Hi, your Substack is new to me but I’m guessing you’re familiar with Rupert Sheldrake’s work? Also interesting to me about TTT are the quantum-like effects at play, for example Mia struggles with reading her dad and had previously written in her diary at some point that she can read everybody’s mind, but you have to believe in her. Like anything that is “real”, there is an element of relationship that comes into it. Also reminds me of the story of Clever Hans, the horse who could apparently do arithmetic – turned out he could sense his owner’s anxiety around him getting the answers right. But that doesn’t detract from the horse’s abilities due to its heightened senses. There’s very little that the majority of humans understand about the non-verbal, human and non-human; being skeptical though, is seemingly disruptive to the field.
Hi Claire! Yes I love Sheldrake's work, although I'm no expert. The Clever Hans argument has actually been used by most skeptics to argue that this isn't non-local consciousness, it's local intuition. That is a totally fair argument until we see proper studies or better videos. But both Jeff and Ky's comments allayed my concerns. We will see!
I think that using the Clever Hans argument to discredit is kind of shooting oneself in the foot though! Why would a horse need to understand or care what arithmetic is?! It understands anxiety and empathy. Animals tend to use imagery when they communicate telepathically anyway, but that’s a whole other conversation. For my part, very little in TTT is surprising to me having spent time with those who are non-verbal autistic. But I am very heartened that the podcast is bringing these seeming phenomena to light, which are frankly, simply representative of what it means to be a sentient being. So I’m all in, but interested to see what happens next and whether that light can shine through the chinks in the armour of scientism.
Because clever hans just says "the kids are reading their mums or vice-versa". The TT talks about non local communication, reincarnation and the existence of God. It's quite the disconnect.
Sure, I get that, but that makes a lot of assumptions about how animals communicate and about non-verbal communication. If “normative” thinkers can’t or don’t want to understand how it works, how can they be the ones who set up the parameters for a control? And yes, ultimately this is about consciousness not “telepathy”, it’s not a phenomenon, it’s deep listening with the entire body into and of the energetic field. Appreciate your stance and enquiry around all of this.
Yeah, as you can tell from my pre-existing biases and personal experience, I think there's more going on. But there's also a very fair response: if you're saying this is 90% accurate under somewhat controlled conditions, then it should be replicable. I'm excited to follow it!
Thanks for your balanced view Tom. Many uncritically believe just because they want to, including, unfortunately, the aforementioned Scott Britton who's had a couple of extremely dodgy people on his podcast and not asked them any difficult questions. I also want to believe, but I know that doesn't make it true. I've read a lot about fraud in facilitated communication as well, so I know it can happen, which, to be fair, is covered in the TT podcast. I think, as Mona says, we have to treat this as a feasibility study and wait for the final results. But I do think if it's conclusively proved, it could take a significant Jenga block out from the materialism stack.
I agree it could be an absolutely crucial piece of the puzzle. Or another false dawn.
But a major ‘opportunity’ in the ‘crisis’ of ‘reality itself is breaking down’ may well be that these types of suppressed abilities come surging back into ‘mainstream’ consciousness (as much as there is a mainstream in a broken, or new, sense of reality). Telepathy, magick, healing, etc etc
Yes absolutely, and in fact I know telepathy can be real because I’ve experienced it. But as you say, that doesn’t mean this is real, even though I am convinced nobody is actively lying about it. The problem is that there is so much riding on it: ‘my kid is special and has incredible abilities’ VS ‘my kid, much as I love them, is severely disabled and probably unable to communicate in words… PLUS I have been unwittingly duped and arguably have made a fool of myself by claiming this is all real’.
I tripped over this podcast while searching "consciousness" here on Substack (I'm a newbie). I totally relate to the 'problem of believing.' I'm an electrical engineer who had a dark night of the soul and woke up on the quantum side of life. I struggled for a few years as so much of what I was experiencing was far outside my norm I had a very hard time believing. Time, experience and research have convinced me we are quantum beings and psi phenomena makes absolute sense. Thank you for sharing this!
Thanks Sabine! I’ve been on a similar journey via a different route. This has been the hardest single case so far. Seems incredibly compelling: so I’ve worked as hard as I can to inhabit a mindset of skepticism.
It seems really clear to me. There isn't even a need to reject a materialist explanation of things, unless by materialism one means the laughably hubristic view that there can't possibly be connections between things that we aren't currently capable of reliably measuring.
I.e. we are physically connected in a continuum with the entire universe - with the whole of it. All changes to specific parts of the whole, change the condition of the whole. Really the question is, how sensitive are we? What are we capable of sensing? Are we not capable of sensing our environments? And given that our environment is connected in continuum with the entirety of everything, if there is somehow a limit to our ability to sense the whole (rather than discrete 'facts' within it) - where is that limit, and why exactly there?
Which seems very obviously something which is highly influenced by beliefs.
It seems to me that people are very scared to examine the foundations of their own beliefs.
The idea of science is an extremely effective smokescreen for this - it presents itself, or at least functions within discourse, as a story about the universe with the force of an authoritative structure to give its version of truth a concrete primacy, and so free people from the need to be sure about their own perceptions. Paradoxically, while its claims for truth rely on questioning itself, there is only a certain amount of doubt it can tolerate.
