know, where the ego takes over or whatever happens. And it's like they're living in a prison, you know, it's not them. And it's like living your entire life imprisoned.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And that's one of the reasons why people need, it's sad to say, people feel like they need permission to just be their authentic self. And some of my favorite patients that I worked with over the years were people who were part of the 12 step program. And one of the reasons why is that they really say, hey, be real, man. You know, be authentic. And people love their. Once they get into the 12 step program, one of the things they love about it is it's a place where it's like you can come and show up and say, I screwed up. And people still accept you and you feel a true, a true sense of belonging and love from that community. And then you're actually, you're not wanting to let them down, but you're also not wanting to let yourself down anymore. Because what you start to realize is that you're letting yourself down and you've got all of this support that's saying, hey, we love you anyway. And what you ultimately want is, I mean, one of the reasons why people are being inauthentic is because they're wanting. Ultimately they're wanting. They're either afraid of rejection or they're wanting to be loved and liked or whatever. So ultimately you're like removing that layer of it and giving the person sort of permission to be authentic. And then over time the person is like, maybe what it was that they were trying to escape from before no longer needs to be escaped from. Maybe what they were trying to escape from was a lack of self esteem, a lack of self worth. And by being in this supportive community, they start to develop a sense of self worth. And so then there's like less of a feeling like you need to escape. So it's like, so people get like you said a prison, in a prison, you get locked into this like you Know, it's easiest. The path of least resistance is to just keep doing what you've been doing. But if what you've been doing is not giving you the results you want, then you're probably going to continue to get those results or even worse, because things tend to get worse over time.

[Sean]

You had mentioned earlier, you know, I mean, what we're talking about is living in a lie. And you know, we just talked about strength, you know, and how if you live in truth, if you are your true self, if you're authentic, then, I mean, it physically makes you stronger as well. Whereas if you are living in a characterization of something that's not you, then your body becomes weaker.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Absolutely, yeah.

[Sean]

The funny thing is we live in a day and age right now where people are screaming for authenticity, but I think there's a small percentage of the population that is actually, they are genuinely authentic. They are projecting exactly who they are. Another funny thing is that, that, I mean, the more authentic, the more of yourself that you are. At least, least as you get older, maybe not in, maybe not in, maybe not teenagers and below. But you know, I mean, when you are authentic, it. People gravitate to that.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah.

[Sean]

Even people that are not authentic, that don't have the courage to be themselves, that don't have the courage to lay the lies down. I mean, they even gravitate towards you. Why do you think that is?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Oh, I think that being authentic is something that. That people really want for themselves. Okay. And so we tend to be attracted to individuals who represent something we want for ourselves, even if we don't think we're capable of it. It's as though we're attracted to it, as though it's going to rub off on us. But it's just. And there's this saying about people, you know, that saying opposites attract. You know, part of the attraction is a desire for more balance, you know, a desire to be a little bit less like this and a little more like that, or to strike some kind of, you know, balance or, you know, to have a little bit of both. And so that what's attractive, as I said, is what we want. And I think ultimately, who. I mean, why wouldn't people want to be their authentic self? Why wouldn't you?

[Sean]

I think that. I think that people are born that way. I mean, I look at my kids, you know, and they're their authentic self. And then as you become indoctrinated through society and external influences start to play a role not in who you are, but who you become.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Right. And that's what I'm saying is. So when I'm saying why wouldn't somebody want to be their authentic self? I'm talking about their deep, deep, deep self wanting to be its authentic self and expression, okay, that, you know, that we're here to have, you know, to express fully who we are. But what happens is that self goes underground because of the social conditioning, because of the desire for approval or, you know, sometimes, you know, so a little, you know, a baby coming right out of the womb, I mean, that baby's authentically that baby. And along the way they get conditioned into being who they think they need to be to get parental love. Then it moves on to peers. You know, that when kids, you know, they reach an age where it's the care, you know, they know they've got their parents love. Now they want their, their peers love or they've given up on their parents love. They're only looking for their peers love or whatever. But it's this, this. You're, you're, the social conditioning worked because you're wanting that approval. But if from the get go, at every step, as you're coming out more and more into the world you got met with, oh, I'm so happy to see you and your full authentic self, then people wouldn't suppress it.

