Alain Nu | Mentalism, Manifestation, Strange Experiences, & Improving Your Psychic Ability

00:00 You have one new message. Greg Carwood, Mark Jaycox If you look up my regression on YouTube it will give you a good idea of who I am. I'm a student time traveler and about to teach the whole entire world how to time travel I altered time on 8-8-15 during the Barrett Jackson automobile auction. That's quite obvious, all you have to do is watch the Vegas auction because it is different from every previous auction. If you stop the movie, the 1951 movie The Day The Earth Stood Still at 842 Center above Woman in the Black Hat You will see my face emerge Agent Smith style from the one that was there

00:40 I'm in contact with the mystery satellite orbiting earth. I was contacted after the 81912 incident where my dream became a reality and Whitley Strieber talks about it, and i actually predicted 81912 with Ian Punnett months before on Coast to Coast Radio. I'm here because Chuck Burkhouse told me about a spider story and I told this spider story on coast-to-coast early in 2012 when during my abduction faced with 10,000 60-foot tall spiders. How's it going Ironside Chatters, drinking a little drink smoking a little smoke and getting my head right from sunny San Diego I'm Greg Carlwood. And we know that of all the oddities and strangeness this world has to offer one of the biggest mysteries is still the human mind

02:08 Whether we're talking about things like meditation, accessing higher forms of consciousness and ESP or the potentially darker territory of hypnotic suggestion, subliminal messages and mind control it's obvious that many of the big curiosities of consciousness never find their way into our 9 to 5 reality. But today we have a guest who has been wading through these weird waters for a living nearly his entire life Alon knew was an author, lecturer and professional mentalist that has made a career messing with the cogs of consciousness much of which he talks about in his new book State Of Mind The Man Who Knows Reveals The Secrets Of Mind Over Matter. A fascinating guy who might be pulling my mind strings right now And by the end of the show might have us all bending spoons! The man who knows himself, Alan welcome to THC

02:52 I'm excited to be here Greg thanks for having me. Yeah man im psyched for this too you know we have a lot of consciousness explorers, psycho nuts new age dabblers and scientists that talk about these kind of things but I've never spoken to a mentalist before and at first I was a little dismissive until actually read the book which I enjoyed alot it really covers a whole lot ground but I think we should address this out-the gate there might be a preconceived notion that with someone from the realm of mentalism we're just gonna get parlor tricks rather than substance because I know that might be on a few minds out there and of course the two don't have to be mutually exclusive but let people know why mentalisms should be considered more than just mind games for cocktail party.

03:35 David Kessler, the founder and CEO of Mindful Minds. to deceive you and trick you into believing things that don't exist. That's usually the first go-to place when people start to try to dissect where mentalism comes from My idea is that mentalism is really an art form and just like all arts, it's a reflection and response to reality. We experience things that are strange and inexplicable all the time sometimes through the illusion that reality presents us with or through the fact that reality does some strange things we don't understand. So my idea is that mentalism is really just an art form which reflects this idea

04:38 Then my exploration is that if we actually explore it with an open mind, that takes us beyond the entertainment aspect of what it means. Does it give us something more to think about? That's basically what State of Mind, my book, is all about. Yeah, it really is interesting. It's stuff I hadn't really connected before and it's kind of like magic right? I guess you have your Siegfried and Roys then you have your Aleister Crowley's near John Dee's in your Lone Milo Duquette but with mentalism it seems like that line is a little bit more blurred than it would be say the magic realm yeah absolutely I feel that Aleister Crowley and John Dee and all those people who were really

05:24 I feel that Alistair Crowley definitely explored the realm of magic deception as well as the deeper aspects of magic and it wouldn't surprise me that he had very similar thoughts that I would have on this particular subject. In just a fact, there is a reality that takes place from the illusion of magic and so you've got magic which essentially is a duality between Illusion and reality. The bigger picture I think is that people believe that magic is just an illusion, and usually the perceptual shift in our consciousness over the past 200 years or so

06:08 is that magic is all just an illusion, that it represents everything. That's just an illusion but I think that takes away the much broader perspective of what the actual word magic means. I mean magic is a word that actually has a much greater definition than just illusion or I think that there's a greater idea behind what magic is and if we were to explore the fact that it had this bigger definition before, perhaps we're literally looking at it with one eye closed and not realizing There are other dimensions and other facets of the word to think about that are inexplicable, and that will actually create miracles or shift reality in ways that can't currently be completely understood. I think that might bring us to a new territory in just the way we think, and just the way we explore things, and the way we might find new things out."

07:05 Yeah, well said and kind of like you mentioned with it being a reflection of the reality I mean some people talk about reality itself being illusionary in nature and definitely aspects of culture are Illusionary whether by design or coincidence is something we're always debating but I mean who's to say what what is truly real? Yeah David Steinbrook Exactly. That is such an interesting idea for me just because I'd say that 95% of the magicians that are performing out there really don't put too much thought to this idea and these are the people who literally represent the

07:42 The word magic, these are people who should be magicians to their true right and yet they really just explore this one little aspect of it for children's parties or for fun and entertainment to have fun with your friends. I think that stuff is amazing too. I find that whole culture is an amazing little culture of people. I grew up in that culture. who they are, I know what they think about and how they think. It's a whole subculture of people just like paranormal world is their own subculture of people but you know what's funny about that is that

08:18 There's a fellow by the name of Marcello Truzzi who kind of combines all of us. He was literally the founder of three big organizations or one of the founding members of three big associations that study these types of things I know that Psycop and PEA started at the same time, The Psychic Entertainers Association had Marcello Truzzi as one of their founding members They are an association of entertainers who particularly focus on psychic entertainment and mentalism, hypnosis and stuff like that. And they are a very amazing organization of people that consists of the best all over the world these particular people. They give awards away to people like Darren Brown and Bury Geller and people who they feel are leaders within

09:10 entertainment, the psychic entertainment world. Then you've got Marcello Truzzi who was also the founder of the Society for Scientific Exploration which is an interesting organization formed after he also founded SICOP which is a committee for scientific investigation for claims to paranormal so I think that it's interesting this one man who is really just interested in mystery and really just interested in the exploration of understanding what mystery and magic was all about. He was a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, died just a few years ago but very close friend of mine. In my opinion, my particular vision rests on his interests

09:53 in many ways that there is a bigger side to magic than just the entertainment factor, though we should consider the fact that there's an entertainment out there that does these interesting things and how do explore it. That side of it becomes fascinating just because that is the side that actually, in my opinion creates the capacity development for people who are interested in this sort of thing. And it kind of opens the doors and sort of the doorway saying to people look at this, isn't this interesting and shouldnít we think about this a little bit more? So I see mentalism and the stage hypnosis and stuff like that in many ways as sort of like the doorway to let you know that there are powers of the mind that go far beyond reaching out into your hearts than just entertainment. It actually can change your life in ways that might surprise you if you actually thought about it a little bit more.

