Tag Archives: ESP

263 – Dream Telepathy: From Inception to The Grateful Dead

We live as we dream – alone…

– Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Or do we?

– Me
Me, getting ready for a little Ganzfeld-style dream research

We’ve talked about dream interpretation before (Episode 129 and Episode 53 in particular are a good place to start) and we’ve discussed the idea of dreams as parallel universes. Of course, we’ve talked about the Succubi and the demons of our nightmares as well. And trying to control your dreams through lucidity was our second episode! Dreaming is the the ultimate looking inward, it’s us actually living inside our own thoughts.

For millennia, humans have considered the dreamstate to be something mystical. After all, it’s a place where anything can happen. Dead loved ones can appear to you, friends can return, you can imagine what life would be like if you had made a different choice, and it all feels real. The thing about dreams is that it feels just as real as regular waking life.

You might not meditate, drop acid, or take magic mushrooms, but you experience an altered state of consciousness every night. When you fall asleep, you dream. Even if you don’t remember your dreams, you still dream when you enter REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep.

And if we believe that paranormal experiences happen to us in an altered state of consciousnesss, when are they most likely to happen except for the altered state that we naturally go into every single night?

What if we don’t have to be alone while we dream? What if someone can communicate with us, or even join us?

Inception was the latest movie to use this idea, but of course, we’re also big fans of Dreamscape (one of our friends even worked in the art department for that Dennis Quaid classic!) So, when it comes to dream telepathy, we’re trying to find out what is real and what isn’t, what scientists have proven and what they haven’t.

In this episode, we’ll talk about the most famous dream research, from Sigmund Freud (he’s the man who really introduced dream interpretation into the modern era with his “talking cure”) to Dr. Stanley Krippner, who did dream ESP research for decades, to the latest studies that prove there’s actually something significant (even if it’s only statistically right now) more to our dreams than just a “undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, or a fragment of underdone potato”! Here’s what we cover:

For the song this week, we picked a track off our first album where “dreams”, whether they be of the “wake up in a cold sweat” kind, or of the daydreaming your future kind, can have a huge impact on your life. They can paralyze you as well as energize you. Because no matter where the dreams are coming from, you have to pay attention to them, so you don’t get stuck!

Woke up this morning paralyzed by a dream, 
Stared at my ceiling for an hour, 
Prayed a little, thought a little, then got outta bed. 
Then I went to work at nothing for what seemed like forever. 

The days turn to hours, 
the minutes race past. 
Dreams have this way with me, moving too fast. 
We danced until dawn under endless sky, 
but when I woke up, it had passed me by. 

I’m falling behind in the human race, 
cuz all of my life I’ve been running in place. 
The boys with big dreams have to pick up the pace, 
or all of our lives we’ll be running in place. 

This room looks so old and worn and beat, 
I stared out my window for an hour. 
When you have too much ambition than it’s worse than none at all, 
when you’re waiting for a sign that will never come. 

The days turn to hours, 
the minutes race past. 
Dreams have this way with of outreaching my grasp. 
We danced until dawn under endless sky, 
but when I woke up, it had passed me by. 

I’m falling behind in the human race, 
cuz all of my life I’ve been running in place. 
The boys with big dreams have to pick up the pace, 
or all of our lives we’ll be running in place.

261 – Greening The Paranormal: A New Way of Investigating with Dr. Jack Hunter

Last time we spoke with Dr. Jack Hunter, it was upon release of his book Engaging The Anomalous : Collected Essays on Anthropology, The Paranormal, Mediumship and Extraordinary Experience. He’s an anthropologist who has devoted much of his research to exploring paranormal experiences from a more holistic perspective. Instead of just searching for physical evidence in paranormal experiences, he factors everything in from the culture of the experiencer to the history of the surroundings to try and get a deeper understanding of the phenomena.

Dr. Hunter giving a presentation

Humans seem hardwired for extraordinary experiences, so why can’t we prove it? Everyone knows someone that they trust that has had some kind of strange psychic experience or seen something that they absolutely can’t explain. So why is it so hard to prove it? One theory lies in the idea that the very words “paranormal” or “supernatural” are part of the problem. Those words say that metaphysical phenomena is something outside of normal experience.

