- "...the door out of Hell is firmly
locked, but by the devils themselves, on the inside; whether it is also
locked on the outside need not, therefore, be considered."
- --C.S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost
-
- Mark Twain said, "The truth is the
most valuable thing we have." Ironically, it is Twain to whom a few
have referred as the archetypal "Gonzo Journalist"; his "reportage"
was often a skillful blend of truth, embellishment, and outright fabrication.
Indeed, the above quote is only partial. Twain actually said, "The
truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it."
-
- Twain was of course joking, but like
all "Twainisms," the observation was intended to cast a light
of humor on the darkest aspects of the human condition. Twain was a skilled
fabricator because he understood -- and perhaps empathized with -- the
enormous portion of Homo sapiens for whom truth is an aversion. Publicly,
everyone claims to be a proponent of truth, and almost no one thinks of
himself as a liar. But as history demonstrates, a vast majority of humankind
lives in active denial of and resistance to truth.
-
- Most people would rather opine a lie
and "fit in" than profess the truth and be excluded. Just as
the majority would rather be lied TO and made comfortable than be told
the truth and made uncomfortable. Liars have held humanity in the throes
of illusion for countless centuries. Governmental, religious, and academic
officialdom can and do transform basically decent human beings into unconscious
automatons bereft of free will. They do this successfully because a majority
of humans are terrified to assume personal responsibility. To accept and
speak the truth unconditionally is to make oneself the master of his own
destiny, and this is a burden few people are willing to carry. It is always
easier to allow oneself to be manipulated like a marionette on a string.
-
- The mass of humanity has always lacked
the insight, discernment, and internal gumption to tell truth from untruth.
If this weren't so, liars could find no profession other than used car
salesmen; instead they are running the world, heading corporations, educating
our children, controlling the government, leading nations into war and
bringing our species to the brink of annihilation. Little or no awareness
of this exists in the common man, who actually takes COMFORT in the belief
that the world's elite know better than him.
-
- The forecast is abysmal for any species
that prefers lies to truth. Without truth there is no meaning, and without
meaning life is a pathetic, joyless facsimile of its great potential. Intelligent
beings cannot live peacefully or sustain life without meaning. The only
possible road to redemption for humanity is the unconditional acceptance
of truth.
-
- Ask yourself, how might humanity react
if someone were to demonstrate a reliable means to distinguish truth from
untruth (or more specifically, true statements from untrue statements)?
Not just a sophisticated lie detector, an actual KEY that could unlock
the door to the infinite treasure trove of human consciousness and tell
us what a person is really THINKING. Imagine the ramifications for civilization:
politicians would have no choice but to tell the truth or be driven out
of office; the justice system could convict or acquit the accused with
little or no doubt of the person's guilt or innocence; consumers could
make more informed decisions by exposing the deceptions of big corporations;
world religious leaders and cultists that have corrupted the great spiritual
teachings might be exposed as the worst kinds of hucksters. Ultimately,
the integrity of EVERYONE, both public figures and private citizens, could
be put to the acid test, thereby forcing human beings to make a choice
either to speak the truth, or be exposed as liars. Would human beings accept
this key and bravely push through the door into the light of truth? Or
would they retreat like frightened animals back into the darkness from
whence they came?
-
- Believe it or not, the above question
was already posed to humanity -- and tragically, they chose the latter
course...at least for the time being.
-
- Reverse Speech: The Discovery of David
John Oates
-
- "Knock, knock Neo."
- --The Matrix
-
- The year was 1996. I was a 21 year-old
living life with few meaningful responsibilities, and as is often the case
with people in a state of drift, my obligation-free routine led to an abnormal
sleep pattern. I began staying up into the wee hours of the morning listening
to late-night talk radio -- and yes, the show I generally listened to was
Art Bell's Coast to Coast AM. One evening, Art interviewed a man named
David John Oates, an Australian researcher who claimed that when human
speech is played backwards, intelligent messages are sometimes heard that
reveal what the speaker is actually thinking. Oates had been developing
the theory since 1983, accumulating thousands of audio examples on celebrities,
politicians, religious figures, and private citizens, including newborn
children. Like many others, my knee jerk reaction to Oates' claim was not
just skepticism, but outright denial -- how could anything so transparently
silly possibly be real! Yet there I sat by my radio, listening hour after
hour, totally enthralled despite my best "judgment." I was able
to decipher most of the reversed statements easily, and something about
their ethereal, "ghost-like" quality struck a nerve at my core.
Ten years later, my memory of that first interview remains remarkably clear.
-
- Oates immediately became a fixture on
radio shows around the U.S. Interest in his work crossed-over into semi-mainstream
media, and he was featured on such TV shows as Extra and Geraldo. I followed
the progress of R.S. with an odd blend of dubiousness and fascination until
a personal "paradigm shift" around 1998. It wasn't any one revelation
but a combination of factors that began to persuade me R.S. was probably
valid. For one thing, R.S. seemed to have uncanny "predictive"
powers, or rather the ability to glean secret information that would later
prove accurate.
