Otherworld - Episode 24: The Gateway Process

Episode Date: March 8, 2023

In this episode, we dive into the declassified CIA document titled "The Gateway Process" which discusses the complicated theories behind hypnosis, transcendental meditation, biofeedback, and more. Jack enlists the help of his much smarter friend Sidu to go through these papers, explain the ideas, and decide whether it makes sense.  If you want to read the CIA's report on The Gateway Process you can find that here. To see photos related to this episode, click here Subscribe to Otherworld on Patreon for exclusive content and bonus interviews Check out our Merch Follow us on: Instagram, TikTok, Twitter  If you have experienced something paranormal or unexplained, email us your full story at [e-mail]   To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host Jack Wagner. This episode is the final episode of an ongoing series I've been doing. If you haven't heard those other episodes, you should go back and listen. I suggest starting at episode 20 and going from there. Today's episode is a little different than how we normally do things on the show. At the end of the last episode, I mentioned that I came across a declassified CIA document called The Gateway Process. That really took me by surprise. As you know by now, I've been hanging around a clairvoyant,

named Wendy for a while and learning all about her firsthand experience with this awakening she had and everything that followed. Now, Wendy has a very specific Wendy-style way of talking about things, and I think for some people, it's really easy to write her off

when she says things like, everything is energy. We're all part of one field. You could tap in and receive information if you're open, and so on. I've been interviewing her with an open mind for months and digesting her experience.

I could tell something was going on with her, but I think I was even guilty of chalking up some of this stuff as, like, hippie terminology, for lack of a better word. But then, by chance, I ended up reading this document called The Gateway Process, and as I was reading, I was seeing so many things that Wendy described to me laid out in extreme detail,

backed up by theoretical physics that was far beyond my level of understanding. In fact, most of the stuff in this document, is far beyond anything I could begin to comprehend, which is why today I'm going to be bringing on somebody to help me out with that. But before we get to that, I should give a little overview because there's a lot going on here, and this could be really hard to follow.

So, during the Cold War, the US was experimenting with a lot of unconventional ways to spy on the Soviets. In 1978, the US Army and Defense Intelligence Agency formed a secret unit that was eventually called That was eventually called Project Stargate. A lot of you have probably heard about this or seen movies about it.

They're basically studying psychics and remote viewing in hopes of using it in war. Lots of that was kind of bizarre and funny, like using tarot cards to find missiles and such. But this specific document that we're talking about today is not like that. It's very thorough and very specific. It focuses on a place called the Monroe Institute.

Now, the Monroe Institute was founded by a guy named Robert Monroe. And Robert Monroe was a radio broadcast executive and a very curious guy who began doing these experiments on himself in the 50s. And he was trying to figure out if you can learn while you're asleep by listening to recordings. And during one of these experiments, he started having strange sensations. And he kept tinkering around with that. And eventually, weeks later, it led to him. having this full out-of-body experience. In fact, he coined the term out-of-body experience.

Anyway, Robert Monroe, because of this, he went on to found this place called the Monroe Institute that specifically researches human consciousness. Now, fast-forward almost 30 years later, and the United States intelligence is sent to go investigate the Monroe Institute and find out exactly what it is that they're up to. That's where it gets interesting and much more complicated.

The document we're talking about today is a summary of the studies the Pentagon did on the Monroe Institute. Not only does the Monroe Institute believe that people like Wendy exist and can do the things they claim to be able to do, they also have a detailed explanation of how they can do it, and they also say that they've developed a system to give other people these same abilities using something called the gateway process.

Now, the gateway process is very complicated, but it's basically a series of acoustic waves that are played to a person using a special set of electromagnetic headphones. They say that this causes the brain to begin oscillating at a particular frequency that allows us to perceive information that we can't normally perceive. They also say that this information is already out there and our brain just is not operating at the level necessary to receive it, but their system could change that, or so they claim.

I know this all sounds like a big conspiracy, but I promise you, this is a real thing. You could read about it yourself. It got to classified in 2003. We really did study this. Not only that, the lieutenant in charge of overseeing the entire operation, Stargate Project,

eventually went on to become the president of the Monroe Institute after he retired from the army. This show normally focuses on firsthand experiences, but when I began reading this stuff, my mind could not stop racing and considering how, even if part of it is true,

how much of an effect it could have on the stories that flood my inbox for this show. If it's possible that certain conditions can enable our brain to perceive information that we normally can't, even just for a brief moment, what would that look like and what would it feel like for the person it's happening to?

Could that possibly be related to some of the stories we hear about on this show? So, like I said, this document is very dense and references a lot of concepts that I simply don't understand. So I sent it to my friend Sidu, who has a PhD in molecular biology from Harvard, and is currently doing his postdoc research there. And I consider him a very skeptical person. In fact, I've reached out to him in the past specifically to debunk some things that I consider paranormal. I wanted to see if he thought this had any merit. and if so, if he could possibly explain it to me in a way that I could understand.

So this episode is going to be a conversation between the two of us, diving into the CIA document together and seeing if we could make any sense of it. This is episode 24. The title is The Gateway Process, and you're listening to Otherworld. Bobby? Yes, it is. You still warm? Yeah, let us know when you're ready. Okay, okay.

I feel for no. As a question. You tell me, Samo. in the Pacific Islands, it would be superstitious. This is a story about... Why don't you explain your background first and what you do for a living, your education, and so forth? Yeah, so I, in general,

have been very stoked about science since I was pretty young. Could really make a decision about what I wanted to study in college, so I majored in physics, math, and chemistry to try to maybe figure everything out, which leads you down some very like sort of philosophical paths of what can we know and what can't we know about the natural world. But I, more recently in my PhD and then recent research have sort of turned my attention towards biology

and trying to understand, well, can we use some of these like more quantitative tools that we used to explain the universe and, you know, apply them towards understanding how a cell works or, you know, how maybe we can do things that would be considered possibly superhuman, like regenerate your skin if you get a cut instantly or make a person sort of biologically younger than they actually are in real life, which is like a big topic of study. So I find these questions really interesting.

