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March 11, 2017 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:03:14
Edition 289 - Tricia Robertson

Acclaimed Scottish paranormal investigator Tricia Robertson - we talk consciousness and lifeafter life...

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Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is The Return of the Unexplained.
Thank you very much for your kind feedback, the nice things you've said, the words of encouragement and reassurance that you've given me recently and just for being there and being my friend.
Thank you very much indeed.
It means a great deal to me.
Please keep the emails coming.
When you get in touch, go to the website theunexplained.tv, follow the email link, and you can send me guest suggestions, thoughts on the show, anything you want to say.
Go to theunexplained.tv designed by Adam Cornwell at Creative Hotspot in Liverpool.
When you do get in touch, please tell me who you are, where you are, and how you use the show.
It's very important if you do that.
And thank you if you have.
And if you'd like to make a donation to the show, the website theunexplained.tv is the place to go to do that through PayPal.
And thank you if you have recently.
It is all absolutely vital for this because, like I've said before, and we don't want to harp on about it, life is very much a shoestring venture for myself.
But I guess that makes it half the fun, really.
It's all about survival, isn't it?
One way or another.
Guest on this edition, the return of Tricia Robertson, wonderful Scottish paranormal investigator and friend of mine and this show.
She's loved on the radio show and on the podcast, so she returns.
And we're basically just going to take it wherever it goes.
We'll shoot the breeze.
If I've got time, I might put in one other item on this edition.
We're just going to see how we are for time.
Now, literally, I've just got off the motorway, driving back from my early morning Saturday gig.
I have to get up at half past three for that one.
Drive back home.
So, it keeps life interesting, doesn't it?
Let's do some shout-outs.
This is by no means all of the emails that I've had.
Please believe me that unlike a lot of the mainstream media, I do see all of your emails when they come in.
And if they need a personal reply, they get one.
And if they just need noting in my head, they get one.
And I try and include as many people for shout-outs who want them as I can.
So let's do this now before we get to Tricia in Scotland.
Moly says, best show on the radio, whatever Ian Lee on Talk Radio says.
It messes up my Sunday.
This is the radio show.
Messes up my Sunday night's sleep, says Moly, keep up the great work.
Thank you for that.
Think you also listen to the podcast.
Leslie Keene says Rob has a new book out.
Leslie mentioned that she doesn't want to do any interviews that primarily focus on UFOs right now, but the subject of her latest book is in your territory.
It's called Surviving Death.
Yes, definitely.
Thank you for that, Rob.
Matt McEwan in Salt Lake City wanted Jeff Meldrum.
I think I had Jeff Meldrum on the podcast a few years ago.
I must check, but always good to get Sasquatch and all of that back on here.
Hello, Howard.
Thank you for the brilliant podcasts on the varied and interesting topics that you cover.
I drive a lot because of my work, and I enjoy listening to them as I'm driving around the northeast of England, and I'm loving catching up with the old episodes.
Thank you very much for that.
And also for making a donation, Mark, from Heaven on Tyne in the great Northeast.
It's been too long since I've last been there.
Lovely people.
Chris in Buffalo, New York.
Dear Howard, I wanted to write to you to tell you how much I've enjoyed the recent episodes of The Unexplained.
That's really kind of you, Chris.
And we talked about you doing mowing of your lawn, I think, of the last time you got in touch.
I hope the weather's good enough.
I know that they've got a snowstorm in your area.
I think more or less at the moment, as I record this, I hope it improves enough for you to be able to get back on the sit-on lawn mower.
Or maybe it's a push-along.
I don't know.
James Wafer says, hi-how, great show, brilliant interview.
Listen to it on my day off having a lion.
This is Dark Waters.
He will be back and on the radio show.
Ollie in Surrey, your email meant a lot.
Thank you.
I listen every Sunday.
10 o'clock brings me such joy and peace.
This is the radio show.
Keep up the good work.
And he says some nice things about me, which are very embarrassing, but very nice.
Thank you.
Ollie in Surrey in the UK.
Andy in Reading, Berkshire, an area I know very well.
Nice comments, Andy.
Thank you very much for that.
Karen Winter Churchill in Broadview Heights, Ohio, USA.
Thank you so much.
I have replied to you.
Thank you for the very, very kind email and comments.
And one of the most, if not the most amazing email I've ever had from Michael, who says, I am an armed guard and oversee a high security area for a location in California.
I usually work the graveyard shift and I listen to your show on a regular basis on my iPhone with earbuds.
I wear a tactical bulletproof vest that has an additional front center pocket for a trauma plate, but I never use the trauma plate.
That's where I put my iPhone.
To cut a long story short from Michael's email, he got shot in some incident that happened.
And he says, during the debrief, I realized that I'd been hit directly in the solar plexus and my breathing began to become labored and I was bruised.
I hope you're okay now.
The paramedic who removed my vest began laughing, pulled out my phone and asked me if I was expecting any calls.
Basically, the phone with my shows on it took the bullet.
What an amazing story.
Michael, I've asked you by email if you can get in touch.
Maybe we'll put you here on the podcast or on the radio show to tell that story.
It's a great story for you and for me, and I do hope you're okay now.
That has got to be a doozy of a story.
I think you still say in America.
Okay, let's get to Glasgow, Scotland now and the marvelous Tricia Robertson.
High time we talked.
Tricia, thanks very much for coming back on the show.
You're very welcome.
It's a great pleasure.
Now, you know, my listeners, they love you.
And just tell me, how is Glasgow at the moment?
I'll tell you that it's some listeners, one or two, a very few listeners, never like me talking about the weather.
But most people email and say, we like to hear about what the weather is like over there.
So I've got here in London a kind of milky white sky, and it's quite mild.
How about Glasgow, way up in Scotland?
Well, it's not too cold, but it's what we call in Scotland dre.
It's dreary, smeary rain, and no sun at the moment.
It was a lovely day yesterday that was gorgeous.
You think it's going to be a broad brick moonlit next?
Well, who knows?
I hope so, because I'm hoping To play tennis this afternoon.
Oh, yeah, I'm full of admiration.
Oh, one way or another, I am.
Just to explain to my listener, there is a very slight mains hum in the background of Trisha's recording gear.