-
- In 1998, David found a reversal on President
Clinton that stated, "Had sex with an Oregon madam." Several
months after David presented the reversal publicly, Clinton's affair with
Monica Lewinsky (who had attended college in OREGON) was exposed. Other
Clinton reversals included "She's a fun girl to kiss" and "You
trash, make her swallow" -- interesting considering Clinton and Lewinsky's
contention that their relations were limited to oral sex.
-
- Also in 1998, Oates presented a reversal
on former U.N. inspector Scott Ritter that seemed to reveal highly sensitive
info. Ritter stated in his forward speech that the U.N inspection of Iraqi
"weapons sites" was a "pre-ordained" setup intended
to justify U.S. military action. In reverse, Ritter said, "Our wrath
won't shake the fox." Weeks later, the U.S announced its bombing campaign
in Iraq under the code name Operation Desert Fox. Reversals on Clinton
seemed to support Ritter's assertions, including: "Our pile of sh*t
/ Helps us. He helps little fox"; "Afraid to damn the fox";
'Hell with the Earth, seek desert answers"; and most chillingly, "I
am a snake oil terrorist."
-
- On the basis of these and other reversals,
Oates predicted in 1998 that the campaign against Iraq would "not
be totally effective." (Listen to the reversals here: http://www.reversespeech.com/rev_clint_iraq12-1998.htm)
-
- In the late 90s, Oates' presentation
of R.S. began to enter increasingly dangerous territory. His reversals
on the F.B.I's investigation into the doomed TWA Flight 800 ("We flogged
the wing"; "We assassined it"; "We don't serve the
law"; and "We'll beat the crime.") aroused a generally horrified
public reaction. (Reversals can be heard here: www.reversespeech.com/twa800.htm)
-
- As bizarre and disturbing as those reversals
might seem, they were downright tame compared to the ones Oates presented
on NASA scientists Don Savage and Ray Vellard. When speaking on the topic
of the so-called Martian Face, Savage and Vellard stretched credulity with
such reversals as: "We're involved with Cydonia"; "Mars
set the ray gun"; "These ships are on it, but nobody's getting
answered; and "What's locked up with their starship, this needs to
be know." (Reversals can be heard here: www.reversespeech.com/nasa.htm)
-
- In 1999, interesting scientific support
for R.S. seemed to come (indirectly) from a study at the California Institute
of Technology, which showed that the brain can "decode" backwards
speech. An Associated Press report on the study reads: "The ability
to understand speech is so deeply ingrained that people can decipher recorded
sentences that have been chopped into brief segments and played backwards...Digitally
recorded sentences were sliced into very short segments in the study, then
reversed. The distorted speech was played to seven test subjects. The participants
had no problem understanding the sentences. Their brains were apparently
able to perceive the syllables as sounding nearly the same whether heard
backwards or forwards." (Of course, this argues against the a priori
assumption of "skeptics" that R.S. is mechanically impossible
for the brain.)
-
- I noted all of these developments as
part of a growing anecdotal body of evidence arguing in favor of R.S.'
validity. By 1999, I'd decided that R.S. was not only real, but might have
the power to transform the course of human history. The potential applications
seemed limitless. In addition to its obvious capacity as a "lie detector",
Oates had been using R.S. in a private therapy practice for years. R.S.'
ability to tap the subconscious mind not only revealed the truth of what
a person was thinking, but seemed to offer a gateway into the very soul.
-
- And alas, the very thing that made R.S
so beautiful may have been the source of its (temporary) derailment. Around
1998, Oates' world began to burn, sometimes LITERALLY. He suffered an arson
house fire and numerous death threats not long after presenting his reversals
on Flight 800. He had a famous (and still mysterious) "falling out"
with the aforementioned Art Bell that led to a prolonged personal and legal
battle. By the end of 1999, David had decided that he could no longer safely
continue his research in America, and decided to return to his homeland
of Australia.
-
- I was disillusioned and angered by the
devastation that befell David and the science he had developed, and wanted
to help in any way I could. Through a series of odd serendipities, I was
able to meet David in Portland, OR, prior to his departure from the U.S.
I connected with him both personally and intellectually, and the two of
us began a correspondence and friendship that lasted into the new millennium.
I became intensely involved in reverse speech, accumulating many hundreds
of reversals of my own, and as is so often the case, I found that one cannot
know the truth about something without investigating it first hand.
-
- The most common "skeptical"
argument against R.S. is that listeners cannot hear reversals without being
prompted beforehand. My experience is that this is NOT correct; on frequent
radio interviews, I played my examples for the hosts with no pre-suggestion,
and roughly 90% of the time we agreed on the reversals' exact wording.
And in fact, for the last year that I was doing R.S., I would not document
a reversal without independent and unprompted agreement from another listener.