[Sean]

Now, I know we're getting away from the telepathy tapes right now, but I'm curious what your thoughts are as a parent. You know, I, I think about this often because it, I, it took me, I don't know how long. I mean, it being in the SEAL teams, contractor for. That's not who I am. That's not, that doesn't, you know, I thought that's who I was. I really wanted to do that. I did it. But it took me a period of time to get back to what I believe is my, my true self. And now as a parent, you know, I think about, you know, I want my kids to be their authentic self. And so, and that, that goes into everything. I don't want my kid playing a certain sport because he thinks I want him to play that certain sport. I don't want him to have hobbies that he doesn't want to do because I like to do it. And, but so is, I'm curious what your thoughts are, you know, for somebody that's a parent that genuinely, you know, I see this all the time. People, they force their kids to play baseball, they want them, they push them, they push them into things and then the kid is forced to do it. And Maybe they want to do it, maybe they don't. Maybe they only want to do it because they know that that's what's going to make their dad proud. And so how do you introduce hobbies, activities, values, things like that to your children without over influencing them?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Well, I think a lot of it starts with yourself in terms of, first of all, setting the intention as a parent that what I want is going to be that which makes my child feel happy. And I'm not going to define what that happiness looks. I'm not going to say oh, I'm not going to put a condition on it. I'm not going to say, oh, that happiness has to include that they have a higher level of education or it's not going to include that they make a certain salary amount per year. Those are not going to be the measures of success. The measures of success are going to be that my child is happy and fulfilled. Okay. And independent, though you don't want the child to be, you know, you can be happy and fulfilled, but not totally dependent upon others. So you want them to be independent because that's part of feeling self fulfilled is to know that you really, you've got it covered for yourself. So what I did with my daughter and what I encourage people to do is to provide a whole variety of interests for the child. You know, just like these are all the possibilities. You know, there's music, there's sports, there's, you know, all of these different possibilities. And some of which I engage in, which some of which I don't, but doesn't matter what I engage in. It's more that there are people that engage in all of these different types of things. And which one of these things appeals to you? And if you don't know yet, then just try a little bit of all of them. And then what you do is you track how your child responds to whatever that thing is that, you know, they're taking the summer course in or whatever it is they're doing. And you just see, boy, my kid really, you know, on the days that he's got, you know, baseball practice, boy, you know, he's got an extra little glint in his eye, you know, he's really looking forward to it. Or you see, you know, or you know, oh, this is what she's doing on the weekend when she doesn't have to, you know, she's going out and she's getting her sketchbook because she's really enjoying her art class or whatever. So what you do is, you see what it is that they graduate. Because the reality is that a lot of what leads to success is not just aptitude. It's, are you willing to put the tens of thousands of hours of work into the mastery of it? Because the reality is a lot of us could master a lot of things if we had the motivation. And nothing motivates us more than actually being inherently drawn to it. And so we have to rein back our own sort of. Well, that's what I would have liked to have done when I was a kid, but I didn't get to do it because I was fulfilling my father's dream that I'd become an attorney. But now I want my kid to do that. Well, that kid may not want to do the thing that he wanted to do. And you're just sort of. You're perpetuating the cycle. Even though that, you know, the family acts are different, the process is the same. Your dream fulfillment is really coming. You're looking to your kid to do that, so you help them to sort it out. And with my daughter, I saw that what she really liked to do was draw and sketch. And even though I'm looking at going, well, okay, hard to make a living as an artist, I'm the last person who's going to try to discourage that. And so she majored in design in college, and she got a fantastic job out of college because people now recognize how important design is to so many different things that she actually got a very, very good job.