In our interview with J. Van Ysslestyne, the author of Spirits From The Edge of the World, which is a study of one of the oldest continuous cultures on the planet as well as the one that gave us the very word “Shaman”, she says that to that tribe, the very idea that we’re separate from our surroundings, our land, our ecological system, is an alien thought.

We are part of the land as much as a tree and as much as a bird and they have a spirit or an energy that we can connect with. Paranormal experiences reflect that energy and when we isolate ourselves from it, or try to study the physiology of the experience instead of what happened as a whole, we’re not getting the entire picture. When we do that, we become observers instead of participants. And being a participant seems to be essential in having a paranormal experience.

That form of belief, animism, is one of the oldest kinds of religions, and it’s less of a religion with “rules” and more of a system of belief and conduct. The idea that we’re all connected to the world around us and that spirits are in everything whether it’s an inanimate object or not is how our ancestors viewed their surroundings for much longer than we’ve had modern religion.

Okay, so in this belief system does that mean that rocks have souls? Well, maybe not like humans, but sure, they have their own type of souls. Their own type of energy and it interacts with all the other energies around it and the system itself becomes its own entity. From Bigfoot to faerie sightings to UFO encounters to ghosts, people have often experienced the extraordinary outside in nature. What does that mean?

The new book, feeling at one with his feline friend.

Well, that’s what Jack is tackling in the new book he has edited, Greening The Paranormal: Exploring The Ecology of Paranormal Experience, is a collection of essays that goes deep into the idea that everything in the world is connected. In fact, he took his inspiration from the recent trend of “Greening Religion”, which means that certain churches and faiths are becoming more interested in environmental activism because they realize that pollution and man-made climate change will destroy the wonderful planet their God has created.

And that’s part of the idea of this new book, that perhaps understanding how important nature is to our own ecstatic and spiritual experience will give us new inspiration on how to battle harmful global warming or plastics in the ocean or smog over our cities. If we destroy the system, we could destroy our paranormal connection to it. That’s all very Avatar, sure, but that doesn’t mean that tens of millennia of human nature doesn’t have some ring of truth to it.

My fellow weirdo and sister Allison Jornlin joins Jack and I in this conversation where we talk about:

  • The roots of animism in human belief
  • The modern countries where rivers have been given legal personhood(!)
  • Jack’s own paranormal experiences and how they relate to some classic legends
  • How to approach paranormal investigation from a more holistic anthropological angle
  • How we can open ourselves up more to the spirits and energy that are surrounding all of us

For the song this week, we were inspired by Chapter 9 of the new book, “Ancient Webs, Modern Webs, World Wide Web” and the idea that we’re re-creating with LTE and 5G and the already-here Internet of Things a kind of communicative web among humans and inanimate objects that’s been there all along. And when we thought about that, well, Golden Earring’s “Radar Love” was the first song that came to mind. We used a little homage to that in the lyrics to be an inspirational starting point for this episode’s Sunspot track, “The Web”.

Inside the web
it’s all alive
inside the web
we’re all aligned
from the rocks to the seas to the dirt and the trees, our pets and the breeze, our love and disease,
it’s the wifi you see with your mind’s eye
it’s the wave in the air, our line in the sky.

I can feel you
always with me.
I can hear you
when I can’t see
from the whisper in my ear
to the hair upon my neck
I know you’re somewhere out there
Inside the web.

inside the web
it’s not a trap
inside the web
it’s our wiretap
from the land to the snows, the worms and embryos, mushrooms
and rhinos, our pain and shadows,
it’s the radar love that we dreamt of,
a hidden network we’re all part of

I can feel you
always with me.
I can hear you
even when I can’t see
from the whisper in my ear
to the hair on my neck
I know you’re somewhere out there
Inside the web.

255 – Professor Paranormal: Parapsychology Pedagogy with Loyd Auerbach

With the litany of web sites and television shows on the topics of ghost hunting, psychic mediums, and theories of the unknown, it’s easy to get swept up in what is entertaining, but not necessarily good/correct information. The X-Files may have popularized the expression “The Truth Is Out There,” but how many paranormal investigators make the effort to apply proper research methodology when looking for the truth?

