Ep 6: Scientific Evidence for ESP that Shatters the Materialist Paradigm

Summary

Summary of "Ep 6: Scientific Evidence for ESP that Shatters the Materialist Paradigm"

The Telepathy Tapes Season 1, Episode 6, titled "Scientific Evidence for ESP that Shatters the Materialist Paradigm," explores the profound and often contentious realm of extrasensory perception (ESP). Hosted by Ky Dickens, this episode delves into scientific research, personal anecdotes, and philosophical debates that challenge the prevailing materialist worldview. Through conversations with esteemed scientists like Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, Dr. Dean Radin, and Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell, the episode seeks to unravel the mysteries of telepathy and consciousness.

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Introduction: Telepathy as the Tip of the Iceberg

The episode opens with Ky Dickens sharing a personal anecdote about his son claiming to hear thoughts, setting the stage for a deeper exploration into telepathy. He states, “Telepathy is the tip of the iceberg with their spiritual gifts” [00:43]. This introduction underscores the episode's focus on the extraordinary abilities of non-speaking individuals with autism, who may possess untapped telepathic capabilities.

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Historical Context: Sir Rudolph Peters and Early Telepathy Research

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake recounts his initial skepticism towards telepathy until he encountered the groundbreaking work of Sir Rudolph Peters. In the 1950s, Peters conducted experiments with a severely disabled and almost blind boy who astonishingly read eye charts from across the room. When the mother was removed, the boy could no longer perform this feat [03:34]. Sheldrake explains, “He came to the conclusion that somehow the mother was communicating telepathically to her son” [04:27]. This historical study laid the foundation for modern ESP research, highlighting phenomena that defy conventional scientific explanations.

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Animal Telepathy: Bonds Beyond Words

Ky delves into Sheldrake's research on animal telepathy, particularly the telepathic bonds between pets and their owners. Sheldrake reveals, “About 50% of dogs and about 30% of cats know when their owners are coming home” [05:33]. Detailed experiments demonstrate how dogs respond to their owners' thoughts about returning home, even when separated by significant distances and varying environments [06:13]. These findings suggest a deep, non-verbal connection that transcends physical barriers.

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Case Study: Amy and Her Parrot Nikisi

A highlight of the episode is the story of Amy Morgana and her African Grey Parrot, Nikisi. Amy trained Nikisi to understand and respond to images she viewed telepathically. In controlled experiments, Nikisi accurately described pictures Amy saw in separate rooms, even when they were five miles apart [10:31]. Sheldrake emphasizes the robustness of these results: “The results are fantastically above chance” [11:24]. This case not only showcases animal intelligence but also provides compelling evidence for interspecies telepathic communication.

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Personal Stories: Elephants and Emotional Connections

Ky shares a heartfelt story from his father about the elephants' response to Lawrence Anthony's death. After Anthony passed away, a herd of 21 elephants traveled 12 hours to pay their respects, an event that profoundly impacted Ky's skeptical father [14:07]. This narrative illustrates the possibility of emotional and telepathic connections across species, further challenging the materialist paradigm.

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Scientific Perspectives: Dr. Dean Radin on ESP Evidence

Dr. Dean Radin, Chief Scientist at the Institute for Noetic Sciences, provides a rigorous scientific perspective on ESP. He discusses the Ganzfeld experiments, which involve sensory deprivation and telepathy tests between senders and receivers. Radin reports a consistent hit rate of 30-31%, significantly higher than chance [20:30]. He asserts, “Telepathy is essentially demonstrated to an extent where we don't really need to do more proof-oriented research” [18:57]. Radin critiques the materialist view for its inability to account for consciousness and telepathic phenomena, advocating for a broader scientific paradigm that includes these extraordinary experiences.

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Challenging Materialism: Consciousness as Fundamental

The episode delves into philosophical debates about the nature of consciousness. Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell likens the brain to a smartphone accessing a broader consciousness “cloud” [26:47]. This analogy suggests that consciousness might not be solely produced by the brain but accessed or tapped into from an external source. Rupert Sheldrake criticizes the materialist worldview, describing it as “scientism” and likening it to a “fundamentalist religion” that stifles free inquiry [30:17]. This critique highlights the resistance within the scientific community to embrace phenomena that challenge established paradigms.

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Post-Materialist Science: Marjorie Woollacott’s Transformation

Marjorie Woollacott, President of the Academy for the Advancement of Post Materialist Sciences, shares her journey from a skeptical materialist to a proponent of psi phenomena. Initially dismissive of ESP, her experiences with meditation and exposure to credible research led her to reassess her beliefs [31:15]. Woollacott emphasizes the abundance of peer-reviewed studies supporting psi phenomena, arguing that ignoring such evidence is neither scientifically sound nor intellectually honest.

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The Foundation of Consciousness: A New Scientific Paradigm

The conversation converges on the idea that consciousness may be the foundational element of the universe, preceding even physics in the hierarchy of reality. Dr. Dean Radin posits, “It's actually below physics. In that case, the pyramid of reality is resting upon awareness” [33:55]. This perspective aligns with quantum physics notions of non-local connections, suggesting that consciousness could facilitate telepathic interactions across vast distances and even species boundaries. The episode posits that individuals with autism and non-speaking abilities might inherently access this foundational consciousness without the “dissociative boundary” that typically separates individual minds [35:19].