So the interface between physics, math, chemistry, life, biology. So, frankly, a researcher at Harvard. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, you're at Harvard right now. You're speaking from the Harvard campus doing your postdoc research. chemistry department right now, doing my postdoc there. I think I explained to you that I have been doing this multi-episode series about this person. I don't think I've told you that much, but they have kind of had some very, very bizarre things happened to them through their life, and they explained to me this whole process of like

experiencing this awakening that's completely changed their life as now like their career using that to help people. And she doesn't quite understand all of it. She knows just from her own personal experience. But then I stumbled across this CIA document about the gateway process when they're researching this stuff basically trying to, like, it seems like they're trying to weaponize astral projection

in the 80s. But it was mind-blowing reading this document where they're laying out how they think, this might actually work. I'm reading it, and it's so similar to what she described from her lived experience. And honestly, there's a lot of stuff in this document that I just don't quite understand because I don't have the knowledge. So I told you to read it and come back so we could discuss it.

And maybe so that you could explain what they're saying to me, you know, explain it like I'm a five-year-old. Let's go maybe explain to like I'm a 13-year-old. I'm not that stupid. But either way, I'm excited to hear, like, what do you think? You just read, you read this document. Yeah, so first of all, it was very interesting because I think as you worked through the document, I was trying to paint a picture.

And I think it was really interesting to me because these documents get declassified. And with, like, stranger things and, you know, men who stare at goats and these sort of, like, pieces of media where we sort of laugh at, like, you know, all the crazy things that you're trying to do to, like, you know, figure out, like, where the Russians were going to go next. many decades ago. You don't really think about it as like a real-world thing, but this is clearly a document that was produced maybe in the hopes of utilizing some of this stuff.

And so you can see the writer work his way through these. To simplify it, the thing that they're studying is vibrations. It's literally, you know, studying vibes. And they're studying frequencies. And they sort of split into two ideas or two things. So like, you know, in physics, we learn about maybe high school physics, maybe into college physics. we learn about, like, oh, light can be like a particle or a wave.

And, you know, waves are a pretty useful way to describe a lot of things in physics. There's, you know, the molecules in our bodies have oscillations. They vibrate at certain frequencies, certain energies. But the crazy thing here, I think, comes out when they try to link multiple frequencies of things. So that in my mind, the sort of two halves that this does is sort of a real world, the more like tangible world frequencies, which are like, you know, if I plucked a guitar string here, that's a pretty large thing that you can see,

and that is a frequency. But there's also like, you know, the vibration of individual molecules and atoms that you can't really see. And this hemisink idea is based on some real findings that people have seen in the brain using EEGs and other measurements of our brain activity. And it's an observation that when the brain is going

through different periods of usage, for example, if you're solving a math problem, where people have looked at brains of people that are listening to music or playing music, there'll be these different oscillations, these ebbs and flows of neural activity. And you can look at the frequencies of these oscillations, and you can see that maybe you have a very high-frequency oscillation when you're solving a math problem or a very low-frequency oscillation when you're listening to music. And there's different parts of the brain that these oscillations and activity come from.

And so people just generally call them brain waves, which has been used a lot in sort of popular science. And it raises this question of like, you know, if you're writing a sci-fi book, not to say that everything described here is science fiction, but, you know, somebody who's really acutely reading this stuff would ask, well, if you're saying that this frequency is solving a math problem, what if I have a frequency even higher than that or even lower than that? Would that make me do math better?

Would it make me the best, you know, musician in the universe? And so, like, that is sort of an idea that's explored, but that doesn't have, you know, solid evidence that our brains can actually do that because all we're able to do is really watch people doing things. We're not getting to the point, I mean, you'd have to bring up sort of ethics in that case where, you know, should we try to input these brain waves into people? Should we try to, like, you know, put some wires into their brain and make them feel a certain way? A lot of these experiments are either just starting to be done in some mice or rats,

but have not really been done in people. Yeah, so it starts with sort of a description, and it's really useful to read this through because he sort of starts with him learning about these brain waves. Talks about these alpha, beta, gamma waves. And then the next thing that he goes into is also something that people have brought up previously, which is, well, you know, when we hear a noise, our brain picks up that noise, our ears pick up that noise, our brain perceives that and there's a spike of activity. But there's this idea of binaural beats, which is, you know, if we can play, yeah,

This is sort of the groundwork for this hemisink idea. And I sort of think of hemisink as a separate thing. So with hemisink, the idea is that you're playing these musical beats, which end up just being these intonations or things that hurt certain frequencies, there's an effect that our brain does where if your two ears are perceiving two slightly different frequencies, especially if they're, I think this is based on mostly frequencies that are 10 hertz apart. then you'll hear not only one frequency and the other frequency from your left and right ear,

but your brain will perceive a third frequency. It's a very high-pitched frequency that sort of arises at specific combinations of these frequencies. So people have really found this to be a replicable thing. If you can set up like headphones on people and play two frequencies that are 10 hertz apart and people hear this third frequency. Now, whether that third frequency is doing,

it's just a bug or a feature, of the brain remains to be seen. I think that's where people, psychologists and neuroscientists, really differ. You know, people listen to music a lot to con themselves down and to enter a meditative state. And that music can be different for different people. But there's a lot of people that have professed that,

you know, doing this binaural treatment and getting that third frequency, that extra frequency that your brain perceives is like really good for meditation, makes them feel a lot calmer, And that's where the verdict is still sort of out. That's where the debate still stands on this treatment. And that's barely getting into this document, too, because, like...

Oh, yeah, that's just the first level. That's barely scratching it. Like, okay, so we should get into the real part. And so my very basic understanding from reading this is that basically, like, it has to do with the left brain and the right brain, right? Whereas meditation is, you know, like transcendental meditation, you're kind of turning to turning off your left brain or trying to quiet as much as possible. Hypnosis seems to be like isolating a certain part of the brain to people, right?

