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June 13, 2021 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
59:36
Edition 552 - Terje Simonsen
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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 Unexplained.
Beautiful, perfect day as I record this.
We're just sliding from May into June now, and it is 24 degrees Celsius, 75 degrees Fahrenheit, clear blue sky, little bit of a breeze, and absolutely perfect.
But it does make me think that after all of the last two months of rain and cloud weather, we're now heading into hot stuff.
And by July, I'm going to be needing that little air conditioning box that I bought off eBay.
I need to be checking it out just in case we get back up into the 30s again.
But I'll deal with it when it comes.
Thank you very much for all of your emails.
All of the things that you've been saying about the show, gratefully received.
And please keep them coming if you have an idea for the show.
Guest suggestion, anything you want to tell me, it is theunexplained.tv.
That's the website.
Follow the link and you can send me an email from there.
Just a couple of shout-outs before we get to the guest, a return visit to Therier Simonsen, author, researcher on the paranormal and occult and a lot of other stuff.
You liked him last time, you wanted him to return, so he is returning on this edition.
Before I do the shout-outs and get to Therier, just a quick thank you to Adam, my webmaster, for his hard work and to Haley for booking the guests, including this one.
Dwayne in Bellevue, Canada, nice to hear from you.
Nick in Romsey, Hampshire, nice to hear from you.
Paul Lewin, thank you for the UFO suggestion, Paul.
Ross in Liverpool, some strange ghost photos.
And the question with those photos is, where is the strange light source?
Where is the light in those pictures coming from?
A very, very weird set of pictures.
I don't know what to make of them.
Thank you.
Joe in Bristol, nice to hear from you.
Ian sent me a photo of himself and Paul Sinclair on those famous cliffs where those strange things happen at Bempton.
What an amazing thing to see.
One of these days, I want to go to Bempton.
I want to spend some time there and just experience it all for myself.
Who knows?
I might even end up living there.
Thank you very much.
And thank you for all of your emails.
Please keep them coming.
Okay, the guest on this edition then, let's get to Scandinavia now, Terrier Simon Sen.
He's been on this show before, and it is a pleasure to welcome him back.
Terrier, thank you for coming back on the show.
Thanks a lot for having me, Howard.
So, Therie, what's been going on in your life since we last spoke, which I think was more than a year ago?
How have things been?
Well, as we both have experienced, there has been a pandemic and there are lots of challenges with lockdown and also economically with cancelled book fairs and all that cancel.
It has been a kind of demanding period, but you know, we have to try to make the best out of it.
And luckily, none of my friends or family have died.
Several have been infected by the virus, but they have done fairly well.
So I'm happy for that at least.
Now, you are in Norway, we have to say that.
And I don't know a great deal about the way that Norway came through all of this.
I know how we came through it, and I've heard the reports about Sweden.
Are you beginning to come out of it now as we think we are here in England?
Yes, clearly.
Vaccines have started to say a great part of population have been vaccinated.
Statistically, we have been doing quite well here in Norway.
That's what we can say, several reasons for that.
Most importantly, I think we are not a dense population.
We have a long country and it's a small city.
So we have not this urban metropolis thing.
Everybody infects everybody.
So we are, as a nation, we are fairly well off during the pandemic.
And as I said, no vaccine is rolled out.
So I think we'll see the light in the end of the tunnel and it's not the train approaching.
No, that's, you know, we all have to hope for that, I think, after this terrible, awful period that I hope I never see anything of its like ever again.
But as you say, Norway is different because, you know, God gave you social distancing.
Yeah, that's a very good way to put it.
People are so far apart.
Do you know, I've been to Finland and I've been to Sweden.
I must come to Norway.
And I want to do it in the winter time.
Let's hope we can do that then.
Okay, for my listener who hasn't heard you, and I know that a lot of listeners did and they wanted to hear you again, but for my listener who hasn't heard you, tell me about yourself then.
How would you describe Therie Simonsen?
Well, you know, I'm a strange mixture between artist and say scholar.
So I used to play the piano quite a lot and do lots of salsa dancing and that kind of things.
And I wanted to become a pianist when I was younger.
But I also was interested in the broader cultural field.
So I studied the history of ideas, which is really, say, the network of all cultural impulses interplay with each other.
You know, how real, say, what is called normal history interacts with art history, interacts with the history of literature and philosophy.
And so the big cultural web, really.
And there under also these paranormal or occult movements and phenomena, which for me have been a very, very exciting study.
Before we talk about all of that, which is going to be the bulk of our conversation, I suspect, the history of ideas is an interesting thing.
And I love to talk to people who've talked about the history of ideas, philosophy, those sorts of things, because I've never really had time for those.
And when I was at uni, I never really got on with philosophy, but I just think I was a kid who wanted to get on the radio and I just didn't have time to think.
But when you hear news stories like there was one today that appeared, some researchers in Scotland have found some very, very, very ancient wood carvings.