Now, a lot of the world's most famous albums, LPs as they were called, if you listen to them from the 60s, they have American mains hum on them, and some British ones have British mains hum.
They're different frequencies.
I don't think this is a problem, but you can hear a very slight hum, and it's not distracting me, so I hope it doesn't distract you.
But that's just in case anybody mentions this.
How has life and paranormality been for you this year so far, Tricia?
Well, I think that things are actually changing in the paranormal world.
I mean, we've all been prepossessed by ghosts, apparitions, near-death experiences, all those things, which would tend to support the survival hypothesis that when you die, you don't actually, some part of you lives on.
But more and more scientists of different disciplines are coming to the whole aspect of consciousness, because it really does, the whole thing lies within who we are as human beings, what we're capable of here, and is there any part of us in our consciousness that survives.
And you know, you're so right that it is the consciousness, and we'll talk about this in just a moment when I've run one thing past you, but it is fundamental, isn't it?
Because it goes to the core of who we are and what we are, and how can I be sure that I am here now, cognizant and sentient and having the experience with you that I believe I'm having.
Well, you know, belief is actually a key word in this.
And one of, I can't remember where I wrote it, there's a saying that goes, the optimist in life is correct because he has optimistic thoughts.
And the pessimist is correct that the future will not be good because that's the way he foresees the future.
And to some extent, to some extent, not necessarily, but to some extent we shape our own destiny.
Archie always quoted, Archie Roy always quoted, there is a destiny that shapes our ends.
But part of that destiny is actually you.
It's how you think about things.
If you're optimistic, you're much more likely to have a better outcome in whatever you're doing in life.
And there is a thing nowadays that people are thinking about consciousness that in some ways what you're talking about is in some ways you do create your own reality.
It doesn't make it any less real, but it's your reality.
And it all becomes terribly complicated when you start thinking about these things.
But there's quite a lot of evidence to support that thought.
Well, I've had, for reasons I won't go into, I've had a couple of experiences recently and we'll just say without going into what the experiences were, but life has been bizarre for me for the entire number of years that I've been here.
All 25 of them, he joked.
I'm sorry.
There'd been an issue around me that I've been dealing with at work and then something else happened at home that laughably tied in with the issue.
Now, those things would have seemed to be totally unconnected but for the fact of when they happened.
So how much of this life, this experience that we're having, is coincidence?
And how much of it is pre-programmed by us?
In other words, to what extent, other than through our actions, are we the architects of our own destiny?
That's the big question, isn't it?
Well, of course, that is the big question.
And my simple understanding at the moment, and it's only my understanding, is that we come into life, which in itself is quite a miracle that we are here and doing the things that we actually can do.
To some extent, I think we're pre-programmed or given the opportunity, obviously, to be born, to live a life, and then at some point you die.
But along that life, you're given opportunities to experience as much life as you possibly can for you.
Your experience is totally different to mine and everybody else's.
But my understanding at the moment is to be the best person that you can be, the most positive person you can be, with whatever hand you've been dealt at this point in time.
All right, we'll come back to this in just a second because it is a discussion that we can have at greater length and we'll talk about any research you may know of or been involved in.
This morning I did a radio show and I always look at the newspapers from the day.
The Daily Mirror in the UK this morning front page has a picture of something that always used to sell pictures, Princess Diana.
Now I covered the death and funeral of Princess Diana on Capitol Radio in London.
In fact, I broke the news.
It was a very, as we all know, emotional time for everybody.
We can believe that the Princess of Our Hearts had died in the way that she did die.
And of course, a lot of people have theories about that.
That's a whole other topic.
Her butler was a man called Paul Burrell, is a man called Paul Burrell.
He is said to be, by her, her rock.
At one time, she said that she couldn't do the things that she did without Paul Burrell being there.
He was very, very close to Diana as any servant, which is what I guess he was, you know, could be.
He was very much, what's the word, a listening post for her, you know, a friendly ear for her in many ways.
Very important person.
He's not really around, or he's not seen or heard from that much.
I've interviewed him a few times.
But front page of the paper is essentially that he believes that Diana is communicating with him in dreams if the paper's interpretation of a conversation it's had with him is to be believed.
What do you make of that, if anything?
Yes, I think that actually can happen.
Communication can come in many ways, and one of them is through dreams.
But it would have to be specific.
It would have to be to make it real and not just his wishful thinking, she would have to be telling him things that he perhaps doesn't know and has to go and find out, or perhaps pass a message to a third person that he doesn't know, and the information would have to be meaningful.
But yes, people can communicate through dreams.
There's almost no doubt of that, actually.
And is there evidence that suggests that the person who's doing the communicating through the dreams always has something to communicate?
In other words, is it always for a reason?
It's pretty well always for a reason.
Even if that reason is just to say, look, I'm here and I'm okay and I'm fine.
That's the basic one.
Yes, there are other things like where the jewellery is hidden in the box, in the cellar, etc., that kind of thing.
But yes, there's pretty well, anytime anyone communicates with you, whether it's through a medium or whether it's through dreams or any other way, it's usually a sense of unfinished business, something they want to tell you.
Even it's just to tell you, I love you, I still love you, I forgive you.
If we fell out, then forget about it, everything's fine now.
There is always a reason.
There has to be a reason.
Otherwise, it doesn't make any sense.
I mean, the one thing that, you know, I've had the fastest read-through of this front page and story within the paper on page five, all the way through to, I think, about seven or eight of the paper.
And the one thing that I would have wanted to hear, and I wonder if these things ever do happen, is this is Diana.
I want to communicate with you.
And, you know, for all those people who've ever asked questions about the events of that night, that terrible night in Paris in 1997, here's what I know about it.
That's what I would want to be hearing.
Yeah, but I don't think you're going to.
If you cast your mind back to the account I gave, and I'm trying to remember off the top of my head, it was an account of Stansted Hall in my first book, where the new chap that was the head of it, he was a new financier, he was killed in a car crash.
And he came to another person in a dream, giving them the facts and figures, more or less, of where his briefcase could be found so that things could be put in order.
Now, the chap who had the dream was not a medium.
He was just sort of a caretaker in the building.