This, what they're saying is that certain people can reach this meditative state where the heartbeat becomes an even rhythm, an even tempo, and that's affecting the brain and the brain waves and the brain fluid and activating some part of the brain that normally is not able to be activated, right? And then in turn, causing these people to be able to perceive something, you know? Basically, there's like this map. Maybe we'll get into that, but there's this map in the CIA, document where it's like this theorized illustration of the universe and what we can perceive.

That was probably the most eerie part of it to me is that like there's this map of the universe and our perception is just this tiny little part of it. Yeah. And then there's what was a, oh man, that's where we start getting into the stuff where I'm like, I really can't understand it. We're talking about like white holes, black holes, galactic north. Galactic South, the Taurus. Like absolute infinity, the Taurus, yeah.

What is, yeah, okay, so we can't get ahead of ourselves, but what is... That's what they're saying, basically, with the... theoretically, it's causing this, like, your left and right brain to be working, like, completely evenly, right? Is that... Yeah, basically, there are, like, if you connected a person to, like, an EEG

and you're looking at their brain activity, look at the left, you look at the right, and you see that they're... you know, if you can sort of look down to the level of, you know, at a certain level with, like, different neurons, there's different sort of oscillations happening. But again, the interesting thing here, which I think would raise the most eyebrows,

is that the oscillations that are happening in neural activity are all very, they are through, like, basically, electricity. The neurons are polarizing, depolarizing, and that's sending signals, and that's what's being measured when you look at these brain maps. What they're describing is a very, like, you know, mechanical oscillations, a different kind of oscillation, which they start talking about, like, that's why I was sort of saying, like, until that point, like, they're not really saying anything wrong about the brain. It's not anything that even people in 1983 would have argued against. I think we, if anything, have more evidence now that that's, you know, there are oscillations in neural activity. They are differently to do different things. We're still learning a lot. I mean, like, if you go to any sort of. as a scientist, you go to neuroscience talks and you'll be surprised at what people don't know,

but really basic things like being hungry or thirsty or solving a math problem. It's when they start to connect those oscillations and then say, well, you know, what's a way of beating this whole, like, these limitations and oscillations. A lot of this document is like limitations and oscillations, right? If you could just oscillate a little further,

if you could oscillate into like this sort of state of being, then think of like the things you could see through these oscillations. And the way they proceed to those doing that is, like you said, through this sort of like breathing exercise that, you know, attunes your entire body. And rather than your brain being like this electrical computer with all these depolarization polarization events, is your brain is just this thing that's actually sort of like moving up and down within the fluid of your skull. And, you know, if you're doing that sort of globally to your entire brain, then that's like, you know, and training both parts of your brain

at once without treating them as two separate parts. like they are used to being. And I think that's where the sort of the beginning of my skepticism started, because there is not really a clear link at this point between, like, those would be, like, I think a mechanical push or like a poke is something that can be perceived by cells and perceived by biology, but there's little to no evidence that that necessarily operates via the same sort of like axes that your brain would perceive.

And so when the biology sort of gets into it, it feels a little bit less credible that this could be the case. But that's like the first, I think the two like big links that I saw where they're really like asking you to like have faith in their system is the first link is the link between like your own body's movement

and those neural connections, number one. And number two is like the sort of crazier one that we'll probably get into a little bit later, which is all of those connections linking into this like quantum realm of a very, very high frequency. Well, yes. And that is exactly why I'm doing this in the first place, actually, because I think I've mentioned to you that I am doing this whole story about this woman who had this awakening. She describes it as a kundalini awakening, which I thought it was interesting to see that mentioned alongside a lot of this Monroe Institute stuff. but a lot of her firsthand experience lines up so much with what's described in this document.

And these high frequencies, the high frequency quantum realm stuff, basically her describing the ability to perceive information from like this quantum realm, essentially. And sometimes it is jumbled, but being able to perceive it in a very scrambled, confusing way at times, it really, really lines up with the theories in this paper. So just even the fact that they're researching this at all was very shocking and eerie to me to see, you know, because this person I've been around her for a long time. She's not crazy. She's not crazy. And hanging around her, you could see something's happening with her. I don't know what it is, but something's happening with her. And even if a lot of the stuff in this research and this document is wrong,

there might be part of it that's onto something, you know? So what part do you think we should go to next? Well, so like one of the things that they talk about is on page 15, where they talk about this like, you know, you have this energy oscillation, and then after a certain length scale, which is like this 10 to the negative 33 centimeters, which is incredibly tiny, you can imagine. You get to sort of point where like this is where the writer gets,

but he gets to his point where he's sort of, very beautifully, like, describing it as like, you know, we don't really have definitions where it goes on in this space. Once you get beyond this length scale, like, we don't really know what happens. And that's actually, I mean, it's labeled as such, but it's this idea of Planck's distance. What is Planck's distance? It's sort of described as many things. I've seen it described as like one of basically the smallest sort of measurable unit. These are things that are relevant to physicists in general because, like, you know, you can imagine in your head.

It's like a sort of, it's like the opposite of that, like, the Phantom Tollbooth, like, you know, imagine the biggest number and then add one, add one, add one, right? Like, it's the same thing where it's like, well, imagine something smaller than that, smaller than that, smaller than that. But Planck's distance is really like, you can theorize a smaller distance, you can make this 10 to the negative 34th. But in terms of, like, this distance's effect on, on, like, science and the effect on, like, physical phenomena that people can see in, like, particle physics, for example, this is, like, one of the smallest distances that sort of has relevance. And people don't really know there might be things. Some people say there must be things happening at a smaller scale than this, but we have really no idea what's going on.

