Latest / Radically Genuine / 166. Children Who Read Minds: The Research Dr. Diane Hennacy Powell Risked Her Career to Expose

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166. Children Who Read Minds: The Research Dr. Diane Hennacy Powell Risked Her Career to Expose · Radically Genuine

• Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (00:01.58) Welcome to the radically genuine podcast. am Dr. Roger McFillin. All truth passes through three stages. First, it's ridiculed. Second, it's violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. That is a quote by Arthur Schopenhauer. In an age of unprecedented technological advancement and scientific discovery, we face a paradox that few dare to confront. Why? is our understanding of the human mind, arguably our most vital frontier, seemingly moving backwards. Despite billions invested in neuroscience research and an explosion of brain image technology, rates of mental illness continue to soar. Autism has increased at least 200-fold since the 1980s. Depression and anxiety are reaching epidemic proportions. And what is promoted as medicine provides only marginal relief or benefit of that. Could our entire framework for understanding consciousness and the brain be fundamentally flawed? We've built our modern understanding of psychiatry and neuroscience on the assumption that consciousness emerges from brain activity, that our thoughts, feelings and awareness are merely byproducts of neurons firing. Yet this model fails to explain a growing body of anomalous data. from the placebo effect to documented cases of expanded consciousness and near-death experiences, most provocatively, it cannot account for the extraordinary abilities of autistic savants who can perform complex mathematical calculations instantly, create precise artistic masterpieces without training, or access information in ways that defy our understanding of perception and memory. What if consciousness isn't generated by the brain at all, but rather channeled through it, like a radio receives signals? How do we explain savants who can multiply nine digit numbers in their head instantly, but can't perform basic addition? Or those who can recreate entire cityscapes in perfect detail after a single glance? What if some conditions we label as disorders are actually reflecting expanded rather than impaired? Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (02:25.39) states of consciousness? And what if our rigid adherence to materialist models of mind have led us to systematically dismiss and pathologize human capabilities that lie beyond our current scientific framework? These aren't just philosophical musings, they're questions with profound implications for how we understand human potential and even treat mental health conditions. If our fundamental assumptions about consciousness are wrong, It would explain why we're ground in the battle against mental illness despite our advancing technology. It would suggest why some of our most powerful psychiatric medications often work no better than placebos and have problematic long-term consequences. And it might reveal why certain individuals, particularly those whose minds operate differently from the norm, sometimes demonstrate abilities that our current scientific paradigm fails to understand. from seemingly telepathic connections to superhuman feats of calculation and memory. The guardians of mainstream science have a long history of dismissing evidence that challenges their fundamental beliefs. But what happens when the evidence presents itself to someone trained at the pinnacles of medical research? When a Johns Hopkins trained neuroscientist and psychiatrist encounters phenomena that shake the very foundations of brain science, does she ignore what she's seen or risk her professional reputation to investigate? Our guest chose the latter path, applying rigorous scientific methodology to explore abilities that our colleagues often misunderstand or even dismiss. A decision that would not only threaten her medical license, but transform our understanding of human consciousness. Dr. Diane Hennessy-Powles, a pioneering neuroscientist and psychiatrist whose research challenges conventional understandings of consciousness and human potential. After training at John Hopkins and serving on Harvard Medical School's faculty, she's investigated extraordinary phenomena through a rigorous scientific lens. Her groundbreaking work focuses on autistic savants and non-speaking autistic individuals with remarkable abilities, including telepathic capabilities. This research is featured in her acclaimed book, The ESP Enigma, The Scientific Case for Psychic Phenomena, and forms a centerpiece of the documentary series, The Telepathy Tapes. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (04:51.352) where she conducts rigorous testing of these extraordinary abilities alongside host Kai Dickens. The series explores how these silent communicators possess gifts that defy conventional understanding from telepathy to other worldly perceptions. Beyond exploring consciousness, Dr. Powell has made significant contributions to trauma treatment, establishing the psychiatry program for survivors of torture international in San Diego. as a former researcher for the Salk Institute's Think Tank on Human Consciousness and the director of research for Johnny Mack Institute. Dr. Powell brings a multidisciplinary approach to understanding psychological anomalies. I can't wait to pick her brain today. Dr. Powell, welcome to the Radically Genuine Podcast. Diane (05:42.51) Thank you. It's pleasure. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (05:44.344) So you began your career at what we would consider the pinnacles of conventional medicine, John Hopkins, Harvard Medical School, where the materialist view of consciousness does reign supreme. Yet today, you're documenting phenomena that your former colleagues would often dismiss, even facing the suspension of your medical license for daring to investigate them. So... I guess the best way to introduce you to my audience is what were some of these watershed moments that forced you to question everything that you've been taught about the human mind? Diane (06:20.94) I would say the major one was when I was on faculty at Harvard and I was asked to consult on a patient who was on a medical floor and wanted to leave against medical advice. And you're not allowed to sign out against medical advice if they think that you're incompetent. And she was telling the staff she saw ghosts and that she was psychic. And so everybody assumed that she had a mental illness and they called me in to see her. within five, 10 minutes of meeting her, she started to tell me things that there was just no way that she could know. She told me my husband's profession and that he was applying for a job in two different cities, which was happening that very week. She told me where we would end up, which we did. We ended up in San Diego. And it was just one of those things where it was so profound and it was so contra... Dictory to what I had been trained that I felt that I had a duty to really investigate it as a phenomenon Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (07:23.672) Yeah, curious to know in that moment, how did you think about it given what your previous training had been? Diane (07:32.226) Well, it's interesting, and I talk about this in my book, and how I thought about it was, first of all, Although we were told that these things were evidence of mental illness, these are things that have been reported by people across time, across cultures. And I knew that our model for understanding the brain and consciousness was seriously incomplete. That we really, that it's just a large assumption on the part of neuroscience that the brain is what creates consciousness. And I also was aware of theoretical physics because I took a fair amount of physics as an undergraduate. I found it interesting and I have a brother who's a theoretical physicist and we'd have conversations about consciousness and about, so for example, some of the conversations between Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli about synchronicities and how there's really this world that quantum physicists and various mystics from the from the East would discuss, and it really implied that some of these phenomena actually were not only possible, but maybe even likely to occur at least occasionally. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (08:51.832) Yeah, many indigenous cultures, value voices, visions, expanded perceptual states that Western medicine labels as psychosis with the assumption that there's a underlying kind of brain dysfunction that would be influencing that experience. Do you believe our current model of mental illness from that perspective is doing more harm than good? Diane (09:20.034) I do believe it's doing a lot of harm. I think that what's happened is you have a lot of people who are afraid to talk with their clinicians about what it is they experience because they know there will be a judgment. Others that say what they're experiencing are automatically put on medications without any sort of attempt to see, is it possible that what they're telling me is actually true? And so that's really, really harmful. