Otherworld - Interview with Dr. Kim Penberthy of DOPS

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

I speak to Dr. Kimberly Penberthy of University of Virginia's Division of Perceptual Studies, also known as DOPS. Kim is a Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences and her research at DOPS includes after-death communications and altered states of consciousness, including a planned study involving psilocybin for prolonged grief. DOPS is a research unit within the UVA School of Medicine that rigorously investigates and studies extraordinary experiences of human consciousness and the mind. The division explores topics such as near-death experiences, children who claim to remember past lives, altered states of consciousness and much more. The core of their mission is a commitment to rigorous evaluation of empirical evidence surrounding these exceptional human experiences and capacities. For more info about DOPS visit www.uvadops.org To hear bonus episodes and videos of Otherworld, sign up for the Otherworld Patreon Check out our Merch Follow us on: Instagram, TikTok, Twitter For business inquiries contact: [e-mail] If you have experienced something paranormal or unexplained, email us your 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 an interview, the first of multiple interviews, hopefully, that I will be doing in the future with a group that I'm very excited about. University of Virginia's Division of Perceptual Studies, aka DOPS. DOPS is a research unit within the UVA School of Medicine that rigorously investigates and studies extraordinary experiences of human consciousness and the mind. The division explores topics such as near-death experiences, children who claim to remember past lives, altered states of consciousness, and much more. DAPS is part of University of Virginia's School of Medicine, and the core of their mission is a commitment to rigorous evaluation of empirical evidence surrounding these exceptional human experiences and capacities. When I first heard about Dops, I was so excited. I know that these stories you hear on the show are mysterious and entertaining, but I legitimately.

but I legitimately hope and believe that we will one day have some breakthroughs and answers to many of these big questions within our lifetime. At DOPS, there are many different people focusing on different fields of study. My plan is to interview them one by one about their research. This first interview is with Dr. Kim Penberthi. She is a professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences, and her research at DOPS includes after-death communication and altered states of consciousness, including a planned study involving psilocybin for prolonged grief. This is my conversation with Dr. Kim Pemberthy of Dopp's, and you're listening to Otherworld. Hello?

Is this Bobby? Yes, it is. At its core, the science, you can't argue. I'm worried about all the science. Open the sky. It's almost frustrating that it's happening. I'm going to die. It's slim.

We're just like wrong. Everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them a minute. All right. Welcome to the show. How are you doing? I'm joined by Dr. Kim Penberthie from Dops. Very excited to have you and nice to meet you. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. I am Dr. Kim Penberthy and I'm the Chester F. Carlson, professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. And I'm in Charlottesville, Virginia. First of all, I think this is probably going to be the first episode where we discuss DOPs, but can you explain what that even is and sort of the backstory of DAPS? Sure, I'd be happy to.

So DAPS is an acronym for the Division of Persexual Studies, and this is a division, interestingly enough, in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences. at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. And the division has been around since 1967 when it was founded by Ian Steven, who, Ian Stevenson, who was then chair of the department, so the head of the Department of Psychiatry. And he had been studying children who remembered having past lives. He was a child psychiatrist, very,

well-known in child psychiatry and really became much more interested in studying this phenomena. Primarily, he was using, he was researching people in areas where this was more of a common belief, so places like India, and he developed this division. He actually was so compelled by it that he stepped away from chair of the department to head this up and really make sure that he was spending time starting this division. And they, you know, get calls all the time from people experiencing this, children who are saying things about a past life. So that work has continued and there are thousands of cases of reports of this

that they have provided information for and we have data for and lots of publications. We also have Bruce Grayson, who joined as well decades ago, who's a psychiatrist, an MD-trained psychiatrist who studies near-death experiences. And again, Bruce was practicing as a psychiatrist and really came upon this sort of experience of a near-death experiences and noticed the impact on people and really started wondering, what does this mean? Marietta Pella Vanova joined and has been continuing the research on near-death experiences. We have David Akunzo, who's a neuroscientist, again, studying what's happening in the brain for all of these experiences.

And then one of our more recent folks that has joined us is Philip Kossolina, who is a social psychologist. And like me, very interested also in the application. for people and how they feel. And he's studied a lot of fear of death and dying in the process of accepting death. So my work has been as a clinical psychologist and involved in DOPS looking at after death communications, meditation, and most recently the role of psilocybin or psychedelic drugs. I will say overall the mission of DOPS really has been very clear for, you know, over 50 years. which is looking at the current scientific paradigm that says that our brain is a biological piece of meat

and it creates our mind somehow magically and then when it dies, it's over. We are sort of exploring. We are scientists so we can develop hypotheses but really our focus is to explore. Well, what happens to this thing we call ourselves? our consciousness, our soul, our personality, our being, what happens to that when our physical body dies? And, you know, traditionally in Western science, it's been, well, you know, your body disintegrates, it decomposes, whatever, and you're gone.

But we know throughout the history of humanity, there have been other views that the soul exists, it continues, religious beliefs, spiritual beliefs, other indigenous beliefs. So we're really looking at, well, what is the evidence and what does the evidence say? And how do you explain some of these phenomena that are happening? So that has been the really the mission of DOPS is to explore what is this thing we call ourselves. And does it? And does it? that exist after the death of our body? And what does that mean? What are the implications?