We barely really understand what's going on at this Planck's distance. But the link here is less, I think, about that and more about this idea that, like, well, we talked about vibrations. We did the first link, which I think is like, you know, our brain has waves and our body has waves. and they mention the sort of vibrational energy of the earth. You know, like the earth's mantle itself, having this vibrational energy and moving at this, like, low frequency

and us being able to match that frequency and maybe utilize it the way you'd, like, break a glass by singing in its certain resonating frequency. We can use it to sort of resonate through the earth and connect. So it's our vibrations connecting those vibrations. But then there's this idea about, like, you know, going smaller than the scale of the earth. Instead of zooming out and looking at us in relationship to the world around us, like the Earth, zooming in and asking really, like, can we approach vibrational realms that are at or beyond the level that, like, sort of physics can describe? And that was a little,

a little bit crazy for a few reasons. I think that there are definitely things happening in your body. For example, like, you know, we are at our core made up of atoms and electrons and, you know, molecules and things like that, which, as I've said, do have these vibrational energies. But I think the point is not necessarily that those things are inside of us or that they are operating at these like vibrational frequencies, but more that we have any control, that's where it starts to get a little meta, right?

Like I am made up of these parts. I am made up of these atoms. And so to what extent can a human sort of recursively then control things that are, you know, making the building blocks of what they are? And the idea that you know, in 10 days, somebody can learn like these specific techniques which are operating on energy scales that are very different.

and vibrational frequencies that are very different. That's where it started to get a little bit crazy. But I did think it very interesting that this guy in 1983 was getting into some of the sort of, I wouldn't say this is like niche physics, but it was definitely not, like, people are a lot more focused on things that are more directly applied to like wartime. Like, you know, if you were like a really smart physicist, you were going and studying like combustion and like, you know, splitting the atom and maybe you're thinking about these things. But I think this guy did a remarkably deep dive.

And I can tell you honestly, this goes beyond like, you know, the 2022 college physics curriculum or even a lot of the grad school curriculum. So it was a lot of crazy stuff. I mean, you know, we've talked before about how there's a lot of stuff, especially in the world of New Age, where science and physics is mentioned, but they're playing very, very fast and loose with it to the point where anybody that knows even a little bit about physics looks at it and they're like, oh, this is complete nonsense. just they're using the words, it doesn't make any sense. It seems to me that you are saying that while these theories are very far out there, it is based in reality. These are connected to real theories and concepts in physics, and it lines up with your understanding of how the universe works.

Basically, it's plausible. Is that what I'm understanding, am I understanding of that correctly? Yeah. I know I sound dumb, but... No, no, this was... Not at all. This was... That was one of the more remarkable things I found about this

because at its core, the science, you can't argue with the fact that there are length scales that hurt the punk constant. You can't argue the fact that we do have oscillations in our brain. And I think that a really nice thing it does is it would serve, I think, to bring at least a small group of people into the fold of, like, you know, how can I connect something that makes me feel spiritually very good, like meditation, to maybe like, maybe use that to learn a little bit more

about like the physical universe and, like, sort of understand, like, what might be going on that we can't prove or disprove necessarily. Yeah, and to be clear, like, I don't know that this can necessarily be taught to people easily. I think I've heard anywhere from like five to ten years if you were going to learn it,

but the person I'm doing the story on, it just kind of happened to them. They weren't trying. Like, they just one day it kind of hit them. And the spooky thing about this is that I forget if it was mentioned in here or somewhere else I've read, but it could happen that, like, theoretically, this can accidentally happen to people who are being hit by those same wavelengths and the same rhythm. So there's reports of this happening to truck drivers and guys that work on, like, AC ducks.

And, you know, I think the thing that we haven't, like, explicitly said yet is that when this happens to you, theoretically, you're able to perceive. other dimensions, essentially, like, perceive things that we normally, that are there, but we normally can't see. So this could be information, like, downloading information from the quantum sphere, I guess, or, like, communicating with other dimensional beings or things like that. Whatever it is, I mean, I've heard a lot, like, the person that the story's about, man, like, she just, like, talked about, like, going into deep trance and, like, communicating with people, other beings that like have time

and like earth like laid out almost like flicking through an iPhone photo and like just going through time and space like showing her things and she describes the quantum realm as like being completely jumbled and flat things in your life she's like pulling things out randomly

because it's all mixed up and jumbled it's not chronological a lot of very very interesting things I don't know how to describe them other than that But I think where this becomes really interesting to me is if theoretically there is more out there that we can't currently perceive, our brains cannot perceive it, or our senses, or maybe there is some type of sense that we haven't quite developed yet,

and if it briefly turned on for a second, like what would that be like? I, on this podcast, hear stories all the time of people seeing very strange things all of a sudden, and sometimes beautiful things, but there's patterns. There's obvious patterns from these people, and a lot of patterns are very weird. It's not just like stuff they read on the internet. So to me, what's really, really interesting is maybe there is some kind of future understanding of this.

You know what it reminds me of is death people when they get cochlear implants, which I believe is like a sound processor that stimulates the nerve inside their ear. Is that how it works? Yeah, it's helping them through that, like that intermediary step of like taking in stuff from the environment and then like some sort of battery powered like, you know, sending that

sense into their into their ear. But if you have, if you don't have the certain like, you know, the inner ear, the bones that help process that information normally, then you need some kind of intermediary machine, basically. I've heard it's really unpleasant for people when they get the cochlear implant at first. It basically comes in a static. But their brain eventually gets used to it and kind of learns how to use those signals. But I've read that it's extremely unpleasant and a lot of people don't want it pretty much immediately after getting it. It's not like they hear music all the sudden. It's just like pure, static, horrible and confusing. I think it's overwhelming as well because

all of the brains all of a sudden having to do way more work. But it eventually gets good. So what's really interesting to me in talking to you about all of this stuff in the document and just the possibility that, you know, our brain could maybe do more, maybe perceive more. We don't know. But what's interesting is that if it could suddenly do that, receive information, essentially, like downloading information, let's just say that there's energy out there, messages that we're just not perceiving. If suddenly it turned on, it probably wouldn't work very well.

like our brain has limitations on how it would process that, right? Yeah, because you haven't learned how to filter. There's probably a lot of garbage in there. Like, if you could, there's types of information, right, that we don't normally see. Like, I could, just because you could do that, doesn't mean that information would be high, that data would be sort of high information content, right? Like, I don't know, there's a bunch of stuff here, right? Like, because there's all the different things that the cells in your brain

or your brain as a whole can do in response. to something unexpected, right? I mean, there might be a lot of examples of people where you get some sort of sense, you know, if you, like, in this sort of like hypothetical, you can sense this thing. You can sense the thing that you could normally sense. Your brain, I guess, has sort of a fight or flight, right? It can either try to process it given the time that it has or it's like, no, I'm not going to tell them about it. You know, it's just going to get filtered out and maybe it's a dream or something, yeah. Okay, we have to take a quick break, but we will be right back. Yeah. But like, I think wavelengths of energy is another one of the sort of, you know, overarching themes of this, like, CIA document.

