http://mindfutures.libsyn.com/rss (click to go to the podcast page)
This is the very first episode of The Consciousness Files, where I regularly chat with some of the world’s most interesting thinkers, feelers, seers and be-ers. The subject is the human mind and its limits (if there are any).
My very learned and perceptive guest on Episode 1 of The Consciousness Files today is Dr. Peter L Nelson – author, psychologist and seer. Peter is an explorer of non-ordinary awareness, a very similar notion to what I’d call integrated intelligence. In Peter’ case, this allows him to directly know someone’s psycho-emotional state and the forces that shape it.
Peter began his scientific career in the early 1960s, exploring perception and consciousness. Later he became a social scientist and focused his research on how people create a picture of reality, including the visions of mystics and the highly intuitive, who seemed to be able to see directly into the minds and thoughts of others, as well as the last and future.
I stumbled upon Peter a year or so ago, when I read his wonderful book, The Way of a Seer. Peter’s explanation of how he employs integrated intelligence is incredibly insightful. There are a lot of philosophers and scientists who cover this topic these days, but not so many who actually know how to facilitate the art of the seer, and who have extensive personal experience of using it.
I caught up with Peter a few days ago. In my chat with him you will find out why he threw in a perfectly decent and potentially promising career as neuroscientist, why he believes that Rupert Sheldrake is wrong about morphic fields, and how reading a letter sent ten years into the future changed his life forever.
Please enjoy the show!
Marcus
Peter’s web site:www.socsci.biz
Royalty free music by www.bensound.com.
PODCAST TIMELINE
3:57 What is a seer?
4:30 There is a non-ordinary stream of consciousness which seers can tap into.
4:50 The difference between a “psychic” and a “seer.”
5:50 “How did you become interested in these other ways of knowing, given your science background?” Peter tells the remarkable story of how he was inducted as a seer.
6:40 Peter re-tells of a dream he had as a young man, of flying over rolling hills. He immediately recognised the place as Devon, England. He came to this realisation the following evening at a movie. He then had a very strong urge to travel to England.
10:00 While working as a graduate programme in neuroscience, Peter meets a wealthy woman, who helps take him to England.
12:30 Peter quits the programme and flies to England with the woman.
12:50 Peter decides to look up two groups in England which were interested in the psychic domains.
15:40 The psychic medium tells him to “go to the other place.”
18:00 Librarian says she has some interesting notes from a trance medium, Peter refuses.
18:45. Librarian again insists he sees the notes, reads him incredible details of his life.
25:00 She offers to train him.
26:10 Example of Alice (his teacher) reading his and another woman’s mind. (Good example of mind reading).
27:10 There are two streams of perception. Inwards and outwards.
28:50 Difficulty in social adjustment, offending people. Alice taught him.
31:00 Peter had to learn to keep quiet, and avoid scaring others with his perception.
31:00 While appearing on a German TV show Peter accidentally shocks a contestant by revealing facts about his brother’s suicide.
39:30 He had to learn how to properly articulate what he saw in others as a seer.
40:30 The nature of fields, biofields. These are not the four known fields of nature.
42:40. You have to learn to feel the field. Only a higher order system can detect the field, e.g. a human being.
44:40 Fields define living things. We impregnate things with our fields, such as a place where a person dies violently.
47:40 Peter critiques Rupert Sheldrake’s morphogenic fields. e.g. How a fertilised egg becomes a blastula, does not require fields.
53:00 Why Deepak Chopra is on the wrong track.
54:00 What I’m interested is the psychology of attention. I’m not interested in training psychics.
54:30 Discussion about attention. Fixed attention vs expanded perception.
Why fluid attention is very important.
59:50 This is very useful for any people in problem solving fields.
1:03:00 Our society teaches us to pay attention to certain things, esp competition, making money and so on.
1.04:30 Education. We don’t train for attention. Students are shaped. High achievers are usually highly fixed. But this is useful for certain things.
1:05:40 Steve Jobs and his fixed perception
1:07:30 Peter recounts his Albert Einstein dream, and how it influenced him to question whether special relativity theory is theory of perception?
1:11:30. Why theorising is arrogant,
1:14:40 Peter states that we can never really know the world. That’s outside of human knowing. He interested in engaging experience deeply.
1:17:10 Is there an evolutionary process with consciousness?