It makes me have a, this may be a very pedestrian kind of thought to have, but it makes me have this thought.
When did we start to think about who we are and how we fit into this world and possibly the cosmos?
When did things change from we've got to hunt, we've got to procreate, we've got to live, to we've got to philosophize as well?
Well, you know, if you look to the history of religion or anthropology, in fact, it's a normal opinion is that shamanism or shamanism, I don't know how you prefer to pronounce it, but shamanism is a very old tradition.
It goes back at least 30,000 years before Christ, you know.
and I suppose when you start doing rituals, you know, and interact with the spirit world as they experience they do, there must be lots of thinking also and reflection and how are we to act with the spirits and how are the spirits related to the bigger picture and eventually the creator God and all that stuff.
So, I suspect, even if it's not a written philosophy tradition, I suspect 30,000 years should be a good estimate.
If you go to the written tradition, of course, the oldest tradition is probably the Indian Vedanta tradition, which go at different, it's difficult to say exact, but at least some thousand, about three to five thousand years before Christ, I suppose.
Right.
And do we get a sense from the history of when man became aware of things beyond his or herself?
In other words, those almost paranormal things that we talk about, perhaps gods or spacemen, you know, to use a well-known phrase.
When did we start to look beyond ourselves and see significance in maybe ghosts and spirits and maybe things that come from other planets?
When did all that start and how?
Well, as I said, the Indian tradition have lots of reports of both paranormal phenomena and also about aliens, in fact.
So I think if you go to the Vedanta tradition, as I refer to, and also you use the word a man, and that is, in fact, an old Sanskrit word, manas means a man is etymologically say the root of it is the carrier of thought.
So they reflected on themselves back then as the carrier of thoughts.
So a man is really in itself a kind of manifestation of that process you are asking about.
But if you think about the carvings and paintings in places like ancient Egypt that we found, and even more recently in places like Kobekli Tepe and Peru and even in Central South America and places around the world, they seemed to be aware of something that we don't seem to be as aware of today.
So I suppose that begs the question, have we lost something along the way?
I think so, yes.
Western modern tradition, and that is also what I suggested we should talk a bit about today, that if you have, say, a map of reality that excludes certain aspects of experience, then you get this problem.
I think Western both philosophy and science has ended up because we are very instrumentally successful in conquering the world and even some part of the space.
But as lots of these other older cultures and indigenous people have reports about the spiritual, I will not go into what are spirits.
There's a lot of we can speak out about that, but at least experiences of spirits and experiences of aliens and that kind of things.
And if that experiences are somehow relegated to psychiatry, as they are in our time, that is a problem, I feel.
So I think we have lost something because we are devaluating what really used to be considered perhaps the most valuable experiences that people can have, namely experiences of transcendence.
And that's given us a problem, hasn't it?
As you say, that in this modern era, I mean, look, as we speak at the moment, there is about to be a report on UFOs or UAPs delivered in Washington.
And it would seem from what we're hearing, some things have been encountered.
I think we know this anyway, but some things have been encountered that come perhaps from somewhere else that we simply cannot explain.
You know, we have more to find out about this.
But our difficulty over the years coming to terms with this is, I think, partly due to the fact that we lost touch with those elements of ourselves that the ancients had built into their culture.
Now, I don't know how that worked, whether the aliens or whatever they may be or other dimensional beings, if they existed, made themselves less available, or we simply started to deny them over the years.
But something's happened, and that's why we have difficulty, I think, some of us, coming to terms with where we are.
I agree totally.
And as I said, I'm very interested in the phenomenon and about how models of reality determine what you are able to see or perceive.
Because, as I said, if something is by definition non-existent, then you cannot somehow account for it.
So I think it's a very problem that we have established quite narrow models for explaining reality, and then we are losing something.
As I said, we cannot explain all what are spirits, what are aliens, and all that.
Lots of theories, some good and some not so good.
But at least from our side of this, we are narrowing the scope on reality.
And I think that's a pity.
Two of your books, Our Secret Powers, a short history of nearly everything paranormal, and I think it was re-released or refined a couple of years after that.
So it's basically two volumes, but the same thing.
Deal with paranormality.
Is that something that has been a part of your life that you have personally experienced?
Yes, I would say so.
And also because some people in my family told about stories.
I can give an example.
For instance, my aunt and uncle were in bed together, and my uncle went to sleep.
And my aunt was reading a history book about ancient Egyptian history.
And she's now a New Ager, so this was quite a normal history book.
And she was below, there was a Kind of statue, or something like that.
And the text below, she was reading that, and suddenly she heard my uncle was starting speaking in his sleep.
And what the words that came out from my uncle's mouth were the exact same words that my aunts were reading in the history book, you know.
So this is kind of a strange experience.
I would call it kind of spontaneous telepathy.
That is one example.
But he was sleeping.
He was sleeping.
That's astonishing.
I mean, we've heard of telepathy.