People love talking about, like, different energies. Like, you know, energy is like almost colloquially something. Like, if you feel an energy vibe, right, like a bad vibe. I think we were talking about this earlier, too. Like, a bad vibe is something that people at least claim to feel. You can feel like literally bad energy, you know, there's different energy sources. you can feel like it's too hot or too cold. Like that's a presence or absence of energy.

But being able to sort of tap into different types of energy at these different wavelengths and frequencies is something that they talk about a lot in this document, this idea that like there's all these prevailing frequencies in the universe. We can only access some of them, but imagine if we could access more, which would fall into this like extrasensory sort of perception.

And that's kind of what we get into with like these little maps that are illustrated. Honestly, the spookiest thing is that, how illustrated this stuff is. Yeah. Can you please explain to me, page 18, when we start talking about the Taurus, the black hole, white hole, universe and hologram, what that. Do you understand this at all?

So the cosmic egg. This is pretty, this is pretty sort of heady stuff. Yes. And again, this is one of the times I was like, this guy's making a huge effort. This is really actually pretty cool that he, I'm just imagining some guy, like, you know, signing up for to work for the CIA and then, you know, having to learn all this stuff.

To interpret the diagram that they're showing is like, so there's black holes, which like, we've now, like, been able to get a picture of them, which is really cool. That was one of the big things in 2021, I think, or 2022. There's also, like, a theoretical reverse of that, which is a white hole, which just exudes, you know, matter and light energy, all that stuff.

So black hole sucks it in, white hole. hole sort of puts it out. And the way the diagram that they drew in the CIA document was like almost like a attached white hole and black hole that were like near each other where like at every moment like things are coming out of the white hole. Our galaxy is somewhere there and then they're like being sucked back into the black hole. So it's almost like this like cycle of being, you know. But a lot of this stuff is like not something that you could show anyone a picture off. You'd have to say, well, these are the, this is the equation that describes what. going on in there.

Yeah. And that's where a lot of these structures like the, like the, you know, like the structures that he's drawing, right, like the Taurus or like the space time evolving, you know, you end up asking, well, like, you know, can there be like a boundary to the surface? Oh, no, there can be a surface. I'm going to start thinking of like a troidal shape or like a Mobius strip or something. And so it sort of invokes a lot of like you try to, people try really hard and spend a lot of time thinking about like the geometries of space time.

in these states, definitely. So what do you think about this as a Harvard man? Well, as a Harvard man who doesn't, who hasn't thought about this sort of high-energy physics stuff that much. I think that like, I think multiple parts of this can be true in the sense that, like I said, I think like there are people who devote their lives to try to understand what happens of these tiny time scales or length scales or at, you know, energies that we could in fathom that are, you know, higher than like the surface of, you know, more energy than there is

on like the surface of the sun or whatever. I think that like the difference comes, it almost, it might give some people a sense of maybe powerlessness, but I think like there are a lot of things that are in control of us. I mean, again, like, you know, if there's a lot of very like minute things going on with like an electron, our body has, you know, trillions upon trillions upon, you know, how many, you know, electrons, all the different atoms in our body. Like, those things are in many, if people think of things, if people think of life is very, like, deterministic, like, yes, you maybe are able to,

if you can measure each electron in my body, you can predict, like, everything I'm about to do, like, today or on this call or after I, you know, after I go home for the night. But it's less, it's less realistic, I think, in my mind, at least currently to think of a way in which, like, We would be able to, as such, like, big, like, coarse, you know, beings, be able to, like, do the reverse and control things on that, on that level. I think what gets me excited about this and why this is the first time that I,

doing this show that I've had a moment where I'm like, man, like, I think this might be on to something, and maybe my perception of things is actually changing. Okay, this is kind of how I look at it in, like, very much layman's terms. We're probably about the same age. And we both remember the time when our computers didn't have internet. Like, internet existed, but most computers just, like, weren't hooked up to the internet, right? You, like, couldn't get a picture on there. You would put, like, CD-ROMs on.

You couldn't put anything onto it. It was just, like, your computer. I think that's how we generally think of our brains, right? You could, like, put information into it out of it with, like, by talking to people, whatever. But I think, like, with this stuff, theoretically, that there's, like, a one- Wi-Fi card, essentially, or Bluetooth, in our brains that we don't know about. Like, if you can imagine one of those old Windows 95 computers all of a sudden, like, enabling Wi-Fi, you didn't know was there.

And then we're able to, for brief periods, these people are able to download information not available normally or see things. when only during times when they reach this super relaxed place where that part of their brain is able to work. And to me, that is, I mean, first of all, amazing, opens up like so many more questions, but then also starts to explain, possibly explain, the huge amount of paranormal stuff I get submitted to me all the time

that just like, like, it's possibly, it's all connected right here where, you know, because like, why are so many people seeing things? Why do so many people see, like, spirits, weird cryptid things that just kind of like make no sense. And some things become less scary. A lot of things become more intimidating and scary, but it is kind of like this connective thing where it's like, okay, maybe people are having these moments where just for a second, like their brain is reaching that and it's like activated for a second.