[Sean]

Are you careful not to overemphasize.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Things.

[Sean]

That she is interested in that you are also interested in, or inject in overabundance of positivity into an activity? Here's an example. My son and I love to fish. He's a toddler, used to love to fish. I think now he gets really bored. And now I'm like, am I overemphasizing our time together or doing fishing as a hobby? Because we go. He'll say he wants to go. But now I'm wondering, are you just saying you want to go? Because I'm saying I want you to go with me because this is how we spend time together. And this is one of the only things that I can do where I can actually be in the moment with my son and not be thinking about all the other bullshit in the world.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

I think there's still value in you doing the fishing with your son because it's an opportunity to just hang out together. And it can be an extremely relaxing thing. And so he gets to experience his dad in a relaxed state. Hanging out. And you know, it's not like that's driving his career choices. You know, it's more like. No, it's something you like to do that, you know, he. Yeah, it's kind of boring. But, you know, you're doing more than just fishing. You know, it's almost like a meditative space. And so I think that there's no problem with that. It's more people fulfilling somebody's dreams. It's more like, oh, you know, they're going on and becoming a doctor because they want their dad to be proud of.

[Sean]

That's what I have to do to.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Gain my parents approval. Yeah. When it's not really they're coming from within them as their calling, but, you know, go and spend time. You know, we all, you know, as social beings have, you know, times when we spend time with people because we love them and we want to spend time with them. And it's not necessarily doing 100% what we'd be doing on our own. And that's just part of the social, you know, social contract. That's okay because that's just part of the glue. But it's not the soul. It's not our full identity. I mean, your son's, I'm sure, got other things he's interested in that he's pursuing. Okay, but you know, but getting back to these telepathic autists, an interesting story about this is that this one person who contacted me out of concern, who has a telepathic autistic daughter, one of the things that happened to her was that her daughter could tell that the mother was not a happy person and started going into her memories. So it was not just reading her current thoughts, but was actually. She said it was as though, you know, I have a file drawer there. Whoa. And it's like I've had more than one parent tell me about this. And it's like she was going through the files there and the daughter was trying to understand why her mother was so unhappy.

[Sean]

How old is this daughter?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Oh, like 15. And what the daughter discovered was that her mother had given up her career as a dancer and her love for a man who was another dancer but 10 years older than her, to please her parents and went on to become a medical doctor and married somebody to please her parents. And here she was living this inauthentic life and was unhappy and her daughter was picking up on it. And so her daughter brought up this man to her and brought up her past career. And the mother contacted me, wanting the therapy session, saying what do I do with this? This is opening up all my wounds. I thought I closed this chapter. This is the last thing I wanted to be dealing with. What should I do? You know? And so, and she. So there's this, there's a tie in here between the, you know, this sort of like us, you know, our living in inauthentic life is something that these, these autistic individuals, I mean, they pick up on it like very, very quickly.

[Sean]

Wow. Wow. So some of them have access to your men are.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah, they do. They do. And so it's like, it's like. Well, you didn't think you were going to have to deal with that. I guess you're going to have to deal with it now.

[Sean]

Wow.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah.

[Sean]