We have a sense, and you've written about this, that we may communicate on levels that we don't understand in the realms of what we can just see and touch and feel and know.
Yes.
There's another realm beyond that.
But to be able to communicate words to somebody, even if you're very close to that person physically and spiritually, to be able to communicate words to them and get them to speak those words in their sleep, I've never heard a story like that before.
Well, no, as I said, excuse my English, you know, I'm still a bit novice in speaking English in programming.
Me too, and I was born to speak it.
Oh, okay.
Thank you a lot.
How on.
No, but what is the crux, the core of my book is that consciousness is a collective phenomenon.
I use the metaphor the mental internet because if you think of consciousness as just something going on inside your own head, these things are really totally unexplainable or inexplicable.
But if you consider consciousness as a collective field of information that we all participate in, then these phenomena are much more easy to explain.
So I think what is so important is to establish an understanding of consciousness as a collective field of information.
As I said also, I used the metaphor, the mental internet, because if someone says internet is inside my PC, we know that's not true.
Internet is between all the PCs, between all the tablets, between all the telephones.
And just in the same way, or metaphorically, in the same way, consciousness is a web that linking us all together.
So we are communicating on a subconscious level via this web of consciousness all the time.
And some people are more aware of that communication.
And those are the people we call psychics.
Have you had experience in Norway of psychics?
Do they have psychics there?
Oh, yes, we have quite a lot of them.
And some good and some not so good.
And some are somehow deceived by their own ego.
And some are, what you can say, deluded in other ways.
Of course, some people have taken LSD, you know, and perhaps some people have psychiatric problems and so.
But I have spoken to several.
I'm quite impressed by I don't know if I told you that little story.
Yes, I remember I told you, but should I repeat it?
I was going to a date.
Well, I think if we've got the minutes, we might as well.
Yeah, let's go back.
Okay.
Yes, I was going to a date and I have never met this woman before in this kind of connection.
So I had no idea about, say, her specifics, to put it that way.
And I asked an old traveller here in Norway.
He's quite psychic.
He's 85 years old now.
And I asked, how will this date go?
And he told me lots about her.
And yes, will you go very nice because of this and that.
And you communicate very good.
And so.
And then he suddenly said, and I can tell you, this woman is one meter and 64 centimeters tall.
I used the metric system.
I don't know how that will mean in feet or inches, but one meter and 64 centimeters.
I think that's kind of average height, isn't it?
Yes, not exact, but at least he gave me the exact height of this woman.
And I was going to this data and I asked just out of curiosity during the evening, by the way, how tall are you?
And then she said, one meter and 64 centimeters.
Yes.
I was impressed that she knew, I think, when we first spoke about this, because I know that I'm six foot one.
Okay.
But my height may have changed as I've got older.
I don't know.
People tend to shrink a bit when they get older.
But at least that was that.
And also, could you give lots of other examples of that?
Yeah.
I don't know how much time you wanted me to spend on that.
I mean, look, depending on how much research you've done into this kind of thing, I think people are fascinated by.
I am.
I'm fascinated by how sometimes I can know what somebody is thinking or I can gauge their mood.
And it seems that I'm tapping into something, but I don't know what I'm tapping into.
No, I can give you one example that was not a psychic, it was from our family.
My grandfather, he was an engineer and a very rational person.
But when my grandmother was approaching home, he would feel that half an hour before she was coming home.
And he would hear it physically when she opened the door, going up the stairs and so on.
And if she had been invited to some friends and have a nice cup of tea or coffee and become two hours later that afternoon, he would know that also.
So it became so regular for him that he would hear the noises of her opening the door and going up to stairs that he put on the dinner on the stove because he knew by certainty that then she would approach half an hour later.
So that was very regular.
So that communication via, as I say, if we think in the metaphor of the mental internet, he was somehow say perceiving her coming before via this mental web.
That is at least my way of describing it.
And that connects with something that I know you contend.
And I believe this too.
I think we're very much on the same wavelength.
people have different perceptions of so-called paranormality.
But in fact, the point that you try and make is that the unusual is actually a part of our daily experience, whether we acknowledge that fact or whether we don't.
Exactly.
And I also remember, I'm a bit afraid just to repeat myself, but I think it is worth repeating that the most prestigious psychological journal in the world is normally considered to be the American Psychologist, which is released by APA, American Psychological Association.
And in 2018, the May issue, there is an article by Professor Etzel Kadenja.
He is Mexican, but he is tenured in Sweden at Lund University, and he's written close to 300 peer-reviewed articles.
So he's a really stellar scientist, this man.
And he's written an article called Experimental Evidence for Parapsychological Phenomena, a review.
And he goes through more or less all the experiments that had been done in the paranormal field and concludes that, yes, these phenomena are very real.
But we probably need, say, a reformulated idea of consciousness to explain them.
And then he suggests some model from quantum physics.
So I think that's even if people want a short version of my book, they could read that article.