But the man gave him such information that eventually the briefcase was found, the check was found, and all the relevant papers were found, and they were able to salvage something from that disaster.
So that was a good one where you actually get a result from something that's given in a dream.
But it's like the murder case I had.
The girl didn't really ever say she gave a description, but not who the murderer was, what the name was.
There seems to be some unwritten law about giving names of people who've done bad things.
I don't know why.
I wonder if that is some kind of prime directive or whether there will be people who say, well, that's very convenient, isn't it?
The one crucial piece of evidence that we want.
And we've talked about that murder case that you looked into before, but it's a fascinating one that she gave so much detail, but she didn't point the finger.
She gave a description and she gave an address which it didn't pan out because we couldn't follow it up because it was so much later on.
But yes, it's almost teasingly you get little snippets of things which are part of the truth, but you never quite get there fully.
Although there was one in America, and I can't remember the name, it was years ago.
It was investigated by Monty Keene, where a medium did in fact give a name.
And that was before DNA testing came about.
And the policeman there was so convinced that this person, it was a funny name, it was like a nickname.
We'll call him Janko, that wasn't his name, that Janko was responsible for this girl's murder.
And the medium said it was, but he couldn't prove it.
But he was very wise.
He kept one of the jumpers that was involved in the murder.
And then DNA testing came in about 10 years later.
And he was able to have the jumper tested for DNA.
And it was Janko's DNA that was on it.
So that was a case where the medium gave the correct name.
And later on, because DNA testing came in, they were able to prove you did it.
Your blood was on that particular jumper.
Now, that was interesting and that was useful.
Yeah, well, my listeners know that when my mother died and the death of my parents, well, anybody who loses parents, and I've told you this before, you know, it is the most horrendous thing.
And I was very, very close to my mother and father.
They were the finest that you could ever get.
And, you know, I'm still devastated at their loss, even though my mother left us 11 years ago and my dad left us four years ago this year.
You don't get over it.
But my mother came back to me, as I believe it, in a dream.
And I wasn't expecting it.
I was emotionally, physically exhausted, so I was sleeping deeply.
And she appeared and she asked me, was I okay?
Her question was about, well, her whole life was about making sure I was all right, really.
And she said, are you okay?
And as soon as I told her I was, she vanished.
And that was it.
And that was probably three days, maybe two nights after she died.
Yeah, makes sense to me.
And that's the kind of thing that happens.
Other people report that sort of stuff?
Oh, yeah, all the time, yes.
Once they know, quite often we get, well, myself individually and other people get cases where people think there's something happening in their house.
And more times often than not, you find out somebody close or even a friend that's lived far away has died.
And it's just their way of letting you know, I'm here and I'm okay.
And once you recognize that person like you did with your mother, then quite often they don't bother coming back again.
They just want to know that you're okay and that you know they're okay.
Well, that's a fact.
Just to say to my listeners, if you're picking this up, there is a small hum on the digital output from Tricia in Glasgow.
I'm concentrating on what she's saying.
I'm not noticing it.
I hope that you're not, but I think it's better to do it digitally than just do it on a crackly phone line.
So let's persevere with it because it's so interesting, all of this.
We did a show on the radio about past life regression.
Now, I know it's not a subject that you've done that much about, and I think you're quite skeptical about it, but you tell me.
There was some compelling evidence that this might indeed happen.
And the cycle of birth, living here and dying and then coming back again, rebirth, is something that's played out all the time, As is evidenced by cases like one that we cited on the show of a young boy, I'm sure you know this case, it was in the Daily Mail over here in other papers, but this is an American story.
A young boy called Luke, five years of age, recounted to his mother virtually from as soon as he could talk, he told his mother that his name was Pam and he'd been a black woman in a place that she described as Chicago.
And it transpired that a woman called, I think, Pamela Robertson or Rob Inson had died sadly, tragically leaping in the 1990s from a blazing hotel in Chicago.
And the boy knew all about this and he was only five.
What a compelling, you know, if ever there was a compelling case, unless I'm a fool, this seems to be one.
That is a very good one.
The other one is the James Leniger case where the boy from When He Could Speak spoke about airplanes and he actually named his name in a previous life.
And the parents were sort of American.
I don't want to say Bible thumpers, but they were, you know, in the Bible Belt.
And it's a fascinating case recounted by Jim Tucker in the University of Virginia.
And this boy could give you his name.
And so much so that eventually the parents managed to get hold of photographs of the Thai and Second World War.
And he was able to pick himself out and give the name of the person who was next to him.
He served co-pilot.
And that is a fascinating case.
Now, I think perhaps you misunderstand what I'm saying.
Reincarnation to me has been shown beyond a shadow of doubt.
There is no question that reincarnation can happen because these cases and other cases that I've cited show that.
There is no question that that child is remembering a previous life because of all the internal emotion they feel with that case.
What I'm not so keen on is people who go for past life regression to find out if they're Mary Queen of Scots or somebody very important.
Now, why is that, Tricia?
Why do you buy into the theory that there is a cycle, but you don't like the idea of people being able to unlock it in that way?
Because once you unlock, you see, we're very fragile beings.
We have, we'll go back to consciousness again.
We go back to levels of consciousness and levels of understanding.
Now, I don't know about you, but I have the weirdest dreams at night, which if they were my reality, I would be locked up somewhere.
Our consciousness, our inner turmoil surfaces in bizarre ways.
And if you have your consciousness altered by either deep meditation or hypnotherapy, then you can allow all sorts of fantasies to come in to our little fragile part of reality.
But a child who has got no indoctrination, often they cannot even speak and they start making noises about things that they can't possibly understand.
And it's only when they can actually speak they can voice what these problems are.
And it always relates to a specific, identifiable former life.
That's why we called it children who remember previous lives are by far the most evidential of reincarnation.
The detail of what they give is just amazing.
And I'd say there's 3,000 cases logged in the University of Virginia with the, well, Professor Ian Stevens' group with Jim Tucker and Bruce Grayson, etc.
That there's no question that some people at least can absolutely show that they lived before.
And what about the idea when we talk about past life regression in terms of therapy that you can go back to a past life, you can identify where something happened in that past life and it's giving you problems that you don't understand, you can't rationalize in this life.