More recently, we've also been looking at, what are the implications for humans? Because, you know, we've found along the way some significant impacts that these experiences have on humans and society. Well, you just made me think of about 1,000 questions. So I'm going to try to do my best. ask them in order. But maybe it's best to start with you. Where did your career begin and how did you end up working in DOPS? It's a very interesting pathway that makes sense when you look at it from

this perspective. And early on, I studied clinical psychology and got my PhD in clinical psychology and studied really the mechanism of action. I've always been interested in, what is the component that is making a difference when we do a therapeutic intervention? And so had a career really looking specifically at persistent depressive disorder, what we used to call chronic depression. And then looking at it with comorbidities, you know, many people with chronic depression have addiction and post-traumatic stress and different things like that. And so I had really a career and expertise in that arena.

published books lectured internationally and started working always worked with medical patients started working with cancer patients pretty exclusively and noticing when I would teach them more contemplative practices like meditation mindfulness that they started reporting things that I was not I was not expecting they weren't surprising to me because even very very early on, I had studied, due to my, the way I was raised, I had studied, um, some of the metaphysical components. I had, you know, um, studied transnational meditation, um, read, you know, things like, you know, related to that. And, and I think, um, I was open to it. So I think part of this was my openness and my experience.

clinically that I started putting things together, you know, when someone would, for instance, meditate and we were talking through their grief and then they felt the touch of their mother's hand on their cheek. You know, I wasn't that, you know, you don't learn that in your PhD in clinical psychology that that might happen. And yet these things were happening. And what I was finding is they were helpful. And these altered states of consciousness, that many people might have either not reported to their clinician. So they would never tell anyone because they would think someone would judge them as crazy. Or they were reported and dismissed as like something weird and not related.

So I started paying attention to them. And that's where really I started thinking about, well, we can we can explore this more. We can research this. And that's when it really took off. off. You know, I was at the University of Virginia in psychiatry, aware of the division of perceptual studies and really started working with them and presenting some of this first in meditation and then in the after-death communication. And it's sort of moved from there to looking at, well, can we intentionally create these altered states of consciousness that instead of waiting

for them to sort of spontaneously happen for someone to have a lot of. near-death experience or report an out-of-body experience, but can we, can we facilitate this in a good way to help? And so that's sort of how it started and how it's continued. It's been fascinating, and it's wonderful to help people in this way, in a really effective way. Yeah, it seems like you started noticing what a lot of people would call anomalies and ignore, but it seems, to me that DOPS, what's cool about it is like, you know, all of these people within a respected institution studying the stuff that most people would have typically written off or ignored as anomalies. But once you have enough of the same anomaly, it's not really an anomaly anymore,

is it? Correct. Right. Yeah. I think, and I think with what's interesting is with the dawn of the internet and more people getting online every year, it's like, It's easier to gather a mass of people who have all experienced the same thing that maybe wouldn't have even noticed or known that they experienced the same thing just years before when there was not a place to discuss this type of thing, you know. I think you're absolutely right. It's even just hearing you talk about the meditation. I mean, you cover quite a few. large topics in your research, so we should maybe go one by one. But I have, you know, we get emails submitted to us with stories of strange experiences that end up getting turned into

stories for other world. A lot of them involve people meditating and something really strange happening. Or if it's not meditation, something adjacent to it, it's pretty fascinating. I mean, I've practiced transcendental meditation myself for a time. I really, really, I have really bad discipline. So I like don't do it anymore. But I went in, personally, I went in just kind of curious and skeptical. Yeah. Just sort of like, hey, what I know all sorts of people that do this. What's this all about? And I was, I was pretty impressed as to, I don't know. I don't know how to describe it. like how real it was. Like it really did something. Something was going on, you know. Um, it had an effect. So. Oh, yeah. I mean, and I've spoken to, you know, colleagues even who,

um, are like you. They used to practice. And, and, and, um, one in particular that strikes me, a very successful businessman. He said, you know, I actually stopped on purpose because it was spooky. It was, um, he said, um, he said, he went to a particular retreat where he was trying to learn more. And he said, I just, every, every experience they had, he was able to sort of predict. He noticed that he was becoming very, very good at predicting what people would say, what the next thing was. And he said it literally spooked him. And so he stopped.

And he felt like this was a power he had tapped into that he just didn't know if he was really ready. responsible enough or ready to sort of handle. So I think, you know, I've spoken to people who have a wide variety of experiences. And for folks who can do it, who can meditate, I think it can be very effective. I think it's helpful to sort of have a sense of why am I doing this? What is the purpose? Is it spiritual? Is it religious?

Is it for my health? Is it for others? Is it to ground me? Because I think that for many of us, we can use it as a tool as a way to sort of achieve a state of consciousness that is much healthier for us, for our community, for the world maybe. What I've come to realize also, for those of you out there who say, I have tried to meditate and I just can't, that that is. the case for some people. And so I think trying to find other ways of saying you can alter your consciousness, you can have this access to the state of awareness through other methods. And they don't have to be just spontaneous. They can be induced in other ways. There's holographic breathing.

There's breathing techniques. There's somatic techniques involving touch. I don't do those. But, you know, even psychedelics is something where initially I was fairly ambivalent and a bit skeptical. Like, why would we go there when we can achieve these states in our breathing or in our meditation? And yet I've come to see and been convinced that there are people for whom it's just too challenging. They just can't do this on their own. And the psychedelics really help get them to that state of mind that, that, that, that, will be helpful for them. So I, you know, people ask me all the time, well, do you think everyone should try

psychedelics? And I say, no, if you don't need to, you probably don't need to. And yet some people may need to if they, if they want to achieve a state to help therapeutically or to expand their, you know, awareness or sort of enhance their life. Yeah. That's another topic I'm excited to discuss in more detail with you. Yeah. What extraordinary abilities did you study or observe once you started working on like formally researching the meditation practices?

Yeah. So we started off looking at primarily a convenience sample, to be honest. So it was a upper level class that was being taught at the University of Virginia on, it was on Buddhism and meditation. And it was sort of an introduction to the different contemplative practices. So one day a week, it was more of the history of the contemplative tradition. And then the next week was the modern application. So like some Buddhist, you know, tenets. and then the application through mindfulness-based stress reduction or something.

And then they had a lab. And in the lab, they actually performed the contemplative practice. And so we wanted to see, and this was just a regular course, people signed up to take for credit. And we kept track of how much they were meditating. We kept track of a lot of different measures, things like compassion, self-compassion, compassion for others. mood and anxiety levels. So we were looking first at those things as sort of our entryway and then asking about some

extraordinary experiences like an increase in coincidences or synchronicities that they noticed and sort of more changes in spiritual beliefs. So things like, you know, did their beliefs change? And personally, I really felt like there was not going to be any change. These were fourth year students, third and fourth year students, very bright, competent, you know. And I thought, well, we probably, everything would be, you know, pretty solid and we probably won't see any changes. And yet, over the course of one semester, we did see significant changes. and they endorsed having more compassion.