Of course, my book is much funnier and much richer and much more comprehensive than Cardani's article, but it's really good.
And as I said, that is the most prestigious psychological journal in the world.
And if they allow him to write there with these perspectives, it's certainly worth considering.
But if such things exist, and I have no doubt they do because of strange things that have happened in my life, why is it so difficult to access them?
You know, there are a million questions in my life.
At the moment, I have a million question marks hanging over my life.
It's very wearing.
A lot of people can relate to this at the moment.
It's very draining.
And I would love to be able to go outside myself and use some of that ability that I might have that's allowed me to be somewhat intuitive over the years, but not nearly enough and certainly not in a way that I could systematize or use in a routine fashion.
Why is it so difficult and why is it not possible for us to just tap into this as we would turn on the television or switch on the computer or whatever?
That's a very good question.
I think, as I said, my idea about this, say, collective consciousness is a basic natural thing.
And it is like all us.
Life is full of complexities.
Even if you're an athlete, you will eventually become old and sick and die, you know.
So that is some part.
It's somehow the problem of evil, the problem of chaos and conflict.
It seems to be an integrated part of the world that things are not easy, really.
But also we develop and grow through our problems.
So if you have that perspective of the world as consciousness becoming more conscious about itself and say using problems and challenges to enhance that process, that perhaps could give some meaning.
But as I said, these phenomena are not different from everything else.
My perception of a bird can be wrong.
I look at a bird 100 meters, 100 yards away, and I think it's a robin, and suddenly, oh no, it was a crow, for instance.
You know, my perception, physical perception, can be wrong.
So even if it works quite well, it's not perfect in any way.
And also, these phenomena we are talking about, the so-called paranormal, even if they, as the American military, found out during a period of 20 years, it's quite astonishing results they can get.
Still, they were not perfect in any way.
So I don't know if that's a good answer, but it's just fallible.
Like everything human is fallible, I think.
The world is full of paranormal investigators these days.
Some people who do it as happy amateurs, some people who do it semi-professionally, some people who do it academically.
Those who dabble in these things, are they doing something that may have risks inherent in it that they may not be aware of?
Yeah, I think so.
But, you know, basically, I think it's a good thing to explore.
And Aristotle said, the old Greek philosopher, that it's a man's nature to want to know.
So I think we are following our basic nature if we are serious in our exploration also about the paranormal.
But of course, the classic is the guru trap.
If you are going into this and you have some kind of insights and use that to gain power or extract money from people and that kind of things, that is, of course, difficult.
And also, if you are prone to have some kind of psychic problems, a friend of mine here in my little town, Mandal, he is quite gifted, at least as I perceive him, with psychic abilities, telepathy and that kind of things.
But he has also suffered quite a lot and have been committed to psychiatric hospital.
And he asked me, how can I develop my psychic abilities more?
And I said, I will not reveal his name, but I said, do you really think that is a good idea?
Because that could bring more imbalance into your life.
And also, and I recommended for him just go more for walks in the forest and feed the dog and do what's called mundane activities that ground you and make you centered in your own life.
Because you can be plagued with too much information.
And Norway's most famous psychic so-called Snorselman, he's now 94 years old, and he's been used by the police to find, say, people that had disappeared, and also by the Red Cross when people have been taken by avalanche, for instance, and they can't find them.
They have called him and several times succeeded in finding people buried by avalanches, for instance.
But he told a journalist, it's a miracle I've not become totally mad.
Oh, the journalist asked, why?
Yes, because the information is overflowing him.
When he meets a person, and very often people seeking him are troubled persons in a way, he somehow perceives their suffering, perceived their anxiety, perceived their pain.
So too much information can be a problem.
And also, a psychic I consult from time to time when I need some perspectives on my life.
I write about her in chapter one of my book.
She did some quite successful archival research when we dug up information about my great-grandfather.
And she was spot on a couple of times.
But she told me also difficult for her, for instance, to go to the shop often because if she stands in a queue and there are four other persons in that queue, she suddenly starts to say get pictures from four different life stories.
So that can be quite chaotic.
So that is an aspect that if you dabble into this, for instance, people using LSD and used as a therapeutic tool, I think psychedelics can be very valuable, but they must be used with, say, together with a psychologist and in safe connections.
But if many will tell about having telepathic experiences during psychedelic trips, for instance, and that could be difficult for you in many ways.
So you have to be careful that any doors that you open are doors to things that you can handle.
Yes, I think so.
And therefore, if you look to the Buddhist tradition there, they take these phenomena for granted.
They take clairvoyance for granted.
They take contact with spirits for granted.
They take telepathy for granted.
And so.
But they say that it can all very often become impediments on the way because you can be allured by these phenomena to go into that.
Oh, I'm the great guru.
Oh, I'm omniscient, omnipotent.
So you can hype your ego.
So they will often have an extreme modest attitude towards these phenomena.
And working with your body, doing garden work, and all that kind of things that makes you grounded, you know.