And when you know about it, you can correct it.
Do you think that that holds water?
The problem, as with everything else in life, there are bad car mechanics and good car mechanics, bad doctors and good doctors, good mediums and bad mediums.
Oh dear, I'm getting feedback in this.
No worries, I was just checking on your line.
So you were saying good mediums, bad mediums, etc.
Yeah.
So I'm not decrying hypnotherapists and past life regression is out of hand.
And there have been cases where people go back to an identifiable former life and perhaps find they've been drowned.
And then they realise that's where the fear of drowning comes from.
But I think on balance, and people are going to shout and scream at me, I think on balance, if you go into past life regression, it can release all sorts of false memories and all sorts of fantasies that you incorporate into your past life regression.
And as I say, people are now screaming at me, but I don't think unless you've got a real phobia, a real problem, that it's necessarily a good idea.
But that's just me saying that.
But the most convincing cases are children who remember a previous life and when they're born.
Look at the case of the little boy, I'm trying to remember his name now, it'll come to me in a minute, who from when he was about two began to draw something very peculiar.
And as his drawing got better, the parents who were not musical could see it was a cello.
And his very first word was cello.
And from when he could speak, he always said he wanted a cello.
And when he got the cello, he could, they bought him a miniature cello and he immediately picked it up and started to play identifiable tunes.
Now, you can't make that up.
It's amazing.
You can't.
And, you know, there is a possibility, I suppose, that he might have heard the word in the cot or whatever, but it's not the kind of word, I mean, you would use, you know, boat plane, train, duck.
Not cello.
It would not account for you being able to pick it up and play a tune straight away.
No, it wouldn't.
I don't know how that.
I mean, look, there is another theory about that, I suppose.
And this speaks back to cases that we've heard of people carrying with them the characteristics of somebody who's donated an organ to them, maybe a kidney or something, genetic memory.
They talk about that now.
I'm not sure how strong the evidence is for that, so I wouldn't speak about that.
But I've got this child is a perfectly normal child in a very upper-class family who are artists, but have no interest in music.
And suddenly this child comes out with cello and et cetera, et cetera.
And so it goes on.
It's amazing.
No, it is absolutely amazing.
What about the whole cycle then?
The cycle of birth, life, and rebirth.
The idea, and we were discussing this on the radio show, which is why I raise it, because it's something that gives me a headache when I think about it.
The idea that, okay, you will die, but you will go somewhere during which your life will be reviewed and your progress as a soul will also be reviewed.
And although, I mean, look, I've had my share of knocks and kicks and bangs professionally in this world.
Some of them, I've had some wonderful experiences, but some of them have not been nice.
The last thing I can tell you consciously here today in this body, the last thing I want is want to come back and go through anything like that.
But they tell me, the people who know about these things, that when you get to wherever you go and you're making decisions and looking back at your life and your existence, that actually you might choose more of the same in order that your soul can learn.
What do you make of that?
I think that's very probably true.
And I keep saying if my life lessons, this life lesson is patience, then I failed.
I have to come back and do it again.
But all we can, all any of us can really do is just do your best.
And I say it's like, do no harm.
It's like the Hippocratic oath.
Do no harm to anyone.
Do your best for everyone possible.
And then you should be perfectly all right.
But you can't sit back and do nothing.
Doing nothing is really not an option.
You know, I've been lucky enough to have met, as we all along the way, I assume, most of us, some wonderful, inspirational people.
You know, we'd be here for half an hour at least if I was to name the names.
But, you know, one of them I can think about is a guy called Norman Katanak, who was a great Fleet Street journalist and was on the training course that I took to be a journalist.
And he taught me newspaper copy.
But not only that, he helped me to get through when I was thinking of throwing up the course and doing something else.
Norman guided me.
He was a wonderful man.
On the other side of it all were people who've been utterly vile in every way.
I hate the idea that if you follow the logic that, and we don't want to talk about me too much, but I'm representative of a lot of people, I think maybe.
I wouldn't want to meet those people in whatever guise they might come back as.
Again, I'd like to be able to filter that out, but I'm not sure whether you get the choice.
I have no idea.
I have no idea.
They say that it doesn't really matter what happens to you.
It's how you deal with it that actually counts in the brownie points of an afterlife, if you know what I mean.
Right.
Okay.
Well, I'll report back then.
I'm not sure when, though.
Exactly, exactly.
All right, let's get back to consciousness then, because there are some key questions about consciousness that I know that you've been looking into.
And those questions include things like, what is it, as far as we know, and where do we think it's generated from?
Where does it come from?
Well, the answer to both of those is nobody actually knows.
Nobody in the world, no neurologist, no neuroscientists, no anybody can tell you what consciousness is.
It really shouldn't exist because when we're put together as a mass of electrons, protons, whatever we're made of, all these chemicals, all these things going together should not really, inert substances shouldn't make a consciousness, but it does.
So we have to conclude from that is our consciousness doesn't come from the physical body.
So where does it come from?
And this is when we employ the idea of some sort of a God, some sort of etheric input, like pouring liquid into a glass.
We have the glass, but something is poured into it, which allows us to be conscious.
And even if that is not true, even if it comes from the physical body, which no one, absolutely no one can explain, it doesn't explain why we feel compassion for others, etc.
It doesn't explain why that actually happens.
Consciousness is the biggest mystery on the earth at the moment.
It's even more of a mystery than black holes and all the other things that people are looking into.
It's quite bizarre.
It shouldn't exist, but it does.
And of course, if it didn't exist, we wouldn't be here.
Very strange.
And presumably it resides, as far as medics and people like that are aware, in an area of the brain.
But that can't entirely explain it because, you know, there are people, I think there was a case in the papers not so long ago, somebody who lost, I think, two-thirds of their brain, and they're still perfectly able to function like they were before.
So there's a mystery here to be explored.
Well, first of all, it shouldn't exist, but it does.
Then where does it lie?
Well, it's certainly not in the brain, because Dr. Ibn Alexander, who's a neurosurgeon in America, who didn't particularly think about these things, he was dead ostensibly for a whole week.
He was being kept alive and life support, etc., etc.