They endorsed having changes in their belief system where they were sort of more open-minded, more socially connected. Their anxiety was reduced. Their depressive symptoms were reduced. And I was floored because this was, you know, this was not a study they entered to feel better. They were just sort of taking this class

because they had to take a class. And to find these results, when they weren't even trying, to me, was really impressive because it means we can impact people, the way they interact, the way they exist in the world, the way they feel about themselves and other people through something as straightforward as this. Imagine if they were actually trying. And so that sort of started a series of studies looking at meditation, looking at meditation in people who were already meditating

and noticing how that was different from people who never meditated. Again, in all the predicted ways, then we looked at, well, can we compare it with exercise? So we randomly assigned novices and people who'd never meditated to either a meditation, standard sort of meditation training in Vaphasana meditation or a standard exercise training for the same amount. of time. And what you saw was that both groups felt better. They were happier. They were less anxious. Only the group that was meditating demonstrated some of these extraordinary abilities,

the changes in their beliefs, their openness to maybe believing that life exists after death, their sense of connectedness to other people, their ability to have things like, you know, they reported more out-of-body experiences. So this was just meditating. This was not psychedelic drugs or anything. And it was only eight weeks in novices who had not done any of this before. So what this tells me is these forms of meditation, even things we might consider pretty mild, really do have an impact. And now, were there some negative components?

Sure. Sometimes you get people, you know, some of the benign things are like, this is boring. I didn't find it very useful. My mind kept drifting. I couldn't do it. And once in a while, it's very rare, but once in a while you do get someone who says, you know, I went to a dark place and I didn't like this. This was not good. Or I had an out of body experience and it scared me to death.

And I don't think I can do this again. So you do get those. They're lower. I think it's important to say it, though, because I have worked with people who have negative experiences, and we need to put that out there that can happen on psychedelics, on a near-death experience, you know, in an OBE, which is an out-of-body experience with meditation. There's always there's always a risk that, you know, that it can be not, not pleasant, not real positive. Yeah, that's, that's fascinating. I mean, during the time I was doing, the, brief time, mind you. I was doing transcendental meditation. It was uncomfortable for part of it because in the beginning, I mean, through a lot of it, it was unpleasant. Like, they told me that

sometimes if you have a lot of repressed emotions and things that you've locked away, which in my case, that's like my main tactic of dealing with things, that you might end up like, I mean, it's not like you're consciously thinking about them. But for me, I was, every time I would try to meditate, I would sweat. Like, my shirt would be drenched. It felt like I was in a hot room no matter where I was. And, um, interesting. Yeah, it was real. Wow. Yeah. It was a lot. Um, and yeah, it was a, you know, I would feel good after it, but it was striking to me because I was just sitting there on the ground. Like there was, uh, usually an air conditioning. There's not really good explanation for it. but I think it did really feel like I was kind of breaking through whatever was back there,

you know, stored away. I think a lot of people underestimate how much they have tucked away underneath. Oh, I think you're absolutely right. And I think we have gotten in our culture today sort of lackadaisical about the power of our brain and our mind and whatever you want to call our being, you know, that I get really excited when I talk to people because I tell them, you know, you have this powerful asset, which is you, you know, your attention, your mind, your spirit, your soul, whatever you want to call it. It exists.

And if we can learn to access these components in ways that, um, help us see that we're part of something larger maybe or help us understand, you know, that really, I know this sounds corny, but what what people say over and over again, that there is just this love, that there is this purpose and this connectedness and this love that they could just tap into any time. And I think what you're talking about is, yes, many of us have grown up or culture or the people that raised us or whoever, we didn't learn that. And so we're sort of equipped with this amazing ability that's never really been tapped into.

This never really been allowed to flourish. And I really truly believe we all have this. And it's a matter of like how do we access this state of being? And it's multiple ways, you know, and perhaps religion was a way in its origin. you know, in some of the original spiritual beliefs that became religions, you know, that that was what they were passing on, you know, some sort of contemplative practice of, here's how you access it. Here's how you know that you're connected, that you're loved.

And we've sort of lost some of that. What are some of the things you noticed? I mean, we're talking about these as extraordinary abilities, but are there some other strange things you noticed in these people practicing meditation, maybe closer to paranormal? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, most often what would happen, and a lot of these are patients that I'm working with who, you know, have cancer or lost someone to cancer. So a lot of grieving people, people approaching death, having to come to terms with that. Many of them had these extraordinary experiences of encounters that what I came to know and understand is after death

communications. And so it seems to open, we now know there's some beginning research that being in this sort of contemplative space or through meditation or some sort of strategy that, that gets you to this contemplative place seems to open up actually. access to these communications. And so as I think I mentioned maybe before we started recording a patient I had who was really working with a complicated grief related to a mother, her mother who passed away that she had had a very difficult relationship with.

And she was really struggling with her grief and it was interfering with her ability to take her treatment. she was receiving cancer treatments. And so we were using meditation to sort of help her relax and settle down into a space where she could at least be present with me to do the next phases of the work for grief. And what happened during the meditation is she felt the stroke of her mother's hand on her face. and this sort of gesture, I mean, she said, I know it, I know it's my mom because I can smell her and I can feel the roughness of her skin. And it's her.