10:47 Yeah, that makes sense. And one big takeaway for me in reading about this stuff in your book is just how malleable and manipulatable the mind really is I mean it really isn't as hard as people might want to believe not that It has to be used in a bad way But when you study the circuitry like you do it seems like you start to see how the wires can Be crossed and moved around a little bit Is that kind of how you see it? Yeah, I mean. I feel that everyone should feel free to explore these ideas and so what my book does is it creates a It just creates a bunch of games for you to play and try for yourself. First, it will teach you how to amaze people and friends and family members with powers-of-the mind tricks that are essentially deceptions based on how you might create the scenario or how you might put something in someone's mind and plant an idea in someone's mind to make them think in a certain direction

11:45 and then there are ways that involve math and mathematical formulas, and then there are ways that involve literally your own ability to be suggestible to people and cause them to think in certain ways by planting a certain seed in certain ways or giving them idea but more subconscious than it is conscious. I feel that these are explorations that a mentalist who is an artist interested in the art of mentalism kind of explores on their own while they're trying to figure out ways to amaze their audiences.

12:26 certain ones that might appeal to people who are just beginning in the field, I think that you can create an assortment of explorations that they themselves can start to open up their own minds and start to see how this stuff can actually be used in a functional and mysteriously functional way. Yeah, and let me ask you about an area of modern society that seems to be using every weapon in its arsenal. And that's advertising! Obviously they've been fine-tuning that machine for a long time but do you ever recognize things in advertising or marketing that stem from things you might have studied as a mentalist?

13:03 Absolutely. It comes in and really like I feel that it really kind of starts to move into the realm of what is actually moral to do when it comes to these ideas, you know if mentalism can manipulate the mind, if mentalism can make They can suggest certain ideas and plant certain ideas into your mind. Is it moral to use mentalism? That starts to become the bigger question and my feeling is that advertising does this just as really all industries use these ideas of how we use our mind and how we use communication and how we define certain words to make people think in a particular way. In many ways, you can blame it on mentalism but my feeling is that all industries really do this and advertising is certainly easy example of how manipulatable we are through just

13:58 visions that they give us and the storyline that they give us, and how they can affect our minds. And how we could have it can affect what we want essentially. Yeah, and I mean even on the simplest level one of the tricks i've always liked is when someone says don't think about an elephant balancing on a beach ball. And then of course that's the thing you think of! That to an extent is the control of someone's mind with a simple sentence and the moral question is a big one it seems like a fine line to me when you really get into this stuff But where do you see the point where mentalism or some of these tools can cross over from compelling exploration of possibilities into the realm of things like nefarious mind control?

14:40 David Kessler, MD, PhD is a licensed financial professional both in the U.S. and Israel. ideas with as much responsibility and with as much open-mindedness is possible, but when it comes to things that involve nefarious mind control and stuff that involves whether or not somebody else is Manipulating you and how do you defend yourself against people like? You know the evil mentalist are the evil different is that's trying to do the Manchurian candidate on you I feel that what he can do is

15:24 by simply understanding yourself and what I get into in the book also involves things like deeper understandings of mysticism, things that involve the yin and yang and tapping into your own energy centers and stuff like chakras. These are all in many ways illusions just because we don't really even have proof that they exist. They're illusions that are created in our mind by our own belief system and what is interesting about that little idea is that it's an idea that empowers us to realize that we have control over ourselves, greater control over ourselves than you might imagine.

16:08 When it comes to other people affecting us from the outside, when it comes to psychological bombardment of advertising and suggestions that are coming from outside ourselves. I feel that understanding our energy centers inside of ourselves and understanding that illusion within ourselves empowers us to realize we have a the ability to know what's the difference between what is the right direction and the wrong direction. We have in many ways psychic ability to know what our best choice is, in fact my first book Picture Your ESP was a book that came out in 2010 and it was all based on the question do we have intuitive abilities over chance? And the scientific study has always been

16:59 For better or for worse, man has an above ability over chance expectations to make the right decisions. So what I did was created 30 different challenges of various different things so it might be things like think of a color, what color you think thinking of now turn the page and see if that color is within the photograph that you see it in, how dominant that particular color is or think of a texture and we'll turn the page and see if this photograph denotes the texture that you're thinking over. Think about emotion and will do this." It kind of takes you through little meditation as you turned the page each time and just immediately know and then scores you against chances to just how well you did. My prediction is that

17:42 read the book open-mindedly, you would find that you'd have an ability over chance expectation to be able to know the right thing. What's interesting about that is just going back to our original question is I think that intuitive ability within us is in empowerment or it's sort of an ability we have that guides us through our lives and what we need to do is just be honest with ourselves and realize that we do know the hidden answer, that our spirits actually know the answer to what is going to happen if we meditate.

18:19 and ask the question to our subconscious, and don't take things just purely off of trying to make the right conscious choice. Just literally go into your subconscious and ask your own spirit or subconscious what you think is the right idea is and move in that direction now I feel that artists oftentimes think that way already. I'd say that most creative people generally don't allow outside influences to affect what they think and they usually just kind of go off and do their own thing so, I'd say that a lot of people already have the ability to do that automatically however there are a lot of people who just kinda...I'm not gonna mention any names but certain family members of mine have a tendency to follow the rules it's all about following the rules

19:06 stuff that when the telemarketer calls, pick up the phone and talk to them. Give them the time of day. I don't understand why they do it. I don't understand why they choose to be affected by the television and telemarketers an advertising as much as they are, and it certainly keeps those guys in business but I feel that if they were just realize that there's a deeper way of understanding yourself and doesn't take much really just kind of takes your having to be concerned enough and to just not take everything that comes at you with face value. Yeah, well said and I guess by people strengthening those inner abilities and by learning the tools and tricks of the trade you become less susceptible To them in the end so there's definitely value just from that perspective but let's lighten it up a bit because I kind of went straight to the darkness today Jesus!

