S2E10: Cognitive Decline and Higher Consciousness

Hi, everyone. This is Kai Dickens, and you're listening to the Telepathy Tapes podcast.

In season one, non-speakers showed us that telepathy is possible, shattering our assumptions about the world itself.

This season, we're turning to others who've also been dismissed, doubted, or mocked for the ways they claim to know, see, heal, or create.

What if only by listening to those who've been ignored, we could unlock the deepest mysteries of who we are, where we come from, and where we're going.

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It's Kai, and as we move into the holidays, I've been thinking a lot about the ways we stay connected. So this December, we want to offer something that feels truly special.

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The link is also in our show notes.

We hope this brings a little bit more joy and connection into your holidays.

In our last two episodes on healing, we explored how scientific research is beginning to explain how energy and information can move through us, even across distance.

Those conversations grounded the idea that the body and mind are not closed systems.

They gave some scientific validation to the fact that even though some mysteries are not yet fully understood, they're real and not imagined.

But data can only take us so far, because at the heart of this work is something science has not yet been able to measure. Is there a higher self? A soul?

A part of us that exists beyond the physical brain. And this week those types of questions become particularly relevant.

especially if possibly a higher self or soul might be a bridge to connect with someone whose mind or body are failing them due to disease, decline, or dementia.

When memory begins to slip or cognition fades or when language falls silent, it's one of the most frustrating and isolating experiences, almost like enduring grief while someone is living.

And is it wishful thinking to believe that connection might still be possible?

I used to think so until I met scores of non-speakers who do not feel fully in command of their bodies, yet rely on telepathy as a real and dependable form of communication and connection.

And if it's true for them, then we have to at least consider the possibility that those whose brains are failing them may still have access to something within, something aware.

So the ultimate question is, could telepathy be a bridge for all of us when language is gone? And that's the question we're exploring today.

And to begin this exploration, I want to introduce you to someone who's been a part of this journey ever since the very first telepathy test I ever witnessed in episode one of season one.

A dear friend whose world, like mine, was deconstructed entirely. and then reconstructed again.

So originally you reached out to me and you're like, hey, I'm recording this nonspeaker, autistic girl who's coming in from Mexico and her whole family, they only speak Spanish.

So you knowing that I'm Cuban American and so I know Spanish fluently, you were asking me to translate. And I'm here to help.
You know, I love you. We've been friends for a while.

So I'm like, whatever you need from me, I'm here to help. That's how it all originated.
This is my friend Rebecca.

And for those of you who did not listen to season one of the telepathy tapes, here's the context.

When this journey began, I struggled to believe that telepathy was truly happening in nonspeakers, even with neuropsychiatrist Dr. Hennessy Powell's years of research pointing in that direction.

Her work was compelling, but if I was going to put my own time, resources, and reputation into investigating this, I needed to witness it firsthand.

So I called in every favor I could to create a fully controlled environment for a series of telepathy tests with a family from Mexico who had just reached out to Dr.

Hennessy Powell regarding their daughter Mia, who was 12 years old and said she could read minds. I flew a few scientists and the family to Los Angeles to do these tests.

I invited Rebecca to the shoot as a translator.

She's a parent and someone I trusted to enter that sensitive space, but I didn't know what she would think of it at all because this was far outside of her typical life experience.

I've animated for features across multiple studios, like Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, Sony, Blue Sky, you name it. So this is not the world that I'm familiar with.
I just do animated family films.

And so she really didn't have any exposure to things like telepathy or ESP.

And Rebecca and I had never really talked about anything like that in our friendship because up until then, I wasn't interested in those things either. So I had no idea what she was thinking going in.

The only beliefs I've had like in the past is I do believe there's

more. to life, but that was just like an internal kind of like, yeah, I think there's more out there.

Now, what? I have no idea. And so I've never really thought beyond that point.
When I was going over there, I was thinking more like in my mind skeptically.

And as an animator, I always look where I'm not supposed to look in a scene because that's how I animate. I want to direct people's eye to where they need to be.

So that's my mindset is more like, this is a magic show. Let me see where they're pulling off this trick.

When I walked in and I met Mia and her mom and, you know, her other family members, they just seemed genuine.

They seemed just curious. Like, why is this happening? That's all they wanted to know.
We ran dozens of telepathy tests with Mia.

Once the actual telepathy started, I think it was like a little bit of a shock.

Mia sat blindfolded on one side of the divider while her mother was shown random words or pictures or numbers on the other side of the divider. And then we'd take off Mia's blindfold.

And Mia's a non-speaker, so she spells to communicate by pointing to a letterboard or an iPad. And she typed out every answer correctly.
By the end of the second day, I felt, I genuinely felt, okay,

if people don't believe this, I don't even need to convince them anymore because it's real, whether someone believes it or not.

So all of this was conflating with something happening in your personal life. So just tell me a little bit about your family.
Well, okay. I'll have to rewind a little bit.
So my family's from Cuba.

So my parents both came here. They got married and then they had us, which is me, my brother, and my sister.
We all grew up in Miami. English is my second language, technically.

My sister and I have always been like best friends, 100%.

But we had very different interests. Like she

has always had an interest in like law enforcement and like the military and she became a police officer.

She worked for the DA in Georgia, and I went sort of the avenue of creativity and art, and eventually stumbled into this career in animation.

My sister and I have very like politically different views, but still, what's funny is we're able to sit together in a room, even though we have very different views on different topics, and have an open, honest, fully like transparent conversation where we can completely not agree, but understand each other's point of view.