And after she reported this, we sort of unpacked, well, what does this mean? And she was weeping and she said, she means, she means to tell me it's okay, that she's okay, that we're okay. it was a reassuring sort of encounter that came through the meditation. And after that, her grief was really resolved. That yearning, which is a key characteristic of prolonged grief disorder, that yearning, it's qualitatively different than depression. So that was gone. And she felt this sort of sense of peace and connectedness

and was able to sort of move on with her treatments. And so that's the kind of thing I started to see that is above and beyond saying, I feel more compassion, I'm less anxious. So it's accessing sort of things like that. As I said, noticing synchronicities, the sort of ability to predict things in the future. I've had all of these reported. And then they've been both in individual patients I'm working with and in the research, we see that this is significantly increased. What about people seeing things after they meditate?

Yes. So after death communications are very interesting because there are multiple ways they can come about. And it includes a visual, a visual sort of encounter. So sometimes people do report. that. What I have found to be more common are hearing things or feeling things. And yet the, a visual sort of representation absolutely happens. That's often in sort of that state of mind that's in between. So it's sort of when you're meditating, when you're falling asleep, when you're waking up. That's often when these are sort of encountered. So this is maybe a, a, vague or broad question, but obviously you're talking in the beginning about how people typically

view the brain. Is this like self-contained hunk of meat or like, you know, a computer? Right. I think I like the analogy of like a computer without a connection to the internet. Like everything's stored in the hard drive. Right. Therefore, when we think of these strange experiences people have during meditation or dreams or seeing ghosts, anything like that, you know, most skeptics chalk it up as like a trick of the mind, right? Is there any research out there or even anecdotal things that you've seen that maybe point to our brains and consciousness maybe being able to go somewhere else or perceive other things. Does that make sense?

Yeah. I mean, so I think fundamentally some of the near-death experiences research would say, well, you know, some of these people are reporting experiences when their brain should not be working at all. And so there's that. Like how do we explain that? also in meditation often what we see when we are you know if we can record the imaging of the

what's functionally happening in the brain we see that it's it's quieted down that there's there's not like what you might expect you know extra activity because we're now perceiving things and we're making up hallucinations and stuff like that we actually see sort of a quieting a shutting down of that activity and so there's one hypothesis that is, well, maybe if we quiet the brain, it's like we shut down the filter,

then we have access to all of it, whatever that is. So that's one sort of, we're getting into some of the theories, which Ed and Emily Kelly sort of talk much more about at DOPS, but there are certain ways of saying, well, if it's not just a pure physicalist, you know, that it's just physical and the brain creates these images or these sensations, then what is it? And could it be that all the information is out there, all of this consciousness and that our brain is more like a filter that so allows in what we what we can handle, what we can process, and that sometimes that filter is not there or gets shut down, or whatever and we then access.

Maybe that's what mediums are doing. Maybe that's what we're doing when we meditate. We have some evidence to show. We're quieting the brain. So maybe it's not that we're generating this. Maybe it's that we're shutting down so we can access, which is a really interesting way of thinking about it. No, it gets into crazy territories when you start.

It's one of those where most people start, they eventually turn around when they start walking down that path. of thought because it gets really interesting what's like because then it opened up it opens up questions of like what is creativity is creativity us actually pulling from somewhere else it's not actually coming from us you know there's all of these a lot of things were invented yeah oh yeah please go on well yeah i mean you think about some of these savants these extraordinary abilities that people have at a very young age or um or out of sort of nowhere pretty presumably, that is hard to imagine where this came from.

Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of those cases. I've even heard anecdotally, granted, but I've heard of people sustaining brain injuries and waking up and having a different accent or being able to speak a different language or play piano when they haven't been able to do that before, like unexplainable knowledge.

Have you ever heard of anything like that? Or is this just... Oh, absolutely. So I worked with a gentleman who, as you can imagine, we get a lot of calls, a lot of contacts from people who have these experiences. And we want to hear from them because, you know, that helps us sort of accumulate data on how frequently this is happening. It helps people feel that they're not alone. This particular gentleman had, you know, it was complicated because they had, they had suffered from, some depression and in so doing been offered by you know presumably good friends some drugs to take to

help feel better these turned out to be psychedelic mushrooms I think and and this individual feels like that that experience really was almost like a near-death experience so so he was saying you know I did the mushrooms so the psychedelics expanded my brain and it felt like almost a their death experience because of what he described. And these often do seem to overlap a lot of these experiences. And after that, he gained these abilities that he did not have. He barely graduated college. He was just sort of an average person living in an average life, barely graduated from not a really great school, college.

And after this experience was writing complicated physics papers. And we followed all of this up and they were published and they were legit. And he had no training in this. He was also talking about geodesic domes. And anyway, bottom line, he started exploring this because he said it was like a download of information. And he really felt like his explanation was not so much that he gained these abilities, but that he was discovering that he was a reincarnation of somebody. So which was, you know, so you have all these components together.

Now, we've not done anything with that other than sort of verify some of the information. because like you said, a lot of this is anecdotal. So you have to sort of look. I can verify, though, the one thing I can verify, you know, I can't validate that he is a reincarnation. I can validate, though, that he was publishing material and seemed to have grasp of knowledge, particularly of physics and architecture, that I don't know how else he would have had. he's tapping into something whether that was a past life or this sort of global knowledge I don't know but it was real and it is continuing to be real I mean you know so it's it's very

interesting to me that is completely mind-boggling yeah I think it's also interesting you know there's all of these child prodigies um they'll occasionally be like a 60 minutes doc about child prodigies kids that have like inexplicable gifts or like a grasp of music at a young age. I could be wrong, but it seems to me like most of them lose those abilities later on in life or things take a turn for the worse. And it essentially either like stops progressing or it goes away, which is really interesting and confusing to me, I guess. I don't know if you study anything with.

Yeah, I have not looked at that specifically. And I think, you know, the numbers are so small that can be swayed by, you know, a few outliers. So that would be a wonderful thing to really dig into and look at and compile, you know, what does happen to these individuals over time. And I agree with you. I think, you know, what I seem to recall is some of them, the sort of tragic endings very early in life and things like that. So, and I know there is some, you know, debate about, well, what is this? Is this, you know, just some rewiring of the brain that happens, you know, and the neural, you know, the neural connections are ignited that weren't there before? Is this tapping into sort of this global knowledge or creativity?