And within that week, he had so many experiences when actually his brain was actually more or less dead, just kept alive physically, that he has written a book called Proof of Heaven.
And so this is a neurosurgeon's account of what happened to him when his brain was dead.
So wherever it lies, it's not in the brain.
Now, this ties in with one of your earlier questions.
Some people, and I'm not saying it's true, believe that consciousness is permeated in every cell of your body.
Some people, and that's your consciousness all sort of manifests through every cell in your body.
And that's perhaps why on occasion, if with transplants, you get some of the characteristics of the person who's given you that part.
Now, I'm not saying that is true for everyone.
I'm not even saying it's true.
I'm saying it's a theory.
And to that extent, it would make a little bit of sense.
Okay, when we die, though, we are either buried and the process of decomposition, let's not be too graphic about it, goes on underground, or we are cremated and fire does what it does.
What happens to the consciousness then?
Well, the consciousness obviously lives on, otherwise, these things I speak about and many other people speak about could not, these things could not possibly happen.
But if it's within ourselves, if it's within every fibre of our being, then it's difficult to explain, isn't it?
Impossible for us to explain because we haven't got the wit.
I'm not saying that's one theory.
I'm not saying it's true.
Some people believe that.
But contrary-wise, as Alice said in Wonderland, what you're saying now is correct.
That the things that happen, for example, your mother coming back to you in a dream with all her memories, etc., that her consciousness, whatever that is, has now survived the physical body.
So maybe the people that think it's in every cell of your body are not correct.
Nobody knows where it is.
My current theory, and that could change any moment in time, is it's something quite different.
It's something separate from the physical body.
And that is shown by all of these cases with portages activity, near-death experiences, the murder case, for example, the consciousness of someone who's past coming through a medium giving specific information that people have to go and check out.
For example, the one I told you about at Stansted Hall, where the young man came to dream through a dream and he gave specific information.
Now, that shows that that young man's consciousness has survived.
He remembers, oh, they need that money, they need to find the briefcase, they need to know where it is, etc., etc.
So there was intent, there was motivation from the consciousness.
And that's where all that's where everything comes from in life is our intention and motivation.
The more I go into this, the more it's all about thought and motivation.
But on a lighter side, but it's all to do with it.
In quantum physics, and I can't remember who said it, in quantum physics they keep finding particles.
First of all, they found electrons, protons, neutrons, neutrinos, all of these things.
And now they've got so many things, I can't even possibly remember what they are.
But people sometimes hypothesize, well, if this happens, we should find another particle and we'll call it X. And sure enough, in a little while, they do find this other particle called X that they have thought should be there.
And when they did find that, one of the other scientists said, well, who ordered that?
It's as if you've put the thought out there, that should happen.
And it does happen.
And actually, if you think about life, it quite often works that way.
But it's a bit like sort of Agatha Christie, isn't it?
It's like a mystery.
Did you put it there without knowing, or was it there reaching out to you?
Or did you create it in your thought?
Yeah, I think that's what I was trying to say, but not very well.
We'll get there between us, Howard.
But you know, I have known and I've even, I think I've even done this.
Look, I can remember.
I mean, you know, I only have me.
Me is all I know.
So I can remember being a teenager and hating being fat.
I started thin.
I was fat through my childhood.
And then in my teenage years, I got sick of being fat.
And I begged and prayed and focused on being thin.
And yes, a certain amount of that was eating a bit less.
But I wanted it more than anything else.
And I harped on it all the time.
I prayed for everything.
It took me three months of that.
And I became as thin as a rick.
People thought that I was very ill when I was 17.
But it was the thing that I wanted and it was the thing that I got.
Your intention, yep.
Your motivation was there.
Yep.
Intention, motivation is all.
If you think about these countries where they have black magic, voodoo, etc., and the people believe that someone's sending them bad intention, they do become ill because they accept this bad intention.
It's the same.
It's on reverse side.
If you're talking about sending healing to someone, you're sending people good thoughts, good intention, good vibes, if you want.
And there are hundreds of studies done on the positive effect of sending good thoughts.
This is where the Catholic Church have it quite, I'm not Catholic, but they have it quite correct.
When they do prayers for the dead, prayers for the souls of people who pass, you're sending them the good intention.
This seems to help them on their way to whatever's next.
Well, now I understand.
I remember I was quite ill when I was 21.
And, you know, I'm from Liverpool and Glasgow is the same where, you know, half of my family is Catholic, half of it is Protestant.
And somebody connected with us sent me a special intention to get better.
And I did indeed get better.
You know, I was quite ill just after finishing my finals at university.
And, you know, so that's the same sort of thing, I think, if we follow that process.
No, it is.
Absolutely.
If you think about it, if you really think about it, intention is everything.
And if you create bad intention for someone else, then it's not very good for you.
Even somebody you don't like, you can ignore them.
You can pretend they're not there, and that's fine.
But do not send them bad intention because it will not auger well for you.
The good intention is everything.
So this is all to do with this thing that we, this mysterious thing called consciousness.
Nobody knows what it is, but you and I wouldn't be speaking just now if we were not conscious and we are not completely mad.
There's the other theory, of course, now that people are, it's popular about a matrix theory that we're living in some computer construct.
But actually, I don't particularly buy that because there's too much emotion between people.
We're all involved with each other and we care.
If we were in a machine of some sort, I don't think we would care.
And I don't think that people would come back from after death and give all the amazing information that they've given.
I had an amazing guest on this show who I think you maybe should talk to at some point.
He's in New Orleans.
His name is Dark Waters.
That's the name he goes under.
And he has had a lot of paranormality in his life in a place that is rife with hoodoo and voodoo.
Yeah, yeah.
And also he recounts other people's paranormal stories.
But I've talked to him about the idea of wishing bad upon people, and he is firmly convinced that there are people there who are practitioners of this and can do it.
I guess the question is, I was always told that it only works if you accept it.
If you reject anybody wishing anything like that, it's not going to hit you.
Well, as Archer, I used to say, I couldn't possibly comment to some extent, but I'm trying to think of an example.
I know this doesn't sound the same thing, but if you go down to experiments with plants, this does not sound exciting, but it is.