20:07 You do talk about a lot of the little mentalism tricks and tools that you've used over the years in the book. exercises I guess, what they could be called. They're very cool! Can you outline one of these little exercises for the people so that they can make friends at the bar and impress the ladies? You know um yeah let me think about one for a second uh that would that would impress the ladies at the bar...you know this is an interesting exercise and it's a very simple one but i think that it's one is worth sharing with other people because you hear a lot about the secret and you hear a lot about the law of attraction, and it's really all about wishing for things that end up happening to you. I find it to be one of the most interesting things that you can do for yourself just because number one, it caps into your inner spirit. It lets you realize there's an inner visual

21:01 to your controlling reality that might actually control reality in a strange way. So if you want something or if you desire something, and you feel that you need something the most important thing to you as of this moment. What you can do is summon that thing in your mind and what I've done is, oftentimes when you read books like The Secret or watch the movie, you'll be told that you have to close your eyes and imagine those particular things and put those things in your mind and heart in a particular way. And what I did was I created an interesting one

21:43 at the beginning of the chapter which I call The Outlaw of Attraction. And, and the idea is that what you do is close your eyes and obviously you would have a thing in your mind as to what you most desire or are the things that you would like to have completed or a question that you don't know the answer to and you imagine a search bar in your mind, sort of like a Google search bar except instead of the word Google around the search bar. You just kind of let create an animation in your mind of all the things that you love all the people places and things that you connect with and resonate with And you allow those things to just float around the search bar and really try to visual visualize those particular things as vividly as you can just sort of floating around this

22:28 this search bar in your mind. And as you visualize those things and kind of cycle through each and every one of those particular things, again people places and things that you particularly resonate with. Things that you find important to you or things that come from your heart. You then type in the thing that you want whether it be something that you desire or something you desire to happen or something that you have a question about but don't know the answer too. Imagine yourself typing that into your search bar after that You imagine yourself hitting enter and then you'll see a list of links show up just like you would in your computer monitor. But, click on the top link and you'll imagine that by clicking on that top link, a form of advice will come to you in the form of one or two words, one or three words. And this advice is something that you'll remember and something that you'll take into heart and realize that you can use that advice

23:32 for the future as you continue to meditate on this particular subject matter. Finally, at this point you have nothing more to do so just breathe in and imagine everything entering your heart, everything that you've imagined all those things that you visualized floating around your search bar all enters your heart and breath out and imagine all of those things as you open your eyes just sort attaching itself to the reality that you now see in front of you. Then, you're done! You've just basically planted the seed in your mind and heart and in the world. as to what it is that you want and what it is that you wanted to have done. You hope that thing will manifest itself in some way, and you've also been left with a little piece of advice from the top link in the form of one or two words – something that you can meditate on to see if that might inspire you towards getting what you want

24:26 What I find interesting about it is that first of all, it's free so you don't have to do anything or pay anybody in order to have that be done. It just takes a little bit of your own time to do it and then secondly what I find is that usually those one or two words at least for me are words that keep me patient so that I can wait for those things actually take place What I find is that whenever I manifest stuff using that particular method, and I've done this now a few times since writing the book. It's kind of ironic because the first... Because I haven't used that method until I wrote the book.

25:09 Basically, when I was supposed to be done with writing the book, I had just finished that chapter. I literally wrote the book from the beginning of it until the end without stopping. It wasn't a patchy way of writing it. I just literally wrote it from beginning to end, so this chapter happens near the end of my book and was right around the time that I had planned to finish writing my book but I wasn't done yet and so... So uh.. So I still had like an entire part to write on the book and I wasn't done yet at that point I was pretty much out of money

25:49 And so I and and i'd saved up all this money so that I could just basically spend time writing my book. So as you know, As an artist I live in this world which I'm constantly moving up and down above and below my income level. I hear ya! Now suddenly I've like literally drained out my entire income. I got a wife and kid you know where and were suddenly my life gets really nervous about this And she's like, we need groceries next week and I'm not sure if we haven't just maxed out our credit cards. So at that point I closed my eyes and thought to myself this is the time for me to use this prayer you know? And I've used similar things like this in the past and it always came to my rescue in certain ways but this time I used this particular prayer which was so weird because

26:39 I remember typing in the word money into the screen, feeling like an idiot about it too because you know it's like is this really going to happen right? So I remember typing in money into the search bar and then thinking myself okay I need to be a little more specific here so I just wrote money and then I wrote now. I wrote money now because I don't need money next week or next month but now! I click enter and when I click enter, I get my list of links and the one word that comes to me is the word patience which kind of infuriates

27:22 Because I'm mad at myself for having come up with that one word for myself. And yet, it came from me so I couldn't deny it and at that point I breathed in and imagined everything entering my heart, breathed out opened my eyes, imagined everything becoming a part of my reality which is really fun. That's like my most favorite part of the actual experiment is that when you do that, there is a weird feeling like something has changed and you don't know how but something makes you feel like something changed at that point. At that point I felt like I couldnít do anything anymore so I just continued living my life and the next day Iím with my daughter in the playground and it literally took 24 hours

28:08 I suddenly get a call from one of my bigger clients, big financial institution. And the meeting planner literally says, Alon, I know this is last minute but can you do a show for us tomorrow night? And I was just thinking to myself as she said that it was just ironic that number one would be this one client of mine because they're the only corporate client of mine that'll pay me on the night of my performing. Wow! Most of them take like a month to pay you afterwards, but they're the only ones that I mean. I don't have a single corporate client that won't do this and so and so what that will do this except for this one So it just happened to be my one client who hadn't called me all year But suddenly it was the next day after I'd made this prayer that they called me And they asked me to perform for the day after so I needed patience for 24 hours in order to get this money that I needed now