They're able to perceive something that they normally can't. It kind of clicks and starts to make sense, you know? And even with like the UFO stuff, because I've heard like a lot of people who have had experiences with that talk about how it's like telepathic communication almost. Like even that could be explained that way. It starts to open up a lot of doors. That's kind of how I think of this. And I don't know if that's like an incorrect way of interpreting it, but that's kind of a combination of reading these documents and talking to people who. have lived through this?

Yeah, so I think like we generally intersect on that point. In my opinion, like using anything that is confined to like our bodies, like, you know, me like, you know, slamming my fist on the table in a certain rhythm or something,

right? Like that, what you refer to as control, right? Like going in the smaller direction trying to say like, well, I'm doing this in some way of getting like some quantum state or whatever is a little bit less realistic. But, I think, again, one of the reasons this is so compelling is that, like, we know just generally, like, our bodies and our, like, realities sort of follow these rules because that is what makes

up nature, right? Like, these are, like, the fundamental building blocks of matter. And so whatever rules at the quantum level or at the particle level, you know, are these things are following, like, we are somehow beholden to those rules. So in that sense, yes, like, you can imagine in a sort of. of experimental sense, like, if somebody was doing like a really crazy, like, quantum physics experiment and you stepped in the way of that, I mean, most of the time people weren't against going into those rooms because there's like a high amount of energy or lasers or this or that,

right? But you can imagine, like, that is also, like, it is, these things are not so separate that that that thing on that scale cannot interact with you. A lot of the time it's like deleterious and maybe gives you like a burn from a laser or you like, you know, a lot of time it's with light so people will guard against getting blinded or something by lasers, but that's still a type of interaction between the scales that these guys are talking about and us.

On the sort of larger scale, I mean, this is more mechanical, but like, there's a reason that we don't go near black holes. People are sort of cognizant of what happens to real things like stars and asteroids and stuff around these big structures, and it's posited, I think correctly, that like the human being went near that, like we would not hear from them again.

unless they're going into this like hologram space that we know nothing about, right? So in that sense of like that scale sort of communicating to us, I think it's reasonable that like especially with the examples that you gave of the people who have gotten this sort of feeling like through things, like real life things, right? Like different noises that they hear through like AC ducts or things. And I think that's, I think it's very realistic because it like, you know, tuning yourself to access.

that level of thing on that sort of like on a scale you can hear is a realistic thing. Your brain is not used to that. Maybe you get this like higher level. On the really sort of like out there ideas, like somebody seeing something that they couldn't see before, I think that kind of stuff is very understudied. I think it's definitely could be possible. This is not me saying that, you know, every single one of those things like a quantum event or anything like that.

But, you know, there's no reason to think that, like, those effects that are going on in our body in a normal person could not be, like, you know, sort of tuned in a different direction by some weird event that happens. And then what I will also say is that I think that you get to a, you get to one last step, which I think is very important, which is that like our brain is like a limited thing. And I'm not really a neuroscientist, but like, you know, our brain is finite. There's a finite number of neurons. and our brain does crazy things, right? Like we will have dreams where the dream will be indicative of some conversation we had months ago. So I think that there's a last step that makes these stories and what you're doing sort of difficult to work through and it makes it like a real challenge.

It's quite an undertaking, which is that like at the end of all of this, our brain has to like do this weird job of like projecting maybe some crazy thing onto like a language that we can understand, you know, that we can actually think of. like seeing somebody scrolling through an iPhone, maybe not literally, but like that is still like a physical thing. The person is doing something. It's not like, I don't think people would say I saw pure, like, you know, there's like structures in the universe, like mathematical structures that we cannot easily imagine or visualize in three dimensions. And so all of these end up being like projections onto what a person can visualize. And so there could be things that,

you know, something happens on like a very interesting, like molecular level in your brain, but your brain has to do the job of trying to either ignore it and like maybe that neuron just dies or he tries to convey to you like, this is what I think you saw. And so it becomes a person to person thing where I think maybe a lot of people could be having a similar effect happen on a molecular level, but they all report slightly different things. It makes a little bit challenging because, you know, it's going to draw on. This is a really interesting thing you're saying now too. This is like opening up a whole other section as well, where it's like, and it's, and what the funny thing is that like, this is like a

scientific explanation that normally, you know, normally when you talk about that stuff in terms of the paranormal, it's in, it's dispelling these things like, oh, these people are crazy or lying or whatever. But like, this is something that, like, if you, if it was an explanation, it's like, oh, no, they are experiencing something. It's actually like a lot bigger. Their brains are trying their best to make sense of it. I mean, everything that we perceive is just, you know, sound waves or light waves. And our brain is the thing that's processing it and turning it into what we think. If somebody says SIDU, I imagine SIDU in my head. That's just a sound. It's your name. It's a sound, but I associate it with you, and then a mental image of you pops up. So perhaps

there's other information out there that can be detected at various times, and our brain is doing its best to kind of process it and turn it into an image, even though it's never had to do that before. So, like, I think that's where I'm kind of getting at here with this stuff, is to, like, maybe that could be what's going on here. And it doesn't mean that it's paranormal or not. It's just, like, maybe something that we'll understand later on, you know? I think the same thing happens with, like, you know, you can imagine people responding in different ways to even these, like, binaural effects, right? Like, if I'm just working, like, if I'm, I mean, it's all very context dependent. If I go to a monority, if I go to a monorough, you know,

into a two person and they say, well, I'm going to play it. I'm going to do this thing, right? Put headphones in your head. I'm sort of primed to feel that way, right? I'm sort of primed to get ready for this third frequency. If somebody just like hears, like imagine, like it might be scary for some people, right? They hear this third frequency in their head. And that's all, this is without paying attention to like black holes or white holes or the quantum space or anything like that. That's just like a third thing of their hearing. And so I think that a lot of these things have this additional layer of like, if your brain is primed to like project things onto a space that you can understand.