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Closing Thoughts: Unlocking Human Potential

Ky Dickens concludes the episode by pondering whether non-speakers could hold the key to a new scientific paradigm that fully embraces consciousness and ESP. He teases the next episode, which will feature a 10-year-old girl named Amelia, whose abilities align with the phenomena discussed [39:35]. This anticipation underscores the ongoing quest to understand and integrate these extraordinary human capacities into mainstream science.

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Notable Quotes

• Rupert Sheldrake: “One reason that materialists remain so committed to their worldview is that for many, it's become a kind of belief system. [...] They try and discredit their opponents by saying they're pseudoscientists or charlatans or frauds.” [30:17]

• Dr. Dean Radin: “How does 3 pounds of tissue in your head give rise to internal experience? We don't know where consciousness comes from. It's called the hard problem.” [26:29]

• Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell: “Why does consciousness have to be something that's created? Why isn't consciousness something that can be accessed and tapped into?” [26:47]

• Ky Dickens: “But it's clear why biologists and scientists were very interested in studying Nikisi. Chimps go like that.” [08:14]

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Conclusion

Episode 6 of The Telepathy Tapes presents a thought-provoking examination of ESP and consciousness, challenging long-held materialist beliefs. Through scientific research, personal stories, and expert insights, the episode makes a compelling case for re-evaluating our understanding of the human mind and its potential connections beyond the physical realm. As the series progresses, listeners are invited to reconsider the boundaries of communication and the very fabric of reality itself.

Transcript

[Kai Dickens]

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[Rupert Sheldrake]

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[Kai Dickens]

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[Rupert Sheldrake]

What is this phenomena happening?

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Why are his mind and my mind completely connected?

[Kai Dickens]

Telepathy is the tip of the iceberg with their spiritual gifts.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

People don't understand that they can do this.

[Kai Dickens]

They don't even have to be in.

[Marjorie Woollacott]

The same room, the same zip code.

[Kai Dickens]

For decades, a very specific group of people have been claiming telepathy is happening in their homes and in their classrooms. And nobody has believed them. Nobody has listened to them. But on this podcast, we do. Welcome to episode six of the Telepathy Tapes. We're more than halfway through our season and so far you've met incredible teachers and parents who have all stated something extraordinary Telepathy is happening amongst non speaking individuals. And many of you are still asking, how on earth can this be true? And that's to be expected because you and I are both products of the materialist paradigm that has influenced skeptical scientific thinking for decades. Today we'll look at why and how that's been so pervasive. And we'll also look at research on ESP that's been dismissed, buried, or conveniently ignored. Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell, who has been studying non speakers with telepathy for over a decade, is not the only reputable scientist who left a promising academic track to pursue riveting questions about consciousness. Last week you met Dr. Rupert Sheldrake. He's a Cambridge biologist who's authored more than 100 papers in peer reviewed journals and written nine books. He reached out to Dr. Powell when he first read about her research, and the story that inspired their meeting is fascinating.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Rupert Sheldrick is well known for his research on animal telepathy. And not just animal telepathy, but telepathy between people and their pets who are like family members.

[Kai Dickens]

Dr. Sheldrick, just like every scientist I met, never set out to study telepathy. But early in his academic career, he was sitting in the tea room at Cambridge University when he learned about a disabled child who could see through his mother's eyes we had a tea room.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

In the laboratory where we had breaks. And once the subject of telepathy came up and I just dismissed it as rubbish and superstition and so on.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

He had a professor whom he really respected tell him about an experiment that was done with a blind boy.

[Kai Dickens]

This professor who forever changed Rupert's life was named Sir Rudolph Peters, a biochemist with such an incredible contribution to academia that he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

Sir Rudolph Peters told me about an investigation he'd done with a severely disabled child.

[Kai Dickens]

It's impossible to know what the boy's diagnosis would have been today, but at the time, which would have been the 1950s, he was deemed severely mentally disabled, and he was almost completely blind. And the boy's ophthalmologist was shocked during a checkup because this boy, who could not see, was reading the eye chart from across the room.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

He did phenomenally well on those eye charts. The ophthalmologist, he just couldn't believe what was happening. So then he thought maybe the mother had something to do with it, so he sent her out of the room. And this young man couldn't do it.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

This boy was able to read the eye chart only when his mother was in the room looking at the eye chart as well, and couldn't if she'd laughed.

[Kai Dickens]

Sound familiar? So, nearly 60 years ago, sir Rudolph Peters looked at this and came to a very similar conclusion that Dr. Powell did when she was studying children with severe autism who seemed to be able to read through their mother's eyes.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

He came to the conclusion that somehow the mother was communicating telepathically to her son.

[Kai Dickens]

So Sir Rudolph Peters crafted an experiment to see if mind reading was occurring between the blind boy and his mother.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

They got the mother in one laboratory, sitting by the telephone, and they had the boy in another laboratory about five miles away, and they recorded the whole thing on a tape recorder. They showed the mother a series of cards with letters or numbers on them, and the boy then said what it was, a number or a letter. And the results were staggeringly higher than the chance level.