Today’s guest, Loyd Auerbach, has built his career around researching the paranormal in a scientific manner. His impressive combination of academia, open-mindedness, and careful investigation makes him uniquely qualified to responsibly educate us on the topic of Parapsychology.

Loyd was an early guest on See You On The Other Side, back in 2015 when we were still in the double-digit episode numbers. I recommend checking out that episode to dive deeply into his extensive educational background, and hear Mike fanboy out at the opportunity to talk to one of his heroes:

Parapsychology Fact vs Fiction: An Interview with Loyd Auerbach
https://othersidepodcast.com/27

But this time around, Mike was on vacation, so Allison Jornlin of Milwaukee Ghosts and I had the opportunity to converse with Loyd. The timing was perfect, as both Allison and Loyd will be presenting at Hawaii Paracon in less than two weeks!

Loyd’s interest in the paranormal and psychic abilities dates back to his youth, with ghost stories and television shows peaking his curiosity. Entertainment such sitcoms Topper and Dark Shadows, reading classic Greek Mythology, and monster movies fascinated him, as did the study of science and other “nerdy” activities. His natural inclination was to admire psychic abilities- not fear, chide or ridicule them.

By the age of 13, Loyd was reading works by J.B. Rhine and his colleagues. He formed a parapsychology club in high school (endorsed by Rhine himself!), which opened doors to meeting other luminaries in the field. His early exploration of the topic provided a perfect foundation for continuing studies at JFK University.

So, what is involved in earning a degree in the field of paranormal/parapsychology? Loyd’s rigorous graduate academic studies included history of parapsychology, laboratory research, field investigation of real-world cases, physics and parapsychology, anthropology and paraspychology, neuropsychology, statistics and more. Clearly, choosing this career requires unabashed devotion to an extensive amount of work.

Years and numerous case studies later, Loyd points the skeptics to research and evidence of psi/psychic abilities. Compelling data/statistics behind the Ganzfeld studies and the Stargate remote viewing program “shows that there’s something really here.” And his own extensive work with psychics/mediums has provided evidence that humans have a tap to an information source that is undeniable. However, he is unabashed in putting “a big question mark” next to cases where the proof is not present.

Loyd recounted one entertaining case, dubbed “The Sexorcist”, in which a house was haunted by the energies of an extremely amorous couple. This brought to light the possibility that a residual type of haunting does NOT require that the origin of the “residue” be deceased… A myth perpetuated by modern ghost entertainment. What would it be like to witness a ghost of someone still living? Apparently, some people have seen apparitions of their own self. Can you say…

My paranormal perspective continues to grow, thanks to guests like Loyd. For those striving to develop their own psychic abilities, he recommends beginning by making sure to write down (or sharing with another) any personal experiences/feelings that you think may be paranormal. The conscious labeling/acceptance that you are experiencing something can help identify patterns in the body/mind which can bring light to when/why these things are happening.

And with his strong dedication to education, Loyd was the perfect person to recommend books for us to read and expand our own knowledge of the paranormal. Here’s a starter list we went through, which very well may be the beginning of a See You On The Other Side Book Club (join our Patreon community here!):

You can also further your own education through online classes available at the Rhine Research Center, many of which are taught Professor Paranormal, Loyd Auerbach himself!

You can find Loyd online:
Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/loyd.auerbach.author/
Twitter at https://twitter.com/profparanormal
Email at [email protected]

For the song this week, we took one of Loyd’s most well known quotes, “Faith is belief without proof. Faith is fine, but don’t call it science.” and put our own spin on it. Here’s Sunspot with “Bull$h!t Detector”.

When there’s smoke ya know there’s gotta be some fire
When you talk you show that you ain’t a liar
Put your money where your mouth is and step up to the plate
Ya gotta back up your story or I’m just gonna cut bait

Faith is nice but proof’s a little better
You’re setting off my bull$h!t detector
If it don’t pass the test for the professor
Then I don’t need you
Unless you’re true

Show me don’t tell me, no pink elephants, don’t tease
If you want me to stay I need some evidence, so please

Faith is nice but proofs a little better
You’re setting off my bullshit detector
If it don’t pass the test for the professor
Then I don’t need you
Unless you’re true
Faith is nice but proof’s a little better
You’re setting off my bull$h!t detector
I need something more than just conjecture
Cuz I don’t need you
Unless you’re true