Yeah, and I loved when you and I were talking about this, because I think that

most families in America

have

political differences. And I come from the standpoint, I think so do you, that

above anything else, we should be love forward and finding our commonalities

and

when you were talking about your family and what's different about you all, but there was a commonality that you all shared, which was wanting to try to reach your dad.

And so what happened to your dad and how did it impact your mom?

My dad was diagnosed in 2016 with Alzheimer's and dementia. When we found out that he had dementia and Alzheimer's, my mom shared it with us.

And I don't think they, both of them, ever had real conversations with each other, like as, you know, husband and wife, about what that really means.

I think more than, I think most families kind of do this. You just put it under the rug and you just kind of move on with your life.

You're like, well, it's not affecting me today, so we'll just deal with it when it comes. And so a few years ago, it just started getting worse and worse.

He's gradually lost his memories and his mind. as time kind of passed.
And now it's what, 2025. So it's been quite a few years that he's had the disease.

And it was three years ago where there was a real incident. He walked out of the house in the middle of the night.
And when my mom woke up in the morning, she was like,

Where is he? We didn't know if we would find him.

So all of Miami police department was out looking for him. The police department found him on the stoop of some big complex.
And I think it was four in the afternoon when they found him.

So we'd spent the whole day not knowing what was going on. So this was the first time that it was very clear.
This is serious. What do you do when this happens in your life?

And of course, my mom doesn't want him to go anywhere. She wants to take care of him.
So we thought as a family, okay, well, yes, we'll keep him at home. And then after a year,

something happened in the middle of the night where he gets up. and he didn't recognize her.
It was scary for her. And he ends up, you know, jumping out of a window to get out of the house.

He injured her in the process. I'm all the way in California.
My sister's in Georgia. We get a phone call in the middle of the night.
That was the turning point for us as a family.

We're like, he can no longer live here. Like, that's that.
But what do we do?

And that's when, you know, luckily, there are services at that point that we were able to put him into a facility.

Yeah, and that's such a hard decision for families to make. How did your mom and all of you handle it? It was not easy for my mom.
Like, it wasn't easy for any of us, but certainly for my mom.

It was not easy. She's always prided herself in taking care of everybody in the family.
And this was the moment in her life where she thought, now I can take care of him

or she can't.

So it's been devastating for her to have to put him somewhere. I think she's paused her whole life because she's felt now that if he can't live a life and he's in there, I can't live a life out here.

Yeah.

And I think that's true of so many people. Yeah.

And so this episode came about accidentally. It was never in my plans for the second season.

But everything you were experiencing, Rebecca, in your personal life started to converge with the emails that were coming into the telepathy tapes inbox.

So about a year ago, my then assistant Catherine starts seeing a bunch of emails from people that have dementia or caregivers of those with Alzheimer's who say, Hey, this telepathy thing is not just relegated to non-speaking individuals with autism or praxia, it's also happening with people who are non-speaking because they have dementia or Alzheimer's or a stroke or they're in a coma.

And I remember treading lightly, but bringing this up to you: this possibility. When you had mentioned it to me, I'm like, Do you know how freeing that might be for my mom?

Like, if she could actually hear from my dad, and

if he could give her some comfort in knowing that he was okay, you know, that he's happy where he is. And is he happy?

Because ever since they've been together, he would always say, don't put me in one of those places. I don't want to be in one of those places.

And there was one person who I hoped could help her understand what this might look like in real life, a man named Dan Gurky.

And if you caught up on the Talk Tracks episodes that we recently dropped in our feed, you'll be familiar with the story of Dan and his late wife, Denise, who was diagnosed with early onset dementia in her 50s.

And as the disease progressed, things became increasingly difficult for Dan as a caretaker.

He was working a full-time job in real estate and trying to take care of Denise, and things kept getting harder and harder.

And one night, just totally exhausted, something incredible happened that changed both of their lives. And we're not going to tell this whole story again, but here's a brief recap.

It would take upwards of anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes to get her to go to the bathroom. And that was everything from getting her in the bathroom to figuring out how she just would not sit down.

Daily things that used to take minutes were taking a long time, making the caregiving strain on Dan way worse. I was exhausted.

I was laying there next to her, and I remember hearing myself, I said to myself, you know, if I could only talk to you and you could communicate back, that would help this situation.

In somewhat of a frustration, I said that.

And in my mind, I heard her voice, the intonation of her voice, say, well, talk to me.

Shocked, but also intrigued, Dan started talking back in his mind, and thus began Dan's telepathic connection with what he describes as Denise's higher self.

And this improved their lives significantly in both spiritual and practical ways. I said, okay.

All right. How do I get you on the toilet so that it's easier for both of us?

She starts explaining. And again, I'm hearing her voice.
And I'm looking down next to me, right?

She's fast asleep, not moving a muscle. And then Denise sent him images or instructions of what to do to help the process.
Turn me this way, push me down, do this, do that, right?

I get up the next morning. I'm excited.
I like, okay, I have a new method to get her in. So we go into the bathroom.

And within 30 seconds, I've got her sitting down. And I am like raising my hands, whooping it up.
It's like the NFL player scoring the touchdown.

And then the same thing was going on with getting Denise into the car. It was a fight and a struggle that took a long time every day.

She tells me what to do telepathically in my mind, shows me the images of how to maneuver her to get in the car. And guess what? Same thing the next day, in the car in 20 seconds.

And I asked Dan he thinks it's possible that Denise is communicating with him if her brain, which as far as most people know, is responsible for all communication and knowledge, was deteriorating.

How could she be coherent enough in any way to express anything to him? I've come to believe that who I am communicating with is Denise's higher self, her soul, said another way, right?

That is who I'm communicating with. And that higher self and soul is all-seeing, all-knowing, all-loving.