[Kai Dickens]

And when Sir Rudolph Peters told Rupert Sheldrake about this research in the tearoom at Cambridge, it changed the course of Rupert's life.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

Think that at least some people can develop an astonishing ability. I think it's probably more common in animals than people to develop this ability because animals, after all, can't communicate through normal speech.

[Kai Dickens]

Dr. Sheldrake has done remarkable research around telepathy in the animal kingdom. And one of my favorite studies looks at the Telepathic bond between pets and their owners.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

About 50% of dogs and about 30% of cats know when their owners are coming home.

[Kai Dickens]

His study on this led to his book Dogs that Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home. Definitely check that out if you want to know more. But here's a small recap of what he did.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

We set up cameras to film the place the dog waited, and then we had the owner go at least five miles away and come home at a randomly chosen time. They didn't know in advance. And this wasn't just one dog. We did it with several dogs, and it was replicated by a skeptic. To his surprise, he got just the same results we did.

[Kai Dickens]

Dr. Sheldrick's team would ping the dog owner with a pager when it was time to go home.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

And to rule out familiar car sounds, we had them come home in a different taxi every time. And what we saw over and over and over again was the dog started anticipating the arrival of the owner when they received the call to start going home, when their mind turned homewards.

[Kai Dickens]

So they tested this with multiple dog owners and their animals. And what they found is right when the dog owner started thinking about home is when their animal would go to the window or door to wait. And sometimes something unexpected happened after the page had come through. For instance, there's once a flat tire, or someone's boss would call and say, you've got to come back into the office.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

On quite a few occasions, people set off to come home, and then they were interrupted. What happened is the dog started by waiting by the door as if she was coming home, which she was. But then when she stopped coming home, it lost interest and drifted away. So I think this shows that what was going on was a telepathic connection with the owner.

[Kai Dickens]

Dr. Sheldrake notes that animals beyond dogs and cats can create profound telepathic bonds with their owner. And one of the most remarkable cases he ever came across was the incredible bond between a woman named Amy and her parent, Nikisi.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

Amy Morgana got in touch with me after my book Dogs that Know When Their Owns Are Coming Home came out. And she told me that she'd been training her African Grey Parrot to learn language in a meaningful way. And at that time, it had a vocabulary of hundreds of words. It's now well over 1,500 words, the highest vocabulary of any parrot ever reported.

[Kai Dickens]

Nikisi can speak in full sentences, use verb tense properly, and he'll invent new terms for things he doesn't know by combining Other words together. At one point, Jane Goodall actually met this incredible parrot, and she marveled at the fact that Nakisi, this gray parrot, seemed to crack a joke. Here's the story from Jane Goodall herself.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

And as I walked into the room.

[Kai Dickens]

I said, oh, hello, you must be in Kisi.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

I've heard a lot about you.

[Kai Dickens]

And he said, that's Jane got a chimp. Now, he'd seen all the pictures of me in the books, and I think he'd seen a video. He had never said chimp before. So it's clear why biologists and scientists were very interested in studying Nakisi. Chimps go like that.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

Very good.

[Kai Dickens]

Amy explains that Nikisi will talk about his future and even reflect on the past. Things that were extremely exciting. He might even talk about for months. For instance, his first car ride had a huge impact on him. And here's Jane Goodall again, recounting the unbelievable intellect of this bird. If he sees somebody who's once taken.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

Him in a car, he will immediately start. Want to go in the car?

[Kai Dickens]

Want a car? And if Amy says, I haven't got a car, he says, get a car.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

Phone for a car.

[Kai Dickens]

So Amy reached out to Dr. Sheldrake after learning about the research he'd done around telepathic bonds between pets and their owners.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

She found that this parrot became extremely telepathic with her, so much so that it slept in her bedroom. And when she was dreaming in the night, the parrot would wake her up by commenting noisily on her dreams. And she also found that if she was sitting one side of the room looking at pictures in a magazine, the parrot would comment on the pictures.

[Kai Dickens]

So Dr. Sheldrake flew to New York to meet Amy and Nikisi and get a better sense of their bond.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

This parrot was totally remarkable, utterly astonishing. And we then set up a series of controlled experiments to see if the parrot really could pick up her thoughts telepathically.

[Kai Dickens]

So Dr. Sheldrake orchestrates an incredible study between Amy and her parrot, Nikisi. And the study is very similar to the first telepathy test Dr. Diane conducted with Hayley that you heard about in episode one.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

Amy was in one room and the parrot was on a different floor in a different room.

[Kai Dickens]

He had a neutral and random third party pick out a variety of pictures.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

Corresponding to words the parrot knew, sealed in brown paper envelopes.

[Kai Dickens]

The envelopes were shuffled, and again, neither Dr. Sheldrake or Amy knew what pictures were in the envelope.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

And she then opened an envelope and looked at the picture, which she hadn't seen before. And what happened was mind blowing.

[Kai Dickens]

Looking at the old visuals of the test, it's remarkably similar, almost identical to some of the telepathy tests we were doing with the non speakers.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

Say if she's looking at a picture of flowers, then the parrot said, it's a flower. From now on, all the words you hear are the parrots.