Now when you're talking about them communicating with each other, separate rooms, what. How do they describe what that experience is like? Is it like a. I mean, if they have that ability to an antenna or whatever in their brain that is able to access all these other minds, you know what I mean? How are they able to differentiate people that have this ability versus people that don't have this ability? I mean, it would be. I mean, the way I envision it right now is, you know, you're in a room with all these different people and you have to sift out, you know, you have to sort through them all to get to the one that you want to talk to, that you can relate to or have a conversation with or whatever. And so is. Do they have some type of a radar?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Well, they, they see auras and so they'll so. Or they basically say they seed the biofield and people have. Have different colors to their auras depending upon. I suspect it has to do with which chakras are the most dominant in your field. And so people who have a dominant crown chakra and have a violet aura, which is what I've been told I have, is violet aura and the other people have a blue aura or a green aura. And so this gives you them an idea of who's psychic or not. Because if you have a, if you have an indigo blue aura or a violet aura, they know that you've got some of these innate abilities, even if you're not aware of it. But if they see that you've got a red aura or an orange aura, they see that you're. Which are the lower frequencies. They see that you're really more. Your consciousness is predominantly expressed through the root chakra, you know, which is this sort of three dimensional reality. You know, it's a very security Based, you know, survival based reality. You know, if it's, if you've got an orange aura, that's your sacral aura, which is more the, you know, things like sexuality or, you know, you know, other, you know, other aspects that are much more hedonistic, you know, or if you've got a blue, a green aura, you know, then that's your heart chakra and that you are more heart centered. And so, so they, so they actually see the colors around people and they'll tell you, oh, you know, they feel safe around me automatically because of the color of my aura. And they'll avoid somebody who's got a red aura or, you know, or a brown aura or, you know, because they don't feel safe. They like yellow. They say that's a happy aura. So that yellow is a fine color too.

[Sean]

Okay. I mean, how does that play in when you're, they're communicating through walls in separate rooms, maybe? Separate. I mean, how, how far does this go? Is it throughout the world? Can somebody in the US talk to somebody in China?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

They, I mean, anecdotally, I mean, there have been autistic individuals from different countries, I mean, that have been in contact with one another predominantly between the US and the uk But I haven't really had the chance to experimentally test it out, but it's something I'd really be interested in doing. Yeah.

[Sean]

And so what about the other rooms? How do they describe that?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

That they just, they just call it, you know, they're just mind talking. You know, I mean, they don't, it's hard to get somebody who's autistic to describe their inner experience. They, they, they tend to really struggle with that. They don't really have. It's so easy for us to try to impose our way of being on them. And they're in some ways so different from us that it's really, that's one of the reasons why I can't answer some of these questions because it's really, it's just so different. To give you an example, a lot of them don't identify with this body itself. Okay. And so this one boy, Ethan, he always refers to himself in the third person. He'll say, ethan, da, da, da. Ethan went to the store yesterday. Or Ethan thought about, it's just like, yet he's talking about himself. A lot of them will say that they don't feel that they're out of their body a lot of the time. And so there was this Japanese boy who wrote the book, the Reason I Jump and the title comes from his answer to a question about why do you jump? And he says, because I feel my soul detaching from my body. And when I asked other autistics about this, they were like, absolutely, I'm out of my body a lot of the time. And so I think that being out of the body is a common characteristic of a lot of these psychic abilities. It's a common denominator. And so, for example, if you think about the remote viewing, a lot of them say it's astral projection. They go. They actually send their consciousness wherever it is, see what's there and then come back. Look at people who've had near death experiences, who then afterwards report an increase in psychic abilities. Well, during a near death experience, there's an out of body experience component to it. So you have that experience where you're seeing yourself from a perspective that's different from the embodied perspective. Similarly, people who've experienced tremendous trauma in early childhood when we can disassociate more easily and leave our body more easily, they can oftentimes have an out of body experience because of some traumatic event that happened when they were very, very young. And it's like once you've had that out of body experience, it's like it's easier for that, your awareness to leave the embodied perspective and perceive things from somewhere else other than what it's like to be perceiving through my eyes and hearing with these ears.

[Sean]

Wow. When you were talking earlier about these guys and girls that are talking to Jesus Christ, talking to angels, I mean, and they're saying that they're here on earth to make us a better place, a more loving humanity. What. How do they describe those experiences with, with both angels and Jesus? Are they visual as well?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. They definitely see them. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And they tell me that I'm. That I've got angels around me. They said I'm heavily protected, so.

[Sean]

Well, that's good.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah, good to know.