If you get one big plant and you separate it into, so it's the same plant you're coming from, and you plant, you take 12 cuttings from the plant and you put six in one place and six in another.
Same conditions, same greenhouse, etc., etc, etc.
And this has actually been done.
And then somewhere else you have a big, huge jug of water that somebody sends healing to.
And I know it sounds nuts, they keep sending positive thoughts and healing and love to this jug of water.
And you feed six plants with a jug of water that's had healing.
And you do the other six with ordinary water, same water, out the same tap, only one's had healing and one has not.
The plants that have had the healing water thrive one-third better than the ordinary water.
And that's experiment's been done many, many times.
Contrary-wise, again, they did the same thing, only they had the jug of water and they sent this jug of water, bad intention, you're a bad jug of water, we don't like you, we hate you, all these negative intentions, and they compared that to the ordinary tap water.
And when they looked at the plants that had the water that people didn't like, these plants did not thrive at all.
They died because of the bad water.
Now it sounds nuts.
I totally agree.
It sounds nuts, but it's a fact.
It happened.
But is that because the plant that didn't do so well accepted the bad vibes?
If you don't accept the bad vibes, then maybe if the plant hadn't accepted what was then, we're talking about a plant here, but it's a living thing.
Well, the plant, who knows?
The plant wouldn't know any better as far as I'm concerned.
But of course, plants are living things as well.
Yeah, absolutely.
But I'm just putting out there that vibes can affect things, whether it's people or plants, or in fact, it can happen with blood files as well.
They can be affected by thought.
The chap, Dark Waters, did he say that if people didn't accept the negative thoughts, that nothing happened to them?
Did he actually say that?
Well, I think thinking back to the conversation, it was more about taking steps to make sure that this cannot affect you.
Yeah, that's correct.
It's the same as if you go into any paranormal situation, you should, what they say, protect yourself by putting a gold light round about your whole body like a mirror.
And when you go into those investigations, do you do that?
If I remember, yes.
Boy.
I say this for a reason because there's a great, can I call him a ghost hunter?
I don't think so, but he's that kind of thing.
And he's dealt with the whole gamut of spirits.
Richard Estep, who's been on this show in America, he's a British guy, works in the States, I think is a paramedic there.
And he's told me that he's, you know, on a couple of occasions, he said in the interview that he brought home something that he'd acquired.
Oh, yes, that can happen.
Yeah, absolutely.
If you don't protect yourself, if you remember to put your protection on when you go in, you should be fine.
Like a mirror.
It's like an invisible mirror round about you so that anything negative reflects off the mirror and back again to whoever's sending it.
But this is why Ouija boards and things are dreadful because people just open themselves up.
They invite anybody in.
It could be Jack the Ripper.
It could be a murderer.
It could be anybody.
And sometimes they can take that home.
And it's a, I can't swear on radio, but it's a dashed nuisance.
In fact, almost impossible sometimes to get rid of.
And yet in California, somebody else I would love you to meet, Karen Dolman, out there, who's written books about this.
I like Karen a lot.
And she's used the Ouija board since she was young.
And, you know, I wouldn't use it.
And I've said I wouldn't use it.
You know, we got one sent from America when I was a kid.
And, you know, my mum wanted that thing out for a whole variety of reasons.
But Karen is a very grounded person and says that she's used it with wonderful results.
Yes, but it's all about here we go with intention again.
Karen is using it in a sensible way.
She probably says a prayer.
She probably protects the area and only asks for the highest and the best to come through.
Nine times out of ten, you'll probably be okay with a Ouija board.
I accept that.
But why take the chance?
And most people sit with a Ouija board or with one or two drinks.
Oh, this is a good laugh.
Let's have a Ouija board.
And that's when the trouble starts, when you've got a schism in your psyche that allows something negative to come in.
And have you seen that happen?
I've heard many, many people have come to me with similar things that have happened to them.
Yes, Benny.
Okay, well, I have to say, because we do this podcast in the way that we would do a radio show, that we are certainly not here to advocate this thing.
In fact, I would do the reverse.
I would say steer clear.
But it's like anything.
I take the chance, yep.
Yeah.
Well, it's like, you know, if you can use an acetylene torch, then you can make wonderful things out of metal.
Most of us can't, so, you know, don't buy one and don't use it.
Exactly.
No, no, 100%.
I say that all the time.
Do not use the Ouija board in capital letters.
No.
Okay.
Exactly.
Back to consciousness.
One of the things that you considered was the idea of dementia, which is such a huge problem.
You know, somebody who lives not too far from where I live and I've known for a while and like a great deal, confided to me that he has a form of dementia and He is comparatively young.
It's such a problem for people.
But how does it connect with consciousness?
Well, I can actually answer that through one of my own experiences.
You know, my colleague, Professor Archie Roy from Glasgow University, Archie was a brilliant man.
He designed, he did one of the early calculations for rocket ships to go around the moon, etc.
Brilliant man, lovely man, absolutely gentleman, gentleman Jim, really.
And he was absolutely lovely, spot on and bright.
But in his latter years there, he died in 2012, he began to suffer from memory loss.
I don't know if it was dementia or Alzheimer's, it doesn't really matter, one or the other.
And I could see this happening gradually.
And latterly, for the last year, year and a half, I went to see him.
He was in hospital and he didn't know who I was.
He would say to me, what's your name again?
And I would say, Tricia.
And I would always sit near him because he was quite deaf as well.
And every time I said, I would look into his face and I would say, Tricia.
And there was something there behind the eyes, but nothing much.
And we had the most bizarre conversations.
They didn't make any sense.
They weren't the conversations that we would have had at all.
So anyway, Archie passed on a Thursday.
But it was his time to go.
It was a blessing.
It was definitely time for him to go much better.
But most of the time, if he went to see me, he was kind of sleeping.
He was kind of out of it.
So he died on a Thursday.
And on the Sunday, now, I go around different meetings, different talks, different spiritual churches to hear people speaking, to see what the state of play is with the paranormal world.
And I went to, now I wasn't particularly sad, although he'd passed on the Thursday, because I knew it was right and it was better for him to be away.
So I went along to this church in Mulgai, actually, and I didn't know who the medium was going to be, etc., etc.