[Kai Dickens]

Yeah, your mother. Amy and nikisi were about 55ft apart on different floors and in different rooms. They were both filmed continuously throughout the test with two separate video cameras with synchronized timecode. And that's where this audio from the parrot is coming from as you picked.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

Her, looking at a picture of a couple hugging and says, it's a hug.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Oh.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

It was astonishing. All this is on film.

[Kai Dickens]

And here's a clip of a younger Dr. Sheldrake, almost two decades ago, presenting this research to a large room of people.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

The results are fantastically above chance. I mean, the odds against chance are thousands, even millions or billions, depending on the method you use. To one, it's staggeringly significant telepathy results. The parrot didn't get it right every time. Sometimes it didn't say anything. Sometimes it spent the whole time of the test shouting to Amy to call her back. It said, come back, come back. Why are you growly with me? Because in the others, in many of the others, it did say exactly what she was looking at.

[Kai Dickens]

In a way, the test reminds me of the image generator that we did with Akil. It feels more than just telepathy because the parrot has to interpret what Amy was looking at. For example, at one point, Amy was given a random envelope containing an image. And there's a lot going on. In this picture, there's a yellow taxi cab and a man standing on the curb as if to get in, or maybe he's hailing it. And the taxi driver has his head out the window as if to talk to that man or wave to someone else.

[Dean Radin]

Careful.

[Kai Dickens]

Nakisi says, careful, if you're going to put your head out.

[Dean Radin]

Careful, put your head out.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

There's a guy's head out of the cab window. And that's what Amy was actually looking at when the parrot said, you put your head out.

[Kai Dickens]

Or at one point the image showed to Amy was a man talking on a phone. And again, this was years ago. So it's one of those big clunky phones with an answering machine. Amy again is in a different room on a different floor. And the kisi, her parrot, starts to say, what are you doing on the phone? And making answering Machine noises.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

This is all published in a peer reviewed journal called Testing a Language Using Parrot for Telepathy.

[Kai Dickens]

You cannot ask for a better way to test animal telepathy than finding an animal that speaks our own language. This story and the evidence that Amy and Nikisi have given us that telepathy does exist and can exist between animals of different species is absolutely amazing.

[Dean Radin]

Can I have a kiss?

[Kai Dickens]

Okay. I love you. I love you too. I'm compelled to share these examples of animal telepathy because of my dad. He's the most informed, well read person that I know and every step of this journey I've had my dad in mind because he's a proud, hard nosed skeptic. He's brilliant and logical and prone to dismiss something like telepathy immediately offhand. But there's a story about elephants that profoundly impacted him. So I want to share a snippet of a conversation between him and I. You have been, I would say, a materialist for most of your life. Would you agree with that?

[Kai Dickens' Dad]

I've always thought this kind of stuff was goofy and explainable by other things, mistakes, coincidence, whatever. So I never had much faith in religion or these things that we can't see. I've been a materialist for sure.

[Kai Dickens]

But there's one story that stopped him in his tracks and made his skeptical, materialist heart open to something more.

[Kai Dickens' Dad]

What I'm thinking about right now is a story about Lawrence Anthony, who was living in South Africa with his wife, and at some point they decided to buy a game refuge. And they did. And then later on, Lawrence found out about a group of nine elephants that were going to be killed because they were, in some sense terrorizing a populated area. People would try to, you know, chase them away and they would come back. So these huge elephants are causing problems and the only solution was to kill them. Lawrence Anthony found out about that and went into the bush to live with these elephants to gain their trust so he could bring them to his game preserve. Apparently, he was almost trampled while he's living with them, but over time, they trust him. He moves them to the game preserve. At some later point, Lawrence Anthony died.

[Kai Dickens]

He died due to a heart attack.

[Kai Dickens' Dad]

Two days after he died, there's a commotion outside and a herd of 21 elephants. All of the elephants now on the preserve walk two days to get there. They're making distress noises.

[Kai Dickens]

And here's a clip from a news story about this. Upon the passing of Lawrence, these majestic beasts walked 12 hours from Zululand bush to their friend's home. To pay their respects. They stood vigil for two days outside of Lawrence's house before returning to their.

[Dean Radin]

Regular lives in the bush.

[Kai Dickens]

They had not visited the house for a year and a half. What's even more amazing is that no one told both herds about Lawrence's death. It's like they just knew about it.

[Kai Dickens' Dad]

It leaves you with the question, how on earth did these elephants, two days away, know that Lawrence Anthony died? His wife said that there are some things that cannot be explained by reason, cannot be seen. Deep roots that connect all living things, humans and animals. It wasn't until that night, two days after Lawrence died, that I truly understood. To me, it's an amazing story. But there's even more because every March 4, for at least three or four years afterwards, that whole herd would show up at the compound celebrating the anniversary of his.

[Kai Dickens]

Oh, dad, you're crying, aren't you? He couldn't finish his sentence because he started to cry. But the beautiful end to the story is that for years after Lawrence Anthony died, the elephants would come back and gather outside of his house on the anniversary of his death. They walked for miles, sometimes days, to do this. And nobody knows how they can remember the date of his death, let alone how they knew he died in the first place.