And once Dan's telepathic connection with his wife was opened up, it's like the floodgates had opened to his ability to do this. And he was suddenly able to communicate with others with Alzheimer's.

And he even started receiving messages from strangers with dementia asking for help. A lot of times there is somebody, you know, I could be in a restaurant.
I could be out driving in the car.

And I just hear people starting to talk to me. And a lot of times what I'll say, okay, tell your loved one that you want to connect with me.

And so sometimes I get a call, sometimes I don't, yet I encourage that person's higher self to somehow, let's foster that connection.

It's almost like Dan has a gift of mediumship, but not for those who've passed, but for those who are still here.

And as we learned earlier in the season, telepathy would be the mechanism that makes that kind of communication possible. And we've come across many other stories like this.

And in episode five of the talk tracks, you met Ellie. She had a near-death experience in the hospital.

And when she returned, she suddenly had a new gift for connecting with people who'd passed on, but also those who were unable to speak due to disease or dementia or a coma or a stroke.

It's all telepathy. And I have done sessions where I'm communicating with somebody's mom and that woman is saying, you have my mom, but she is still living.

She has Alzheimer and has been nonverbal for years. Or maybe I'm communicating with a father that is passed on the other side.
And then all of a sudden, I'm starting to communicate with the mother.

And, you know, one lady lady even said, I know you have my mother because you're describing everything, but she's still here. And that's happened to me quite a few times.

Sean Collins, another medium based in Australia, echoed this sentiment.

That's a very, very common thing that all of us mediums experience is like someone showing up and they're like, I know exactly who that is, but they're alive.

So now back to Rebecca and her family's journey. If there was a way my dad could communicate with my mom telepathically and allow her some peace of mind to say, Look, you have a life.

You need to live it while you have it. I had to jump on it.

So, for one more layer of validation, we asked Elody if we could speak with someone who had personally experienced her connecting with a loved one who had Alzheimer's and saw that connection make a meaningful difference in the real world.

She introduced us to her friend, who we'll call Jane, to protect the privacy of the senior. And Jane, who was very skeptical of this type of thing, could have never imagined what happened next.

I know Elody for a long time, and somewhere in the 2000s we just became closer and she started to reveal and share a little bit more about kind of her ability to attune, how it developed.

And I was very skeptical, hesitant, all those things. And I kind of wrestle with it personally just within my own faith system of what I mean, I guess.

But over the years, I've seen so many examples of extremely bizarre connections that she's made, people I've sent to her, or things like that, that

they validated this was very specific and unique to them. And I know I didn't provide any information.
I know that the people don't have social media or things like that where people can research.

So, plus, I just know her ethically. And so I know that she doesn't do any of this for money and she's not trying to make a living from it.
She's truly just trying to help people find healing.

And so this was my first time to really kind of ask her for something.

Elody's friend Jane found herself in a desperate situation and though hesitant, decided to reach out to see if Elody could use her gift to help.

I have a family member and this family member has very early onset dementia

and

also like a primary progressive aphasia. So limited ability to speak and things like that.

And they were able to, even even with all the safeguards in place, they were able to wander off and they were able to get lost.

And so it became a situation where everybody presumed they would be found. They were not.

I reached out to Elody and I just said, Hey, on the off chance that there's anything you can offer in this capacity, let me send you a picture of this family member who Elody had never met.

And I didn't say say anything about sort of the area in which that person lived or what it looked like. Like I didn't describe it.

I just said they don't know, you know, if they made it far away from the house, if somebody picked them up, if they'd been kidnapped. I mean, all scenarios were possible.

Within a short period of time, she called me back and she just said,

They're okay. I was able to make a connection.
They are okay.

They got confused. They got lost.
It's not that far from the house. They're tired and they're going to rest.

They said the only real thing that's happened is that their legs have gotten significantly scratched. I guess it's wooded.

And in my mind, listening to her, I was thinking, I didn't even say that there were woods around there. We didn't talk about that.
You know, like that was. weird.

The next day, it was going on quite a bit.

Like we're talking a massive search they knew the person had dementia they knew this was a dangerous situation i called elodie back and i said like do you have you know anything else and she said you know that concrete thing that's like a cylinder that the road goes over and water runs through the cylinder and i was like like a culvert And I sent her a picture.

I said, is this what you're seeing? And she said, that's exactly what I'm seeing. She She said, there has to be one of those near that area.
Another family member said, we know where that is.

And the team had the dogs with them. And as soon as they hit that area, my relative said the dogs went bonkers, picked up a scent, and took off.

One of the teams was able to find the missing relative within proximity to the culvert. And then I went to see the relative after they were found.

And the first thing I did was look at their legs and sure enough they had all the marks like from branches and things like that.

It was the first thing because it was fascinating to me that that had happened and they were indeed they were okay. Thank goodness.

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Though Jane was reticent to lean on Elodie's gifts for help, desperation brought her to that point.

And Rebecca and her family were in a similar situation, desperate to connect to ensure the well-being of their loved one.

And coincidentally, Dan Gurke, who you met earlier and said he can connect with all sorts of people with dementia, happens to live about 20 minutes from where Rebecca's dad had just moved into a nursing home in Georgia.

So I set up a Zoom call for Rebecca to meet Dan Gurke.

Rebecca, I'm sure you have questions as to how all this works. And Dan, you probably have questions regarding her family and their willingness to do this and that type of thing.

I understand your dad has dementia or Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's.
Alzheimer's. Okay.
My dad's name is Pedro. Pedro.
Okay. What about your mom? Her name is Maria.
They both speak Spanish.