-
- But here is perhaps the most compelling
fact about R.S.: it is actually quite easy to predict what TYPE of speech
will produce reversals of the greatest number and clarity. In my years
of investigation, I rarely found reversals on individuals reading directly
from scripts, and when I did, they were of an inferior quality. This was
not for a lack of trying; I spent many hours "reversing" newscasters
reading directly from teleprompters, and I never found anything much better
than "gibberish". On the other hand, when people speak extemporaneously
and with great emotion, reversals occur anywhere from a hundred to a thousand
times more frequently, and are of a much higher clarity. This was NOT something
I had anticipated, and in fact, I had hoped for the exact opposite, particularly
since the speech of most public figures tends to be stilted and rehearsed.
So the question is, if R.S. is nothing but "coincidental sounds,"
why do these sounds occur PRIMARILY in emotional speech?
-
- The answer of course is that R.S. is
NOT merely "coincidental sounds," but is a natural function of
the subconscious mind -- this is what makes it such a reliable lie detector.
And in fact, R'S.' powers of insight may be far greater than most human
beings can presently handle.
-
- On many instances, I asked David if he
could explain what went so terribly wrong during his time in the U.S. Not
surprisingly, David expressed the belief that elements of government may
have taken action to suppress R.S., but he felt that a more fundamental
cause was behind some individuals' violent reaction against his research.
It wasn't enough for some people to DISAGREE with David; more than a few
actively sought to destroy him. David always began his explanation of this
with the same two words:
-
- "Reversal Reaction."
-
- Uh...say what?
-
- The Mirror in the Door -- Will You Like
What You See?
-
- "I only promised you the truth.
I didn't say it was going to be easy."
- --Morpheus
-
- Imagine a gorgeous young woman who has
spent most of her life gazing into a mirror admiring her own beauty. The
impeccable picture reflected back provides her entire sense of self, but
this is fine, as she is quite beautiful. Then one day, a bearer of truth
walks into her room and says, "Um, I'm sorry to have to tell you this,
miss, but that mirror is broken. This is what you really look like."
And before her eyes the truth-bearer holds a mirror reflecting her true
image: the visage is unspeakably grotesque -- her angelic countenance made
of supple skin, luminous eyes and golden locks has been replaced by the
mask of a hag -- toothless, wart-riddled, misshapen and scabrous. Of course
she goes completely mad, but she retains enough presence of mind to shatter
the mirror and slit the truth-bearer's throat with the broken shards.
-
- The above analogy may accurately describe
the condition that David has defined as "reversal reaction" --
a reportedly common response by traumatized, dysfunctional, or highly egotistical
personalities upon hearing themselves "reversed". According to
David (and many others who have used R.S. in private counseling sessions),
R.S. provides a direct gateway to the subconscious mind, allowing an unfiltered
examination of one's own dysfunction at its TAPROOT. This provides a metaphorical
mirror for self-inquiry, and oftentimes, the image reflected back is anything
but flattering.
-
- The ego-dominated mind lives in denial
of the true essence of self, which is spirit. R.S. is the voice of self
that speaks without the influence of ego or intellect. With brutal and
unrelenting honesty, the true self "comments" on the best and
worst aspects of one's own personality. To hear oneself indicted by the
voice of one's own consciousness is a trauma that few individuals are prepared
to absorb. Oates has described people who have descended into intensified
dysfunction after exposure to reverse speech, sometimes lasting for years.
(This is why David has always insisted that R.S. specialists require years
of training before they can responsibly use the technology to counsel others.)
-
- And just as the individual ego can be
shattered by the uncompromising honesty of R.S., so too can the collective
ego. The information that Oates injected into the public consciousness
-- shockingly scandalous speech reversals on the world's most powerful
figures, including the highest ranked officials in the U.S. Government
-- could not have been a source of comfort, pride, or uplift for anyone.
In retrospect, how could things have turned out DIFFERENTLY for Oates in
the U.S? Denial amongst our citizenry runs deep; despite embarrassingly
overt demonstrations of high-level criminality in the Bush administration,
outrage is barely a rumor. The unflinching courage required to stare the
truth in the face is tragically lacking in the vast majority of the American
public.
-
- One of the great sayings of Alcoholics
Anonymous is, "I am only as sick as my secrets," and the same
can be said of any society. As many have already observed, our country
is becoming increasingly analogous to a prison...but it is dishonest and
self-defeating to pretend that this prison is inescapable. A way out is
RIGHT THERE in front of you, a door leading from the drab and gray confines
of your cell and into the radiant sunlight of the REAL WORLD. But before
you can open this door, you must be willing to look in the mirror -- and
no, you're not allowed to blink.
-
- Who knows? Maybe you're not even ugly.
-
- ADDENDUM
-
- David John Oates still makes appearances
on the Jeff Rense Radio Program (www.rense.com) which can be heard in his
program Archives. A huge data base of Oates' research and reversals can
be found on the official Reverse Speech website, at www.reversespeech.com
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