29:01 And so, that was pretty crazy. And I remember thinking wow that's a pretty far out considering that I did this the day before and of course I was also like concerned because just because I have one show it's not gonna necessarily save my life its just gonna take care of me for like a little while until the money goes out again. So at this point I was pretty much broke So it was strange that on my way home, driving my daughter back home from the playground I get a second call and my manager, the guy you just spoke to Clinton Billets calls me up and says what are you doing on November 13th? And i'm like nothing. He goes well we've got another big corporate event that's coming up November 13th and they want you for it suddenly like my next month was taken care of as well then as I get home

29:54 And this is, mind you I spent since May. I was on a cruise ship from December through May and so I'd saved up all of this money while I was out on the cruise ship because you don't have to make...you know spend any money while your living like an hedonist So I saved up all this money by the time I got off the cruise ship, it was like May. And so suddenly it's like May through October and I hadn't gotten any phone calls because everybody thought that I was out in the Caribbean and you know I didn't bother to because I'm busy working on my book I didn't bother to tell anybody that I was home. For me to get these two phone calls suddenly for like October and November, suddenly filling out my October and November, I was sort of beside myself going man this is a crazy little wish that I made but actually kind of came true. Then within a couple hours later, my manager called me up again

30:52 Says you've got this other gig they want you at the win in Las Vegas on December 6th and suddenly it's like Suddenly, it's like October November December And I've got my entire year just mapped out for me at this point. I'm ready to continue To write my book and then later on I got another one for January But but it literally took from that point until January For me to finish my book and all I made was that one prayer wish after I'd realized when money had cut out Damn, that's impressive. Suddenly I made enough money to basically cover the... literally sustain me while I finished my book until January of this past year yeah. Wow! So that was one of the crazier things that happened to me as a result of literally just imagining this search bar in my mind and visualizing these things potentially happen

31:46 That literally felt to me like I was being ridiculous for even doing it. When you do stuff like that, it's kind of like am I just acting? acting superstitious and being stupid about this but then when things like that happen you just have to say, I have to say it almost felt like he was trying to prove to me that it did exist by the way it manifested the answer for me. That's fascinating man. It sounds almost more like Neuro-Linguistic Programming, that exercise it sounds kind of like NLP but that is interesting its funny how it worked out like that yeah you just had to have a little patience

32:30 Another interesting exercise that was in your book, a simple thing people could do when it comes to trying to harness their own psychic abilities is this thing about the small-to-large coffee experiment. I thought that was a fun little thing i'm probably gonna do every day for the rest of my life really but tell the people about that have you ever seen that work? You know something The most recent time that it happened to me was the opposite had occurred. I had ordered a large cup of coffee, not doing the experiment and what they gave me was a small cup

33:13 coffee. So seeing that it can work in the opposite, it does kind of make me wonder whether or not it can actually work in real life. The truth of the matter is I'm like such a huge coffee drinker that I always drink large coffees but my friend Craig Browning swears by this and it's his experiment that he kind of contributed to me. He's this amazing urban shaman He's a psychic reader out in the New England area, Western Massachusetts. He swears by it and he says that he goes out and visualizes and asks for a small cup of coffee at the register. Of course you have to do this in a place where you order the coffee and then wait for it to be made for you. Then he visualizes large cups as he orders a small cup of coffee.

34:08 pays for a small cup of coffee and as he continues to visualize it and visualize the fact that they're going to give him a larger cup of coffee, they will give him a larger cup of coffee. And the idea that I put in my book that kind of added an idea that...that I had decided to make part of it was the idea that you know everything that we say every everything that we say is a reflection of us imposing our energy into reality. And so the idea behind magic words is that our words contain the ability to shape people's thinking and shape people's thoughts and make people form their own decisions, at its most base level. That's what communication with words is all about."

35:02 And so the idea of that you can actually use words that complement people and words that are positive to bring out the best in people is just that oftentimes we forget to be socially graceful for it in front of the people that were around. Usually, we're so caught up in our own lives that we don't bother to reach out to other people and make positive connections with the people around us but if we did How much more positive would our life actually be? Could we actually find that things manifest in much more interesting and surprisingly positive ways if we just used words that maybe affected people in a way that made them feel better.

35:51 One thing that I oftentimes try to do is just simply find a reason that it's honest to compliment somebody. It's often times if I'm out and about, and I see somebody and think there's something about them that seems distinguishing, I'll mention it to them. And it comes from the heart. It's just reminding myself that it's okay to say nice things to other people and by doing so, you find amazing things coming back to you in different ways. The idea on the coffee front is that after you visualize the cup of coffee rather than just going off and hiding behind something and waiting for your coffee, engage that person and say something nice to them about the day or about themselves. By doing so it will encourage them as they visualize their cup of coffee to make it a large one!

36:50 I love it man, that kind of stuff is so interesting. Yes these aren't the droids you're looking for! Yep yep well because of your job as a mentalist it does seem like you've had some strange experiences You talk about some in the book do people also come up to you are they more inclined to come up and tell you about their own paranormal experiences? Oh yeah I had a great one just recently as a matter fact I was performing for a Sunset Station casino in Las Vegas and on my way out there just this past November. I happened to sit next to a guy who was reading a book and I'm always sitting next to somebody in coach that's just ignoring me. Somehow, we end up talking because I was flying in from Baltimore to Las Vegas and he had just finished doing this bike race marathon that he was part of and he was

37:50 When he found out that I had just written this book, he told me the most fascinating ghost story. It was probably the best one that I've heard and I'm going to try to include it in my next book probably but basically his wife had died about three years ago He had been married for several years to this one woman. She died of a brain aneurysm while she was in the hospital, and he had given her a touch lamp that had three different settings from dim to bright, and she would just have to touch it in order to turn it on

38:27 Eventually, while in the hospital she ended up dying and he ended up bringing the touch lamp back home. It sat on a bar on his first floor of this house and it has one of those sweeping staircases that comes down and as youíre walking down the stairs you can see this lamp on the bar. He said that ever since he brought that lamp home, every morning when he... He said the first one day he was walking down the stairs and as he's walking down the stairs a lamp just turned on by itself in front of him and turned on to full brightness by itself.