You know, you speak English and they only speak Spanish. And so I was concerned, like, how does that look? Or

would you be able to communicate? So, what I have found is that as far as telepathy goes, that doesn't matter. I only know English, but when I do readings, I always get messages several ways.

One is through words, which come to me in English. I might get a Spanish word that you would have to interpret.
Or I get images

of objects or people. The basic premise of all that is to say that language is not a barrier as far as telepathy goes.

Again, this is fairly new. for me like over the past like few years since originally I helped Kai translate on the very first episode with the very first family that came from Mexico.

And since then, I feel like it's been a bit of an unfolding for me.

Like I was exposed to that and then that led me down like a little bit of a rabbit hole to try and make sense of what I saw that day.

And I think my sister has a lot of reservations. Toward the end of the call, Rebecca seemed willing to keep moving forward, but wasn't sure how to approach this with her family.

How do we know that this is like for real? If there was something specific, I think that would

that would make both my sister and my mom be like,

nobody would know that.

Rebecca next had to get her sister on board. Her sister was a bit more skeptical and she took Rebecca through a valid thought exercise saying, look, let's say telepathy is possible.

What if what their father communicates through Dan was negative or something they didn't want to hear? And here's a clip from that conversation.

So I was asking him the questions that we all had a concern over, right?

You specifically were telling me

you don't want dad to come across and be all saying things that's going to make mom being like in a bad headspace, right? Right.

As soon as I said that, he said first, he's never had an experience where someone has said something like that to him. like a negative thing.

But he said, like basically when he communicates or connects with someone, that it tends to be like the higher self. Like, you're not talking to someone necessarily, like, in this plane.

Like, if we could talk to dad in this plane, it would be dad in this plane.

But he's talking to dad's higher self, just like you have a higher self that kind of guides you. That's who he's communicating with.

And I told you his backstory, right? Yes. His wife has since passed away.
But his wife had had Alzheimer's. So two things.

He communicates with people who have Alzheimer's, but also he has like firsthand experience, like what that feels like and what kind of questions are important. You know what I mean?

Rebecca is one of the best humans I know, and she moves through her life with deep sensitivity and intention. And she approached this experience in the same way.

And after many conversations with her mom and siblings, they decided that the best approach that would probably feel the safest and best to their dad and least intrusive would be for Rebecca to visit her dad alone with Dan Gurky to see if they could telepathically connect.

And we also had a sound guy tag along.

So I had already planned a trip to go to Georgia with my family to go see my mom and my dad and spend a little bit of time.

So it was just by chance that it was fantastic that Dan also lived there so we can kind of like merge the trips and make it kind of organic and natural and, you know, no fuss.

And before Rebecca left, her and I talked just briefly on the phone. Okay, so we're going to have a sound guy, Sully, there, and he'll be rolling the whole time.

So you don't really need to worry, you know, about any of that stuff. But if you can just try to remember to take notes maybe on how things unfold.
Yes. So that way you can give me a recap later.

And, you know, just if this doesn't work, it's okay. You know, if he's not connecting, it's okay.
Just because there's a sound guy there doesn't mean that something has to happen. It may not.

So no pressure. You know, just let it go where it goes and just report back honestly what happens and we'll learn something from it.
The way we started is Dan and I met.

We went to the facility so that he could sit with my dad and with me and we could just have a conversation just to see how it goes, see if he could connect, see if there was anything there.

So prior to Dan sitting in front of your dad that day,

you had no way of communicating to your dad or even telling your dad, hey, this man is here to speak with you telepathically. No.
No, there was no conversation with my dad prior to this.

So he didn't know Dan was coming, wasn't introduced to him at all until he walked in that day. When I walked in, I was like, we're going to have a conversation with Dan.

But prior to that moment, and none of it was, we're going to talk in telepathy.

When we got there, that was the first time my father had any clue that we were having a conversation with anybody with him. I guess Dan tries to sort of connect and communicate.

you know, with whoever he's going to be talking to. And he did that with my dad.
He said he'd been having conversations with him via telepathy over the course of the past week.

So he'd already had that kind of communication.

Okay, and now here's some audio from that day. So yeah.
What? Are we recording? We're good?

Immediately when I wheeled my dad out into the little outdoor area where Dan was waiting for me, he recognized him to some capacity. And that's why he acknowledged him.
He lit up when he saw me.

I could sense that he knew who I was. Sully, who was the sound guy who was also there, he was on the other side next to Dan, and he saw that connection that they almost like recognized each other.

So I wheel him out, we sit down by the table, and then we just start having a conversation. My mom gave it to me.
It's a dessert. He loves desserts.

As soon as we sat down and we just started talking, Dan initially was saying, oh, I'm receiving some information. You know, I want to share this with you.
One of the things was was food.

I guess he would show images. That's how he would talk to him with telepathy.

And he's saying, I'm seeing, you know, this, these images, and I'm translating them as though he is saying that he wishes his food was more flavorful.

The food, the food, he goes, I'm used to more spicy food.

So anything you can do to spice it up. My dad would put Tabasco on everything.
White rice, Tabasco. Eggs, Tabasco.
You name it. Tabasco.

Okay, but that could also be an easy guess or an assumption for someone who grew up in Cuba. But here's the thing that got really wild.
What her dad said next?

Oh, he said you have to turn on your mind so you can talk. That's what he just said.
He said, turn on your mind so we can talk.

See, he knows. And I'll say this: like, my dad, sometimes you'll go see him and he's not having a good day.

And other times you go and he's having a great day. This was a great day.

He was actually like verbal.

And then, did your dad say anything specific? Because, you know, it's easy to be like, oh, Dan was just saying things that weren't evidential.

He could have said that about anyone.

But was there something that he said where it's like, no, he was obviously talking to my dad? Like, there's no way he could have known this. Were there any moments like that?