[Kai Dickens' Dad]

It's that deep connection, inexplicable, that, you know, we don't see it, don't necessarily feel it, but somehow we're connected. So I find it a powerful story.

[Kai Dickens]

It is a powerful story, just like the other stories you've heard in the past five episodes. And it points to this idea that a telepathic connection is most likely to be formed amongst animals and people who are deeply loved, needed, or valued by one another. There have been numerous credible studies done on animal telepathy, but even more so on human telepathy. And one of the most influential and leading scientists in that space is Dr. Dean Radin. He's the chief scientist at the Institute for Noetic Sciences, which was started by the astronaut Edgar Mitchell. While returning to Earth from his Apollo 14 mission, Mitchell experienced what's now called the overview effect, a profound sense of unity with all things as he gazed at Earth from space. Seeing our fragile blue planet teeming with life in the vast loneliness of space gave him a deep and profound understanding of our interconnectedness. This transformative experience inspired him to start the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which explores consciousness and beyond. Leading the Institute for Noetic Sciences, Dean Radin is also the author of many seminal books, including the Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds and His commitment to the scientific method and rigorous statistical analysis has bolstered the legitimacy of telepathy worldwide.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

His background in electrical engineering helps him to understand the very physical aspect of things, and yet he also has a background in psychology.

[Kai Dickens]

I asked Dean about the volumes of peer reviewed, tightly controlled telepathy studies done over the years. And if the results prove that this.

[Dean Radin]

Stuff is real in science, we don't have proof. We only have proof in alcohol and logic. So what we can say is with high confidence, telepathy is essentially demonstrated to an extent where we don't really need to do more proof oriented research. People who just get into the field or don't believe that such a thing is possible, they will do proof oriented research because they need to see it firsthand. The experiment that has been done the most over the past 50 years or so is called the Ganzfeld telepathy method.

[Kai Dickens]

This telepathy test requires a sender and a receiver.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

The Ganzfeld technique for investigating extrasensory perception isolates a subject. The receiver in a darkened room. All she sees is reddish light. All she hears is white noise.

[Dean Radin]

If you're in that condition for about 15 minutes and you don't fall asleep, it pretty quickly puts you into the state, like just before you fall asleep, the hypnagogic state. And so it's like a dreamlike reverie state.

[Kai Dickens]

Then the sender, who is far away in a different room, looks at randomly selected photographs and tries to send the image telepathically to the receiver in the different room.

[Dean Radin]

So after close now to 4000 such sessions run by at least a couple dozen laboratories around the world over five decades, the overall hit rate, as we call it, the number of times that the receiver correctly chose the right target, is 30 to 31%. The likelihood of guessing at about a 30% rate is a gazillion to one. Odds against chance. I mean, the number is so big, I don't even know what to call it.

[Kai Dickens]

So the science, the data, it's legitimate, but misconceptions abound.

[Dean Radin]

Many psychic phenomena are still thought of in terms of the way that we see it in entertainment and in the movies. Very powerful stuff shown as magical phenomena or as superpowers and that sort of thing. And so when scientists are then asked about this and they don't actually know the evidence, they'll say it's fun for entertainment, but of course, its fantasy doesn't exist. For those who do know the evidence, you'll find very quickly that in peer reviewed academic journals, these kinds of phenomena have been discussed now for many decades.

[Kai Dickens]

And when you're doing research on something that society deems so unbelievable, the researchers take great pains to make sure there's nothing that could be contaminating the results. Dean says if you look at the history of these type of tests, you'll.

[Dean Radin]

Notice how careful are parapsychological tests as compared to in what we consider mainstream.

[Kai Dickens]

Disciplines, the use of things like double blind methods or placebo controls.

[Dean Radin]

So by the time you get to something like the Ganzfeld telepathy experiment, it's about as close to a loophole free experiment as we know how to make.

[Kai Dickens]

Being that Dean knows about the vast amount of research held in this space, he felt like the perfect person to ask about some of the explanations. Myself and the parents have pondered regarding how this could be happening. Over the last few episodes, we've wondered, could telepathy operate like sound waves or energy fields? The non speakers themselves say that the mind to mind communication is effortless, Almost like tuning into a CB radio. Is this just a good metaphor for explaining how this is happening?

[Dean Radin]

The first thing that most scientists will jump to is an electromagnetic effect, because we're used to radios and cell phones that are working at a distance and communication is happening. And so that idea has been tested for many, many years to see whether or not one person's brain might be picking up electromagnetic signals from another person's brain.

[Kai Dickens]

And the scientists that conducted this research were thorough.

[Dean Radin]

In many of these experiments, the receiving party is placed inside an electromagnetically shielded chamber. The chamber that we have used is £2,000, and the walls are double walled, solid steel. And then the whole thing is grounded. There are other kinds which also have magnetic shielding. So anything in the realm of radio, television, cell phones, and so on, all.

[Kai Dickens]

Of those types of waves are completely.

[Dean Radin]

Gone, cannot pass through that.