And the nature of the authority which it clothes itself in is highly questionable and fallible - who funds it, who gatekeeps, who stands to win or lose from maintaining rigid stories about what is a valid belief or not?
Doubting too much of its truths tends to provoke a very strong reaction.
From my perspective, I have to ask: why do people cling so strongly to this story of reality (which to me seems highly rigid and very limiting)?
What I see has very old and primal roots: many people feel safer belonging to the group and being told by authority what the truth is, than relying upon their own inner knowledge. This is an issue of very deep disempowerment. Some people deciding they are capable of living in their own reality feels extremely threatening to those who have given all their sense of security to the authorities and arbiters of truth.
Those old roots? Well, the current worldview evolved out of opposition to Catholicism - which exerted a horrifically violent compulsion to its truth. 'Either believe reality is what we say (and therefore do exactly what we tell you), or you will be sent to the worst place imaginable for eternity when you die, and we'll probably torture you while you're still alive.' Truth becomes a very binary proposition. Which I think it still is, for many people still attached to the scientistic view for their security in reality.
Obviously, it's not very secure, because otherwise there wouldn't be such a tremendous backlash when it's threatened. The security is an illusion which requires an ever-increasing amount of energy to maintain.
Underneath that, the roots of that insecurity are in the millennia of (often extremely traumatic) control and conditioning, to separate us from our inner self, of which Catholicism was only one manifestation. These are all very present in the bedrock of our current way of relating as a society, but we'll hidden by all the layers of trauma that we don't want to look at, but which are clearly being replicated externally.
This is hugely disempowering. And to regain that independent source of power is extremely difficult, it entails being honest with the entirety of our own history of traumatic disempowerment. And many people would much rather not face that.
Of course, this also leads to very binary thinking. I'm suspicious of the way 'Materialism' has been set up in this context. Let's beware the journalistic tendency to find drama and opposition in everything, and approach this with as much openness to disagreeing as possible.
So to get back to the point, there are questions which I think could really help. If you're struggling to get your head around 'telepathy', first define what exactly what you mean by that. Then ask, and perhaps be really clear in answering:
Why shouldn't we be able to sense things which are currently hidden to a limited worldview?
And, why do we have to prove it in a certain way before it becomes an acceptable 'fact'?
How much do you as an individual, need your beliefs about reality to be identical with billions of others on this planet?
I think there's also a neurological (LH lock) and psychological reason. Ontological shock is very much a thing. AND speaking from experience, the process of surrender can be hard enough so as to be nearly fatal. So I try to be compassionate.
In his podcast Self-portraits as other people, I think in an interview with Eric Wargo, the ungoogleable michelangelo talks about 'materialist expansionism' rather than reductionism, which feels totally right to me.
Whichever comes first, it's about getting really really good at the technique of Yes And...
Robert Anton Wilson also had a lot of really useful things to say about this.
Ps I hear you about the process of surrender, brother, I'm still going through a long, slow, but unbelievably powerful realignment of reality, that's had me right on the very edge of the edge for years
I guess it just seems to me that it's not a question of reason or logic, so much as psychological blind spots, protected by the deflective power of a huge amount of trauma - buried in matter, in our bodies and the body of the earth around us, and in our collective agreements about reality. My experience has been, the more I can look at that really difficult painful stuff, the more I can look at other things (eg telepathy, magic, spirit...) also outside the general worldview.
I think it might take a long time until enough individuals feel secure enough in their own beliefs, that the culture overall doesn't feel the need to police belief so strongly, with such rigidity.
There is a lot of fear too around the chaos of lots of different beliefs. Daniel Pinchbeck for example, wrote recently about the need for a grand unifying belief system.
Terence McKenna talked about 'the balkanization of epistemologies'. Personally I feel this is not just inevitable, but also something we can learn a huge amount from, and it will be better to embrace it (and our fear of it), and learn a more empathetic ability to disagree gracefully, rather than adopt what seems to me a fearful, oppositional stance.
As someone who has inexplicable precognitive experiences, and believes in non-materialist philosophies of consciousness, I was highly interested in the Telepathy Tapes. But I was frustrated that the podcast didn't give much explanation of what was actually happening in the room when the tests were being conducted. So I ponied up $10 to watch some the video recordings on their website.
Wow. In every video, Akhil's mother is making specific hand gestures before every letter that he chooses. In the videos with John Paul, Hailey, and Houston, the facilitator is always slightly moving the letter boards up, down, left, right, and tilting them, sometimes subtly, sometimes pretty obviously. Worst of all are the tests with Mia, where her mother is *dramatically* pointing her head in directions to indicate where she should point. It's saddening to watch.
"The responses were so fact and so accurate that I don't know how cuing could happen that way" says Dr. Tarrant. What is the big mystery? Here's a, in my opinion, far more plausible explanation: These kids, who might be genuine savants, have learned how to pick up subtle movement cues from their facilitators. Again... watch the videos.