So the Buddhist tradition, I feel, have a very healthy approach to these phenomena, always balancing them with a mundane activity.
A very famous old Zen saying that I will try to be poetic.
Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.
After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.
As we say down here, first things first.
Yes, and always, always stay grounded, even if you open up, especially and also with another metaphor.
If a tree is to stretch its branches towards the heaven, it has to get its roots even deeper into the ground.
And I think that's the problem with people who get involved in all of the fields that have fascinated me and you for all of our lives.
You have to know where to draw the line.
You know, when I do these shows, I get completely immersed in the work, the setting up, the people that I'm talking to, their stories.
And I have to be able to switch off at the end of it.
And sometimes, because I've got a lot of work on, I can't switch off.
But it's vital.
I've always felt that it's vital for me to be able to leave it all behind when you turn off the equipment, when you turn off the microphone.
Otherwise, I think you start ruminating too much.
And I don't think that's a good idea.
And I don't think some people can handle that degree of rumination.
But it's interesting that we talk about that now.
So what do you think, Therier, is the difference between what I would call gut feeling that I've certainly always had about things in my life and clairvoyant stroke telepathy.
Now, today before we spoke, I had a gut feeling.
I didn't know what we were going to talk about.
And I thought, but it's Therier.
He's a conversationalist.
We'll have a good conversation, whatever, so I don't need to worry.
That was the feeling in my gut.
But was I getting the gut feeling from somewhere else?
Or was that just my mind telling me this?
Well, I think, again, if we think in light of the mental internet, you know, we are connected on the subconscious level.
And I think because you said you are an intuitive person and also have been quite used to listen to your intuition, your gut feeling, then I think it can be a real perception of how, say, our contact will be.
And in the last chapter of my book, I discussed this theme quite thoroughly because, as you know, the Nobel winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, he says the apparent magic, and he uses apparent magic of intuition,
is that somehow you have just spontaneous, you somehow utilize all your experiences just like in a snap when you make the right decision, should I drive to the left or to the right?
It's no magic there, it's just somehow generated experiences that suddenly kicks in.
But I take lots of examples that cannot be accounted for by that.
There's a famous American psychologist, she's dead, regrettably, Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, and she wrote a book called Extraordinary Experience.
And she was a skeptic, started out as a skeptic, but her daughter had lost a harp.
It was stolen From the car, a very valuable harp.
And she couldn't, she, you know, called the police and she also talked to the neighbors, but she was not able to find this harp.
And then suddenly a friend of hers said, Have you tried a dowser?
And she didn't believe in that kind of stuff, you know, with people using a pendulum.
But what had she to lose?
So she contacted the leader of the American Dowser Association.
He was a retired military man, Harold McCoy, he was called, and quite high up in the military.
I don't remember his kind of colonel, lieutenant or something.
And he just get a map.
He was living in a different town.
He get a map of her town, and then he sat down with his pendulum, you know, and he set an X on the map and sent it back to her.
And she went to this place, and to make a long story short, she found out that the neighbor, she talked to the neighbor of some kind of suspect guy in a building where this dowser had set this X. And then this neighbor told that he had seen this suspect neighbor coming home with a harp some weeks earlier.
Yes.
And then she called the police and get a research warrant.
And lo and behold, there was the harp.
That's quite a story.
It's quite a story.
And she was a skeptic.
And she said, it suddenly struck her, it came a sentence from her subconscious mind.
This changes everything.
So she had to totally reformulate her view on space and on consciousness after this experience.
And she's written this wonderful book called Extraordinary Experience, which I also quote in my book.
So do you think that all information is available if you find the way to look for it?
I mean, she found a dowser who was able to locate what had happened to her harp.
You know, I don't want to go into what it was, but I lost something that is very important to me about four or five weeks ago.
And I have searched multiply in places where I think it may have been lost.
And I've drawn a complete blank.
And I've thought to myself a million times, how is it possible for something to just vanish?
And if I've got any intuition, why am I not getting any information in my head here about where this might be?
I have replayed my movements.
I have been back over that day.
I've been back to the place where I think I might have lost it six times now.
I've asked police and people who may have been in the area.
Nothing, zero.
And I have no intuition.
But if all information is there to be found, then the location of the thing that I lost is also there.
Yes, it should be there.
So my wild guess why you are not finding it yourself, it could be because of, you know, if you have hopes and fears, that some very often tend to distort our perception of things.
So of course, this is very important for you.
And then somehow you can, in a way, oversteer your own very subtle impressions.
Therefore, it's very often a good idea to consult with an odd.
I don't know how it is in Britain if you have a good dowser, but that could, if possible.
I know there is one.
I don't remember his name, but I can find that.
So you could use that and send him or her a map and see what they can find for you.
You see, it's one of those things.
It's unfinished business, I think, for human beings is a very difficult thing to handle.
You know, things that you haven't concluded.
And for me, I've replaced the item that I lost now at expense.