Or is it a reincarnation from past lives, you know, that knowledge dumped in from past lives? I mean, I think they're all very interesting to think about some of this we can pursue in a more scientific way than others. We can certainly look at, well, what has happened to these people over time? Have they retained these abilities? Have they grown? Have they, you know, have they sort of flamed out early? You know, I think it would be fascinating. Now you've just started me on another line of research.

Thanks. I know. Yeah. Sorry. it is no that's wonderful yeah it's it's it's interesting and it's also interesting that you brought up the reincarnation which is like I mean at least for me on the show I kind of shy away from categorizing things because you really could go if you want to talk about like explanations or like what to call certain things you could kind of chalk it up to like an infinite amount of categories and I think everybody has their own

way of looking at things right so this person yes like that was a plot twist to my understanding of that guy's experience where he's saying that he actually was studying this in a different life, rather than pulling down the information from like a collective consciousness or the ether or whatever. That's really fascinating. And it was based on his understanding of this specific skill set and who would have had that. Yeah. So very, very interesting. Okay, we have to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with the rest of this interview.

Okay, kind of jumping around a bit, but the childhood past live memories that inspired DOPs to form in the first place, I imagine that's like a major chunk of the research. Generally speaking, what are the things that kids seem to remember are their patterns, what research has been done? I'm very curious about this type of stuff. And I'd say that, like, this is a very, common thing that gets brought up to me often, usually not submitted via email, but like, if I'm at a bar with friends and somebody finds out what I do for a living, like, this is often

something that's told to me, like, oh, yeah, my kid was saying a lot of weird stuff when they're a baby. They're talking about remembering blah, blah, blah, you know? Or a common thing I hear is a kid will say, like, Mommy, I picked you. Like, I picked you in the sky before I came here, or something like that. What patterns have you, or DOPS as a group, observed and researched? Yes. Well, and again, you know, each of us sort of have our niche, so to speak. So Jim Tucker and Philip Cozolino are the ones studying that right now. I can say generally, you know, what we see are the parents approach DOPS because they, they're concerned, just as you said, because their child's saying things that they don't really

understand, and often that are sort of in contrast to their belief system. Maybe they're Christian, and they're like, well, you don't believe in this. And so we don't know what's going on here. But typically, yeah, you do see that they're reporting these things fairly early. And they are saying things like, you know, well, where's my real mommy? Stuff like that. And that's That's usually what gets the parents' attention. I think it is important to recognize that we're also doing research to make sure that we explore, you know, is this schizoaffective disorder? Is this some sort of thought disorder?

Because that's important to distinguish. You know, you don't want to be facilitating something that might actually be, you know, a pathology. So that's important to discern is this, you know, pathological because some of these children can be very emotional about it. You know, they're very strongly feeling like they want to be with their real, what they call their real family or something. So we do see in this, we do know some of the timeline. So they may be talking about this early and they're, you know, when they become verbal. And then it sort of fades. So over time, they talk less and less about it.

And if you think about it, that probably makes sense because they, you know, other things get sort of elevated to importance. Maybe they're discouraged from talking about it, that sort of thing. And what we're looking at, so with Philip joining, he's really looking at some of the questions you're asking. So how many of these children, we have huge database now that we really need to mine and look at, you know. So how many of these people endorse that they chose the parents? And do they endorse why or, you know, or how? How many of them remember in between lives? So that's another whole issue.

Some of these kids remember where they were sort of hanging out in between lives. And there are things like past life regressions where you can try to recall under pretty much hypnotic suggestion or relaxation. You know, there's a science that's fairly controversial, but of looking at past life regression. And they also often find in between lives. So what's happening in between. So we need to know, you know, just this is looking at the data we have and trying to pull it more into this, you know, mathematical sort of category. Can we at least learn more about what we do have? Yeah.

What kind of stuff? What are people seeing in like the waiting period or the in between? I'm very curious about this. Yeah. I mean, so again, that's not my area. And Phil and Jim will be able to talk about that. it's it's very much what you sort of think of with near death experiences so it's often sort of like a very pleasant place maybe other other individuals that they recognize are there you know and

it it's really quite quite similar in that respect for many of these yeah is there any pattern in like the landscape or like the place itself yeah we don't know that yet. So we're just starting to look into it. This is what we're really starting to look at these patterns. We're also looking at, you know, this idea, interestingly, that many of the people that report remembering a past life, many of these children report traumatic deaths or violent deaths in the past life. And so we want to look at that. I mean, what is that about? And why why would that matter? And is there something to that sort of abruptness of the end of life,

of the life force sort of shutting down that makes an impact in sort of moving to the next phase? Which, you know, sort of intuitively you think, oh, I sort of could understand that, you know, sort of like if I cut you off mid-sentence and yet you still know what you wanted to say, and so you say it later, you know, I don't know. but they're looking at that, like what are the situations surrounding that? What are the characteristics? And they're also looking at,

can we bring some of these individuals in? So these would be new cases where we also test memory because there's another theoretical approach of looking at, is this a memory that is facilitated by just excellent memory abilities? and can we then look at sort of a skills, memory skills, cognition skills in these kids at this point. Similar to how we would look at pathology, you know, is this, so sort of broadening that examination of the child that presents with memories of past life. Do they have extraordinary memory?

That's why they're hanging on to a memory. Was there trauma and is there some sort of impact of that trauma? now. So do they still have some trauma symptoms? What, you know, what are these characteristics? Is it a thought disorder? And that's sort of a different category. So we have the ability now to do much more exploration, not just to, I think you always have to accumulate the data. So in this, in this scientific arena, I mean, that's what we've had to spend a couple decades doing, is really saying, well, we're going to collect the data first. We need to find out what is even going on.