And its downright dishonesty that TTT has called one of their experiments a "double blind" test because they had Mia and her mom wearing blindfolds. I mean --- we all know that's not what "double blind test" means. What the heck.
On the other hand, I've seen profound evidence of precognition before my eyes, people using random-choice precog apps on my phone and consistently scoring very high above probability. Absolutely astounding. But these tests from TTT are not convincing at all. We really need to shore up our critical thinking skills here.
For those who don't want to pay the $10, I was able to find some on youtube.
But for $10, watching Akhil's mom make hand gestures is worth the cost if you're dying to know how legit this stuff actually is.
So there's all this fluff about how random number generators are going to make statistically impossible for these kids to randomly guess correctly. Of course, that's true. But that all goes out the window when the mechanism of communication is exposed.
And the skepticism could be *easily* debunked with some simple constraints on the tests:
Have the kids perform the tests with a stationary letter board instead of having their trust facilitator moving it around in front of them. Have Akhil's mom out of the room when he types on his ipad. Simple stuff. But i'll bet you dollars on the penny, it'll never happen.
This is a grift. And these kinds of grifts have been happening for, literally, thousands of years.
Do your homework y'all. Watch the videos. Ask yourself why the test were misrepresented in the podcast. Pay attention to affective language used by the podcast host to discourage critical thinking (its "ableist" to questions whether these kids have telepathy? come on.)
Good luck out there. Its a wild world. Full of mysteries and deception. Including lots of self-deception.
But bravo to these kids. They deserve respect for their talents, and for putting up with all the spectacle around them.
I don't feel as strongly as you, but I remain not 100% based on the existence of these questions from people like you. The lab tests will hopefully answer your lingering questions.
Yes, but I don't claim to be an expert either way. People who do claim to be say they are suspect or insufficienct, those in the room say it was unequivocal. And in that disconnect lies my dissonance.
I really don't think you have to be an expert to see Mia's mom shoving her face in different directions to see what's going on. When Mia doesn't "take the hint" with the last colored pencil, her mom just pushes her face even harder to one side. It's not just blatantly false, its deeply disturbing.
You tell me.
You here about a girl which psychic powers. Then you see her mom shoving her head like that. Would you publish it? Please, be honest with yourself.
I can understand more ambiguity about the spelling boards which is not so obviously influenced by the facilitators at first glance.
But Akhil's mom with hand movements?
Would you publish that, with a straight face, and no hedging, as unequivocal psychic phenomena?
I don't doubt that some people in the room really believe there's supernatural magic happening. People also believe in oujia boards, even though the ideomotoric effects are pretty well understood.
Here's a story for you: In the rural southwest, dowsers are pretty common for helping people place their wells. I once had a dowser show me his methods, where his dowsing rods swivel in his hands when he walks over a certain area. "that means there's water there" he said.
I made my own rods with coat hangers from my hotel room and noticed that the rods will swivel move at even the slightest micro-movement of my hands. So I tried an experiment with (or "on" perhaps) my coworkers. I explained the concept of dowsing to him, picked an arbitrary spot in the parking lot, and told him there was a water line there. I slowly walked across the line and the rods seemed to move, all on their own, twisting inward, and then expanding back out as moved past the faux water line.
"You try it!" I said. And he did. And guess what. The rods swiveled in the exact same way, at the exact same place. He was astonished. And then I told him there was no water line there.
This illustrates how imperceptible the relationship can be between our bodies, senses, and minds. But of course, we want to feel like we "know" stuff and we fill in the gaps of our knowledge with whatever convincing explanations are available.
While psychic phenomena and consciousness will continue to trigger my curiosity, so too does psychology and the material sciences.
There doesn't need to be some kind of harsh tribal line in the sand where we either all-in on woo or all-in on scientism.
And nor do we need to ignore our common sense and rely solely on expert testimony nor witness testimony (which proves to be very very unrealiable in many cases -- see: the terrible tragedies of the justice system where people are SO SURE that such-and-such happened).
I'm not 100% about anything, but when I watch those videos, I'm not just skeptical. I'm disheartened. It's not cool to turn these beautiful kids into idols for search for meaning and magic in life. There are better ways.
I think we simply need to see more. I appreciate this may be a disqualifying question given your concerns, but what do you make of the content in section 4?
I think you and I might agree on quite a lot regarding how modern culture conditions our psyches. We probably share the notion that a revolution is needed.
What we'll likely disagree on is that skepticism around these children is purely a result of close-minded rationalist dogma.
Yes - some of the skeptics object purely because of their kneejerk rejection of anything that smells of "paranormal woo".
But there are also those who embrace the woo because of their own kneejerk reaction to the apparent connection between these kids and their own trans-materialist dogmas.
I don't think people on either side of the woo divide really understand how their own psychology tends to operate based on symbolic binary associations.
Those who are sympathetic to notions of transcendent metaphysical realities will latch on to these stories as evidence that bolsters their own beliefs, especially when the kids are supposedly espousing metaphysical propositions that jive with their own.
And thus, they'll also feel that denying the reality of these psi phenomena is a strike against those beliefs they hold.
Here's how the inner calculus works:
Mystical Truth = good.