Not particularly looking for anything from Archie.
I didn't think about it at all.
And the medium could, the way I was sitting, I was hiding from the medium so she couldn't see me because I knew her and she vaguely knows me.
So I was just sitting there just enjoying what was going on.
Pardon me.
So she eventually came to the audience and she said, I've got two ladies here.
It's a mother and daughter and their name, they're both Jean, Jean the mother and Jean the daughter.
And nobody else in the place could take this, but I could, because my mother was Jean and my grandmother was Jean.
Now I don't like to speak up, but no one was taking it.
So I popped my head up and I said, actually, I can take that, Carol.
And she said, oh, hello, Trisha, I didn't see you there.
Now, there's no way this woman would have known Archie Roy had died on a Thursday.
Nobody would have known that.
And she came to me and she started to talk about the two women.
And then she suddenly said, oh, a man has just jumped in here, a very tall man with large glasses.
And she made the movement, Archie used to sweep his hair over to the one side.
And she made the movement of sweeping her hair over to the one side.
He's got this kind of hair.
He's got large glasses, very tall, very distinguished, very well spoken.
And his message to you is, I've made it.
Now, that was something that he worried about because in the early stages, he knew that his mind was going.
And he said, it worries me that when I get to wherever I'm going, I don't know where I am.
That was more or less his last words to me.
Boy, so if you believe this proved two things to you very emotionally, I can tell.
Number one, that you do survive.
And number two, when you get there, whatever was ailing you here is not present.
And then she said, now she didn't know who it was.
And she said, he's now showing me stars and a huge telescope looking out in, looking up.
And she said, he's saying, it's wonderful.
It's wonderful.
And that was more or less that time.
Excuse me, I do have something in my throat.
Then another time, about two weeks later, I was in an afternoon meeting and it was a completely different medium called Jackie MacLeish.
Now, Jackie, once again, wouldn't have known that Archie Roy had died.
And she came to me and she said, Tricia, I've got to come to you.
I've got a gentleman here, very well spoken.
He's like a doctor, blah, blah, blah.
And this gentleman's telling me that he lost his memory before he died.
But he wants to let you know that although he didn't appear to know who you were, part of him really did.
And to me, that said a lot.
The part, and he's saying he was more or less in the spirit world out and in for the last year of his life.
So when he got here, it was easy just to take the step in.
You know, I've asked you this question before, I think.
I can't remember.
You know, you know how there's a million things on your mind.
I can't remember one specific question.
So let's pose it again if I've posed it before.
And forgive me if I've put this to you before.
Do you feel differently about dying, which we all have to do, than you perhaps did before you started doing all of the research that you've done?
Oh, yes.
I mean, I didn't have any particular religious belief at all.
I was fortunate in that sense.
It was just the school stuff.
You got, you know, Bible passages which didn't mean anything to me at all.
And it was only through an intellectual interest in this that it's peaked this knowledge.
It's a knowledge actually through experience that certainly our consciousness survives.
There's no doubt about it whatsoever.
And I'm in the position at the moment like, I can't remember, was it Udi Allen who said, I don't mind dying, but I just don't want to be there when it happens, yeah.
I believe it.
But does that mean that if you know these things or you think you know these things, that your fear of what inevitably will come to all of us at some point dissipates?
Oh, very, very much so.
It doesn't mean to say you don't feel sad when anybody else dies, even if it is the right time.
But no, these things that I talk about, the things I write about, could not happen.
There's 100% could not happen if these people's consciousness had not survived.
and yet and yet and yet.
Colin Fry, a medium in the UK, had his own TV series, was always good enough to travel up on the train and do my radio show at night time on a Saturday when it was on.
Then, I liked Colin, and he was very interesting to talk to.
I know the press had a go at him off and on over the years.
He died tragically young of cancer.
And, you know, he was a loss to the field, many people said.
If anybody had been going to come back or try and make themselves present, I would have expected Colin to.
You know, I sit now in the same studio.
It's been refurbished now.
It looks different, but it's the same position as I did when I spoke with him.
And I often think, you know, well, if this can be done, please do it, if that's possible.
Or maybe on the other side, that would just be regarded as an irrelevant party trick.
They don't have to do that.
Well, we don't know if he's come back to other people or not.
I have no idea if he's come back to anyone else at all.
But you say that, no, they do not perform party tricks, that's for sure.
They wouldn't do it just because you want him to do it.
No.
But I do sit there on a Sunday night, and I just think back to him and other people who've appeared on the show, but to Colin sitting there.
And, you know, he was off-air and on-air.
He was very funny.
I don't know if you ever met him, but he had a great time.
Yeah, yeah, I knew Colin.
I knew Colin 20 odd years ago.
Yeah, yeah.
Impish sense of humour, I think.
And, you know, very young to not be with us.
But, you know, I guess he's continuing on the celestial journey wherever he is.
Absolutely sure, along with everybody else he's doing that.
I mean, people may now phone in, may tell you, yeah, they've had information from Colin Fry.
I shall try and make it my business to find out if any of the people I know have heard anything from him.
Please do, because, you know, I'd be very, very interested to know.
And as I say, he had some negative media coverage one way or another, but I think anybody who does these things does.
And the rights and wrongs of it are always very hard to work out.
You know, how do you quantify any of this?
It is not an exact science.
None of it.
No, of course it's not.
Of course it's not.
It's like many a thing.
Anybody who does anything will be criticized.
None of us are free from criticism from people, rightly or wrongly.
It's their particular point of view.
It could be jealousy.
It could be anything.
It doesn't mean to say the criticism is right either.
You're always working on something.
Are you working on anything right now?
I'm supposed to be working on book three, but at the moment I'm working on just different lectures.
I'm lecturing quite a bit.
I'm going to France.
I was supposed to go to France this year to work with Raymond Moody, Ibn Alexander and Jim Tucker, but that conference has been postponed to next year.
So I'm looking forward to doing that with the big boys next year, you know.
Now, you've mentioned your book.
Most of the authors I have on here, you know, they virtually got the Amazon details out there, the full title, the reference number, everything before you can even draw a breath.
You haven't mentioned the title.
It's Things You Can Do When You're Dead.
That's the first book.