39:07 He thought that was a fluke and he went over and turned it off. It then continued to do that, turning on to full brightness around him. It would do it sometimes several times in the day. Eventually, he started making this connection that maybe her spirit connected with This lamp so that in and of itself is an interesting It's strange to think that you know we as human beings will do that We'll make these connections, and we'll say oh well. You know this lamp was with her during this time in the hospital I mean maybe there is some kind of connection So um so he starts thinking

39:46 I think And he'll say, are you with me? And he'll ask the air this question and suddenly the lamp will turn on. This isn't just a few times, this is every single day from the time that he had brought this lamp back home. So he's having this very strange relationship with a lamp for years at this point so it's every single day that

40:24 that since she's died that this is happening and multiple times a day. And you know, he mentions this to certain friends of his and they ask him to plug it into different walls and stuff and he starts plugging into different walls to see if maybe there's something weird with the circuitry and You know It doesn't get you know Still the lamp is doing the same thing The other thing that's happening Is that every time he even touches the lamp it goes to full brightness? It never goes to any of the dimmer levels So he starts to look into the lamp and he takes the thing apart, trying to figure out if there's something that he can fix about this lamp. But everything is normal and there are no weird loose connections or anything like that so... He puts the thing back together and it still continues to do this thing! The crux of the story comes around when he meets this woman who lives in LA and he meets a woman who is an actress and she's Jewish

41:21 And his wife was Catholic, who hung crucifixes all over the house. So he meets this Jewish woman I guess she becomes his girlfriend or something like that but eventually she needs a place to stay and he's got this house so he invites her to come and stay in this house and She comes into the house In fact, he even warns her. He says you can come and stay at my house but I'm just going to tell you that there's a spirit that lives here and you're just going to have to realize this is happening so she comes in.

42:04 you know, into crystals and pendulums and stuff. And she brings out a couple of her own tools to see if she can connect with the spirit in the house. Apparently she does! It doesn't seem like her very much right? But But she's a pretty strong-willed woman and she's friends with this guy, and they have this relationship. And she says look I'm going to help you get your wife's things out of here because he hadn't moved a single one of her things none of her clothes nothing was gone from the house

42:43 And so she says, look we're gonna help you get all of this stuff out of the house. So she starts packing all his wife's clothes and belongings and they end up donating it to a Catholic goodwill type company. Basically what happens is They get all of her stuff out, she takes down the crucifixes from the walls and all the stuff ends up getting donated to this Catholic goodwill. And suddenly at that point The Lamp went back to its regular three settings and never ever turned on inexplicably again

43:27 That's eerie man, yeah. I've heard nothing that extreme but i've heard stories from people who have had someone very close to them die where they just come back and they don't give a lot of details but they just say you know I am convinced that there is an afterlife now that someone close to me has died I don't know, it sounds kind of compelling. That whole realm of spirits in the realm of entertainment and magic there are those mediums who claim to speak to the dead and sadly seem to be preying on people's moments of weakness sometimes but do you think there is a real ability behind these maybe capitalistic motivations?

44:08 Yeah, you know I'll say this about people who speak to the dead. That is an interesting thing that has huge controversy for very obvious reasons first and foremost what you mentioned that maybe it's just a capitalist way of preying on people who are grieving but what fascinates me about that subject matter is that it really a reminder to me that America and frankly being an American is all about taking

44:44 old, ancient mystical ideas and fusing them with your own current belief systems be it Christianity or whatever. You know we moved from the old country to settle in what is now the United States of America because we wanted to practice a freedom of religion. We wanted to be able to understand greater depth to our own beliefs and particularly the beliefs that the monarchy was forcing upon us, in telling us what was right and what was wrong. And what was blasphemous and what was correct? I think that

45:28 When we moved to this country, there was a lot of experimentation. In Ephrata, Pennsylvania, there's the church that George Washington and Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin all went to study astrology. They had their own telescope. There's Mormonism that sprang forth from who's that guy Smith who you know came from New York Joseph Smith? Yeah, I mean but I mean and and that entire Religion is based on a fusion of things like Freemasonry to I mean Rosicrucians among there's some weird stuff in Mormonism But I'm not about familiar with Mormonism though. I live in

46:07 in Kensington, Maryland just right next to the Mormon Tabernacle Temple which is so Game of Thrones man. I drive by it every time and I can't think of anything except for Game of Thrones. That's funny yeah i'm really fascinated with the early days of America there seems to be all kinds of interesting things there even alchemy, you know? It seems like a lot of the early guys had interest in alchemy and all kinds of esoteric mysticism and those kind of things. And it's kinda odd to think about that context because everybody knows that a big part of people coming into America was to escape religious persecution. And then you see what they were actually studying and there are some real occult esoteric roots to the foundation of America that you really can't get past

47:01 It is really awesome to realize that, in my opinion. just because, you know I've always felt quite the outcast for thinking the thoughts that i think. And never have I felt more patriotic to realize that the thoughts that I think actually come from founding fathers of this country. So with regards to spiritualism and understanding the roots of this spiritualist church, the dead comes from. I'm not sure of its exact roots or anything like that, but it started to become very compelling in New York State with the Fox sisters and people who were

47:52 some of whom were entertainers who started to work in this realm and a lot of them are kind of occultists and people who tried to connect with spirit through channeling the dead. And I think that what I find interesting about that is that your subconscious does so much, and can exhibit so much as many people have seen at college from stage hypnotists and stuff, causing people to transform themselves into things that they never thought that they could become. Things like that are... It's just interesting that we have this

48:38 history that goes way back into this idea that we might be able to connect with people from the dead and we can do this by searching within ourselves. Searching within ourselves, we find that we can actually tap into the spirit of that person and that person can come alive within ourselves and start speaking. I'm sure that similar to the world and beginner magicians learning how to perform magic for the first time. There are very amateurish people out there who speak to the dead as well, and when you start to move into that realm, then you can see how people might see this is being