But that's not the point.
The point for me now is the mystery of what on earth in God's heaven could have happened to it.
So maybe the dowsing route, if I do it, I'll tell you.
I'll let you know.
I'll let my listener know.
I can send it.
I can try to find the name of it.
Yeah, okay.
Maybe we could do an experiment.
I mean, I don't want, at the moment, I don't want to go into the details of what I lost, but it was something quite important to my life and work.
I think it was the gun with which you killed your former colleague, wasn't it?
I don't think so.
Tell me.
Okay, okay.
That's an interesting insight into the way that your mind is working at the moment.
Just joking, just joking.
Consciousness, we talked about.
Yes.
There is a lot of discussion at the moment, and I've done a lot of podcasts and radio shows about this, about whether consciousness, whatever it may be, survives us.
In other words, whether it goes on to another realm, whether it continues in some form after we die.
If it is possible to probe other dimensions, how come our survival after death is the greatest enigma of them all?
It's a very good question.
I am, of course, not able to answer that.
But at least in my last chapter, in my book, I go into some very most famous reincarnation research done by psychiatrist Dr. Ian Stevenson at Virginia.
He was Canadian, but he worked at Virginia University in the USA.
And he checked those stories where children tell about earlier lives and give quite detailed descriptions about the town that they supposedly had live in early, and also what kind of occupation they had, how many children they had, and all that kind of things.
And as perhaps probably quite a number of your listeners will know, he went to hospitals and checked and he got confirmed cases on several times that the story of these children, in fact, were correct.
And there was so stunning details.
And also, some of these children have even birthmarks that resemble the story.
So, for instance, a Turkish boy, he told about being shot very close and he had a kind of scar.
And then he went to this hospital where this in the town where this boy had supposedly lived in his earlier life.
And he checked the medical records and he got this autopsy photographs, and there you could see the body lying with the scar, you know.
So these kind of stories seem to indicate at least should we then say that this boy is a direct reincarnation or is this just a kind of continuation?
You know, the Hindus have a tradition of regarding that it is the person, it's somehow identical person that is somehow reincarnated.
Whereas the Buddhists more think of a way of continuation, that you have one light and with this or one candle, and with this candle you light another candle and blowing out the first.
So it is a continuation, but it's not identity.
So it's, of course, extremely deep, profound questions, this.
But at least some kind of continuation, I think, is very much, very good documented by the work of Iran Stevenson.
Indeed.
And his work continued by somebody I spoke with on my podcast last month.
Jim Tucker.
Dr. Jim B. Tucker.
A wonderful man to speak with who's done some incredible work.
And I was amazed at the number of cases.
I think it's beyond a thousand, but he's done a lot of cases.
But it makes you wonder, doesn't it, if we do go on in that way?
And I think we do.
Why are the experiences of bringing forward memories from a previous life not more common?
You know, most kids don't recall what they were, where they were before.
And I wonder why that is.
Again, I think it's a natural limitation that which is a healthy thing to do.
There is a famous case, one of Stevens' famous cases that also was explored by a journalist of Washington Post.
And her name is Susanna Ghanem.
She was a Lebanese girl, very strong, say, memories of what seems to be her former life.
And she has, at least some years ago when I was looking at that case, she had not let go of this former identity.
So she was confused, it seemed, and quite a lot of time had to call her former family or former life family, you know.
So just this psyche going into shops and suddenly taking up four life stores of the other people there.
If you say you have been, should have been reincarnated 10 times and you got memories from all those early lives, you get psychotic by the second, you know.
So that is, I think it's a healthy limitation.
So there is a natural process that happens within ourselves that cuts off those things.
They may be there, but we can't access them.
Very often.
And I know from my little town here in Norway, a friend of mine, he's a lawyer, very rational man, and not kind of new age guy at all.
And he told me that his brother had suddenly started when he was five, six years old, he had suddenly started about telling about an earlier life in our neighboring town.
I live in a small town called Mandel and our neighboring town is called Christiansand.
And this boy, he was five, six years old, told about living in Christensen about 1840.
And each morning at the breakfast table, he was revealing new episodes from his life living in Christians about 1840.
And he told he was living together with a woman there, and he gave the name of this woman, the nickname even of this woman.
And it developed over a period of time, I think it was a month or so, and between these kind of say married people in the former life, the communication became more and more conflicted, and it became fights.
And it ended by him killing this woman, his wife, in 1840.
And then the stories stopped, you know.
And he had given description of the house and how the door looked and everything.
So it should be have been, I have not done that research, but if I had been Tucker or Stevenslaw, I would of course immediately go to the archives in Christensen and criminal records of the police and see was there really a murder or a family killing at that time happening that and did she have this name and where did they live in a house looking like he had described and so but that was a very case I know from my own
experience.
But after he was six years, he never have spoken about this again.
And I don't think he remembers anything of it anymore.
Well, that's good, because in that particular case, I would imagine that in later life, that's the kind of thing that can lead you with or leave you with psychological issues.