[Sean]

Do they describe the visuals?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

They describe the. So the. A lot of the beings that they see are light beings that they say are kind of a whitish bluish color and they're very tall. They also describe seeing Archangel Michael. I've seen Jesus. I can't say that any of them's ever given me a visual description of God, but they definitely have said that they've seen Jesus and the angels.

[Sean]

Do any of them have described this not knowing who Jesus is or who.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

An angel is, describe not knowing them?

[Sean]

Yeah, like, I guess what I'm getting at is somebody that has not been introduced to that yet, that would have no way of knowing who that person is other than their personal experience.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

There have been individuals who have reported talking with Jesus who were not raised Christians. Okay. If that's what you're asking.

[Sean]

That's what I'm asking.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah. Yeah, there are. Now one of the things that's interesting is that there are a number of the people who have contacted me who have a child who is autistic and has these kinds of abilities, who, who come from a background where the family is Hindu, for example, and so they may, you know, may report, you know, seeing Krishna. Okay. But if you look at the description of Krishna's life and the story of Jesus's life, there are certain parallels between the types of individuals they were. And so I think that. And similarly, when people have near death experiences that people will have, a person who's a Buddhist might see Buddha where somebody who's Christian might see Jesus or Mary or God. And so I think what happens is that to some extent, just like what happens with remote viewing, there's an analytical overlay that we tend to take our cultural background and use that to inform the form that something takes so that we can then identify what we're perceiving is really just the energy. So maybe you're perceiving this is a benevolent, loving energy that I'm around. And if you were raised a Christian, you're gonna think of, of Jesus, but if you, if you're a Hindu, you might think of Krishna. It may be that it's the same energy. It's just the two different cultures are putting a different face onto it and labeling it what they label it.

[Sean]

Are there any of them that say that they don't see? Maybe there's no visual, but it's, it's more of an intuitive experience. Like they just feel a presence.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Oh, well, some of them feel the presence, some of them hear it. It's more of an auditory experience.

[Sean]

Have you monitored any brain activity? When, when, when they're communicating or with each other or having experience with, with, with some type of a higher being or digging into memories, going into the past, going into the future, Remote viewing. I mean, have you been able to map any brain activity?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Well, one of the things that I want to do is map their brain activity, and I'm doing that with scientists using QEEGs, which is basically, it's like an EEG measuring the electromagnetic signals at the surface of your skull, only it's hooked up to a computer program that can take that signal and create like a 3D map of the brain and tell you which areas of the brain the signals are coming from and what percentage of them are the different frequencies. And so it's called brain mapping. And that's something that I'm doing simultaneous recordings of. Of, say, the mother and the son, if they're a telepathic pair or between two autistic telepathic pairs. I only have preliminary data, and it's really challenging data to get because the fact that these children tend to be very, very fidgety, and that creates a lot of artifact. And so it's really hard to get a clean eeg. But what I'm hoping to do is to work with them, whether it's music or other types of methods, to calm them down, to get them into a place where they can stay still and get good recordings while doing these experiments. But right now, they're so excited to see me and to be participating in the telepathy and et cetera, et cetera, that they. They're all amped up and they're just moving left and right. They're just like this, you know, like, okay, we'll get the EEGs later. Well, you know, that's. That's.

[Sean]

What do you suspect that you might find? Do you have any.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

I. I suspect that there's a synchronization of the. Of the brains, you know, that they're. That they're. Yeah, that you'll. You'll find some phase locking between their brains. But, you know, where they're. They're in sync. You know, if you think about, you know, there's a natural in the animal world, you know, if you've ever seen, you know, birds, you know, or school of fish, you know, where it's like they're in sync with one another. It's like they're operating from the same field consciousness.

[Sean]

Like a school of fish?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah, like a school of fish.

[Sean]

They'll turn at the exact same moment.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Thousands of them, instantaneously. It's not like they're waiting for some communication to be transmitted. It's that they're just in the same field and therefore responding at the same time as though they're all one. And so it's that kind of unity consciousness. And what I suspect is that you'll see that there's like a phase locking and a synchronization of the brainwaves so that it's like they're just both. Both. It's like they're tuned into the same channel as opposed to it being when, you know, information being transmitted back and forth, it's more like, no, you're tuned into the same channel in real time.