49:20 outrageous and sort of like a scam artist that's preying on grieving people. But I'd say that the Spiritualist Church is not based on scam artistry, I think that the Spiritualist Church is based on their belief that part of their worship is based on not Not forgetting the dead and not forgetting The spirit that the dead might have within yourselves And that and that something might be tapped into in that if you approach the subject matter from a sincere place, and your intentions are pure and not Capitalist did not the things that we are afraid of but come from a genuine place what? Might manifest from something like that

50:05 Yeah, it is a curious question and if there wasn't some underlying truth or possibility the snake oil salesmen couldn't even do what they do. I think yeah maybe it's just curiosity but there seems to be enough substance that I definitely think something possible there have you had any experiences yourself talking with any kind of spirits that seemed legitimate? My weirdest experience that I can mention in the book actually is this electronic voice phenomenon experience that I had with a couple of famous people like Chris Fleming, he's the host of

50:51 Psychic Kids, which I think aired on Nat Geo and this other guy Danell Rawlings was a famous comedian. Yeah And two or three of us are sitting there at this bar and I just asked him to you know ask him the question You know tell me a little bit more about these weird electronic devices that you guys use How does that all work? And I asked him that question Figuring that he's going to give me some information but instead he just pulls out his machine and says here let's use it so before Before I know it, we've got this machine on and he starts... And all it is an AM FM radio that scans through each channel but within like one to one-and-a-half seconds at a time. So you'll hear static sounds like going chhchhh. It's going forwards or backwards on the AM or FM dial and he chooses AM going backwards so he says that that's where

51:48 That's where he'll get the most reception from and I'm thinking, well, I have an open mind. I'll listen to it and see if this works." And I'm frankly quite skeptical of this as it's happening Danell is frankly quite skeptical as well. So the best thing about it is that both Danell and I are there, and I can actually feed back off of what I know Danell's experiencing at the same time because we're both laymen to this thing that's taking place. Chris says, ìIs there anybody out there that would like to communicate with us?î First he asks us to ask a question and we have no idea what to ask. So then he says, ìThereís somebody out there who would like to communicate.î Within five seconds or so, suddenly it just goes, ìYes,

52:38 We both hear this word, yes come so crystal clear that it was surprising. I literally had to do a scan across the room to see that nobody was speaking through a walkie-talkie at us and stuff like that. I hear it say, yes we're riveted at this point. Chris goes without missing a beat and says that he's not sure if that was just a coincidence but can you give us more like a countdown or some numbers? And suddenly the thing starts spitting out numbers. It starts going, two, three, five, seven. Started doing this kind of weird where it wasn't like exactly there weren't numbers in sequence but they were definitely things that sounded like numbers that were passing through and it was happening at... It happened like in sequence and this is a way that almost seemed like if there was a coincidence, it was the perfect coincidence

53:39 So at this point, I'm literally freaking out in my mind because I'd never ever experienced anything like this before in my life. And we're in Boston and we're in the Sheraton and it's a NACA convention where performers were basically all there because we're for...we're there to sell our shows and our personalities to college students of this National Association of Campus Activities And so we're at this bar and this thing is happening to us, and I'm so surprised because there's people all around us. It's a busy bar and we're just doing this in the bar. You know it's not like a quiet place or anything like that where you are not in darkness. So... Right! This was very strange place to be experiencing these strange phenomena

54:30 After it spits out numbers, he just looks up at Danell and says can you tell us what his name is? He points to Danell. And Danell happens to have a very strange name so I was thinking in my mind there's no way that this thing is going to say anything that's even going to be remote to what his name is. Within five seconds again, it literally goes, Don and just continues going on. The thing says Don so clearly And Janelle, who apparently his friends and family call him Don is shaken by this experience. I mean he is like...he suddenly turns to stone! It was a really crazy moment where he just couldn't believe that this happened. He actually stood up and just stood there like what's going on? You know? Again it was one of the most

55:29 I mean, as far as coincidences were concerned if if I were to be... If I were to try to rationalize any of this. It would have to be a perfect coincidence but it was just too perfect! There was just too perfect a coincidence and so I shook his hand at that point said congratulations sir you've handed me my first on-demand paranormal experience So Danel has to leave, he can't stay any longer and I continue to talk with him about all kinds of stuff like quantum mechanics and stuff. How any of that might relate to what it is we're experiencing right now? And find out that Chris really knows very little about the quantum mechanics of all that stuff and really knows more or seems to be more focused on just what is to manifest a ghost!

56:19 So then I say to him, so how many spirits are we talking to here anyway? And he goes let's ask. How many of you are there out there and suddenly the machine which was on the entire time and I was listening while were talking about this other stuff it wasn't saying anything particularly fascinating or anything that that felt like it was trying to communicate with us. But as soon as Chris said, how many of you are out there? It suddenly says doing this thing where it's going chh yeah, chh yes, chh hi, chh hey and he was just like doing these weird things were like affirmations and salutations were coming out of the radio all of a sudden. And then he turns to me and goes sounds like there is four or five. That's awesome!

57:06 And I'm just like thinking this is so strange it's like i've never you know, i'd never been hanging out with a...I hung out with the ghost hunters before but i had never hanged out with them and had them like. They showed me their craft before. This was really fascinating because not only were they showing me their craft, but it was working and it was working incredibly well considering we're in this busy bar. It suddenly dawned on me that you don't really need to do anything a special place like a spirit seance or anything like that to be able to realize that there's stuff happening all around you at all times and if you just have an open mind enough to realize that you can communicate with these random things, then something interesting might take place when you do.