It's going to be like, no, the thing I heard was definitely, like, so-and-so that I've been thinking about that I haven't seen in a while. Or it's, like, this person who passed away was, like, communicating to me. And so, like, what I'm saying is basically, like, what you're doing here is difficult. It's a difficult undertaking because I feel like there's an interesting question of, like, you know, listening to these stories and I'm trying to find, like, a common thread if you really want to understand some effect that's happening. It's sort of like deconvoluting it from like, you know,

what maybe is the common thread between all of these and so you can pluck out the like person-specific things. I was 100% skeptical in this region going into not just making this show but even like doing the things that led up to me making this show. This is like the one blind spot for me of like I was honestly on board with maybe there's ghosts, maybe there's Sasquatch,

maybe there's aliens, like everything. But the one thing I was like, I don't really believe psychics for one reason or another. And honestly, I probably, there's a good amount of them that I probably still don't believe, but in doing this story,

it's really, really opened up the possibilities for me. And I think it's just a matter of, it's adjusted my way of looking at it, right? It's adjusted my way of looking at it. it and meeting certain people being more open-minded about it and kind of accepting the realities of what this would look like if it was actually discovered, right? Yeah, like what if we had to ground it rather than saying like, oh, it happens, like that doesn't constitute discovering something, right?

If you say like this is why, I think for me, I came in maybe even a bit more skeptical, right? I was the one that you were going to send in to be like, why, I mean, this all started with like, emailing me different phenomena and being like, tell me why I shouldn't be surprised by this, right? Like, why does science explain everything that's happening from like mysteriously breaking glasses to, you know, whatnot. But like, I think I, it gave me an excuse to read a lot about this stuff. And I think like, yeah, there's some people out there there doing the hard work of like trying to connect all of this stuff. And I think like, very generously speaking, it maps onto questions that are a lot more mainstream. I mean, like, how often do you have people going on Nova or discovery or something and saying,

look, like, we don't understand human consciousness? You know, we're only starting to scratch the surface. This is like a problem that like, it doesn't matter if we made like Chad GPT. Like we still don't understand like a child, you know, is born and knows immediately like this or that or like this, you know, basic fact about its existence. And so I think like once you look at that, like, once you look at that, It's sort of like the CIA document about the universe where it's like, even if you don't understand all of it, you're sort of left with this like, every time you think about these big questions, you're like, well, so many things are possible then if like this is the limit to which we understand, you know, consciousness or like the different sort of energy states of the universe, these different dimensions or things like that. So it was really a cool sort of like subfield to look into.

Yes. And I think what's interesting to me is like if this is true, while doing this story and like seeing her operate, like I've been around the person that in question, I've seen her, she's done it to me many times, I've seen her do it to people. I've hung out with her a ton. And it's not, it's not like every time, you know. And she's the first person to admit that it's like, it's her. It's her. of like going into a junk drawer and just pulling stuff out. It's not hitting every single time. Sometimes there's like, sometimes she's finding something, but it's weird, and like maybe she's wrong about what it is, you know? She's just like seeing a thing, and it's messy. It's like not something we're really good at. So it's one of those things where we might not even have the tools

to properly discover this yet, but maybe one day we will. I think it's funny, like, this type of stuff can be written off as, like, Joe Rogan Stoner talk or whatever, but it's really not. And I don't think I like, in talking to you, who I brought on as a skeptic, it's like, and now we're kind of here sitting here in harmony talking about this stuff. It's like, like, it's actually not that big of a stretch to imagine this. This doesn't require, like, that much of a leap of faith when you think of it in this framework. and it's really exciting and scary. Yeah, it's definitely like, it's definitely super exciting. I guess, like, depending on who you think about it, it could be a little scary.

I think, I mean, again, going back to, like, my sort of role as a scientific skeptic, I was like, I was very upset about, like, one possible outcome, which is that I'm going to do all this reading, and I'm going to figure out that, like, all of this stuff has been written off, like, and even worse, maybe written off, like, 50 years ago. And people are just, like, there's, like, maybe a some sort of, subset of people who are like, we have disproven this forever. But I was so surprised to find that paper from like October 2022. Not that there was anything to really doubt in that paper. Wait, wait. Tell me about the paper. Tell me about that. Yeah. Yeah. So they're in Trinity College,

Dublin. Southern Ireland. And they and they're, I don't know what their background is, but they have this interplay within physics and neuroscience. And this group basically asked, well, is there something of a quantum nature going on in our brain? And the way that they chose to do this experiment. There's a method called NMR that basically uses a magnetic field to measure brain activity. You can measure regions of the brain. You can also do this on individual molecules or things like that. People do NMR on proteins all the time. But you basically apply a magnetic field to a sample, in this case a brain. And then you can measure, if you sort of tune this magnetic field, you can basically receive electromagnetic information from these like nuclei

that exist in the brain, of which there are obviously, you know, trillions and trillions, because they make up everything within each atom. So, you know, just sort of to paraphrase, they were like, they realized that, you know, well, this, this response of the nucleus could be construed as like a quantum effect that's happening, because this is happening within an atom, literally quanta. And they're outputting this energy that we can measure. And, and, and, and they're outputting this energy that we can measure. And they found a few of these correlations that they, it's all a little loosely sort of correlated, but they say, well, these don't seem to line up with any of the other NMR data that we've gotten before,

meaning that like we've looked at NMR data when people are in different situations and they're given different drugs, eaten versus not eaten, slept versus non-slept. And these correlations don't, aren't explained by any of this other stuff. They sort of like leave it as a sort of teaser, like this could be the thing. this could be the long-sought like correlation of spins in the brain that suggests some amount of quantum entanglement, which you can think of as just like two particles

being linked to each other. Is that basically to say that there is evidence that seems to be pointing towards the fact that our body might be operating on a quantum level, basically a level that is way too small for us to even study at this point? There's things happening below, even the surface of the surface.