Yes. My dad was sending him this information.
How did he send that information?

Like, just to be really clear, like, did your dad speak that in Spanish and someone interpreted it today on and he's recited to, or how did that message get sent? He was sending it through telepathy.

And he said, your dad is saying

that he wants to make sure that he says he's sorry, that

he had always planned for his life to be a different way.

But

as his life unfolded, there are many things that he regretted doing, that he was a very difficult person and that he made life difficult for

us and for my mom and that he was sorry for that. And so when you played that bit of audio back for your mom, did that track for her? My mom said, oh, yeah.

Right before he got Alzheimer's and was able to communicate, he did share that with my mom. That was one thing that I think was very evident.

And Dan had no way to know that your dad was kind of a rough person, right? Like, you know, because there's like my dad's a really sweet man. It's not like he could have just known that or said that.

Did anything else transpire that felt maybe unexpected or pretty evidential? He loves that you're a great mom to your kids, to his grandkids. He says, keep going with your career, what you're doing.

And he wants you to remember that lesson of follow your heart, follow your intuition, follow your heart, and love. Love, love, love what you do.
That's the most important thing.

Not the paycheck, he says. And then there's something about your car.

You need to take care of something with your car oh interesting well he was a mechanic by trade and then i was like oh shit two weeks ago i was going over a speed bump and i went over one bump a little too fast and i could feel a scrape and then i went over a second bump and i felt a second scrape and before i went to georgia i thought man i need to check my car when rebecca returned home she took her car in to get checked out and then she called immediately after that appointment when the mechanic looked it over.

He actually found that there was a fuel leak from one of the lines going to the fuel tank and that

they basically said the car is undrivable and from what he explained this is an incredibly serious issue that could potentially had caused an explosion of the vehicle from the fuel.

So I'm eternally grateful to Dan and to my dad. The bottom line is that's pretty intense.
I'm actually a bit at a loss of words.

So there was a lot of audio to sort through and they covered a lot of ground, but the next part was wild.

And even if everything else might be tossed into the column of coincidence or lucky guess, this is really hard to explain away.

So when we sit down and we start talking with Dan and Dan starts communicating with my dad and translating what he's getting via telepathy from my dad.

My dad's on the other side of me and he starts speaking in Spanish. As he's speaking in Spanish, I'm trying to translate for him, realizing what he's saying is,

see the wind? Do you see the wind out there?

That is

how we talk. And he started pointing at his own temple and then pointing at Dan, saying,

that's how it happens. Here's some recording of Dan, Rebecca, and her dad sitting outside in the courtyard.

So he said that there's this wind that's passing through, and then you're listening. I'm listening all the time.
Yeah, we've been talking.

He keeps touching his head like

you're listening. Yeah.
Like the wind is listening. Yeah, yeah.

It was a little hard to keep up with. So Rebecca talked me through this afterward.

We were outside. He kept gesturing like that the wind.
is passing. The wind is passing here.
And that's what's speaking to us.

us that's how you talk and at that moment my dad would point at his temple he would point at his temple and then point at dan point at his temple and point at dan and talking about the frequency and communication there's a frequency everywhere and you talk via the wind the wind is passing by as it passes by that's how you send messages and i was like what

and then's like do you think he's talking about telepathy is that something your dad would like be whimsical about it normally?

Like when he sit there talking about telepathy and communication through the wind? Or is that like totally abnormal for your dad to say something like that?

My dad wouldn't be talking about telepathy. Like, as a matter of fact, I don't think I've ever had a single conversation, even with my dad's right mind, about telepathy or communication.

To Dan and Rebecca, this exchange seemed to reveal that her father understood the diffuse, non-linear nature of telepathic communication and was trying to describe it in a way that made sense to people who had never experienced it directly.

And later, when Rebecca listened back to the recording, something else stood out. Throughout the day, Rebecca had been translating from Spanish to English so Dan could follow her father's responses.

But listening back, she realized she had not consistently been translating for Dan's English back into Spanish.

And yet her father, who didn't speak any English, appeared to understand what Dan was saying and respond to it.

So fast forward a little bit, because two days later, when I was in the house with my mom alone, alone, I was like, oh, we have the track.

Do you want to listen to what we talked about with dad when you weren't there? And she's like, sure, play it. I'm hearing this whole conversation and my mom's listening to it.

And I paused it and I go, hold on, mom.

Do you realize I didn't translate that to dad? I translated to Dan. And even though he didn't understand Dan because he doesn't know English, He was having a conversation with him.

Why would he respond to a conversation we're having in English if he does not know english that conversation happened telepathically and that happened twice

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So after your first day together, how did things end? I'm wheeling my dad back into his section inside.

I said, oh, Dan, you want to, you know, come with and just, we'll place my dad and then we'll go together. As we did that, I'm leaving my dad.
I'm saying my goodbyes the first day.

And I turn around and I see Dan's like talking to other patients there. I'm like, oh, that's interesting.
Normally, nobody speaks there. It's usually very, you know, low energy.

But it felt like there were smiles, there was wide eyes. And I looked back and not only did he talk to one, but then there was another one who raised their hand and he came to them.

It happened to like three three patients. And I was like, that's weird.
And then as we walk out together, just me and Dan, my dad stayed behind.

As we walk into the hallway, I look at Dan and I go, hey, so what was that all about?

And he looks at me and he's like, well, before I got here, you know, what I do is I like to, you know, communicate.

with this facility and reach out and say, hey, if there's anybody here who wants to communicate, who wants to talk to me or share some information that I can give to your family members, reach out to me, like flag me down.