57:56 And this was certainly one of those moments where I mean, and so what's funny about this is that I bought one of these things. And I've had it for now years now and I never talked to it. Part of the reason why I don't because I feel completely ridiculous talking to this thing by myself. One day I'll probably get some people together and we'll try to do like a little something or something. But yeah, I mean that's one of the stranger experiences that i've ever had. Wow man! That would definitely trip me out if something like that happened now we were talking about American culture and the esoteric and I am curious

58:36 Because so often we get stuck in our own cultural bubble, especially as Americans. But since you are Chinese and Vietnamese can you tell us anything about how magic mysticism and the occult are thought about in Asian cultures as opposed to the West? I'm so American. I was born in California that it would be hard for me to do so without feeling a little insecure about real Chinese and real Vietnamese people actually thinking about these things through my own experience, however I can say that my immediate family, that is to say you know my mother and father and sister are pretty pragmatic and skeptical human beings. Though my mom and dad are fairly strict Catholic people who go to church every Sunday and stuff like that

59:27 they're really pretty skeptical and have always been more scientific-minded in terms of believing or disbelieving in ghosts or anything like that. I think if anything, they just want to ignore the fact that those things might be a possibility just because it would complicate their lives. However my family outside of them are all people you know many of them are interested in those types of things. I have an aunt who is really into mysticism and palm reading, tarot and stuff like that. Of course, I grew up in California so when...I was born in San Francisco so I was literally born in San Francisco

1:00:13 five around 1970 when when it was just booming in terms of mysticism and you know at the west coast and The whole flower power bad Yeah, so there's a lot of stuff that was going on And I got caught up in a lot of that at an early age the Age Aquarius but But then we moved to New York, we moved to New York State and of course New York state like I was mentioning is also sort of a hotbed of strange or early settler mysticism and stuff like that. And so there were a lot of people in that area that had influenced me in terms of just the things they talked about and the way they looked at strange and mysterious things

1:00:57 My dad eventually, when we moved to Washington DC he ended up getting a job at the Library of Congress. Both my parents are librarians that's what they... library sciences was both of their studies. Interesting! And so uh.. So my dad would bring home these books called Strange but True or various different strange but true type of books A couple were written by a guy named Frank Edwards another couple were written by a guy named Vincent Gaddis who is an exceptional writer in that field. And my love for strange phenomenon started at around the age of seven from just reading books like that about things like the Loch Ness Monster and UFOs, ghosts and spirits and paranormal phenomena. So all this stuff really came from having these books being brought home

1:01:48 by my dad. But later on, I think I found magic in the sense that it just gave me a way to... It empowered me to create these illusions and stuff for people so that they could experience strange things as well. So it was an easy tie-in for me. Obviously, as I got older, my fascination for both of these realms never shifted. And I was very fortunate actually to have befriended when I was growing up. And I grew up in Maryland for the most part, and my early childhood and by the time I was 13, I found this place called Dream Wizards which was the strangest magic store in

1:02:30 in my opinion, just because there are lots of great magic stores in America and many of the greatest magicians started off at these brick-and-mortar magic stores. These days, I'd say that a lot of magicians actually start online from watching YouTube clips and stuff like that. In the early days we had to discover a magic store or book at a library and then started our journeys there. The thing about Dream Wizards was that it actually had a Dungeons & Dragons store in it, and today is considered the longest living gaming supply company in the United States. That's a brick-and-mortar supply company. Dream Wizards' Magic Store has closed down for years though but when it first began in 1979

1:03:24 I'd walked into this place and it was a D&D store at the front with role-playing games and stuff like that. Later on, it started specializing in Pokemon and other games. Then you start walking towards the back of the store where you end up in a science fiction bookstore area where there's just all sci-fi and fantasy books Then, a few posters and arts from Boris and Frigidae. Fantasy art people! And then you walk all the way to the back and there's a magic store hidden at the back of this gaming store.

1:04:06 Normally, magic stores have a reputation based on its place where it is in the United States. You've got magic stores in New York and Los Angeles and Washington DC had Al's Magic Shoppe but Dream Wizards was weird because this place wasn't really known for its location. Rockville Maryland isn't like a popular area of the world or anything But the best friend of the owner, and the owner was a really interesting person himself. His name is Mark Churbinsky and he became the editor-in-publisher of Strange Magazine which was a Freudian philosophy type of magazine that collected strange

1:04:52 on data. It ran for several years, David Lynch was a subscriber and we had lots of big name subscribers so I worked with Strange Magazine for awhile as well but Mark Churbinsky's best friend was a guy named John Kennedy and not the president John Kennedy but a magician by the name of John Kennedy who at that time in the 1980ís perhaps the most creative magician in the world. in the world. It was strange that I just happened to have stumbled on this one magic shop in the middle of nowhere, Maryland and the guy who was sort of a magician behind the magic there was one of the most creative magicians in the world and has since moved out to Los Angeles as a magic consultant for movies and films and television shows and stuff and does a lot of stuff like that these days but

1:05:53 He is known in magic for being just super creative and I was his student, so I learned magic through him. The interesting thing about John Kennedy that very few people know about because most people see him as an illusionist who has basically just a brilliant mind and an illusionist close-up primarily. But Mark Czerwinski was his best friend and Mark was, you know a very intelligent academic person who loved things like mentalism and Fortiana and spirit seances. I kind of grew up in this... My tutelage as a magician was actually formed by this duality between John Kennedy who is a brilliant

1:06:47 illusionist magician and Mark Travinsky who was a, who really was fascinated in you know the realms of the unknown and strange phenomenon. Yeah that's an interesting path through this stuff for sure Well hey, we're getting close to the end of the road here and when your manager reached out to me about being on this show he mentioned a live spoon bending experiment with the audience. And I was really interested in this so listeners go ahead and get a metal spoon if you can or pause the show and come back because were going to see if anyone can bend a spoon with their mind and Alana is going to guide us through this. I think it's a great idea to go out on

1:07:30 So please man, walk us through this experiment and we'll see if anyone out there has got the magic touch. Well the first thing that you'll probably want to do is go and grab a spoon just go to your kitchen drawer and find a spoon of any kind but preferably something that you might actually be able to bend if you were to try to bend a spoon just because They're different levels. The guy who actually started the spoon bending party was a guy named Jack Houck. I got a chance to meet Jack Houck back in about 2008 and he basically used to put people through an entire process in which they would actually bend

1:08:20 metal just by bringing spoons to their event and making it happen. So what you'll do is hold on to a spoon, and I don't know, Greg, do you have a spoon on you? I do! Oh beautiful okay so what you want to do is put yourself in the state of mind by simply first holding onto the spoon and knowing that knowing that you have the ability to actually bend metal. Literally, knowing that you have this now I'm not going to have you bend it yet though just kind of feel it in your hands and close your eyes and just know that you are an energetic being who is capable of imposing yourself on reality in whatever way