Looking into that study and also a lot of papers that they cited unveiled that it's really not just these guys that have been thinking about this. It's a very interesting sort of subfield where people have sought out effects that you might think that maybe quantum mechanics

is the only way to explain them. And one final question, I guess, like, this will be helpful for me too. for people I mean, you know, you're a scientist yourself, that's why you're on here, like to people listening right now that normally consider themselves very skeptical,

do not believe in non-tangible things, things that they can't see or perceive. Like, is there anything that you would say to them about perhaps being open-minded about this stuff? Yeah. I mean, I think like, there's always going to be scientific result. Like, I mean, for almost any scientific result,

like, you know, you want it to be, for any scientific result, you want it to be proven again and again. You want to have, like, you know, beyond a reasonable doubt that these things happen. But I think, like, you can, people can take the same track that I did where, you know, even just to, like, know that this stuff is being studied, it was very interesting just to, like, read what's going on.

And I think for people who are, like, completely in doubt that a, any of this phenomenon is happening or that it's worth studying or that it's of interest to people. I mean, there's some very easy things you can find with just a bit of Googling. And people can decide for themselves. If they're really skeptics, then they'll want to look at data and they'll want to look at things. And I think there's some very interesting studies going on out there where people are keeping open minds. Unlike me, we're just discussing this stuff with you.

People are actually doing the work. And so people, you know, skeptics can gauge for themselves. And I think like at the very least, you gain some insights into here are some interesting new ways to think about the brain, think about energy, think about, you know, how our minds function and how maybe things that might affect your day to day, maybe not visions, but things like dreams or hallucinations or the way that your brain responds to different type of impulses. I think like, yeah, learning more and reading more is the first step and sort of maybe opening yourself up to all the different questions that people are, you know, trying to figure out. Awesome. Well, dude, thank you so much for coming on.

Any final thoughts before we go? I mean, just that, yeah, like we've sort of covered the state of the art in science that's just like sort of brushing up against this stuff. And I'm now sort of like looking towards all this stuff with a keen eye. I feel like, you know, I know what buzzwords and stuff to look for now that I know that there are people that are actively involved in this kind of work. And I just find it very interesting. I'm just curious to see what happens. I think people have been claiming to see ghosts and, you know, have contact with other dimensions and things like that for a long time.

And maybe we're just starting to scratch the surface. What could be going on in our brains that actually create those images? images, create those sensations. All right, I want to thank Citi one more time for coming on and helping me work through that really dense document. If you want to know more or were confused by any part of that, I highly suggest reading through yourself because we barely scratched the surface. This document got declassified in 2003 and is fully available to read to the public.

I'll try to put a link to it in the description. Otherwise, you could just find it by Googling the gateway process. something I've noticed since starting this show is that there's a lot of people out there who are under the impression that we have things figured out a lot more than we actually do. It's easy to think that because we have a name for something, it means we know how it works, what it is, or why it happens. Sometimes when I bring up the paranormal in conversation, somebody will say, I don't believe in that.

I believe in science. and that's kind of an absurd thing to say. Probably the only stance to take on all of this that I actually consider crazy. Science and what we call the paranormal are so often presented at being at odds with each other. But the more I work on this show, the more I think that's really not the case.

Talk to anyone who works at the frontier of a scientific field, and you'll realize how true that is. And once again, I just want to mention this one more time because I can't stop thinking about it. The lieutenant in charge of overseeing the entirety of Stargate Project, Frederick Holmes Skip Atwater, went on to become the president of the Monroe Institute after leaving the army. Surely he had a reason for doing that. Maybe he knows something that we don't.

So, could our brains be able to briefly perceive information we normally can't under certain conditions? If so, what would that feel like, and how would we respond? Would our brains just filter it out entirely? I started this series back in July of last year and went in extremely skeptical. Now, I'm not even sure where I'm at. But I think what changed for me is that after talking to Wendy for so long and digesting her entire experience, which by the way, we barely scratched the surface of, and then discovering this document, something clicked for me.

If it is possible for humans to astral project or perceive information the way Wendy does, it doesn't mean that we would be good at it. In fact, this is something brand new that we can only do under certain conditions. We would probably be really bad at it, but that doesn't mean it couldn't exist, and that maybe one day we might get better at it. I don't know if this specific direction and theory is the key to understanding a lot of the mysteries we discuss in this show,

But I will say that there are some submissions I've received that seem a lot more plausible to me now after learning some of the things I learned in the process of making this series. And I think a lot of you will enjoy hearing those stories when they finally come out. I'll just say that for me, there's a pre-Wendy and post-Wendy type of story. And I think a lot of you will really enjoy the post-Wendy episodes that will come out eventually. That brings me to the end of this mini-series. I want to thank everybody I interviewed one more time for opening up and sharing their stories with me. And I also want to thank all of you for listening.

This is by far the longest series I've ever made of this type, and it was a big challenge. So thank you for coming along and letting me tell this very strange saga. This may be the end of this mini-series, but it's just the beginning in many other ways, and I'm certain you'll be hearing more from these guests in the future. In fact, I have an interview with Harmony going up on the new Otherworld Patreon this week. If you want to hear that and contribute to the show, you can do so at patreon.com slash Otherworld. This has been episode 24, the gateway process, and you've been listening to Otherworld. Otherworld is hosted and executive produced by myself Jack Wagner.

The theme song is by Cobra Man. The song you're hearing right now is Wildflowers by Rose City Band. Editing and Engineering by Theo Schaefer and Theo Krantz. Yes, there's two Theo's working on this. It's very confusing. The artwork for our shows by Coltessack Studios. This is an independent show, so please show us your support by subscribing, leaving a five-star review, and telling your friends.

Like I said, if you want to support the show and get bonus episodes, including one with Harmony this week where we dive much deeper into the Wendy Saga, you could do so at patreon.com slash otherworld. It's not officially announced yet, but it is up there. and I'm starting to roll out content. If you want to follow us on social media, we're at OtherworldPod on Instagram and Twitter. Also, if you or somebody you know

has experienced something supernatural, paranormal, or unexplained, you could send us the story at Stories at Otherworldpod.com.