[Kai Dickens]

However, telepathic messages could get through. They've even tested this in a submarine far beneath the ocean, where we know electromagnetic and radio waves cannot penetrate. So whatever is happening with these incredible abilities of our mind, they can pass through things that most waves that we're familiar with cannot.

[Dean Radin]

So that means we're dealing with something that's much more radical than what we currently understand.

[Kai Dickens]

What appears to be happening is so much more complex and mysterious than simply the transfer of radio waves or electromagnetic waves.

[Dean Radin]

Those ways of thinking about it fall into the category of classical physics, where we know about fields and forces and so on. So the only opening that we can think of at this point that doesn't violate what we know about physics would be quantum physics. Because in quantum physics, we have the notion of non local connections.

[Kai Dickens]

The word quantum simply refers to the tiniest little particles that make up you, me, and everything around us. And quantum physicists, the people studying these particles, have discovered that two particles can be linked or connected in a way where what happens to one is instantly affects what happens to the other. No matter how far apart they are, they could be across the room or even across the universe.

[Dean Radin]

You start encountering the possibility that information can be transferred instantaneously from here to there.

[Kai Dickens]

So the obvious next question is, can humans become entangled?

[Dean Radin]

We don't know yet if that's possible, but maybe there is a form of entanglement between either people who are emotionally close, or maybe they have to be physically close.

[Kai Dickens]

Not all particles are entangled. In fact, specific conditions have to be met for particles to become entangled, Usually something that involves a close interaction. And once that close interaction occurs, they remain connected even at a distance. All of this reminds me of Dr. Sheldrake's theory of the mental fields and how closely connected animals can stay in touch telepathically over a distance. And this would explain something like the elephants knowing when their friend Lawrence Anthony had died. Or harking back to episode two, how Akhil knows exactly where his mom is, what she's thinking and feeling, even when they're not together. All of this stuff might be natural and normal, not supernatural or paranormal. But the reason we feel and think that is because of the materialist paradigm that surrounds us.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

When we talk about a paradigm in science, it's really like your worldview that everything has to fit within.

[Dean Radin]

We're not taught that there's a philosophy of science, but of course there is.

[Kai Dickens]

The materialist paradigm believes that consciousness is created by our little gray noodley brain and dies with our brain.

[Dean Radin]

We assume that the world is made out of matter and energy, and that's the end of the story. Experiences like telepathy suggest that it may be more than that.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

I think that these phenomena tell us that the materialist view of the mind is wrong.

[Kai Dickens]

And that's what we're talking about right now, is the materialist view of the mind.

[Dean Radin]

Materialism works really well for certain kinds of physical things, but it is not the whole story. One way of thinking about the scientific model of reality is in the form of a pyramid. So most scientists would say that the bottom of the pyramid, the thing on which everything rests, is physics. And the next level up is chemistry. And the next thing up from that is biology. And the Next thing up from that is maybe psychology. And somewhere near the tippy top of this pyramid is awareness. Where the awareness comes from is a big mystery. But nevertheless, that's generally the way that many scientists will think about the nature of reality.

[Kai Dickens]

The thinking here is physics, biology, all the material aspects of the world led to consciousness. But the major problem with this model is that it can't explain how or why consciousness exists.

[Dean Radin]

How does 3 pounds of tissue in your head give rise to internal experience? We don't know where consciousness comes from. It's called the hard problem. It does not seem to arise out of the brain.

[Kai Dickens]

If consciousness doesn't originate in the brain, then where might it come from? I asked Dr. Diane Powell if she had any thoughts on this.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Why does consciousness have to be something that's created? Why isn't consciousness something that can be accessed and tapped into? I think of the brain as being more like our smartphone, that it's got different apps, and some of us have apps that others of us don't. And it's a way of surfing the cloud. When you look at some of these savants who, it's like they get a download from the cloud, not just informational download. Sometimes it's almost like they get an application download, you know, so obviously there's something that they're tapping into outside of themselves.

[Kai Dickens]

The thing I wanted to know is if materialism has it wrong about our brain and consciousness, does it have everything else wrong too?

[Dean Radin]

Materialism as a concept, as a way of thinking about reality, is not wrong. Because from physics to chemistry to biology to psychology, all of that works really good. We're not going to throw away the textbooks, but because it doesn't account very well for experience, we need something that's a little bit broader.

[Kai Dickens]

There are a lot more scientists today saying, wait, we need to rethink materialism. And yet the scientific journals and academic institutions and the funders of grants are still clinging to materialism.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

They have an undue influence through the universities and through the media. And their main influence is through trying to make people who disagree with them look stupid. They try and discredit their opponents. They don't look at the evidence, they just discredit them by saying they're pseudoscientists or charlatans or frauds.

[Kai Dickens]

There is not an inch of me that's a conspiracy theorist. I just want to put that out there because when I say this, it's not because I have that bent to my personality. But it is true that these scientists are being censored at every Turn people, go on Wikipedia and completely change and thwart the evidence around things like the Ganzfeld study. Medical boards take licenses away.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

What the medical board did to me really set me back financially and it traumatized me because I had no idea that they could do that.