Mystical Truth = realities which cannot be explained by materialism
Psi kids = realities which (maybe) cannot be explained by materialism
Psi kids = evidence of Mystical Truth
Psy kids espousing Mystical Truth = seeming parsimony between Mystical Truth, Psi kids, mysteries beyond materialism (trifecta!)
Psy kids debunked = Mystical Truth seemingly diminished, evidence of trans-material mysteries seemingly dimished
Mystical Truth dimished = sense of meaning and magic (and hope) diminished
And there's more to this which is bolster by TTT:
Debunking psy kids = ableism
Debunking psy kids = deny the personas of these kids presented by their spelled-out messages
Debunking psy kids = dashing the positive affect of the kids' parents and facilitators
Debunking psy kids = an affront to open-minded exploration
etc.
Debunking psy kids = everyone involved must be a fraud, and a coordinated fraud to boot!
None of these associations are necessarily true, but these overly simple heuristics are how we're conditioned to interpret reality.
Even those who see the limits of materialism are still *deeply* conditioned by culture to form beliefs (and identities) based on dichotomous competition and symbolic associations.
The way you're presenting things is that there's hardboiled materialist skeptics on one side and open-minded truth seekers on the other side. It's a false dichotomy - what some would call "left brain" thinking.
Try this on: If you saw evidence that convinced pretty deeply that Mia and Akhil and the rest in those videos are being influenced to choose certain letters as they spell things out, would you walk away feeling less certain in your intuitions about the mystical truths of reality?
If so, you're operating based on symbolic associations (which is the same thing a dogmatic materialist does).
If not, I would suggest this: double down on your conviction about mystical truth as something which you know *from within* rather than from external "evidence". In that state of confidence, watch those videos again.
Do you really need to see more videos of Mia's mom shoving her head around? Do you really need to see more videos of Akhil's mom *knowingly* sending him hand gestures? Do you need to see more videos of Hailey being told "nope, you got it wrong, try again".
I'm glad I saw it, because its good to know whats going on in the world. And i would support tests which aim to address whether or not those hand gestures, and the movement of the spelling boards, are in fact the mechanism of communication rather than telepathy. I highly doubt that those parents, and the podcast producers, want to see those kinds of tests.
Do you want to see those kinds of tests?
Or do you want more tests where those kinds of questions remain unexamined?
I appreciate your willingness to address the skeptics. If I may say, it’s a bit of a cop out to say, well it’s just a podcast, it’s not going to go through all the scientific protocols. Just do some double blind tests so it eliminates the first obvious concern even if it’s not ready to publish. If they won’t even do that, then you’re just providing content for those who already believe.
but nobody would believe they are double-blinded because there's no official oversight of the design. Also, it's a special population -- their comfort, safety, and willingness to participate takes precedence over our need for scientific data, right?
"Their comfort, safety, and willingness to participate takes precedence over our need for scientific data, right?" Comfort and willingness to participate is doing a lot of work here. The kids often have to be coerced into these spelling performances. Do you think Mia looks comfortable being blindfolded and having her head turned harshly in different directions?
And all so that we can get a dopamine hit from a "omg wow" feeling?
Beyond doubt you're right conceptually. But have you also heard Ky AND Jeff's description of the kids enjoying it, and finally feeling heard and validated? And the parents? And their powers increasing as a result? Again: I choose to believe Ky if that opens me up later it's a choice I've made eyes open. There is the POTENTIAL for these kids to be exploited, I just haven't seen it yet, although you are right to be vigiliant.
Fair. I guess the response might be that this was intended to be proof of concept for a sphere that constantly fails to gain sufficient funding. If you’ve had time to listen, what did you make of Jeff’s comments?
I listened to it, I think the verbal descriptions are persuasive if you trust the speakers at all, and I’m not that skeptical to doubt everyone’s motives (that’s why I listened to it and am reading your substack). If they’re going to talk about the precautions taken with these experiments to make them informally rigorous, then I hope they’ll go further and design them even more bullet proof. If it’s true that these kids have gone through hours of testing, and they have a message they genuinely want to get out, is it really that hard to do? Bring in a known skeptic to check it out.
If other studies are bragging about results that are slightly above chance, then this should be a blockbuster scientific discovery. Of course we should be concerned about their comfort during testing, but if that’s the roadblock, you’ve got to ramp up the skepticism meter at some point and people who are not already convinced will consider this to be merely an entertaining story. (For all its popularity, are significant numbers of people really changing their worldview?)
Hi, your Substack is new to me but I’m guessing you’re familiar with Rupert Sheldrake’s work? Also interesting to me about TTT are the quantum-like effects at play, for example Mia struggles with reading her dad and had previously written in her diary at some point that she can read everybody’s mind, but you have to believe in her. Like anything that is “real”, there is an element of relationship that comes into it. Also reminds me of the story of Clever Hans, the horse who could apparently do arithmetic – turned out he could sense his owner’s anxiety around him getting the answers right. But that doesn’t detract from the horse’s abilities due to its heightened senses. There’s very little that the majority of humans understand about the non-verbal, human and non-human; being skeptical though, is seemingly disruptive to the field.