1:18:10 “What is the benefit for humanity in developing our capacity for seeing?
11 thoughts on “The Consciousness Files, Peter L Nelson: Seeing Beyond the Ordinary”
Great interview. He spoke to my experience with Chopra. He also addressed the visits in dreams by my famous friend, who will remain nameless. I have a similar experience of speaking with someone who is no longer alive and then later having the information confirmed. Who or what it is is still a mystery to me. Many more similar experience discussed in the interview. Amazing. Great to hear someone else has lived through something similar.
Thanks for that positive feedback, Florie. I really appreciate it. This is a new venture and new skill set for me. I know I have a lot to learn about interviewing and using the mic properly and basic stuff like that. I have another couple of episodes coming up (already recorded) and it is getting a little easier for me.
You sounded great!
Hey, I thought of someone who you might find interesting. He’s been doing what you are doing now for almost 20 years. He is an excellent interviewer, and he’s in NYC. I have gone to many of his events. He really is fearless in exploring things that are AWAY OUT THERE. You will hear him explain about his local cable show in NYC and now his affiliation with CNN. He has a website, a Facebook page, and a lot to explore on YouTube. I know that you have been doing this a long time too, and hardly need my advice. I just thought that you’d find him interesting. Alan Steinfeld: New Realities….he doesn’t look like that photo anymore. Same long hair, but white and 16 years later.
http://www.spectrumradionetwork.com/Archive/alan-steinfeld-reflections-in-new-realities.html
http://www.spectrumradionetwork.com/Archive/alan-steinfeld-reflections-in-new-realities.html\
Alan Steinfeld and Deepak Chopra on Donald Trump
It’s a small world
Thanks, but the link doesn’t seem to take me to the Deepak vs Allan chat.
Pingback: Peter L Nelson and How You Can See the Secrets of Life |
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baEQoiIncss
If you are REALLY interested it’s an interview from February. Chopra’s words about Trump have have become a lot more strident now that he could very well become a leader of what we knew as the Free World. Chopra strayed into stronger words recently calling Trump, among other things, retarded. This is a YouTube link. It might work.
I have had a great time listening to your interview over and over. Expanded awareness might be available to everyone, but not everyone is a master, it’s like playing the piano. I’ve been graced by whatever I have experienced over the years. It really helps to find people who are talking and writing about these things beyond intro to meditation and not coming from a place that is wishful thinking or nuttiness.
You can’t just do expanded awareness by being mindful or breathing in this state of awareness. You have to find that other mind somehow. Almost all of what people are selling, and making billions of dollars, is psychotherapy without telling the truth that higher states of consciousness requires a huge shift in awareness, not the frustration of making your self/ego act differently. And, neither does holding a crystal do it, although I am a lot more respectful of the results of shamanic practices. Inadvertently I have experienced weird some stuff as a result of it that concerns me. I’ll leave shamanism at that until I am more sure about it.
Don’t underestimate the simplicity of presence, Florie! The most immediate forms of intuition really are that simple to access. I teach people this process in five minutes flat. It’s not like you become Edgar Cayce or anything. But there is an immense power if you can remain in that state, or return at will.
Hey, I’ll get back to this after I read it many times and think about it. I’d say I’m so freaking psychic I don’t know what to do with it. It is paralyzing. Then I get humble. I’d tell you a story about a family friend who is ordained by the Dali Lama who is no more in control of it than I am, but then he’s fancy. To me presence means something else. It’s not psychic ability but being in NOW, which is nearly impossible. It is the Peace That Passes All Understanding, and that mind that is breathtaking…breathtaking love, brilliance, stamina, knowing, creativity, freedom from the past and future. Then I get humble because even though I have been there I’d never suggest I know. It’s not mine to try to pretend I can explain because it’s not mine.The real experience is the one that liberates, and that’s what it is all about. I say that with all humility and deference. I know I’m not right.
Florie, presence can greatly enhance intuition as a felt sense of things. I’m quite “psychic” in the commonly understood meaning of the term, but I have increasingly come to trust felt intuition in the present moment. It doesn’t require visions or auditory intuitions. I get lots of those, but far less now that I focus upon being present. I chose to let go of the visionary, because it took me away from the truth of the present moment. I’m not saying everyone has to do what I have done, nor that it is the one true path.