[Sean]

You've done studies on twins as well, correct?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sean]

What did you find with twins?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Oh, there's a higher incidence of telepathy in twins as well, and that's something that's been. You know, there have been a lot of people, like Guy Playfair, who did research on twin telepathy. And one of the things I was interested in is the twins who are raised apart. Are you familiar with those studies?

[Sean]

No.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Oh. So there was this twin registry that had over 60 cases of these identical twins who were adopted to separate families because, you know, people didn't want to adopt both of them. So they had a registry of all these identical twins raised totally separately, totally different oftentimes, you know, some of them in different countries, some totally different family backgrounds. And these scientists went and then looked them up years later and found all of these uncanny similarities in their lives. For example, many of them dressed exactly the same when. When they were brought to. To one another to meet one another for the first time, they were wearing the same outfit.

[Sean]

Are you serious?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yes. Yeah. You know, and. And they oftentimes named their dogs, had the same breed of dog named in the same name. There are these twins called the Jim twins, who. They both drove the same car. They had the impulse to build a circular white structure at the same time. They married women with the same name. They. I mean, you know, there's. So there's all of these cases of these individuals who are living, like, these parallel lives that are.

[Sean]

They've never even known each other, and.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

They'Ve never even known one another. And what's interesting from having known a lot of twins personally, identical twins personally, and even identical triplets. I mean, by the time I was in sixth grade, I already knew three sets of identical triplets that I went to school with. And. Yeah, and what you see in identicals is that there's more of. You have some identicals that just relish the. You know, they love the fact that they are identical twins and they purposely dress alike and they're very similar. And then you have these other twins who. It's like they're each wanting to carve out their own individuality. And so, if anything, there's like, more of a pressure to be different from one another. Okay. But when you have identical twins that are raised apart, they're no longer responding in relationships to the other twin in a direct sense. And so you've removed that variable that either makes them become exactly the same or makes them want to be different from one another, and then to see all of these commonalities between them pop up, I mean, it makes you really wonder, what is that telling us?

[Sean]

I don't know.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah.

[Sean]

What is it telling us?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, and. And so it's as though they're still. It's. It's. It's as though their. Their consciousness fields are still interconnected with one another, even though they've been apart. And whether or not it's that they're influencing one another or they're both operating out of the same kind of influences that predate anything, maybe in their epigenetics, who knows? But the parallels are too uncanny to ignore. In my book, the ESP Enigma, I have a whole chapter on twins where I talk about a lot of this data because it's absolutely fascinating. Fascinating.

[Sean]

Yeah. I'll say.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah.

[Sean]

I wanted to talk about ethical considerations for the future of AI and how this ties into that.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah.

[Sean]

Could we dive into that a little bit?

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Sure. Well, I'd love to hear what your concerns are about AI. I mean, I certainly have my own concerns.

[Sean]

Oh, I have lots of concerns. Lots of concerns. I think most of them are kind of conspiratorial, but I don't know. I don't understand how it would tie in with telepathy, how AI would. Yeah.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah. I think that was a question somebody else might have put out there. Well, let me just say this. If you think about what AI is doing, AI is taking all of this information that's on the Internet and it has these algorithms it's operating under, such that it can basically mimic human, you know, human intelligence. I mean, that's been. Their goal is to see if they could pass the Turing test and basically mimic human intelligence, such that you couldn't tell whether you were interacting with a human or not. And there's a lot of things about AI that really deeply concerned me because, I mean, we're already seeing people get sucked into AI as though AI is this almost omniscient sort of entity, and that's giving that algorithm way too much power. And we know that AI can. You know, it's called hallucination, and people in the artificial intelligence world call it hallucination, because AI will actually make stuff up. You really have to fact check a lot of what it gives you because it'll even make up references. So if you, as a scientist, are doing research, oh, give me a reference for this and that. You can't just trust that that reference really exists. It'll actually make that stuff up. Somebody was trying to, you know, they said, I'll create a short bio for you, for somebody. And I have plenty of bios already. But anyway, this person said she'd create a short bio for me for somebody that wanted to bring me on as a speaker. And it said some stuff that wasn't true. Even something like that, where you can just online you could find a bio, lots of bios about me. So AI just can't be trusted in certain ways. And yet you see people even treating. There are people that are treating AI like. Like it is a guru.