And that's what just happened. And I, I just froze thinking that is what just happened.
I just witnessed that. I saw it happen.

He doesn't know any of these because it's the first time he's ever been in this facility. And why are these people flagging him down? He just explained it to me.

And when you've been there before, is any random person in the hallway flagging you down or your sister down or anyone? No. No.

Flagging down is not a natural occurrence here. No, not from my experience.
And people were like raising their hands trying to get to Dan.

They were looking at him. They would even like crack a smile.
Like I could see their eyes become saucers.

It was almost like, you know, when you're like excited about something and your eyes widen, that's what I saw. So you think Dan is the real deal?

I think he is 100%. And I'm so grateful.

He's an incredible human being and he is sharing and giving peace to a lot of families. So do you think that your mom believed in the end that Dan was telepathically communicating with your dad?

There are definitely moments that resonated and comments that he did make that sounded like my dad. I do feel like this gave her what she needed to like be able to continue like living a life.

So it did make a positive difference. So in the end, I believe you had three days there.
And I'm just curious how it felt for you personally.

And maybe you could just share one more time, like what you were hoping to get out of all of this in the first place.

Well, walking into this, i think what i really wanted to get and what i felt my mom needed was sort of the comfort of knowing that my dad was okay that we placed him there and that not only was he okay but that he understood why he was there um and i hoped that would happen through the telepathy and then how did it feel to say goodbye to your dad on that final day He just turned 87.

So we just celebrated his birthday. I went over to the window.
I sit next next to him and I'm saying my goodbye.

You know, and you don't always say goodbye when you're leaving with an all-summer speech.

You just say, I'll be right back, or I'm going to work, or you never end it, or else you know, it's difficult to walk away.

So, as I sit down, I'm like, Oh, you know, I'll be right back. And he looks at me, he's a little emotional.
And I stayed quiet with him. And very rarely do you get moments of lucidity, right?

He was lucid. And he shared with me, he's like,

he goes, I understand.

It's okay.

I think he was referring to being there, that he was okay

and that he loved me.

And I put my hand on his chest and I said, I love you too.

Thank you. I know.
I was just thinking, I hope he's okay.

And he did. And it felt like what he was saying is he understood why he was there and he wasn't going with us.

And that he was okay. Like, I'm okay.

And it's okay.

So it's like, thanks.

Rebecca shared the story with me really candidly on the phone right afterward.

And I tell you this, Kai, I haven't talked to my dad in over six years, maybe seven. Wow.
That he's actually had a conversation, a lucid conversation. And I knew in that moment that

either Dan triggered something or connected something. And my dad came back to me in that moment to share that.
And I know that was a result of those last three days where I was with him and with Dan.

It's really amazing because for to me, it's amazing for two reasons.

One, it's like what you needed him to say through telepathy, he ended up saying to you with words, which is almost a better gift in his voice.

And

the other thing that's like so remarkable is that,

you know, when I was listening back where you were in conversation with Dan, it sounds like there's so much going on with the higher self.

And maybe like something he's doing in that work is connecting the higher self and the lower self.

And I think about with the work with the non-speaker is like so much about it is about regulation and being in your body.

And sometimes when you can be in your body, you can do remarkable things that you can't normally unless someone's there helping merge it all, you know? Yeah.

And it's almost like spelling. Like you need a communication regulation partner to like help you pierce through the praxia, that disease.

We'll come back to this idea in a minute because it's important. But first, I wanted to understand if this experience brought peace to Rebecca in the way that she hoped it would.

Initially, all we wanted to know was that he was okay,

that he was well and he was happy and content where he's at.

And that's precisely what he gave us. He gave me that gift when his last words to me were that.

And he literally used his words, which

is very rare. And I was able to share it with my mom and my sister.
I actually wonder if maybe somewhere deep down, he knew exactly what you needed to hear him say. I think.
Deep down and high up,

he certainly knew. He's more connected there than he is here.
And that's the gift and a gift that Dan gave us.

So watching someone who's been disconnected from his body and his brain, someone who hasn't been able to hold a lucid conversation for six to seven years, suddenly speak with clarity, does make you wonder what happened.

And it's often in moments like this where our usual explanations fall short. And that's when we reach for concepts that might help us make sense of it.

Like maybe there is a difference between a higher self and a lower self. And if Pedro's lower self was not able to communicate, was it his higher self jumping in?

Like did his higher self align even briefly with the part of him still tethered to this physical body just so he could reach Rebecca?

And to start to explore this, I wanted to share a brief snippet of a conversation that happened between Rebecca and Dan later that made me start to think about this other side of dementia, disease, and death.

Might those things that feel so scary actually inch us closer to understanding the true potential of our consciousness and maybe even offer a wider vision to what's real.

So there's that part. And as what I found, as the disease, the physical disease of Alzheimer's progresses, those folks,

as was the case with Denise, they become less and less connected to the physical world and they're more and more connected to the spiritual plane, so to speak.

And they care less and less about the physical world and stay on the other side. So you often see a blank stare on their face

where you don't think they're paying attention. Well, they're paying attention, but they're getting messages or talking to people on the other side.
And so

you may start to see more and more of that with your dad. And that's, you know, people have falsely associated that with, well, it's the disease.
They're spaced out. They're gone.
They're zoned out.

No. they are clearly connected, living in, talking to the other side.
And that's some comfort.

I pass that along from my experience, but also your dad is telling me I want that to be some comfort to you guys that I'm not checking out.

I'm still here, but I'm just communicating at a different level to a different plane.

For centuries, people have spoken about the veil, that when the veil is thin, we can perceive more than usual.

And this seems to be a common experience for those with dementia and for those approaching the end of life.