[Kai Dickens]

As you may recall from episode four, when Dr. Diane Powell published her book the ESP Enigma, the medical board fined her and revoked her license without even reading it. The mere mention of ESP was so.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Taboo and I didn't do anything wrong.

[Kai Dickens]

She paid the price before anyone considered the science behind her work. Only after they reviewed her research was her license reinstated, but the damage was done.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

It's totally about control and shutting you up. And so it's one of the things that keeps doctors silent.

[Kai Dickens]

And Rupert Sheldrake, the biologist who studies telepathy in animals, he gave a TED Talk called the Science Delusion. And this TED Talk was one of the few TED Talks ever to be banned. Here's a snippet that really sums up the thesis of his TED Talk.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

But there's a conflict in the heart of science between science as a method of inquiry based on reason, evidence, hypothesis and collective investigation, and science as a belief system or a worldview. And unfortunately, the worldview aspect of science has come to inhibit and constrict the free inquiry, which is the very lifeblood of the scientific endeavor.

[Kai Dickens]

You can find this ted talk on YouTube and you should. It's thoughtful, rational, intelligent, just like Dr. Sheldrake. And so, yes, the materialistic paradigm does have a grip and control over science and scientists, what they do and what they say.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

One reason that materialists remain so committed to their worldview is that for many, it's become a kind of belief system. So for materialists, indeed, it's become a kind of fundamentalist religion.

[Kai Dickens]

Some refer to this dogmatic and stubborn brand of science as scientism.

[Rupert Sheldrake]

Scientism, the belief that science can explain everything and has all the answers, at least in principle, leaving any of the details to be filled in. There's a tremendous arrogance associated with this worldview. Hasn't occurred to them that their own beliefs might be false.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Ten years ago there was a conference in which several hundred scientists from around the world got together and said, we are going to sign and create a manifesto for post materialist science because we believe that, that there is sufficient evidence for us to say that materialism is dead. It was basically like nailing The Was It 95 Theses by Martin Luther saying we are declaring this incorrect and we're not waiting anymore.

[Kai Dickens]

Diane connected me with a woman named Marjorie Woollacott, and she is the president of the group that became the outgrowth of this manifesto.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Marjorie Woollacott is the president of the Academy for the Advancement of Post Materialist Sciences.

[Marjorie Woollacott]

I find it a wonderful role to be in because I'm able to interact with scientists all over the globe, including people like Dean Radin, learning more about the phenomena like telepathy and the fundamental nature of consciousness.

[Kai Dickens]

And just like every scientist that you've met in the Series Thus far, Dr. Woollacott had an impressive career and started as a materialist.

[Marjorie Woollacott]

I am a member of the Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Oregon and a emeritus professor in the Department of Physiology at the university, having worked there as a professor for 35 years. I was a strongly materialistically oriented scientist. I was very, very skeptical. I thought that everyone around me that had a spiritual inclination was weak minded.

[Kai Dickens]

But after her sister introduced her to meditation and she started to meditate regularly, her materialist worldview started to crack and she started to think more deeply about consciousness.

[Marjorie Woollacott]

In 2015, I decided to retire because I wanted to go into broader areas of research.

[Kai Dickens]

Marjorie wanted to understand more the origins of consciousness, and in doing so, it became clear to her that our mind is not just a physical thing locked in our skull. As a quick sidebar, you're going to start to hear the term psi phenomenon. Psi, psi phenomenon. And this is a broad term for abilities or experiences that go beyond the laws of physics. So things like telepathy or clairvoyance, precognition or even retrocognition.

[Marjorie Woollacott]

I never thought to look to see if there was research on near death experiences or on psi phenomena such as telepathy or on after death communication. I simply quote unquote, knew they weren't true. And it wasn't until I wrote my book Infinite the Awakening of a Scientific Mind that I found out, my goodness, there's all this research that's already out there and it's done by credible people. These are peer reviewed articles in highly ranked journals.

[Kai Dickens]

So Dr. Wallicott began to rethink the materialist paradigm. Because here's the thing, if research is telling us that telepathy and these other psi phenomena exist, then we have to account for it. Burying your head in the sand is not sound science. So Dr. Walcott began to think of the world in the same way that Dr. Powell and Dr. Dean Radin did. After accounting for the evidence, consciousness might not be the result of all the building blocks of our material world. Maybe it's the foundation of it. Enter the idea of consciousness being the most fundamental element of the universe. So from that perspective, consciousness is the base of the pyramid.

[Dean Radin]

Consciousness as fundamental as saying the pyramid is pretty, pretty close to correct, except that it's not consciousness at the top.

[Kai Dickens]

It'S at the bottom.

[Dean Radin]

It's actually below physics. In that case, the pyramid of reality is resting upon awareness. So if that were true, it suggests that ultimately everything is mental. From this perspective, your awareness is actually distributed throughout all space and time and the entire universe. So if that is true, it would mean that it's not surprising at all that occasionally your thoughts, your mind are overlapping with somebody else's thoughts and mind because they're all coming out of the same place to begin with. So that would explain telepathy. And then the question is, well, how come we're not telepathic all the time?