And you see that pattern in after death communication, near-death experiences now as well, where we're finding more and more people who report these if you ask them. And we're looking at what does this mean? So first we have to get the data. We have to be able to categorize it. What is a near-death experience? How do we describe it? can you quantify it? Is it a really big one or a little tiny one? You know, what is an after-death

communication? And that's where we are in that work that I'm doing, which to me was so surprising to find out how prevalent this is. For instance, for after-death communication, if we sort of broadly categorize it, and there's about 12 different categories, but they're all basically a communication, unintended, spontaneous communication from someone who is deceased. Okay. That can be a visual, touch, smell, hearing, you know, electronic. Maybe you get a freaky email from them or something. How many people experience that, would you guess?

Let's just say in the U.S. Like a percentage or a number? Yeah. A percentage. Just say in the U.S. alone. Five. It is actually 54% of people in a 2023 Pew Research poll of Americans,

54% endorsed that they had ever had an after-death communication. And 44% said they had one in the past year. and so this is happening to people, you know, and this is just after death communication. There are, you know, other, you know, you can think about, well, how many people are having these out-of-body experiences, how many people are having extraordinary experiences when they meditate or when they do another contemplative practice and they do their yoga or Tai Chi or Shigong, you know. So I think this is happening more than we realize. and maybe people aren't necessarily talking about it or they don't know what to do with it.

And so, you know, I know I've moved from the children who remember past lives. But what I think you find in all of these arenas is, you know, we tend to think of them as weird and strange and odd and because they're rare. And yet they're really not. Yeah. That's something I've noticed with my show and paranormal. I think people think of it as rare, but it's actually a very common human experience, I would say. Absolutely. And I think in past ages, we sort of thought of it that way, that this is an ability we all have and can access. and it was normal and healthy.

And now I think it's, in many ways, science has helped us advance so much, the scientific method and paradigms we currently have. And yet in other areas, it's sort of shut down some things. And part of that, I think, is the communication about these experiences. It's a lot. It's something that I think when you think about it. about it, and I'm sure when you research it, it can really like spider web out infinitely to a bunch of different...

Yes. Because even if you consider just with, like, child past live memories, right? Like, if you wanted to imagine explanations of how that could happen, it could go to so many directions. I mean, even if you think about, like, oh, maybe it's an ability sort of similar to like a medium or a clairvoyant. people who get impressions. Maybe someone's remembering someone's life.

Maybe it's somebody else. Maybe it's somebody in the hospital who is dying down the hall when they were born. Like, you know, it could be an infinite amount of things. We just so we know so little that like where do you begin looking? I guess for you, you're going to begin diving through this data, which is really exciting. Yeah, I think diving through the data. And as I said, I've always seen it as sort of two-pronged. Yes, as a scientist, it's very curious, you know, what this is.

You know, you want to describe it. You want to understand it. And then as a clinician, I really want to understand the implication. Like, how can we use this? To me, I call it the so what question. It might be very interesting and curious and we might develop all kinds of theories. And so what? how does that help the patient, a dying of cancer or the parent who just lost their child?

You know, so how, how, if we assume this is a natural ability that we have as creatures, as sentient creatures, how can we, you know, manifest this, honor this to help people? And it's not that it makes, you know, I've noticed this, and I think it's an important thing, to state is that intentionally trying to do these or explore them when they happen spontaneously,

it's not that it makes everything better. Like everything's just magically now fine and I'm happy and life is good. It really, it's more like it changes your relationship with it. It helps you

sort of maybe reprioritize or or have this more comprehensive understanding. And that's what's so fascinating to me because I think that that is probably our healthiest default mode for being human is that sort of state. And as much and as frequently and as deeply as we can access that, I think we should.

Yeah. I think that's a nice... No, it does. And I think that's a natural bridge into your psilocybin research. Cilocybin has come a long way in the past decade or so. You know, for those who aren't familiar, that's like the active ingredient. Would you say that's basically magic mushrooms? Right, right.

Most people would know this as. this was like, you know, previously thought of as something you would take it a grateful to Ed concert or something. But over the years, it's become, and by the way, of course, ancient medicinal practices and like various tribes and groups throughout history have used this as medicine and for spiritual purposes. Absolutely. Yeah. For a long time, a long time. but I'm talking about like Western medicine and America specifically. Now it's finally kind of being recognized as this powerful tool, which is really, really exciting because I've heard amazing things about what it could be, what it could do for people.

So what is this work that you've been doing with psilocybin? Right. And I think I think it is important to be excited and cautious because as you said, It's exciting that, you know, it's sort of making a resurgent into the scientific arena after, you know, some of the disasters earlier on with Timothy Leary and situations like that. I also think it's important to honor the fact that it's been, it's been around for as long as humans have had access to these medicines. So we're not inventing anything new. what I do think is important is to remember it's not a panacea just like meditation and compassion and things like this are very, very good, but they can't fix everything. And again, back to my point, it doesn't just magically make everything okay.

So it's more of a means to an end. For me, in my thinking, it's accessing this state of mind. or state of consciousness. And this is just another way. So the important piece is really how can we get to that state of mind? And in some cases, psilocybin is going to be one of the more effective ways. And we also think this study that we're looking at is going to be looking specifically at these mystical experiences, these subjective experiences that people

report when they have ingested this psilocybin or it's been administered to them. And we think that those are particularly important because that's sort of what helps you access that state of mind or is indicative that you have. How is it being used in like a therapeutic setting? So in a therapeutic setting, it is, it's being typically used in people with a diagnosis. So maybe, for instance, in our study, it will be prolonged grief disorder, which is a specific diagnosis of being depressed, yearning, being very distraught over the loss of someone.

And we're talking up to 12 months after the loss. And it is typically used then to help alleviate some of those symptoms. Again, not by just saying it makes you now happy. It's that it changes your relationship with the way you're thinking about it. So maybe the grief is improved because you are not yearning so much because the yearning has been addressed by the fact that through this mystical experience you had, you realized or have this deep sense of connectedness, that that person who died is not gone. So this is our theory that this would be the peace that is what that is helpful, which is different. than what you see, for instance, in a typical antidepressant like an SSRI, where it's changing some, you know, access to serotonin in the synapses of your brain. This is doing something in a different way at sort of a more meta level where it's saying, I'm shifting the way I think of this.