And from the framework of everything we've explored this season, it makes you wonder if the veil is metaphorically or poetically the same thing as the brain's filter, that necessary filter that keeps us anchored and functional on this very physical plane.

And in that sense, the brain is filtering out a lot of extra sensory type perceptions that would make it almost impossible to exist in daily life.

And we've talked about that possibility a lot, that the brain might act less like a generator of consciousness and more like a filter of it.

And many of the non-speakers you met in season one seem to show us that telepathy wasn't a singular gift. It felt more like the tip of the iceberg.

Alongside it came other abilities that are sometimes harder to imagine.

Seeing auras around anything with an electromagnetic field, and seeing geometry and weather, and communicating with the other side. Experiences that feel mysterious and wondrous.

And quite a few scientists postulate that maybe when someone is less connected to their physical body, be it through non-speaking autism or apraxia or through dementia, decline, or disease, maybe the brain does become less of a filter, opening up a whole palette of perception.

And if so, what can we learn from those who appear to have a brain in decline? What might listening to them teach us about consciousness or our place in the universe?

Because as you're about to learn, a vast majority of people close to death seem to have visions of and communicate with the other side and much, much more.

Everyone's heard of people at the end of their life seeing dead people that they knew from the past. It turns out it's way more common than people generally think about it.
That's Dr.

Neil Thiese from the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Dr.

Thies is a liver pathologist and stem cell research pioneer who was part of the group that discovered the interstitium, a breakthrough in modern science.

His research around energy healing was featured in our last two episodes. So in my mom's last six years, she became able to communicate with dead people who she knew personally.

She had direct experiences of the true nature of reality that I only hear about in quantum physics or from Z masters. She found herself able to travel to other realms.

She would report what sounds to me like a spirit guide from the universe showing up.

I wonder in the mind of someone like my mom or someone who has some form of dementia, the broken brain that can't be fine-tuned, are they in fact having greater access?

to what lies beyond this material reality. Dr.

Thies is a firm believer in consciousness being the foundation of reality, and he had experiences with his mother at the end of her life that solidified this belief for him.

Explain to me your mother's diagnosis and some of the things that you started noticing about her at the end of her life. She developed Parkinson's and it was very mild.
It was very slowly progressive.

But within a few months, it was clear she could not remember like five minutes ago. And it became dangerous for her to be at home.

Neil's mother's health started to decline, and she began losing all sense of where she was and who she was. Neil and his mother's doctor decided it was best for her to be in hospice care.

And it was in the ambulet on the way there when his mom started communicating for the first time with the other side.

In the ambulet to hospice, she started ignoring me and talking to dead people who were behind me. My dead father, a couple of her dead sisters.

and stopped communicating with me at all.

Shortly after this, Neil was at a conference in Europe on the science of consciousness, and the first thing he heard about was exactly this, the experience of those toward the end of life having visions of the other side, of a different dimension or different plane.

The first morning of the consciousness meeting, I hear Peter Fenwick talking about people having end-of-life visions, and I realized that's what's happening.

She continued to talk to dead people for the rest of her life, which is about six years.

We never embarrassed her. We never said, oh, that sounds crazy, or that can't be mom.

just explored what was happening

and one of the people neil's mother started to communicate with was their late rabbi i'd come over and i'd say have any visitors because i always asked her and she'd go yeah rabbi bodenheimer was here i said i hope he didn't bore you and she said no he couldn't stick around um he had to be going because his sister was going to be arriving and he had to welcome her and i thought his sister that was mrs brown she must be over a hundred and she must have died by now for sure and then i went home and got a phone call from my hometown mrs brown had died that day at 102 years old

wow and and and your rabbi had since passed so he was dead

he was long dead yeah he was long

and neil who's a distinguished scientist and researcher marveled that his mom also seemed to be experiencing and seeing what quantum physicists have theorized about this is one of my favorite favorite experiences.

I went in and she was lying on her back on her bed, wide-eyed looking at the ceiling. I said, what are you looking at? She said, space.
I said, really? What's that like?

She said, well, it's not at all what I expected. And it's just so beautiful.
I said, well, what's it like? She said, she made this gesture with her hand like she was chopping carrots.

And she said, well, it's not smooth. It's like chopping carrots.
It's in pieces. And it's just so beautiful.
And time is like that, too.

It's not smooth. It's in tiny little pieces.
I wish you and Mark and the kids could see it the way I do. It's just so beautiful.

Buddhist teachers talk about this, that the particulate nature of material existence. That's kind of like quantum theory.

My mother's experiencing the quantum particulate nature of the universe, but she has no short-term memory. Wow.
And she was a very anxious woman. She spent

her life was pervaded by anxiety. And during this time, there was no anxiety whatsoever.
And one day I said to her, Ma, you know, you're even smiling when you sleep. How do you stay so happy?

And she said, well, I don't really worry about the future anymore. And I can't remember the past.
So all I have is the now. When you live in the now, you're happy.
Has there been any research on this?

I just wonder how I'd spread this experience. There's a prospective study done by a hospice doctor named Christopher Kerr in Hospice Buffalo in New York State.
He and his team have

questioned every hospice patient that's come in. I think

they're over 1,200 people.

So in his study, I think it's 88.1% of the patients coming into hospice, adults and children, some people who are neurodivergent, so many different kinds of brains, are experiencing this.

It's not uncommon. We just don't usually ask.
A lot of people wouldn't talk about it. A lot of patients have to be coaxed into talking about it because they're worried people will think they're crazy.

How does that look for kids, especially since they might not know anyone who's crossed and usually who's coming forward is comforting, right?

Tells a really wonderful story about this kid who comes, a teenager, I think a young teen, if I remember right, who's dying of cancer.