[Kai Dickens]

It wouldn't be very good for survival on Earth. If you're constantly aware of the thoughts and feelings and placement of everyone around you, you're not going to make it in the jungle or New York.

[Dean Radin]

Conscious awareness is usually the worst condition for somebody to be in in order to receive these kinds of telepathic connections.

[Kai Dickens]

This is why many successful telepathy studies like the Ganzfeld experiment put people into a state of sensory deprivation. Because when our brains are fully alert, taking in everything, firing on all cylinders, they aren't as open to telepathy or other psi type abilities.

[Dean Radin]

A person's brain is constantly rejecting that kind of information, meaning our brains may.

[Kai Dickens]

Have developed to help us block out more psychic and telepathic states.

[Dean Radin]

So if we now look at people who are neurodivergent, perhaps they're already in.

[Kai Dickens]

That state, meaning maybe some neurodiverse, neurodiverse people are missing the shield, so to speak. The shield that keeps out everyone's thoughts and feelings and all the information floating out there. A sciency way to talk about this shield is called a dissociative boundary. I have a boundary that says I'm Kai and Diane is Diane and you're you.

[Marjorie Woollacott]

What we might call my dissociative boundary, meaning my feeling of separation from someone else at looking at them as other.

[Kai Dickens]

But if the basis of the entire world is consciousness, then we aren't really separate at all. It helps us to survive in the world to believe that we are to keep our bodies functioning. But that separateness, it might be an illusion.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

In order to have experiences, we have to create the illusion of separation.

[Marjorie Woollacott]

As you talked about with children with autism, they don't have that dissociative boundary.

[Kai Dickens]

And if the non speakers that we've met don't have the same dissociative boundary that the rest of us do, then they may be tapped into every aspect of consciousness. All the psi phenomenon that evidence shows us exists. They might be the gateway to validating that this new way of thinking about the world, the paradigm that says consciousness is the base of everything, is correct. I asked Dr. Wollacott if there's anything from her research that might show that telepathy is a basic underlying form of communication that our little physical dissociative boundaries might choose to ignore.

[Marjorie Woollacott]

There are a number of cases of people, people with near death experiences. So they have died. The cardiac arrest, the EEG has stopped. They come back after maybe an hour or something like that, where they have not been present in this reality, but they come back with special new skills, including this ability to sense what other people are thinking. And I should say that it drives a lot of these people crazy because they didn't want it and they don't know how to deal with it because suddenly they have what you might call too porous a boundary between them and other people. And it can get in their way of living a normal life.

[Kai Dickens]

I'm not totally sure what to make of this, but if your body flatlines and your consciousness is less tied to the physical body and brain, maybe it's allowed to access the broader sea of awareness and come back with a bit more of that awareness. Like telepathy. So is all psi phenomena tapping into the same thing? This underlying fabric of consciousness we give.

[Dean Radin]

A label of telepathy for mind to mind communication will have a label of precognition for perception of something in the future, or retrocognition for something in the past, or clairvoyance for just perception in general through space and time. Psychokinetic effects for mind, matter interaction. There are ways that phenomena appear and the ways that we create labels to explain how they manifest. But it's really one thing. That's why the jargon in the field is psi. It's all psi, but it's all coming out of the same underlying phenomena.

[Kai Dickens]

And that underlying phenomena would be the base of the pyramid, the foundation of consciousness, which is at the root of everything. Some people might call this the quantum field or collective consciousness. Other people might call it God. Some might call it the universe or energy or the akashic record. Whatever it is, it seems to be describing this one powerful, unifying, foundational force. And each of us experience this consciousness individually, with a unique personhood while we're here on Earth. The power of this force feels both personal and unifying. It's beyond each of us, but also somehow a part of us. So bringing this back to the non speakers if the materialist paradigm is wrong, if this ocean of consciousness is real and the non speakers can tap into it effortlessly, making things like telepathy easy breezy, it stands to reason, based on their past comments about accessing information and knowing things that they haven't been taught, that their abilities may transcend the physical boundaries that limit most of us. Can non speakers harness more of this psi phenomenon and tap into consciousness more readily? And if so, do they hold the key to ushering in a new scientific paradigm and unlocking human potential that we can only begin to imagine? Next, we're heading to Wisconsin to meet a 10 year year old girl named Amelia. Her mom, Maura has been desperately trying to make sense of the mysterious connections and abilities Amelia has shared with her and they check off every single psy skill mentioned in this episode. I don't think telepathy is the only.

[Dean Radin]

Gift that these kids have.

[Kai Dickens]

Amelia seems to have a bunch of them for sure, the telepathy, but then also, you know, the spirits and recognition kinds of things. She for sure is seeing people that aren't there and she's also talking to.

[Marjorie Woollacott]

God or spirits or someone at night and getting directions and insight.

[Kai Dickens]

They are all connected somehow through this idea of collective consciousness. Please note there will be a longer two week wait for this episode, but I promise it will be worth it. A very special thanks to my incredible collaborator and producer Jen Mirza who created all music and sound effects for this episode of the Telepathy Tapes. Remember that you can review some of the tests and see some of the film recordings on our website thetelepathytapes.com thank you so much for tuning in and join us in two weeks as this world expands and deepens.