I'm not mourning the physical body of this person who died. I now feel connected to the, yes, I miss this person. I'm sad they're gone. And yet I have this greater sense through this mystical experience, this subjective, profoundly subjective, important experience that we're not disconnected, that they're still existing and just on a plane where I can't see them. I've heard that from people.

So this is what we're looking at. And it may be different from person to person, but is that sort of different way of conceptualizing. So with respect to this research in psilocybin, what I think is unique is that we are one of the only groups really looking at that subjective experience and the role of that. And to me, that's important because, as I said, I look at the mechanism of action.

I'm very interested in why does this work? So not just, oh, you're depressed, you take psilocybin, which sort of goes into a black box, and then you come out the other side and you don't have so much depression. Well, I'm looking at what happens in the middle. And the psilocybin, we hypothesize, it's nothing that it does. It doesn't really act so much like an SSRI. So it's not like, you know, providing access to more serotonin or something necessarily. we think it's the subjective experiences.

So the sense of being out of your body, for instance, which might mean then to you, like if I can be out of my body, then I exist outside of my body. Then I am not just my body. I am not just my brain. So that's a, that's very profound.

It's profound just to talk about it. It's even more profound to experience it. or to be able to, you know, feel one with the world or this intense love, um, which many people report. So these are much more profound when we actually experience them and don't just read about them or talk about them. Um, so my hunch is that it's that access to those sorts of states of consciousness that allow then the, the, the improvement in these sense. So that's what's happening in the black box. And we come out the other side endorsing that I feel better. I have less depression. I have less grief. And that may be why. Right now we're not looking at that in psychedelic research. We're sort of looking at what were you like before? You take it and what were you like after? What other things are being treated or might be treated with psilocybin?

So there's already ongoing, and we're sort of right in the middle of a lot of this. Some stuff is just beginning like post-traumatic stress disorder, alcohol dependence, so substance use disorders, depression, anxiety. Pretty much most, you know, most of the psychological disorders that we see, that can be very, very hard to treat and where we are looking for, you know, better, more varied treatments. So looking at some other options because some of these categories are just notoriously very challenging and have really significant negative effects on a person's life and their

quality of life and their relationship. So anything that we can do to do to be a person's life. bring on board and help move the needle for some of these folks. That's what we're trying to do. So you see it most in those areas where we need more kinds of treatments. We need better treatments. I think what's exciting to me is I've heard it seems to be really effective with people who have intense PTSD. It seems to be. And I think there was some new legislation passed in California, at least allowing research and like treatment for people using psilocybin for people who have PTSD. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that.

I'm not with that specifically. It does not surprise me. I think it's, you know, with the approval of ketamine for depression and the use of that more widespread and MDMA coming along nicely, we'll hear about that fairly soon. and psilocybin will probably be next sort of more nationally. So we, you know, I think, you know, as a clinician, we need all the help we can get to help people. So I think doing this research is quite important. This is really fascinating. You could plead the fifth on this, but have you tested the research yourself?

I have not, actually. Interesting. Okay. And that is, you know, that is a point that is asked every time I speak. I think any psychedelic researcher is asked that. And some, you know, some of my colleagues at Hopkins say, you absolutely do not need to try it yourself. It's like saying, do I need to have cancer to understand, you know, what it's like to have cancer? Well, we don't always have that opportunity. But many of them say, no, I don't need to try.

an SSRI before I know what an SSRI will do or will help people. So and then you have other people who say, absolutely, you should be experienced in it and do it. I reach contemplative states myself through my meditation, my meditative practice, my breathing practices, my somatic practices. So I have not felt the need to do that. I've not opposed to it. I've just felt like, well, I'm doing fine with the practices I have. I enjoy them.

They enrich my life. If I felt like it could wrench it my life more, I will try it. So I'm not opposed to that. It's more like, I'm okay right now. So, you know, and I have achieved some extraordinary experiences myself, just sort of doing the practices I've done. So I perfectly understand and I mostly asked that as a joke, although I was curious. I was curious.

Well, like I said, so many people ask it that I'm prepared for it. So, yeah. Is there a common theme that people report like of what it feels like? Is there any trend? Oh, yeah. So I mean, so there's often almost always an out of body experience. So the sense of leaving your body of a lot of. you know, intense sort of sensory experiences. So you remember when we're doing these studies,

typically you have eye shades on, you're listening to a track of music. Usually it's, it's music without words. So people feel like they become one with the music. The music might become color. So they often describe sort of very vivid visuals, these intense positive feelings, so of love, of connection. We set intention before the medicine is taken. So this is an important piece as well. You're never alone. You know, you're not obviously talking. You're not able really to articulate. However, we do prepare you so that you have in mind, why am I doing this? What am I hoping? And, you know, what is my intention? Am I hoping to communicate with someone? Am I hoping to just sort of relax or connect or work through something. So what you do find is often that intention helps direct

what they experiences, whether you connect maybe with other people. Often that's reported like connecting with other people that are also taking the medicine at the same time or connecting with relatives that have deceased. So a lot of origin, you know, ancestor type connection. So, yeah, I mean, those are some of the themes. And again, it can go everywhere. You know, people can weep. It can be very powerful. And that way you can have bad experiences.

Some people go to very dark places, like literally and figuratively, which are very terrifying. They feel alone. They feel frightened. So this is why it's so important to set that intention and have someone with you to sort of say, if you're going to that place that's very scary, that's not necessarily always a bad thing. Maybe that's where you need to go. Can you hang with that a little longer to move through it? And yet then if someone's really panicking and we're usually monitoring them physiologically,

you know, we want to make sure they know they're safe, that they feel safe. So it's not that we always want everyone to just feel happy and good. If that's the case, that's wonderful. If not, maybe that's what they need.