1:09:14 knowing that you have the ability to bend metal. And what you'll do is, you're going to then simply take a deep breath and imagine as you exhale your inner thoughts kind of moving towards the front of your mind, your inner thoughts being the part of your body and part of yourself who understands that bending metal is all about just bending reality and bending nature as you impose yourself on that nature. And what I'm going to do I'm going to put you in a state of mind in which you'll literally be able to feel the ability to bend that metal. What I want you to do is simply take a deep breath, imagine as you exhale

1:10:07 Your energy center is starting at the base of your spine, moving upwards through your body slowly getting stronger and brighter knowing that you can magnify the energy in yourself and bend nature just like you can bend that spoon. When I count to three, you're going to just open your eyes and you're going to begin to chant the word Bend! Bend! Bend! And all the while you are going to bend that spoon in this way and that way in every which way... ...and see what directions it can actually move in if you can bend it in one direction See if you can bend it in a different direction If you can bend it in a different direction See if there's another part of the spoon that can bend? And what you're gonna do is just continue to bend that spoon until

1:10:48 It's all over and see what just happens. So starting at one, take a deep breath imagining yourself about to bend that spoon two you're going to realize that that spoon is going to bend whichever way you want and three I want you to Open your eyes, take a deep breath and say bend, bend, bend. And bend that spoon with as much force and as much effort as you can possibly bend it to see if the powers of your mind have the ability to actually change that spoon and move in whichever direction that you can. Keep bending it until you cannot bend anymore. When I say back to reality we are back 3-2-1. Back to reality open your eyes look at the spoon

1:11:28 If you see that the spoon has bent, if you're listening to this radio program hopefully And if you would mind tweeting that to our show or tweet it to me at alon__new at twitter.com, I would love to see any photographs. Did your spoon bend at all? Mine didn't but you know I didn't make it through my first 5k either so I think my mind muscle needs a little exercise! We would definitely like to hear from any listeners who are able to do this. I try my best to deliver this experience in live programs and actually do a real good job of doing it in my live programs. Iím going to be on March 3rd performing my show called ESP and Espionage.

1:12:18 at the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. So if you're interested in coming out and seeing a live program I will be there on March 3rd in Washington DC again at the International Spy Museum and my program called The ESP in Espionage Other than that, I perform regularly all over the country and all over the world. If you're interested in bringing me out to an association or a business event, it's my specialty – it's what I do – and I'd love to be able to give you more potent demonstration of this in live performance."

1:12:54 Powerful man, I love it. And definitely am going to try and play that back and maybe try a few more times but if anybody was successful let me know you have seen success in doing these large scale Demonstrations absolutely in fact. In fact just Just recently well I've been doing this on the radio a lot also and and this is actually the first time I wasn't sure how much time we had left so I was I was a little concerned because the last Time, I did this on a radio show my usual My usual program lasts about 8 to 11 minutes or so and I think that went over time.

1:13:44 I would have to say that when you see me live or if we had a little bit more time, hopefully maybe next time or something. We can work on it and obviously if anybody out there is interested in having me come out and do a live program for you at your in your hometown. I am available you can find me on at the man who knows dot TV that would be if you just Google banana who knows he will see me as a top ranking so definitely do stay in touch and I'm definitely eager to show what I do and then I'm on a mission to essentially give the world of new understanding of what all this means, and I'm hoping that more people will respond to or what it is but I have

1:14:30 Very cool, man. Yeah well thanks again I really did love this it was a serious blast you educated me on so many different areas under the mentalism umbrella and who knows if we'll ever really dial in on exactly what the mind can do but it seems like It can do a lot more than people think it can and I really appreciate your time man take care of yourself out there Hey thank you is so great meeting you Greg Well there it is people, Elon knew the man who knows. I thought it would be pretty interesting to talk to someone who comes from a different perspective on some of these things we talk about regularly and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to do a live spoon bending event We can scratch that off the weirdness list for THC now and big thanks to Elon for facilitating that but remember It's not the spoon that bends right?

1:15:17 Also, a lot of Plus members have asked me to do a show about ghosts and that's not really my forte. But I thought this was a good opportunity to get into a little bit of that too! And I hope some you guys are happy with this... ...bit of departure from the norm. In the second hour today we got into the mindset of belief, placebo effect, shamanism, psychedelics, Bill Hicks, synchronicity biohacking, the field of neurofeedback and hypnotism and its use of The Pendulum Fun stuff I've been really interested in the neurofeedback kind of thing. I hear that on Joe Rogan once in a while and it dovetails into what we do, but you know the drill if you want to support my ongoing efforts here and treat yourself twice as much show go over to the higher side chats plus dot com and sign up for me

1:16:06 I got four more shows scheduled on the books right now and if all these interviews happen as planned, i'm gonna be very excited. And I think you guys are going to love these next topics but until then that's it for me your moves spoonbenders your frickin' Watch out I can't stand running around I can't stay out No, you don't It's a barrel of bars You'll find The high-sized barrel

1:18:11 I'm afraid to do the time Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah I ain't gonna take None of your foolin' around And I can't stand No pullin' me down Yeah, yeah

1:18:55 The highest I spell on you, is your mind. The highest I spell on you You're not afraid to do the time Yeah yeah yeah oh Oh, oh

1:19:40 As you mop up the remnants of your melted mind, consider this. The high quality commercial-free show you just enjoyed is what we call THC free! But you can spend twice as much time with Greg Carlwood and all his great guests by becoming a member of the Higher Side Chats elite for just $5. And you'll get THE FIVE extended 2 hour episodes that come out each month because an honest, open-minded and uncensored exploration into the fringe will never be brought to you by your corporate overlords but rather must be funded by the loyal listeners willing to take that ride. So join at TheHigherSideChatsPlus.com And on top of twice as much show get your own easy to use RSS feed URL for convenient listening on any device Suggest guests on your member profile

1:20:31 comb through the archives of all the ones you missed, and continue the conversation even further on the new THC Plus Forum. Where you can scratch that higher side itch in between shows with the rest of us and hold your head up high knowing that your subscription supports a show you love produces the free version for everyone else And stands as a small act of rebellion against those nefarious puppet masters of The Power Pyramid Treat yourself It's time