Hi Claire! Yes I love Sheldrake's work, although I'm no expert. The Clever Hans argument has actually been used by most skeptics to argue that this isn't non-local consciousness, it's local intuition. That is a totally fair argument until we see proper studies or better videos. But both Jeff and Ky's comments allayed my concerns. We will see!
I think that using the Clever Hans argument to discredit is kind of shooting oneself in the foot though! Why would a horse need to understand or care what arithmetic is?! It understands anxiety and empathy. Animals tend to use imagery when they communicate telepathically anyway, but that’s a whole other conversation. For my part, very little in TTT is surprising to me having spent time with those who are non-verbal autistic. But I am very heartened that the podcast is bringing these seeming phenomena to light, which are frankly, simply representative of what it means to be a sentient being. So I’m all in, but interested to see what happens next and whether that light can shine through the chinks in the armour of scientism.
Because clever hans just says "the kids are reading their mums or vice-versa". The TT talks about non local communication, reincarnation and the existence of God. It's quite the disconnect.
Sure, I get that, but that makes a lot of assumptions about how animals communicate and about non-verbal communication. If “normative” thinkers can’t or don’t want to understand how it works, how can they be the ones who set up the parameters for a control? And yes, ultimately this is about consciousness not “telepathy”, it’s not a phenomenon, it’s deep listening with the entire body into and of the energetic field. Appreciate your stance and enquiry around all of this.
Yeah, as you can tell from my pre-existing biases and personal experience, I think there's more going on. But there's also a very fair response: if you're saying this is 90% accurate under somewhat controlled conditions, then it should be replicable. I'm excited to follow it!
Thanks for your balanced view Tom. Many uncritically believe just because they want to, including, unfortunately, the aforementioned Scott Britton who's had a couple of extremely dodgy people on his podcast and not asked them any difficult questions. I also want to believe, but I know that doesn't make it true. I've read a lot about fraud in facilitated communication as well, so I know it can happen, which, to be fair, is covered in the TT podcast. I think, as Mona says, we have to treat this as a feasibility study and wait for the final results. But I do think if it's conclusively proved, it could take a significant Jenga block out from the materialism stack.
Thanks Guy. I have been literally losing sleep trying to hold the tension in my mind. Jeff’s comments significantly eased my concerns.
I agree it could be an absolutely crucial piece of the puzzle. Or another false dawn.
But a major ‘opportunity’ in the ‘crisis’ of ‘reality itself is breaking down’ may well be that these types of suppressed abilities come surging back into ‘mainstream’ consciousness (as much as there is a mainstream in a broken, or new, sense of reality). Telepathy, magick, healing, etc etc
The dissonance is that telepathy can be real and this can be fake
Yes absolutely, and in fact I know telepathy can be real because I’ve experienced it. But as you say, that doesn’t mean this is real, even though I am convinced nobody is actively lying about it. The problem is that there is so much riding on it: ‘my kid is special and has incredible abilities’ VS ‘my kid, much as I love them, is severely disabled and probably unable to communicate in words… PLUS I have been unwittingly duped and arguably have made a fool of myself by claiming this is all real’.
I tripped over this podcast while searching "consciousness" here on Substack (I'm a newbie). I totally relate to the 'problem of believing.' I'm an electrical engineer who had a dark night of the soul and woke up on the quantum side of life. I struggled for a few years as so much of what I was experiencing was far outside my norm I had a very hard time believing. Time, experience and research have convinced me we are quantum beings and psi phenomena makes absolute sense. Thank you for sharing this!
Thanks Sabine! I’ve been on a similar journey via a different route. This has been the hardest single case so far. Seems incredibly compelling: so I’ve worked as hard as I can to inhabit a mindset of skepticism.
Not an easy thing when we’ve spent our life that way! It’s a learning to believe in an entirely new paradigm. ❤️✨
It seems really clear to me. There isn't even a need to reject a materialist explanation of things, unless by materialism one means the laughably hubristic view that there can't possibly be connections between things that we aren't currently capable of reliably measuring.
I.e. we are physically connected in a continuum with the entire universe - with the whole of it. All changes to specific parts of the whole, change the condition of the whole. Really the question is, how sensitive are we? What are we capable of sensing? Are we not capable of sensing our environments? And given that our environment is connected in continuum with the entirety of everything, if there is somehow a limit to our ability to sense the whole (rather than discrete 'facts' within it) - where is that limit, and why exactly there?
Which seems very obviously something which is highly influenced by beliefs.
As a basic principle this seems pretty much undisputed - eg amongst many others https://news.mit.edu/2019/how-expectation-influences-perception-0715 . How have we been conditioned into sensing the world, and how deep are we prepared to go to investigate this question?
It seems to me that people are very scared to examine the foundations of their own beliefs.
The idea of science is an extremely effective smokescreen for this - it presents itself, or at least functions within discourse, as a story about the universe with the force of an authoritative structure to give its version of truth a concrete primacy, and so free people from the need to be sure about their own perceptions. Paradoxically, while its claims for truth rely on questioning itself, there is only a certain amount of doubt it can tolerate.