[Sean]

Yeah. You know, I think one of my concerns is you start to see that people are looking to AI for answers. And I'm not talking about answers to information like historic events or stuff like that. They are starting to use AI as a form of therapy. What should I do about the situation and my life with my husband? And then the AI will spit out the answer. And so it's influencing people's emotional decisions.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Exactly, exactly. And it's, you know, I've heard that there have been people who've made some really bad choices as a result of, you know, they've gone back and looked at their conversation with AI and gone, oh, boy, you know, you can see where this went south. And so, absolutely, that's a concern. And so the problem with AI is it's just using algorithms based on language models and there's no heart in it. And one of the things that telepathy shows us is. So telepathy is something that involves a mind, heart connection, that when there's a coherency between the mind and the heart, people have more of this ability to be knowing what the other person's thinking without having to express it through language. And so to me, there are certain things that we as humans are capable of doing that AI will never ever be capable of doing. And one of the AI cannot intuit things. It can come up with its best prediction based on mathematical models and, you know, et cetera, et cetera, but it can't. It really isn't good at predicting things that are not easily predictable because they haven't already happened. And so a lot of autistic individuals, their behavior can't be. It could not be predicted. A lot of things that are, as I said, intuitive cannot really be predicted. And so I think. And if you've got a very strongly developed intuition that is superior, AI can be a tool, just like the analytical mind can be a tool. But we need to put more of an emphasis on really, really developing our intuition and using it as more of the arbiter of what's true and what's not. So it's about developing this discernment so that we can have a better compass and recognition of what's real and what's not. Because we're living in a misinformation. We're living in an information age that is full of misinformation. You know, we've got all these narrative wars going on right now. And so, and now and we've got AI if we, if that's giving too much power to something that's, that's not, that's, that's made by humans. But it's not, but it's, it doesn't have humanity. And so I think that we need to, it really, you know, boobs us to develop our strong gut and heart based intuition that then guides us to navigate all of the, you know, all that we're in. Because, yeah, there are a lot of dangers of AI and part of why I have wanted to get this research about telepathy out there is that I want people to realize that we innately are capable of so much more. And I believe that we will always fall short in terms of what we invent compared to the natural divine design of everything. I mean, the deeper I went into science, the more exquisite. Took my breath away. The more and more I saw how. Wow. I mean, it's like the, the, the blueprint of life is just so amazing. And for us to think that we can muck around with it and improve upon it really concerns me. You know, I'm concerned by things like transhumanism. I'm concerned by things that are going, that are just assuming that something is superior to us and then is going to be taking humanity in a direction.

[Sean]

Where we're not trying to overpower the laws of nature.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Yeah, overpower the laws of nature. I mean, you know, a lot of the troubles that we have today in the world are because we thought that we could, you know, we saw nature as something that we needed to dominate and, and drive in the way that we wanted to drive it, rather than how do we harmonize with it and how do we optimize it.

[Sean]

Interesting. Well, Diane, I would love to go further and this has been a fascinating discussion. I know you have a flight to catch, so we'll end it. I would love to have you back.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

Thank you.

[Sean]

Love to be back, but. But I don't want you to miss your flight, so I'm going to end it. And I just want to wish you the best in. In your research and your studies, and I. I cannot wait to see you again. So thank you so much.

[Dr. Diane Hennessey]

All right. Thank you.

[Sean]

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