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (09:51.012) I'm curious to know about your thinking about, you know, what happens when we do choose to prescribe medications, anti-psychotic drugs, for example, when somebody might be experiencing this altered state. If we can take a step back and assume that there is potential value to experiencing what we label as psychosis, it could be something where there is a connection to a greater sense of consciousness or greater awareness. It could be possible. it could be helping create meaning in a term of distress. Do you think the way the idea of labeling it as a disorder and then prescribing that drug, do you think that may interfere with some natural processes that people experience or go through? Diane (10:48.224) I think absolutely it could interfere with those processes. it could it also can, like, for example, antipsychotics can really dull people. So there's just a whole host of side effects from it. And yet at the same time, some people who have these experiences are extremely dysregulated. So there's a difference between people who just kind of casually say to Someone, well, I had this experience where my boyfriend and I were able to pass this information back and forth, and I don't know how it happened. Versus someone who comes in and says, I'm really disturbed by the constant voices that I hear and my thoughts are, people are reading my thoughts and I can't go out in public because I'm so paranoid. That's somebody who needs help. And so it's not that there isn't a place for helping these individuals. It's that. Just because people say they have certain experiences, we shouldn't automatically think that they're mentally ill. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (11:51.394) Yeah, I guess it certainly depends on the nature of its impairment. And I think when it's spoken in terms of like emergency medicine, for example, and these drugs can be used to help somebody who is really dysregulated or potentially dangerous to themselves or others is one thing, but how mainstream psychiatry kind of talks about it as needing to be on that drug for life or that the drug itself can correct an underlying brain dysfunction instead of its perturbing natural processes as where we start to cross the line of safe and evidence-based medicine into something that really is more fabricated or created to fit a narrative than anything that's really sound science. Diane (12:36.62) Right. mean, one of the extremes of this is I had a patient who was an equestrian and she had told me about how she has this ability to understand what the horse needed, what the horse was feeling. mean, and anybody who's been somebody who spends a lot of time around horses, they oftentimes report that they developed this relationship with the horse, but they're kind of like one unit. after you've worked with them the same horse over and over again. And so she mentioned this to her general practitioner that she had this ability and her general practitioner sent me a letter saying that he thought she should go on an anti-psychotic because of it. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (13:21.176) Yeah, that's sad. And I know that you've had quite a history of working with trauma survivors. And I think that you, I've heard you on another podcast describing some of those formative experiences for you. And I think you've experienced things that I've experienced as a, as a clinician working with trauma survivors. Cross-culturally, that's probably shifted your perspective on Western ideas of mental illness and recovery. What is some of your experience in working with trauma survivors that helped kind of shape your direction of your career? Diane (13:58.818) Well, one of the things I would say is that I became an expert on people who experienced severe trauma in early childhood. And if you know much about child development, you know that children can disassociate more easily than adults. In other words, they can have this experience that we would call an out-of-body experience, where they just literally their seat of consciousness seems to be outside of their body and just kind of looking at events as they occur around them. And it's something that occurs in a majorly stressful situation, whether somebody is in severe pain or, know, extreme of this is like near death experiences where people actually die and then are brought back to life. And there's usually an out of body. the experience that's part of that. And so in working with these people who'd been extremely traumatized very early on, what I discovered is, first of all, that they could disassociate very easily, which I the literature supports that. But then I also realized that they oftentimes had more intuition than, you know, what they had like a radar for picking up things. And one could say, on that survival, if you think about survival of the fittest and whatnot, there'd be a survival value to if you've been traumatized early on to have a better radar at sort of reading somebody else's intentions. I mean, maybe you make that a high priority of yours. But what I found was that oftentimes the people who had that severe trauma also seem to know things that they shouldn't know, just like the patient at Harvard. Besides the autistic savants, I find that people with early trauma oftentimes have a highly developed intuition. That's one thing I would say. And then I'd also say that there's a, with trauma, it's very dysregulating to this whole balance between the parasympathetic and the sympathetic system. And so you have a need for people who've been traumatized to really learn to reset that balance. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (16:23.596) I worked with a woman who was sex trafficked and held against her will. And in my time working with her, she didn't present with typical PTSD symptoms. In fact, there was this profound wisdom in which she communicated to me, kind of like her nature of reality and her experience of compassion and love. And what she spoke to was that when she was being sex trafficked and abused, that she had an experience of higher consciousness, her experience of God came to her and allowed her to, she used the words, turned everything around into love. Like, I was saved by God when I was being raped. I was able to see my rapists, abusers, childhoods. I developed a compassion and ultimately it protected me from trauma responses. And now something like that isn't that dissimilar from other things I've heard, maybe not to that extent, but where they felt protected in response to the traumatic events. Have you experienced that at all? Diane (17:35.998) absolutely. And I think that you raise a very good point. I remember when I was working with this one woman who had had survivors of torture who had been in a country where there was genocide going on. And I mean, it's a miracle. I worked with some of the survivors of Rwanda and Burundi. And some of them, when I was working with them, they, this was still going on. The genocide was still going on at the time that I was working with them and they'd already been able to get asylum in the U.S. And this one woman I was talking with, she, she was literally being held by somebody with a gun to her head who was going to kill her. and she said a prayer and the prayer was answered for some, you know, some circumstances. I mean, the details are a little bit fuzzy as we know when people are in that trauma response, but he released her and decided to not kill her. And after that, she really had the most profound belief in God. I mean, it increased her faith, multi-fold. And I think that that's the thing, when you're talking about not just the kind of trauma that a lot of us have had, but you're getting into extreme trauma, it brings people down to their knees. And when you're down to your knees and begging for a sign that God exists, that's oftentimes when you get answered. You can't just say, hey God, show me you're here. No, for some people it's actually, you are begging for it. And that seems to be the circumstances under which it's most likely to happen. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (19:23.032) Yeah, and think it's situations like that as clinicians or researchers where it allows us to begin to consider possibilities outside of the material, outside of what has existed with our five senses and start considering alternative conceptualizations and understanding what it means to be in this life and our experience in this journey. And for years, Parents and teachers have quietly witnessed this remarkable ability of non-speaking autistic individuals, which was highlighted in this telepathy tape podcast series, which I mentioned during the opening. And you've documented yourself where non-speaking autistic individuals could access information that they really shouldn't know. And you've used controlled experiments to measure these abilities. The case of Haley is one that's fascinating. Can we start there with her as a way of kind of introducing your work? Diane (20:25.646) Sure. So how I met Haley was that I had already predicted that I thought that children who were autistic would be really good candidates for proving PSY or psychic abilities, if anyone could. And after I'd come back from India, I was told by some of the parents that I met over there with autistic savants as children and then also by a teacher over there that that all of them are telepathic. And I thought, wow, I really need to test telepathy because if they're telepathic, then testing them for information that they shouldn't otherwise know, such as, well, how do you know the answer to this mathematical equation? Well, if they're able to telepathically get it from me, then I need to know about that. And so I thought, I'm going to test them for telepathy. And I put that hypothesis out there. And then I received an email from the father of Haley, who was this autistic girl whose father was actually a physician. And when he found out about her telepathy, he was blown away to a large extent. And he realized that it had huge implications for our understanding of the brain and consciousness. And that's why he contacted me. And so the story of Haley was that she was a non-speaking autistic child who had parents who had really, really cared about her and wanted her to get an education. And so they lived in Wisconsin where they have really good support system for autistic individuals. And so they were able to get therapists who would come into the home and spend several hours every day doing homework with her and teaching her how to, to read and that sort of thing. And they were using a method called RPM, which is a method where you have a letter board in which the child would point the letters or the numbers on the board as a way of communicating. And they were working with her doing these exercises and she graduated from using one of those boards to being able to type into a talker, which is like an iPad that has an electronic voice. Diane (22:50.918) And so they're doing math with her and they see that she gets really bored with doing just simple arithmetic. That she actually is more interested if they ask her a more complicated question, like, you know, what's the cube root of this four digit number? Then she would engage in the work and they're like, my gosh, you know, I mean, I'm not convinced that she can do. the basics of math, but look at this, she can do the cube root of a large digit number or she can solve this mathematical equation. They're like, wow. And the father knew about autistic savant. He's like, my daughter's a mathematical savant. This is great. And so he was enriching the environment for her to develop this ability. And then what happened was this one day, therapist who was working with her asked her the answer to a mathematical question and the calculator she was using to generate the answer, the battery died on her. And so she grabbed something else and put in the equation to get the answer and it was given in logarithmic notation. And Haley couldn't see the calculator, gave the answer in logarithmic notation. And that was the first time she'd ever done that. And the therapist was like, wait a minute, what's going on? And she's like, how'd you do that? She goes, are you reading my mind? And then Haley said, yeah, I see the numerators and denominators in your head. She started asking her questions. Like, well, what's the name of my landlord? And she gave the name, was Helmut, not a common name for a landlord. What am I thinking about now? you're thinking about Barney, as in the the dinosaur. And so she was just so blown away, but she didn't know what to do. She was afraid to tell the parents and continued to work with the child. But after a little while, she thought, I've got to tell them what's going on. And the parents were shocked. And then they observed it themselves. And they're like, my gosh, you know, it's true. And then meanwhile, another therapist who worked with her because it was the first therapist to have. Diane (25:11.084) had a small child and said she was only working part time. So there was another therapist who entered in and started working with her. And in that instance, what she noticed was that Haley would make some of the same spelling errors that she traditionally did. We all have those quirks sometimes where there's a certain word that we might misspell. And so it was like, well, wait a minute, Haley. You're doing exactly what I would do on that. So she said, you Can you read my mind? And that's what I said, yeah, I can. And then she says, well, how do you say German? How do you say I love you in German? And she spelled out the German for I love you. And then this therapist was testing her for telepathy and she like, oh my gosh, how do I tell the parents? And she was really relieved when she found out that the other therapist working with her had already done so. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (26:01.476) This is fascinating. And so how does this then lead to further investigation into this area for you? What are some of the things you've found and how have you been able to set up experiments in order to test this in order to maintain, you know, scientific validity around around these concepts and to be able. I'm also interested in how the general scientific community has accepted you in this work. Diane (26:29.486) Wow, there's a lot of questions back then. So, well, let me say that. So with Haley, what I did was after hearing about this, I was like, OK, I've got to go evaluate her. And I told them that what I would need is I'd need some kind of separation between the therapist and the child, we can't have them in visual contact with one another. And so they agreed to start working with her with a barrier between. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (26:32.217) Thank Diane (26:58.808) between the therapist and Haley. And then in addition to that, I said, I'm going to put cameras in all of the different, on all the walls in the room, because I couldn't, at that point, I didn't have them in separate rooms, but I said, I'll cover everything by cameras so that you can see what it looks like from the side, from the front, from the back. And then... put a microphone on her and on the therapist so that if there's any kind of vocal communication that I couldn't hear, would get picked up by the microphone. And then in addition to that, I wanted to use randomized stimuli. And one of the hardest things for people to do telepathically is numbers. yet it's also something that there's less ambivalence about. mean, if you say it's 158, it's 158, as opposed to just describing a picture or something else. And so I knew that numbers also could be easily randomized. And so I started using a random number generator that you can find online and generating six digit numbers. And fed those to the therapist in a way that the child couldn't see it. And then she was asked, okay, what's the number? And then you can see her just pointing it out. So rapidly that I mean, some people say, well, how do we know that there wasn't subtle cueing? Well, If you saw how rapid it was, it wasn't like she's waiting to try to pick up something from somewhere. She's just going boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, like the numbers just right there. And she did it over and over and over and over and over again. And I had a total of 160 plus numbers that she did consecutively. And so. Diane (29:12.014) That really, and then I also tested her with playing cards that had pictures that I wanted to have her describe. And so I had the therapist looking at the picture and then she was supposed to type out what the therapist was thinking. And so was very interesting because I was curious as to whether or not she would actually type what her own version was of what the picture look like, you know, as though she's seeing the picture itself, or would she type the words that the therapist is thinking to describe the picture? And she would type the words the therapist was thinking to describe the picture, which is a very, very important point, because people who criticize, how do we know that it's not this or that? It's like, you know, there's First of all, there's a barrier. I know she didn't see the stimulus, but then also, you know, why is she typing what the therapist is thinking in terms of how they would describe the picture? Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (30:20.718) Fascinating. So you've replicated this with many other autistic individuals. Diane (30:27.212) Yeah, yeah, yeah. mean, with each child, it's slightly different. You've got a different set of circumstances. I had one boy that I worked with named Ramsey's who was actually able to speak. And he was unbelievable. I think that that was the most extraordinary from the standpoint that he could actually speak. Because it then takes it out of this controversy around the method of communication. Because some of these children use a letter board to communicate. Or they may use a talking device where they're hitting into an iPad. And some of them can use a computer, a keyboard on a keyboard. It depends upon their motor, their sensory motor control is really the main factor that determines a lot of which communication device they need to use. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (31:20.92) So before we get into the implications of all this, and there's many, there was a fascinating aspect of the podcast, the telepathy tapes, was the discussion of going to the hill. Can you talk about that? Diane (31:38.456) Well, one of the things that's been the most intriguing is this statement that several of them have made that they are telepathic with one another. And they describe going to a place called the Hill in order to communicate with one another. they'll go up to, so what the parents notice is that they'll go say into their room and shut the door and they'll be in there laughing and having fun. then you ask them, well, what were you doing? I was at the hill talking with so-and-so, and it would be another non-verbal savant. And so that's one thing about it. Then the other thing is that another person told us that their child said, well, there's more than one hill. There's a hill for the... There's a hill for the children that are like ages five through seven and another hill for the ones that are teenagers and the ones that are more adult. And it's like, well, that makes sense if you have a playground and children tend to age as sort out by their age. And so it makes sense that they would have these different little clusters of groups that get together. Even though, mean, on one level, you'd say, aren't they They seem like they're such ageless souls. seem to be living outside of time and space to some extent. Yet at the same time, there's still, know, at one level, there's still like a seven-year-old if they're a seven-year-old or a 12-year-old if they're a 12-year-old, but those kinds of concerns. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (33:16.996) And how has the greater scientific community responded to your work? It's hard for me to imagine why this isn't mainstream news. so when these findings aren't communicated on major television and the entire country is aware of your work. But as this podcast episode has come out, the telepathy tape, I'm sending it to people. No one's ever heard of this. And you can't really find it at all in mainstream news at all. I want to kind of get your sense on why you think that is and then what has been the response of colleagues. Diane (33:54.318) Well, I'd say, well, first of all, when my book, The ESP Enigma came out, in which I make a scientific case for why psychic abilities could be possible, talking about our model in neuroscience and our model in physics, and then talking about which population seemed to have these experiences the most and some of the research that has been done by other people. mean, there's over 120 years worth of research that's been done on these kinds of phenomena and it just never was enough to tip the needle, move the needle as they say. So I wrote that book and it was favorably reviewed actually by my medical school's alumni magazine and it actually ended up in several libraries across the country and including university libraries. And so to some extent, my work was really, really well received, yet at the same time, my medical board had problems with it because if you're a psychiatrist and you think that people who say that they have these experiences, if you think that that is not a sign of mental illness, then there's something wrong here. so they did not have a very positive response. fact, they gave me a lot of... trouble, but at the same time, that passed and I continued to practice for another 12 years afterwards, just recently retiring. But in terms of the academic centers, what's interesting is that I was a little bit too far ahead of the curve at the time that I wrote that book and I started, even when I started to doing this research on autistic savants. And what I'm seeing is that I think that there's more of an openness now to this. The time seems to be right now. And so what I'm doing is I left the halls of academia because I knew that they'd never accept this kind of research. They were just too immersed in the materialist model. But now what I'm doing is I'm forming connections with people at Diane (36:18.538) universities to have the research peer reviewed by other scientists. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (36:26.724) Let's talk about the implications of this. How does this begin to challenge conventional understandings of consciousness? And how are you making sense or how are you theorizing on what is taking place with these individuals? And others too. Diane (36:42.828) Well, yeah, I think that our model for consciousness is very, it's similar to the difference between Newtonian physics when Newtonian physics is describing things like, what happens if you drop a ball, you know, and you have the force of gravity act on it and everybody can look at that. You can, it's easy to design experiments around that and you can have a consensual agreement. around that and you have a mathematics behind it. And then you had Einstein come out and he, you know, with his theory of relativity, which said, well, you know, and if you go, if you go outside of just this level of reality and you, you look more deeply into it, you realize that our sense of time is an illusion. And that we actually live in something that's more like a block universe, that the past, present, and future all coexist. And that we just experience it, that there's something about our human physiology, something about being embodied causes us to. experience time as though it only goes in one direction and that it acts like an arrow. And so some of what these children are showing us is that that is incorrect. And they seem to live in like two worlds. They seem to be living in a world connected to a world that is outside space time. And yet at the same time, they're trying to function in these bodies in this world. Diane (38:42.818) And so I see this shift in how we think about it, consciousness as being similar to that kind of shift where it's just based on this more mundane view of reality and coming, which Newtonian physics represents, and moving into a different understanding of the nature of reality that really incorporates what physics told us over 100 years ago. I mean, you also have quantum physics that's telling us that what we see is an illusion. that we're living in a sea of potentiality and that it's really that our measurement of it, our observation of it seems to collapse it down into this sort of defined way of being. But before we do that, it's really a wave form. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (39:41.732) So in this perspective, and including quantum physics, there's this idea of the observer effect, that we are actually co-creators of our reality, and that we have great influence on this. Do you believe that to be true? Diane (39:56.384) I do. I absolutely do. And I think that some of the people that I've worked with demonstrate that. It's interesting how I've practiced psychiatry for 40 years and the kinds of things that I saw over and over again where I saw how people literally create their reality. And so much of it has to do with, for example, what do you believe? There's a lot of discussion you can find on the internet about the power of belief. That if you really truly believe something, it actually can become reality. And I'm not saying that that's without limits. I don't think that if I woke up tomorrow morning believing that I was one of the greatest basketball players of all time, I don't think I'd suddenly be able to go shoot some hoops and impress anybody. But what I'm talking about is a simple example that is well known in science, and that's the placebo effect. If somebody believes that a pill is going to make them better, 30 % of people on average get better, and it's nothing but a sugar pill. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (41:18.04) Yeah, and we see the power of fear and the creation of consciousness around fear. And when somebody believes that they are in danger or they believe they are sick or something bad is about to happen... inevitably, right, they're creating a reality that exposes them to such situations, whether how we describe that, I think there's many different ways to kind of view how that manifests itself into the physical realm, but everything does start in consciousness. mean, even just sitting in this podcast studio right now is an idea in somebody's mind before it is created. And then we're having this conversation. Diane (41:58.454) Right, I mean I think that to some extent you can say that that's the way in which we are in God's image, because we also have a power of creation. Diane (42:12.258) People are so, they're so focused on the material that they then think that that means that there's somebody, you there's a giant man out there, know, gray-haired man with a beard, you know, and no, it really, I think, is saying something about the nature of our consciousness and our conscious potential. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (42:38.628) Yeah, and you were mentioning earlier that there seems to be that we're more open to these conversations and these ideas now as if there is this expansion of consciousness, there's an awakening. I'm curious to know if this is something that you're experiencing in your day to day life. I'm experiencing it with people who are close to me, to clients who are coming to see me. I'm certainly now attended to these ideas in ways that I wasn't five, six, seven years ago. Do you see that? there might be something happening on Earth right now, a raising of vibration or a raising of consciousness that is allowing us to shift perspective. Diane (43:17.066) I definitely think that things are shifting. It's really wonderful to watch because I didn't know if it would happen in my lifetime. And what I'm seeing is that so many people now are interested in the big questions. mean, these are the to me, mean, these things were what were intriguing me. Now, over 40 years ago. And what's happened is that whether or not it's, I mean, what's bringing this about? Why is it that people are so intrigued by these big questions? And I think it's a combination of factors. think one thing is that people know that there's something seriously wrong with our paradigm. They know it. It doesn't define, it doesn't describe their own reality. There are just too many people out there who've had some experiences that they're not choosing to ignore. That's number one. Number two, the media has been preparing people for accepting that there might be this greater reality for quite a period of time. I I think about a lot of the people who really appreciate my work are the millennials and They grew up reading Harry Potter. And just like people who watched Star Trek as children, then later on started working for companies that developed some of the technology that we have today that looked like science fiction back then. So science fiction and the film industry in general, Diane (45:13.688) helps to prepare people for possibilities that then later can become probabilities that then later become reality. Just kind of like the quote that you started off with about the nature of truth and how it gets adopted. Similarly, there's this evolution that occurs in terms of how we even shape the future. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (45:41.7) Yeah, and we're at a time now where there's an openness to plant medicine and seeking out of psychedelic experiences as a way of trying to make sense of this reality because I think a lot of people are speaking to the emptiness that they feel under the current paradigm, that kind of that disconnect from each other, not part of a greater whole, the individualism that certainly exists. mean, we're facing calamities all the time. whether it's war, the division of politics, and all that I think creates a collective sense of hopelessness that people are seeking something much greater. And so when we start talking about the nature of consciousness, there's one of the things that people get from these experiences, and they talk about being part of something greater. So they're like part of a collective. as if we're tapping into something greater that maybe we maybe the divine is creating through us but we're there's also a larger consciousness that exists that's all around us we can maybe call that God, but that is source and it's a connection of all things that is so loving and that you see that everyone around you is ultimately almost like a mirror of you, like your experience of them is similar to what we're seeing in biblical texts or other traditional texts is do unto others as you would do to you or that concept of anything you do to someone else you experience it back, which can ultimately change off humanity. Diane (47:27.118) Absolutely, absolutely. I think that you have science that really shows us how interconnected we are in other ways. Like I mentioned earlier, Einstein and his theory of relativity and Bohr and his quantum mechanics. But you also have things like chaos theory, which in chaos theory where you have, you know, A butterfly that's flapping its wings on one side of the world can create something all the way on the other side of the earth. Well, how does that happen? It happens because of the way in which everything is so interconnected. so there's a... When you realize that we are not as isolated as we think we are, mean, to some extent, there's a relief in that. Okay, you we're not all alone. Okay. But there's also a responsibility too, that comes with that once you, once you realize that because our thoughts and our actions affect other people, even if we don't understand how it does directly, it can. And what we're seeing is the toxicity of the kind of worldview that we've been living under, you know, this materialist worldview where you can you can do certain things that, well, it's not going to harm others. Or to think that you're not harming yourself when you do something to someone else, it's incorrect. And it has to change. We've come to a precipice. And I think so many people realize that. they're And they're really delighted to know that there really is more meaning to everything than what they had been told. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (49:28.964) So what you believe the role of the brain is in consciousness? And there's you know, certainly practices and cultures that have talked about, like, potentially, like, the role of the pineal gland as something that can be activated energetically that can allow almost like it's connecting to a greater energetic field. I want to get your thoughts of you know, how the brain, you know, works in this, this perspective and being able to connect with consciousness. But also if you believe that we have the ability, all of us to be able to tap into that greater field, are there, do you think there's certain exercises? You know, we talk about mental health in a specific way with, with treatments to try to like decrease distress and improve functioning and things like that. But if we were to really try to enhance the quality of a person's experience. I am curious to know how that would manifest for you in like daily practices and things of that nature. Diane (50:35.166) Well, I'm a big proponent of meditation, you know, that ability to, you know, a lot of people, think of meditation, they think of it as being just something where you're learning relaxation. And yes, it has that, it has that effect. But that's, that's not really the principle point of meditation. mean, the principle point of meditation is to gain mastery over your mind. And a high percentage of the time, most people have this very busy mind and it's not a busy mind that is telling them anything that they haven't told themselves before or that's even meaningful. And if you have somebody who's depressed, that it's gonna be a lot of negative messaging that's in that very active mind, that self criticism, why do have to be such a failure? Why do you have to, da da da da da. And so with meditation, it's that ability to empty your mind. And you really have to remove that noise because that noise plays a role in filtering out the information that you could then be in a position of receiving. It's kind of like being in a noisy room, you know, and there could be some information that's really important for you outside the room. You don't hear it because of all that noise. And so you learn to quiet that down and then some insight comes to you. it's like you feel, it's really more that a lot of what we think of as our thoughts. is a combination of things. One is it's like an echo chamber. It's like we recorded that thought and we play that as a therapist. People talk about tapes, that negative tape in my head, because it very much has that kind of quality to it. so if you can turn those tapes off, and I do believe that the brain plays some kind of recording role. Turn those tapes off. Diane (52:51.662) Okay, then what comes next? it's, and a lot of people will tell you, it's like, it's like the thought comes to them and they receive it rather than them generating the thought. And then that's what gets called intuition. I had this great insight. It just came to me. It's the act of perception. And that's how these autistic kids describe their experience of the information they get. It's perception. And so it's interesting that the pineal gland, which is in very interesting, very central location in the brain, surrounded by all this fluid, that that pineal gland was something that Edgar Cayce said was heavily involved in these kinds of abilities. Similarly, people in India, in the Hindu tradition, say that the pineal gland plays a huge role. And evolutionarily, the pineal gland is, it stems from what used to be a third eye, quite literally. I think it's so interesting that it was called a third eye. before scientists ever looked into the evolution, that that is its origin. And it literally had a lens, and there are reptiles, there's a lizard that still has a third eye on the top of its head. And so what happened during evolution was that you had the you had the limbic system come in and then you have the cortical come in and so that that third eye got pushed down deeper and deeper into the into the brain. And it's receptive to electromagnetism. It's receptive to light, very receptive to light. And it's what releases melatonin. Diane (55:04.472) that plays a role in the sleep-wake cycle. And if you think about that sleep-wake cycle, it's during REM sleep, which is our dreaming sleep, that we actually are more likely to have something that we could, know, precognitive or telepathic or whatever, even if we don't have those experiences during the day. so, So there's clearly a role that the pineal gland is playing in all of this. I think that it is like it plays a receiving role as in perception, but it's receiving something from the collective consciousness. I don't see it as being that it's receiving it like a radio signal. I don't think it's like that. this information is being passed along electromagnetically, I think that it's a receiver actually for consciousness, which I think is its own field. And that brings us into another topic, which is coming to the conclusion that consciousness is not derivative, it's not created by the brain. I believe that the brain is our means for navigating it. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (56:29.24) Yeah, and that's revolutionary. And when you talk about then the busy mind, which in the work that I do, and we could see it's the mind and what the mind creates is influential in a person's experience and their reality. And then how they respond to that can manifest in a number of problems that we treat psychiatrically, for example. But it does start in the mind and there's an idea of who they are and who they are in relationship to the world, in relationship to their past. And the mind has this survival function where it can predict threat and it's trying to keep them alive. It's trying to keep them safe. And it's even trying to keep their idea of themselves safe, like that self, that small self. Do you think the evolutionary aspect of this is for us to, you know, expand beyond that small self, that survival mechanism? based on experience and to connect to a level of consciousness that is higher, for lack of a better term, where there is growth and there's meaning attached to the purpose of living. And do you see that as part of the process of living? Like maybe why our souls have incarnated into this body? It's for that journey, it's for that learning. And do you separate the two, like a small self, a survival mind versus a greater consciousness? Diane (58:02.25) Yeah, I do agree that what's happening is humanity collectively is evolving and it's evolved. mean, we can look back at where humanity used to be. You can see some people might argue we haven't evolved that much, but we are seeing a shift occurring now. And if you ask these children themselves, these non-speaking autistic children, they'll tell you that they operate at a higher vibration. They look at people and they see auras and they'll say, you know, I don't want to be around that person because that person's got a brown aura or a red aura, you know, but I like you, you got a violet aura. And so it tends to be the sort of higher frequencies of the colors, like the blue and the violet auras that they sort of gravitate towards. And they say that those people are operating at a higher... higher vibration and they're safe. And I think that, you know, that there are more and more people that are being born on the planet that are operating at a higher vibration and yet at higher vibration does not integrate with the physical realm as well. So that could be why there's this mind-body disconnect with the physical body. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (59:25.23) So it's possible what we judge as pathology is actually an evolved state of being that we just don't understand yet. Diane (59:38.38) I think that, yes, mean, these children are, they are involved, they're very highly involved. mean, if you get to spend the time to get to know them, you'll find out that despite the fact that many of them have had a lot of hardships as a result of being born in a body that doesn't function very well. And so they get treated oftentimes like they are mentally retarded. Some of them are abused, they're bullied, the world is very traumatic for them. And yet, when they start communicating and you're able to ask them about things, they say it in what is a very spiritually evolved way. They say it in terms of we all need to love one another. And they don't really harbor all of this resentment. They want to see. people change here and to open up their hearts. so it's like, it reminds me of some of the abuse victims that I've worked with, who really transcended that whole history of abuse and became extremely compassionate towards others. so it's kind of interesting. mean, it's sort of like we're, We're taught, like people are taught with Christianity about what Jesus experienced and how he was treated and have a reverence for him. And what's happening now is that in a very different way, in a very, not as dramatic of a way, these children are kind of showing us the same kind of thing that you can be. you know, have people really mistreat you and yet you don't have to become a bitter person and that you can actually show others, you know, that people can learn from you. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:01:44.836) Should we be thinking about some of these quote unquote mood disorders like people who are struggling with depression or the range of experience with fear? Is there another paradigm that we can view those experiences from and what's the current diagnostic model through psychiatry? Diane (01:02:04.978) in terms, you mean another lens to see the people that are anxious and depressed. think, you know, what's happened for me, the longer I practice psychiatry, particularly working with the people I've worked with, the more and more I really see this, that's archetypes, you know, that we all are different archetypes and we're all in, you know, you whatever movie we're in, if you think of it that way, it's like, who are you? What's your archetype? you the hero? Are you the villain? Are you the victim? Who are you? And what's the archetype of your story? Is this a tragic comedy? It's just like all the plays that Shakespeare wrote about. All the great literature really realizes that there's archetypes, that there's only so many. sort journeys that people take on. And from what I've seen is that, you know, there's this story of, you know, somebody who overcomes, you know, kind of the hero's journey, the story of somebody who overcomes depression and anxiety, but who goes through sort of the dark night of the soul. And it's really, I mean, it's having worked with people, some of the people who've suffered more than anybody else on the planet. What I've seen is that a lot of people just stay kind of more shallow in their thinking about things until they're really brought to their knees and they suffer. And that that suffering is sending them a message that something has to change. What is it that you're doing? What is it you have to do to change? And Sometimes what it is is you have to change how you see the world and how you see yourself in it. And you're really being forced to do that. And once you're able to, instead of just looking for a medication to just sort of symptomatically make you feel better, or a drug or anything that just makes you temporarily feel a little better, that Diane (01:04:23.776) You really need to also do some of the deep work and ask yourself, why am I here now? Why am I here on the planet right now? And what is it that's the reason why I've had these experiences? What lessons in that for me? And I'll tell you, when you do that kind of work with people, it really transforms them in a way that you never could transform them with the medication. And so that's what I found was people would come to me as a psychiatrist wanting medication, but then they found that they liked talking with me. then over time, they were like, you know, talking with you is actually helping more than medication. So that I started spending more and more of my time engaged in that, because I know how important it is for us to look at what is it we're telling ourselves. What is it that we're asking? And what kind of experiences are we making a priority? Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:05:28.772) And I think that's kind of been the profound tragedy of this era that we're kind of, believe we're coming out of is that people became disconnected from their experiences. When you talk about emotions as if there's some symptoms of a brain illness or a chemical imbalance in that nature, people aren't understanding that they're there to serve them, that even the uncomfortable and painful emotions of living can be potentially transformative. And they're used to be able to drive much needed change. And sometimes that change is a shift in perspective, or it's a change in a relationship or a new direction in one's life. And if we ignore that and we become disconnected from it, if we try to numb it or drug it or whatever it is, we don't enter onto that very important journey that life is about, that our soul is here for a reason to grow and... We have to face some of the things that, you know, are really painful and difficult in our, in our lives. do believe we're starting to move out of that as people become more aware of the limitations of the drug model and the DSM diagnoses. And there's a pushback against that, standard areas of care, because we see the data, we see the outcomes there, you know, they're quite poor. we have a large group of harmed patients that are pretty, you know, pretty active right now on social media. And I think this time is for a paradigm shift in the way that we understand our experience. And that was beautifully, beautifully said. We do have a chronic disease epidemic that we're facing, especially here in the United States. Essentially we're poisoned, I think, with pharmaceuticals and chemicals and pesticides and the so forth. We do see a sudden rise in autism cases and I'm... curious to know given your work in this area what you attribute that to or the possibilities. Diane (01:07:23.528) it's because these children are being born in such an unnatural world. mean, you know, they, like when they're born, I mean, there's tens of thousands of chemicals that are found in the umbilical. okay. Think about it, tens of thousands. And so, you know, on the one hand you have these obstetricians that say to the mother, you know, don't take any, you know. Don't take anything, don't drink, don't do this, don't do that, okay, because you want your baby to not be impacted. And yet you look at what's in our food, what's in our air, what's in our water, and we don't know the effect of all of that on brain development. So that's number one. mean, you have things like glyphosate, which is known to be very toxic, that's in our food supply. It's hard to avoid. And it's known to particularly attack the mitochondria. And the mitochondria are the energy powerhouses of the cell. The brain's chock full of them. And if you have faulty mitochondria, your brain's not going to have enough energy to do what it needs to do. And also, your liver also has mitochondria in it. Your body is not going be able to detox you from the chemicals. that you're exposed to. And then you add on top of that all of the, you know, we're vaccinating children right from birth with a much more aggressive schedule than we ever used to. We're doing, you know, ultrasound, you know, and that even something like ultrasound, you know, can potentially affect brain development. We're surrounded by wireless technologies, and the brain is electromagnetic. We've got an increase in cesarean sections, which for some people, it's an emergency. They need to have a cesarean section. But for other people, it's a convenience. And one of the things that happens when the child comes through the birth condyle is that they swallow a bunch of bacteria. Diane (01:09:45.286) and it seeds their gut. And we know that the bacteria in our gut are responsible for creating a lot of chemicals that the brain needs to operate. And so we have less diversity in the gut because we're not eating a very diverse diet. And then a lot of these chemicals are killing off the good bacteria and allowing the bad bacteria to become overgrown and then they're producing chemicals that are toxic. you know, there's, you know, we're finding, you know, cyanide in the urine of a lot of these children. it's not because they're ingesting cyanide, it's that it's being produced in their gut by an organism. so, so there's just so many, unfortunately, I mean, the brain is like the canary in the coal mine, you know, the, you know, it's such an exquisite organ that for it to operate properly, it needs all of these things to be, you know, running, you know, as, you know, as clean and, you know, uninterrupted as possible. And that's just that's not the environment that we're living in. so, yeah, autism, you know, I'm sure that it's it's not the same for every kid at all. I'm sure that it's multi it's it's all been lumped together because psychiatry is based on syndromes and not etiologies. So every kid, can't just say, it's due to X, Y, Z and therefore this is what you do for every kid. No, what it is is it's a process of just like peeling an onion, looking at each layer and what role is this contributing, playing it. And there are some children who are what's called recovered from autism. And it's not that autism itself, it's not the... It's not their mind that is problematic. It's what's going on with their physical body. And it shouldn't even be called autism. It should be labeled as, you know, it's a gut dysbiosis. It's, you know, it's, you know, a lot of other things. And they have seizure disorders or, you know, it's all of that. And that's what we're trying to recover them from, are those physical issues or, you know, are they, want to, a lot of them want to be able to speak. Diane (01:12:09.71) And so that's what it is, but there's nothing wrong with their minds. mean, they have beautiful minds and need our support. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:12:23.012) People often are now kind of talking about the malintent of this and have greater questions about a God when you say, how can this harm be done? When you just eloquently described what we're doing to our next generations of children by poisoning our planet in the name of what amounts to greed for the most part. know that there are pharmaceutical companies, medical interventions, people in high levels of government have kept information from people people to make informed medical decisions. We've created laws that allow this to happen. Do you see a spiritual kind of war for the lack of a better word that is going on maybe outside of our material understanding of things where there is a dark and a light or a good or an evil that's happening? Diane (01:13:15.058) yeah, I do. I do think that there's a spiritual work going on, you know, and, you know, it's absolutely and I think, you know, and it's, you know, if you think about it, it's like, our consciousness is part of the collective consciousness. Okay. And so when I think about, you know, like how I want things to be. Okay, you know, I want to eliminate suffering. want, you know, I want everybody to love one another. I want, you know, it to be a fair place, harmonious, you know, all of these wonderful things. Okay. Well, there are places where we can go in the consciousness of people there and what their intention is, what they're putting out there is very toxic to my intentions. Okay. You know, opposite. Okay. Mine's coming from a certain belief in the individual, belief in certain ideals, et cetera, et cetera. Theirs is coming from a belief in a very materialistic, very sort of cynical kind of worldview. So then imagine we're living in this interconnected world where my consciousness is not just confined to me, it's out there. with, you know, and so is that these other individuals who think and feel very differently than me. Okay. Well, you know, these are like clashing fields, right? You know, this is like wave interference. and so in that sense, you know, it, and, the kind of values I'm talking about are spiritual valley values. You know, are you about service to self or service to others? You know, Are you, you know, whether you consider yourself a Christian or not, do you believe in the things that Christianity has said that this is what we believe in, know, brotherly love, blah, blah, OK. Or do you believe that, you know, there is no God and everybody for themselves. And if you can get away with it, great. Hi, hi to you. You know, you know. What are you operating out of? And so, yeah, there's a clash happening. There's definitely a clash happening and and. Diane (01:15:29.474) But at the same time, I truly believe that the good outweighs the bad and that if enough people come on board and start living their life more consciously, start realizing how powerful they are, how powerful their intentions are, how powerful their thoughts are, that then we'll start to see manifesting in a more obvious way a different reality. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:16:08.644) So then you must be concerned about where we're going technologically. There's an anti-human movement that exists out there of people who want to merge technology with human development. So we see this with some brain computer interfacing or just a fundamental idea that the nature of humanity in itself is as a people does more harm than good. We can advance human nature through technology. It seems like there's a lot of opportunity there for malfeasance and harm being done. I just want to get your thoughts on the pushing of that technology, AI, and brain computer interfacing, that technology that's being developed. Diane (01:17:06.734) Yeah, I find that it's very concerning to me because I think that there is free will, that free will is incredibly important. it's actually being put at risk. for going away if what we start doing is becoming merged with technology that can drive our behavior and our thoughts. I mean, do you really want to surrender your free will? Do you want other people around you who've surrendered their free will? And who is it that's gonna be controlling that whole thing? Who is it's the deciding what human behavior should be. And so what happens so often in the development of new technology is that you get told all the wonderful possibilities of the technology. And wouldn't this be great? yeah, of course I want that. Or, it's going to be used for that technology of brain chips is going to be used to help people that were rendered. paraplegic or even people talk about it for like the non-speaking autistic. So you put a chip in their brain and we can solve that problem. Isn't that wonderful? Well, the problem is that there's always unintended consequences. And you have to also really trust the people that are ushering out this technology and what their intentions are with it. And I don't think that trust exists there. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:19:06.66) Yeah, and I agree and They talk about it as if there's a fundamental problem to be solved. if there's another way to look at the human experience is that we are souls in this physical body and we are in a lot of ways we are co-creating in ways that are servicing our soul. Then even the challenges, even if being a paraplegic or being autistic would be something that our soul possibly agreed to. part of this... very important natural necessary process for us. Diane (01:19:44.654) Absolutely. mean, you know what? And that's the thing is that if you are somebody who really thinks of the implications of the model that we're proposing or we're discussing in terms of consciousness and our soul and the evolution and why we're here, you think about all of that. Then and you're talking about a creation, you know, that we still don't fathom, you know. all of this creation and that we as humans are going to step in there and start inserting things in people's brains and doing different things because we know better, you know, that that attitude. That's really dangerous territory. And because of the fact that you really could be interfering with the whole way that the universe works, you know, the whole soul's journey. And to me, Why would we want to sacrifice something as precious as our soul? Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:20:45.54) Yeah, the playing of God is certainly something that we all have to pay attention to and I'm concerned about this and what we have viewed as medical innovation. mean, we've fundamentally altered the state of being human through pharmaceuticals and pesticides and processed food and a number of things. unfortunately, we're seeing the horrible consequences. I think we can course correct and I think that's probably part of the process here is that we must recognize when there is mal intent and evil and in the name of love and compassion for each other we have to make very important changes and that's this is an important time in my opinion to in the raising of consciousness on earth to be speaking out against these things which I've kept you a while. I wanted the final transition here is the manifesto for a post-materialist science. It was just exposed to this organization. Maybe you can speak to this. saw over 300 scientists are calling for an expanding scientific methods beyond purely materialistic models. So if you can talk a little bit about this organization and then the direction you think that we can take science that can really serve you. Diane (01:21:55.822) Yeah. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:22:03.398) humanity. Diane (01:22:05.004) Yeah, so that was actually around 10 years ago that several hundred scientists came forward. And these are scientists who are at academic institutions and said, there's enough evidence for us to go beyond materialism, to say materialism is dead, and to create what's called a post-materialist model. The scientists who signed that didn't all necessarily agree on what the post-materialist model is, but they knew enough to say, materialism isn't it? There's enough evidence to say that this is incorrect and that we're not going to wait for mainstream science to catch up to us. And finally, we're not going to keep asking, begging them to listen to what we have to say. We're just going to take it upon ourselves. and declare it as such and create our own academy. so that's what happened. I was invited to be one of a little, I think it was 12 or 13 scientists who met in Tucson, Arizona back in 2017, right after the eclipse went over the US. And when we met there, we talked about why we were there. what was the reason that we felt that materialism was dead? And we were all invited to write a chapter for the first volume coming out of the Academy for the Advancement of Post-Materialist Sciences. And so they've had several volumes coming out since then. And it's something that I was part of early on. And that I realized that, scientists are terrible at getting promotion for themselves. Okay, we're not out there as self promoters. We're about the science, you know, and we're trying to just get published in, you know, journals and that sort of thing. And I thought, you know, I want to make sure that that gets into this work that I'm doing. you know, I started working with people in the media several years ago because I felt like it's Diane (01:24:21.696) it's got to get out into the public discussion. And so I wanted to make sure that people became aware of this Academy, through the podcast as well and invited Marjorie Wolcott, who's the president of it to come and give it, give a little bit of the background on the Academy. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:24:42.404) Right, thank you. So you're at the tail end of your career. You said you just recently retired from clinical practice. As we conclude here, I just want to get a sense of kind of what is next for you. And at the same time, how can people become aware of the work that you are doing or have done? Diane (01:25:01.45) Thank you. So what's next is that I'm getting, working on getting funding. I've had some people come forward who say they want to fund some of my research. And so I want to take it to the next level. I want to get on film an experiment that really is going to get. even diehard skeptics to say, yep, you're right. Remove any of the controversy that people have around spelling, for example, as a form of communication. So one way to get around that would be to set up an experiment in which I'm testing the telepathy between two of these kids. I I've heard about them being telepathic on the hill. Let me see if I can test that. Or let me see if some of them are telepathic with more than one person. Let me have, you know, one person doing the facilitating if they need a letter board and have another person being the one that has the answer and have them in separate rooms, really trying to optimize that as well as obtain as much information as I can from a lot of people who wouldn't necessarily want to be in a documentary but are interested in contributing to the research. so that would be, you know, digging deeper into really trying to understand their world. What is it you experience and how often do you experience it? And then using non-invasive imaging to see, do all of these children show the same basic brain functioning pattern? What's going on when they're doing the telepathic communication? Is that different from what it's like when they're not? And then looking at some of these other abilities, testing, formally testing their, you know, that they see spirits, you know. Well, if they're seeing spirits, more than one of them see spirits, then seeing if I can independently have two kids or professional medium or whatever, give me the same, you know, report on that. And there's, I mean, there's an endless number of studies that one could do. Diane (01:27:16.884) know with this population if you have the funding and that's really what I'm wanting to do and to do it in conjunction with scientists who are at universities who are very very excited about my work and really want to collaborate with me. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:27:35.94) Fascinating. Listen, this has been soul nourishing, mind expanding conversation. I'm so grateful for you coming on today. I'm so grateful that I had the opportunity to find out more about your work and an entire world that exists out there that I have to, I know I need to bring more attention to. you know, I'm hoping that this is the beginning for our collective culture and being able to have greater discussions on, you know, what it means to live and the idea of mental health. and how do we make great shifts in our in our own culture? And we heal some of the, you know, the unfortunate injuries, I think that have occurred over, you know, certainly, you know, the last 100 or more years, you know, like, I think there's a there's a an expansion and new way of seeing possibilities. And for me, in the mental health field and psychology and psychiatry, I'm hoping that some of this post material is science. is really used to help people who are suffering. you know, really hope I can stay in contact with you and, you know, continue to follow your work and see what you're doing, you know, in the coming years. So, Diane Hennessy-Powell, I want to thank you for a radically genuine conversation. Diane (01:28:47.36) yeah. Diane (01:28:54.606) Thank you.