And the nature of the authority which it clothes itself in is highly questionable and fallible - who funds it, who gatekeeps, who stands to win or lose from maintaining rigid stories about what is a valid belief or not?
Doubting too much of its truths tends to provoke a very strong reaction.
From my perspective, I have to ask: why do people cling so strongly to this story of reality (which to me seems highly rigid and very limiting)?
What I see has very old and primal roots: many people feel safer belonging to the group and being told by authority what the truth is, than relying upon their own inner knowledge. This is an issue of very deep disempowerment. Some people deciding they are capable of living in their own reality feels extremely threatening to those who have given all their sense of security to the authorities and arbiters of truth.
Those old roots? Well, the current worldview evolved out of opposition to Catholicism - which exerted a horrifically violent compulsion to its truth. 'Either believe reality is what we say (and therefore do exactly what we tell you), or you will be sent to the worst place imaginable for eternity when you die, and we'll probably torture you while you're still alive.' Truth becomes a very binary proposition. Which I think it still is, for many people still attached to the scientistic view for their security in reality.
Obviously, it's not very secure, because otherwise there wouldn't be such a tremendous backlash when it's threatened. The security is an illusion which requires an ever-increasing amount of energy to maintain.
Underneath that, the roots of that insecurity are in the millennia of (often extremely traumatic) control and conditioning, to separate us from our inner self, of which Catholicism was only one manifestation. These are all very present in the bedrock of our current way of relating as a society, but we'll hidden by all the layers of trauma that we don't want to look at, but which are clearly being replicated externally.
This is hugely disempowering. And to regain that independent source of power is extremely difficult, it entails being honest with the entirety of our own history of traumatic disempowerment. And many people would much rather not face that.
Of course, this also leads to very binary thinking. I'm suspicious of the way 'Materialism' has been set up in this context. Let's beware the journalistic tendency to find drama and opposition in everything, and approach this with as much openness to disagreeing as possible.
So to get back to the point, there are questions which I think could really help. If you're struggling to get your head around 'telepathy', first define what exactly what you mean by that. Then ask, and perhaps be really clear in answering:
Why shouldn't we be able to sense things which are currently hidden to a limited worldview?
And, why do we have to prove it in a certain way before it becomes an acceptable 'fact'?
How much do you as an individual, need your beliefs about reality to be identical with billions of others on this planet?
I think there's also a neurological (LH lock) and psychological reason. Ontological shock is very much a thing. AND speaking from experience, the process of surrender can be hard enough so as to be nearly fatal. So I try to be compassionate.
In his podcast Self-portraits as other people, I think in an interview with Eric Wargo, the ungoogleable michelangelo talks about 'materialist expansionism' rather than reductionism, which feels totally right to me.
Whichever comes first, it's about getting really really good at the technique of Yes And...
Robert Anton Wilson also had a lot of really useful things to say about this.
Ps I hear you about the process of surrender, brother, I'm still going through a long, slow, but unbelievably powerful realignment of reality, that's had me right on the very edge of the edge for years
Yes, compassion always.
I guess it just seems to me that it's not a question of reason or logic, so much as psychological blind spots, protected by the deflective power of a huge amount of trauma - buried in matter, in our bodies and the body of the earth around us, and in our collective agreements about reality. My experience has been, the more I can look at that really difficult painful stuff, the more I can look at other things (eg telepathy, magic, spirit...) also outside the general worldview.
I think it might take a long time until enough individuals feel secure enough in their own beliefs, that the culture overall doesn't feel the need to police belief so strongly, with such rigidity.
There is a lot of fear too around the chaos of lots of different beliefs. Daniel Pinchbeck for example, wrote recently about the need for a grand unifying belief system.
Terence McKenna talked about 'the balkanization of epistemologies'. Personally I feel this is not just inevitable, but also something we can learn a huge amount from, and it will be better to embrace it (and our fear of it), and learn a more empathetic ability to disagree gracefully, rather than adopt what seems to me a fearful, oppositional stance.
Count me among those who are happy to see this truth being widely realized, having discovered it through my own experience long ago.
Ultimately that may just be the only way. But helpful to hear thank you!
As someone who has inexplicable precognitive experiences, and believes in non-materialist philosophies of consciousness, I was highly interested in the Telepathy Tapes. But I was frustrated that the podcast didn't give much explanation of what was actually happening in the room when the tests were being conducted. So I ponied up $10 to watch some the video recordings on their website.
Wow. In every video, Akhil's mother is making specific hand gestures before every letter that he chooses. In the videos with John Paul, Hailey, and Houston, the facilitator is always slightly moving the letter boards up, down, left, right, and tilting them, sometimes subtly, sometimes pretty obviously. Worst of all are the tests with Mia, where her mother is *dramatically* pointing her head in directions to indicate where she should point. It's saddening to watch.
"The responses were so fact and so accurate that I don't know how cuing could happen that way" says Dr. Tarrant. What is the big mystery? Here's a, in my opinion, far more plausible explanation: These kids, who might be genuine savants, have learned how to pick up subtle movement cues from their facilitators. Again... watch the videos.