Yes, exactly.
And also, one of the most famous writers in Norway, she has written, I think it's, I don't know, 80 books or something.
It's not kind of regarded as high literature, but it's a kind of kiosk literature.
And she was committed to a psychiatric hospital when she was young.
And she saw all these strange things and also, you know, other beings and all that kind.
But then a psychiatrist told her one day, you are not psychotic, you are psychic.
And then somehow she started to do the the work in a way and map these realities but of course it I have interviewed quite a lot of psychics and many of them have lots of psychological disturbances before they come to terms with their perception and of reality and somehow learned to deal with it and get balance and ground.
So it is a challenge to open these channels too much.
It's not always a gift.
You don't hear too many UFO stories from Norway.
Now, maybe I'm just not looking for them, but you know, do you have UFO accounts and reports?
I know of the Hess-Dahlen lights that are said to be linked, but that's all I know about.
There is this crazy guy you are talking with.
No, I saw a UFO many years ago.
What did you see?
Well, I was visiting a place I had lived when I was a young boy, and it was the night time, and suddenly I saw what I would describe as a luminous cigar appearing on the sky.
And what was strange was I was not able to see if it was, say, 40 or 50 meters away, or if it was about two kilometers away.
It was very difficult to see the size and the distance of this, say, luminous cigar.
And suddenly it started to zap, you know, and it seemed to move extremely fast.
And I suppose it was, if I would give the distance, it was rather a couple of kilometers away.
But as I said, it was difficult to pinpoint it.
It zapped very fast.
And then suddenly it started to somehow come closer and over my head.
And I became a bit scared, you know.
So I was starting walking backwards.
And then suddenly it was gone.
And never to react.
Do you think it was aware of you?
From that account, it sounds like it might have been.
I will not rush to any conclusions there, but that was the aspect you said there, was what scared me.
Because when it was away, I was just curious.
When it started to seem to appear hovering over my head, then I get a bit nervous, but then it disappeared.
So I will not rush to any conclusions.
It could be kind of a materiological phenomenon, but as I said, it was not a usual experience and hovering over me.
You know, I get this slight feeling that there could be some observation going on.
Yes.
But I will not conclude with anything.
The Hessal and lights we mentioned, I've done a whole podcast about those.
Oh, you did.
And it's a fascinating case.
Are they still reported?
This is a valley in Norway where these strange shafts of light and strange, almost like energetic light forms are seen.
You can describe it better than me, but is it something from history now?
Is it still being reported?
I have not updated it myself.
I read quite a lot about it some years ago.
And there have been many researchers, UFO researchers from the US coming.
And so I don't know if they have reached any conclusions, but the phenomena as such are real.
The observations are very real and confirmed by lots of people.
But I have not been updated on this phenomenon the last five years, so I will not say what happens there today.
But as I said, they are very well documented and also by several researchers.
And the great mystery as to whether these things are something that appear externally or whether perhaps the Earth is acting as some kind of battery or generator for them.
It really is a truly absorbing and fascinating case, I think.
It is.
It is.
But when I did work on it some years ago, I did not reach any conclusion either, whether or not it's kind of electromagnetic phenomenon generated by the Earth, or if it really is some have, say, more alien-like things going on.
I have not reached any conclusion on that.
As the Americans say, we've shot the breeze for the best part of the last hour, and it's always enjoyable, Telier.
What are you working on at the moment?
Well, no, I'm working on trying to promote my book.
So if I'm allowed to tell your listeners, I could say that it won a Nautilus Silver Award earlier this year, which is the same price as the Dalai Lama won in 2018.
So I'm quite happy about that.
And there will be a Czech release of the book later this year, if not the pandemic have stopped that.
And also, I hope to get a Spanish release of the book.
So I'm working as my own agent and promoter these days.
And this is a short history of nearly everything paranormal, which, as I said, appears twice in the book listings because it was issued, I think, in 2018 and then again in 2020.
That's correct.
But the last version is updated and expanded a bit and also with a registry.
And so it's really a much better version to buy.
And of all of the panoply of things that you investigate in this book and talk about and know about, what to you is the most fascinating?
Very difficult to say because it's so much, but the archaeological finds done by clairvoyance, I think, is very intriguing.
And for my own self, I am very interested in how we in our own daily lives eventually can use these abilities.
How can I use telepathy to connect better with, say, friends and family?
How can I use clairvoyance to make better decisions?
Should I go to that job meeting or to that job meeting?
And so to maneuver, to manage our lives better with the use of that expanded consciousness that I think is available for all of us there.
That is very fascinating.
And I have done quite a lot of experiences myself also that have been very helpful to me really in my daily life.
But as a project, as projects, clairvoyant projects, and so I think perhaps archaeological finds done by clairvoyants that have been very intriguing to Read about for me.
Well, it's an amazing life that you're leading there.
You know, we all have a life plan, I think.