And he comes in and he sits down in a chair and she says, oh, don't sit there. My dog's sitting there.
And he's like, oh, she's seeing her dog who had passed away.

He asks her about the dog and says, the dog tell you anything? And she looks at him like he's crazy and says, please, dogs don't talk. So this isn't necessarily someone making up a fun story.

A lot of what we talk about in this episode is our dementia kind of turning on the gift of telepathy. I mean, have you stumbled across anything around telepathy and these deathbed visions?

Deathbed visions often don't communicate directly by words. My mother said that to me once.
I went in and she said, oh, I had a lovely visit from a man from the 13th century today. I said, really?

Where was he from? She said, I don't know. And I said, well, what language was he speaking? Because with her, it could have been Yiddish, German, Polish, maybe Hebrew.
She said, oh, that's funny.

I don't think we needed words to communicate.

In our first episode of the season on near-death experiences, people came back not fearing death and saying that what they experienced was more real than here.

It felt different from a dream and different from a hallucination. And you said your mom was super anxious.
So how did these experiences impact her?

So Kerr in his book talks about this reporting that people talk about the the deathbed visions are more real than real.

And they're profound experiences that are utterly transformative, not like an insight you get in a therapy session, but go from great terror at the end of your life or great regret or great sadness

into something of acceptance and lack of fear, et cetera.

And what I think is happening there is that in the dying brain, the filtering of the greater consciousness that underlies everything, the filtering is diminished.

You're getting more pure reflection of what underlies everything.

Are they really perceiving less or are they perceiving more?

Dr. Thies has some theories on how these things might be possible in someone with dementia.
I'm one of those people who thinks that brains do not make our minds.

Our minds are like transmitters or radios that sample the big C consciousness, big M mind that underlies everything. Some people might refer to that as God.

Some people might refer to it as the absolute. Some people like me and my collaborators call it fundamental non-dual awareness, that there's some aspect of a universal mind.

that emanates what eventually becomes material reality as we experience it, as well as these other non-material realms.

And so I wonder in the mind of someone like my mom or someone who has some form of dementia,

are they in fact having greater access?

This reminded me so much of what non-speakers have communicated about their experience.

They often describe being less connected to their bodies, feeling less connected to time, the past, the present, and living much more in the now than most of us.

I asked Neil if he thought this related to why they are able to have telepathic connection and access information that we don't understand.

It takes a lot of energy, time, and focus to be able to take care of ourselves in the world.

If you don't have a mind that's focused in that kind of detail, then you might have the opportunity to experience other things.

It might

be that people who experience that kind of stuff are less able to take care of themselves.

And so in our society where we don't value people who have different experiences of the world and treat them as beings that need to be warehoused or seen as burdens.

But they may in fact have greater access than any of us can imagine.

Some of us are like that for a lifetime. Some of us have glimpses of it, maybe through some practice that develops trance work or the use of psychedelics.

Some of us may have openings because you've had a near-death experience and you survive it and yet part of your mind remains open to what you saw.

Some of us only, it seems most of us, us, get a chance to experience in the last hours or days of life if you're gifted the chance to die in bed, not by violence.

And I think all of these things are potential for every human. It's just how much do you value them, yearn for them, cultivate them?

How much do you honor them in yourselves?

And how much do you honor it in others? I love that.

So what do you think these experiences reveal about how consciousness meets people in their final moments?

One of the things in Christopher Kerr's book that he mentions over and over again, that I think is one of the more profound lessons of his research is that in those final moments, these deathbed visions, even when they're scary ones or disturbing ones, which can also happen,

It seems as though the universe is giving you the vision that you need to, in a moment understand that it's all just fine.

The universe, that underlying consciousness, meets you precisely where you are with all your psychoses.

with all your crazy worries, with all your beliefs and conditionings that you carry into those last moments so that you're lying there in whatever state you're in, the universe shows up and presents you exactly the right medicine.

But

fundamentally, if the universe is entirely consciousness,

then what's the difference between me

and an angel and a demon and a god or a goddess? They're all just constructs of consciousness in the larger consciousness. It's just what's the perspective

through which you're experiencing the universe in this moment? And what's the perspective of the universe experiencing you in this moment?

This episode has taken us into one of the most mysterious and difficult places in the human experience, our consciousness when the brain begins to fail.

And we heard the same thing repeated from family members and scientists, doctors, and mediums. As dementia progresses, people often seem to live partly here and partly somewhere else.

And though bodies might be fading, awareness and access to something we can't see often feels more poignant and alive.

And that makes you wonder if people at the end of life gain access to more of the non-physical world because their filter or veil is thinning. Is it the same for people at the beginning of life?

Most of us have heard at least one story about children talking to a deceased loved one, seeing something that isn't there, or intuiting something they shouldn't know.

Abilities our culture would call impossible. And next week, we'll explore one of these abilities that seems to be much easier for children.

It's been criticized, investigated, embraced, debunked, defended, and taught around the world. Mindsight, the practice of seeing through a blindfold.

I had no idea what to believe about this, so I met with multiple teachers, witnessed this around the world.

I even took classes and got trained to figure out how this was working or what the trick was.

And in the end, I put my own very skeptical kids through the training to see if it's possible to see without using your eyes.

It takes a village to make this podcast, and I want to thank our producers, Jesse Steed, Jill Pachesnik, and Katherine Ellis. Original Music is by Rachel Cantu.

Mixed Mastering and Additional Music is by Michael Rubino. Our associate producer is Selena Kennedy.
Original artwork is by Ben Kendora Design.

And I'm Kai Dickens, your executive producer, writer, and host.