And its downright dishonesty that TTT has called one of their experiments a "double blind" test because they had Mia and her mom wearing blindfolds. I mean --- we all know that's not what "double blind test" means. What the heck.
On the other hand, I've seen profound evidence of precognition before my eyes, people using random-choice precog apps on my phone and consistently scoring very high above probability. Absolutely astounding. But these tests from TTT are not convincing at all. We really need to shore up our critical thinking skills here.
For those who don't want to pay the $10, I was able to find some on youtube.
Here's one where Akhil and his facilitator use a letterboard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2f9DkgvJMw
Notice how the facilitator moves the board in different directions in Akhil points at the letters in those directions.
Here's one with Hailey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBGwkk8vp3w&t=36s
But for $10, watching Akhil's mom make hand gestures is worth the cost if you're dying to know how legit this stuff actually is.
So there's all this fluff about how random number generators are going to make statistically impossible for these kids to randomly guess correctly. Of course, that's true. But that all goes out the window when the mechanism of communication is exposed.
And the skepticism could be *easily* debunked with some simple constraints on the tests:
Have the kids perform the tests with a stationary letter board instead of having their trust facilitator moving it around in front of them. Have Akhil's mom out of the room when he types on his ipad. Simple stuff. But i'll bet you dollars on the penny, it'll never happen.
This is a grift. And these kinds of grifts have been happening for, literally, thousands of years.
Do your homework y'all. Watch the videos. Ask yourself why the test were misrepresented in the podcast. Pay attention to affective language used by the podcast host to discourage critical thinking (its "ableist" to questions whether these kids have telepathy? come on.)
Good luck out there. Its a wild world. Full of mysteries and deception. Including lots of self-deception.
But bravo to these kids. They deserve respect for their talents, and for putting up with all the spectacle around them.
I don't feel as strongly as you, but I remain not 100% based on the existence of these questions from people like you. The lab tests will hopefully answer your lingering questions.
Have you watched the videos on the podcast's website?
Yes, but I don't claim to be an expert either way. People who do claim to be say they are suspect or insufficienct, those in the room say it was unequivocal. And in that disconnect lies my dissonance.
I really don't think you have to be an expert to see Mia's mom shoving her face in different directions to see what's going on. When Mia doesn't "take the hint" with the last colored pencil, her mom just pushes her face even harder to one side. It's not just blatantly false, its deeply disturbing.
You tell me.
You here about a girl which psychic powers. Then you see her mom shoving her head like that. Would you publish it? Please, be honest with yourself.
I can understand more ambiguity about the spelling boards which is not so obviously influenced by the facilitators at first glance.
But Akhil's mom with hand movements?
Would you publish that, with a straight face, and no hedging, as unequivocal psychic phenomena?
I don't doubt that some people in the room really believe there's supernatural magic happening. People also believe in oujia boards, even though the ideomotoric effects are pretty well understood.
Here's a story for you: In the rural southwest, dowsers are pretty common for helping people place their wells. I once had a dowser show me his methods, where his dowsing rods swivel in his hands when he walks over a certain area. "that means there's water there" he said.
I made my own rods with coat hangers from my hotel room and noticed that the rods will swivel move at even the slightest micro-movement of my hands. So I tried an experiment with (or "on" perhaps) my coworkers. I explained the concept of dowsing to him, picked an arbitrary spot in the parking lot, and told him there was a water line there. I slowly walked across the line and the rods seemed to move, all on their own, twisting inward, and then expanding back out as moved past the faux water line.
"You try it!" I said. And he did. And guess what. The rods swiveled in the exact same way, at the exact same place. He was astonished. And then I told him there was no water line there.
This illustrates how imperceptible the relationship can be between our bodies, senses, and minds. But of course, we want to feel like we "know" stuff and we fill in the gaps of our knowledge with whatever convincing explanations are available.
While psychic phenomena and consciousness will continue to trigger my curiosity, so too does psychology and the material sciences.
There doesn't need to be some kind of harsh tribal line in the sand where we either all-in on woo or all-in on scientism.
And nor do we need to ignore our common sense and rely solely on expert testimony nor witness testimony (which proves to be very very unrealiable in many cases -- see: the terrible tragedies of the justice system where people are SO SURE that such-and-such happened).
I'm not 100% about anything, but when I watch those videos, I'm not just skeptical. I'm disheartened. It's not cool to turn these beautiful kids into idols for search for meaning and magic in life. There are better ways.
I think we simply need to see more. I appreciate this may be a disqualifying question given your concerns, but what do you make of the content in section 4?
I think you and I might agree on quite a lot regarding how modern culture conditions our psyches. We probably share the notion that a revolution is needed.
What we'll likely disagree on is that skepticism around these children is purely a result of close-minded rationalist dogma.
Yes - some of the skeptics object purely because of their kneejerk rejection of anything that smells of "paranormal woo".
But there are also those who embrace the woo because of their own kneejerk reaction to the apparent connection between these kids and their own trans-materialist dogmas.
I don't think people on either side of the woo divide really understand how their own psychology tends to operate based on symbolic binary associations.
Those who are sympathetic to notions of transcendent metaphysical realities will latch on to these stories as evidence that bolsters their own beliefs, especially when the kids are supposedly espousing metaphysical propositions that jive with their own.