And the second book?
More Things You Can Do When You're Dead.
Exactly.
And what's the third one?
Even more.
Oh, God knows.
Yet more.
How about yet more?
No, no, no, it will be different because everybody listening to this, including yourself, your thought processes have to change as you get older.
They have to change.
Your ideas now are not the ideas you had 10 years ago, five years ago.
If you don't progress in your thinking, if anyone's sitting there thinking, yes, I know all the answers, this is what happens, blah, blah, you don't.
Because no one knows all the answers.
You can only go with what you know, what your experiences are, what you've read in the past, and how it makes sense.
But this consciousness thing, getting to the bottom of it, is the biggie at the moment.
Everyone's trying to do it.
Quantum physicists, everybody are trying to get into this consciousness act to try and find out what it is, where it lies and what we can do with it.
It's very strange.
It is very, I mean, it is the greatest enigma of them all, probably.
Have you been gathering stories, anecdotes, that kind of thing for the new book?
And what I'm getting around to is I wonder if you could tease us with one for the new book.
I haven't thought about it for a while because I don't think the new book will be the same as the anecdotes and the research in the past.
But I think things happen at the right time.
And when it's right, I will sit and I will do it.
And I'll probably do it quite quickly.
At the moment, I'm into more sort of bizarre things, things that will absolutely boggle your mind, like people who can think images onto film, etc.
Things that don't make any sense, things like the Bangs sisters, who could produce art just sitting looking at a painting.
I did a show about the Bangs sisters with a man whose name I've forgotten for right now.
I'll have to look him up.
But he is a great advocate of everything that they did.
And yet I got emails from people telling me they were proven to be fakes.
No, they weren't.
No, they weren't.
People can say that.
They do that all the time.
Oh, they were shown to be fakes.
No, they haven't.
They said that, I've forgotten his name now.
I'll remember his name in a minute.
The man that projects onto film, they said he was a fake.
No, he wasn't.
He was not proven to be a fake.
He was proven to be unreliable, but he wasn't proven to be a fake.
People say that when they don't want to address anything that's so bizarre, it's just crazy.
The Bank sisters were not fakes.
They were not fakes.
They were investigated by Queen Victoria's cartographer.
I've forgotten his name, Osborne Moore, Viscount Vice Marshal Osborne Moore.
Now, Osborne Moore is Queen Victoria's cartographer, a man of impeccable credentials and observation powers.
He was not nuts.
And that's what really angers me.
That's what I say to some of the people who email me here.
Look, I come from a hard news background.
I am not a soft cookie.
I am no pushover.
I am, you know, tough at times when I have to be.
But my view of it is not everybody can be a fake.
and who are we, unless it's egregious and really clear?
Who are we, knowing what we know, to say anybody is or isn't?
All we can do is look at what they do, listen to what they say, examine the claims, and make a decision.
And I don't think as much as, you know, I get the occasional email saying, I don't know what you had that person on.
They're obviously garbage and you were hoodwinked like everybody else.
In many cases, I don't think it's possible to be so clear.
No, it's not.
But the point is you have to only go on your own experience.
And the people who have experiences, you have to listen to them and evaluate what you can and leave what you don't want to know.
But on the other hand, you're talking about being journalists.
Journalists actually have been one of the greatest advocates of the paranormal, meaningly or not meaningfully to do that.
You had Maurice Barbanell in Fleet Street.
He started off as a complete sceptic and ended up as one of the most wonderful mediums channeling an entity called Silver Birch.
And Maurice Barbanell's work is just amazing.
Sorry, there was another, so do tell me the other one.
I don't know who the journalist was, but there was a physical medium before my day and yours called Jack Weber.
And he was going to be exposed by, I think it was a Sunday Post journalist.
He was going to sit with this person.
He was going to expose Jack Weber as a fake.
So he did the right thing.
He went and he sat in his circle.
And it was a double page middle feature of two pages saying, I went in as a sceptic and came out with something like the smile on the other side of my face.
And he came out and said categorically that he had gone in as a total disbeliever and had come out knowing that Jack Weber was totally genuine.
Now that's something for a reporter to see in a double page, middle page spread, as you know.
I can't remember who he was.
Tricia, my advice to you is to get writing that third book because one and two were excellent.
And if you haven't seen either of those books, things you can do when you're dead or more things you can do when you're dead, you're in for a treat because they're beautifully put together.
And, you know, I'm itching for the third one.
And we can talk about it when you do it.
Thank you very much for coming on.
Just to say to listeners, who will point out there was slight mains hum in the background of this.
I think the conversation was better done than not done.
And somebody did email me from America about the use of notch filters to filter out these things.
Now, I have to say, you know, I know a fair bit about sound engineering.
I don't quite know how to do that.
So if you are listening to this and you can take out that little bit of, or know how to help me take out that little bit of mains hum, let me know.
You know, I know about compressors and microphones and all of that stuff.
I absolutely love it.
It's my meat and drink.
But filtering is another issue.
I don't quite have filtering on that level, although it might be hidden on my computer somewhere and I just don't know it.
Tricia, sorry about going off on that, but just had to explain.
Thank you very much.
If people want to know about you and your work, where do they go?
They go to my website, www.tricia Robertson, spelt T-R-I-C-I-A, Tricia Robertson.weebley.com.
That's Tricia Robertson's all together, www.t-R-I-C-I-A Robertson, R-O-B-E-R-T-S-O-N dot Weebley, W-E-E-B-L-Y dot com.
And the whole, all the research work, everything's there that I've done thus far.
There's always more to do.
And as you've been speaking, the sun has come out here.
I hope it comes your way.
Tricia, thank you so much for speaking with me.
You know, I've had, this week has been a week where I've had three hours worth of sleep most nights, which is not enough.
And you've nicely woken me up.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
The great Tricia Robertson, she will be back.
I'll put a link to her work on my website, theunexplained.tv.
Thank you very much for your support.
Thank you to Adam at Creative Hotspot for his too, for keeping me going one way and another.
Suggestions, feedback, anything, go to the website theunexplained.tv.
More great guests to come.
So until next, we meet here on The Unexplained, please stay safe.
Please stay calm.
And above all, please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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