And John Lennon, I think it was who said, Life is what happens when you're making plans.
We all have an idea of where we would like to be.
Is there some unfulfilled dream or ambition or something that you would like to achieve?
You've got the book out, you think about these things, you write about these things, you talk about these things.
Is there something else that you would like to do?
With my life in general, or with, say, well, you know, I feel some that is perhaps silly to say, because then we are getting religious or philosophical rather than scientific.
But I feel somehow it's a kind of vocation for me to spread the message about this expounded consciousness.
So I want to do that and do it in the most successful way possible, really.
So I hope to see the book becoming a bestseller, both in the English language, but also in Spanish, because I was part of a Latin American milieu in Oslo in several years.
And, you know, the Latin American, they have a much more, say, much more matter-of-fact approach to these things typically.
They take for granted that you can have these experiences.
They have not established as strong as we, say, normal Westerns or Europeans have, that you have to be irrational or psychotic to experience telepathy or clairvoyance and this.
They take this phenomenon for granted.
It's part of their lives.
And that takes us back to the beginning of our conversation where we said that we have lost something maybe along the way.
You know, I think the greatest thing that I would like to explore, and maybe you thought about this, is the power of, they call it the power of intention, the wanting something to happen, wanting it clearly enough and with complete purity.
And in my life, if I've wanted something, maybe a career ambition or something like that, or something I've wanted to own, whatever it might be, if I want it and I move towards it with purity of intention, I know this is going to sound really new agey, and I really, my listener knows that I'm just not like that.
But on those occasions where I've wanted something with purity and absolute intensity, I've got what I wanted.
I think that's a great, you know, we had a great flurry of books in the 90s, early 2000s about this.
I think there is room somewhere for a bit more research about that.
That's what I think.
I totally agree with you, but somehow I feel that is also baked in.
There is this psychiatrist that he is Bernie, I just call him.
But what is the last name?
No, I'm a bit nervous being on the program here.
But he's done lots about this coincidence, you know, synchronicity.
So if you have a strong intention, and that is if we are really allowing ourselves to be a bit new age and airy fairy here, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, the Brazilian author, he says early in The Alchemist that if you really want something, the universe will conspire to make you achieve your goal.
And if you think of, say, consciousness as a collective field, if you think in your mind, you are not just thinking inside your mind, you are organizing in the mind at large something to happen.
You are orchestrating the mind at large.
You're putting in your order.
Yes, you are putting in your order.
And the person you were thinking of that you know as Bernie, I think is Dr. Bernard Beitman.
Of course, Beitman.
You know, I know him, but we just go by first name.
So, yeah.
And he's written about that and tried to take a modern.
The first one doing research on these things was, of course, C.G. Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist.
And I might add occultist as well, because he did a lot of research on mediums and had lots of paranormal experiences in his own life.
But his book on synchronicity, together with the Nobel laureate in physics, Wolfgang Pauli, is a classic in this field.
And Pauli had lots of experiences of manifesting things himself by, but mostly chaotic manifestations of, say, Poltergeist type.
But as you say, if you want something and strongly focus on ideas, you can use this same force in a harmonious way.
But that brings us also to that.
Is it possible to imagine anything?
I don't think so, because you have to somehow cooperate with the deeper levels of your own soul.
For instance, Beethoven, he succeeded in becoming a great composer.
If he had wanted to win Olympic gold in swimming, would he have succeeded in that?
I don't think so, because then he would probably not have cooperating with the deeper forces of his soul.
So I think if you are to manifest something, you have to really follow your intention and follow deeper intention.
And one of the most famous Norwegian psychics, Marcelo Hogan, he's written a beautiful little book about that.
He says you must unconditionally follow your true will and authentic intention, always.
And here you must never compromise because your luck in quote marks, your luck in quote marks depends on it.
So if you are to be an effective manifestor, you have to co-opt and listen very carefully about what is your deeper and listen to your heart, I think is what they say in all the pop songs.
And I am here to tell you that's exactly right.
When I have failed to follow that instinct and that heart song, then I have come unstuck.
When I've wanted to do the will of other people or followed people who I've known were not right to follow, when I haven't done those things that were right for me, things have not worked out.
I'm with you completely.
Teddy, it's a pleasure to speak with you.
It's only fair that I give you a chance to plug the book one last time here.
So what's the book called?
How do we get it?
The book is called A Short History of Nearly Everything Paranormal.
And you can get it on Amazon, both UK and American Amazon.
And yeah, I think it's the most simple.
And there's also a description of the book, so you can get a closer impression by just visiting the Amazon site.
Great to speak with you.
Is the weather improving in Norway now?
I've got 24 degrees here today.
It's fantastic weather here right now.
So it's beautiful.
I have been out in the sun.
Nice.
I'm going to come there one day.
Tellier, we'll talk again.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Howard.
You've been hearing Telier Simon Sen here on The Unexplained with myself, Howard Hughes.
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