And thus, they'll also feel that denying the reality of these psi phenomena is a strike against those beliefs they hold.
Here's how the inner calculus works:
Mystical Truth = good.
Mystical Truth = realities which cannot be explained by materialism
Psi kids = realities which (maybe) cannot be explained by materialism
Psi kids = evidence of Mystical Truth
Psy kids espousing Mystical Truth = seeming parsimony between Mystical Truth, Psi kids, mysteries beyond materialism (trifecta!)
Psy kids debunked = Mystical Truth seemingly diminished, evidence of trans-material mysteries seemingly dimished
Mystical Truth dimished = sense of meaning and magic (and hope) diminished
And there's more to this which is bolster by TTT:
Debunking psy kids = ableism
Debunking psy kids = deny the personas of these kids presented by their spelled-out messages
Debunking psy kids = dashing the positive affect of the kids' parents and facilitators
Debunking psy kids = an affront to open-minded exploration
etc.
Debunking psy kids = everyone involved must be a fraud, and a coordinated fraud to boot!
None of these associations are necessarily true, but these overly simple heuristics are how we're conditioned to interpret reality.
Even those who see the limits of materialism are still *deeply* conditioned by culture to form beliefs (and identities) based on dichotomous competition and symbolic associations.
The way you're presenting things is that there's hardboiled materialist skeptics on one side and open-minded truth seekers on the other side. It's a false dichotomy - what some would call "left brain" thinking.
Try this on: If you saw evidence that convinced pretty deeply that Mia and Akhil and the rest in those videos are being influenced to choose certain letters as they spell things out, would you walk away feeling less certain in your intuitions about the mystical truths of reality?
If so, you're operating based on symbolic associations (which is the same thing a dogmatic materialist does).
If not, I would suggest this: double down on your conviction about mystical truth as something which you know *from within* rather than from external "evidence". In that state of confidence, watch those videos again.
Do you really need to see more videos of Mia's mom shoving her head around? Do you really need to see more videos of Akhil's mom *knowingly* sending him hand gestures? Do you need to see more videos of Hailey being told "nope, you got it wrong, try again".
I'm glad I saw it, because its good to know whats going on in the world. And i would support tests which aim to address whether or not those hand gestures, and the movement of the spelling boards, are in fact the mechanism of communication rather than telepathy. I highly doubt that those parents, and the podcast producers, want to see those kinds of tests.
Do you want to see those kinds of tests?
Or do you want more tests where those kinds of questions remain unexamined?
In the year 2000, I spoke with a psychic. She told me that there were many psychic children being born that she had met.
https://open.substack.com/pub/focusvill12/p/the-affair?
[=3le9sh&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Thanks I’ll read this.
That link isn’t working for me?
https://open.substack.com/pub/focusvill12/p/the-affair?r=3le9sh&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
I was editing, maybe that is why it didn’t work.
Works for me m try again.
I appreciate your willingness to address the skeptics. If I may say, it’s a bit of a cop out to say, well it’s just a podcast, it’s not going to go through all the scientific protocols. Just do some double blind tests so it eliminates the first obvious concern even if it’s not ready to publish. If they won’t even do that, then you’re just providing content for those who already believe.
but nobody would believe they are double-blinded because there's no official oversight of the design. Also, it's a special population -- their comfort, safety, and willingness to participate takes precedence over our need for scientific data, right?
"Their comfort, safety, and willingness to participate takes precedence over our need for scientific data, right?" Comfort and willingness to participate is doing a lot of work here. The kids often have to be coerced into these spelling performances. Do you think Mia looks comfortable being blindfolded and having her head turned harshly in different directions?
And all so that we can get a dopamine hit from a "omg wow" feeling?
These are real living children, please remember.
Beyond doubt you're right conceptually. But have you also heard Ky AND Jeff's description of the kids enjoying it, and finally feeling heard and validated? And the parents? And their powers increasing as a result? Again: I choose to believe Ky if that opens me up later it's a choice I've made eyes open. There is the POTENTIAL for these kids to be exploited, I just haven't seen it yet, although you are right to be vigiliant.
Fair. I guess the response might be that this was intended to be proof of concept for a sphere that constantly fails to gain sufficient funding. If you’ve had time to listen, what did you make of Jeff’s comments?
I listened to it, I think the verbal descriptions are persuasive if you trust the speakers at all, and I’m not that skeptical to doubt everyone’s motives (that’s why I listened to it and am reading your substack). If they’re going to talk about the precautions taken with these experiments to make them informally rigorous, then I hope they’ll go further and design them even more bullet proof. If it’s true that these kids have gone through hours of testing, and they have a message they genuinely want to get out, is it really that hard to do? Bring in a known skeptic to check it out.
If other studies are bragging about results that are slightly above chance, then this should be a blockbuster scientific discovery. Of course we should be concerned about their comfort during testing, but if that’s the roadblock, you’ve got to ramp up the skepticism meter at some point and people who are not already convinced will consider this to be merely an entertaining story. (For all its popularity, are significant numbers of people really changing their worldview?)