We still want them to be safe, though. We don't want their heart rate to go up too high. We don't want them, you know, to come out of it traumatized. So it is important to set those intentions, have someone with you, and maintain that safety. Yeah.

How much of a dose are you giving these people when you do these tests? So it's typically one or two times only. So it's fairly short as far as the number of treatments. And typically 25 milligrams with the psilocybin, sort of the synthetic. psilocybin. So this is not like mushrooms dried. It's, you know, manufactured, standardized. And they don't typically do weight-based because they've discovered that it doesn't really seem to need to be weight-based. So it's more of a standard 25-migram dose to start with. And if you do multiple sessions, you may increase that. Our study, we're looking at one dose,

one time and that's the 25 milligram. Interesting. And you guys are using synthetic psilocybin. So we're using the manufactured from a company that does this professionally. Yeah. You guys need the real thing, man. Well, this is partly to standardize it, as you can imagine. Nobody wants us, you know, drying the mushrooms in our yard and bringing them in and weighing them on our scale there in the lab.

So, yeah, because of research protocols. we are required to do that. Well, I mean, it's interesting. I actually don't have a reference point of how much 25 milligrams of psilocybin is. I only know, I only know like the drug dealer measurements for the weight of an actual mushroom. Right. Is that like considered a high dose, like a hero dose?

I mean, it's considered like a moderate dose. So it's enough to create these subjective experiences. I mean, we do want that. So we don't want these micro doses where you don't feel the effects of, you know, the mystical experience or this extraordinary experience. We do feel like that is important. So this is the dose that would create that level of experience. But yeah, it is very different.

And so people are often surprised because they're like, oh, you're microdose saying, well, no, it's a different measurement. So, yeah. Yeah. Well, it's interesting as well because I know at least with treating people with intense PTSD, they're giving them a really high dose of psilocybin, like far greater than any normal person would want to take in a recreational setting. And greater than like most people could imagine taking, even if you've done it before,

which is interesting. I mean, I've never done that. So I have no reference point. to understanding what that would be like, especially in like a lab setting. It's fascinating. Yeah. And I think you really do have to take into consideration the severity of the disorder and what you're, you know, trying to achieve.

And so it does not surprise me that the dosing would be different for different kinds of disorders. You know, trauma related versus depression versus more, you know, addiction. So really looking at what, you know, what sort of thing we're trying to achieve. And have you noticed any patterns or connections to your other fields of research while you've been working on the psilocybin research? Yes. I mean, what's interesting to me, and I noticed it even before the psychedelic work, is that what we're sort of looking at is this state of consciousness. or state of mind that is achieved. And it can be in a near-death experience. You have people report very similar experiences and outcomes to individuals who have an after-death

communication or have a psychedelic trip. I mean, so it seems to be getting to this place where you feel this intense emotion. It's usually a positive emotion. You feel this connection. you have some realization that you are not just your physical body. And often there's a realization of connectedness. So it seems that this is a common theme, whether we are having an out-of-body experience or an out-of-body experience that's within a near-death experience or just a near-death experience

or an after-death communication or a deep meditative state or holotropic breathing or a, I have a, psychedelic trip, they seem to take you to this state that allows access to this knowledge that seems to be very helpful for us and that for whatever reason we are not accessing every day in our Western lives. Yes. All right. So we've been talking for quite some time. I'll let you go shortly. I think my last question, what are the mysteries that you personally find yourself wondering about the world, you know, even in a non-professional setting? What are the things that excite you and make you push forward with your research?

And DOPSS research as a whole? That is a tough question. I know, it's a tough question. One of the fascinating things to me is our, we're sort of moving into a realm of looking at some of the genetics. And, you know, there's a part of me that wants to expand into these other areas like genetics and genomics and physics. And really bring this in because what in my limited understanding of some of these more advanced physics, so some of these quantum physics, we are finding that the science matches what we're

seeing in some of our extraordinary research. So, you know, this sense of the existence of our minds outside of our body or our consciousness outside of our body, that there may be physics to this that makes sense. You know, when we see entangled particles that are related across, you know, the span of a universe where one changes the spin and the other simultaneously does. And this is that quantum entanglement. You know, all of these pose questions that are similar to the questions we see on the side of research in DOPS, where we're looking at it from a different angle through the lens of a human experiencing these things. So, you know, this idea that we're connected, maybe there is more proof to it in things like advanced physics or

genetics that we need to study. So some of my questions are the big fundamental one really is, will we ever understand this? I mean, are we able to comprehend it? and will that be through these advanced physics and genomics, or will it elude us? Is it something that we experience? It's part of our nature, and we're not meant to know. And I think, you know, I'm reminded all the time that in the past, I'm talking, you know, decades and decades ago, we would often, as humans, accept that, that some of these anomalies, you know, there's a story I heard about in the Midwest, early in the

development there and the settlers, meat just rained out of the sky. This is a real story. There's documentation of it and stuff like that. And, you know, the farmers went and looked at it and they're like, hmm, this is some sort of meat. What should we do with it? And they thought about eating it, but it was sort of rancid, so they didn't, and they ended up just sort of ignoring it. And then it was reported locally, and people were like, well, you know, nowadays people are like, well, why didn't they do anything? Why didn't they research it? And they were just like, well, I guess it just happened. You know, we're just not worried about why. And I think in the past there were, you know, explanations through religion or some traditions and things, but you didn't

need to understand it further than that. And so I, always come back to this, you know, are we meant to know all of this? Can we, number one, I mean, do we have the capacity? And is it even a good idea? And, you know, I've obviously fallen on the side of studying it. So I am curious. I also really work hard to try and be okay with not knowing. I think that's important. That is a great. great way to end this, I think, even though that meat example you just gave, set me off down a bit of a rabbit hole right now. I'm seeing that it's called the Kentucky, the Kentucky meat shower. Yeah. Okay. I have something to research after we hang up here. Thank you so much for speaking to

me. I'm really excited to talk with more people from DOPs. And I think it's amazing what you guys are doing. the fact that you're doing this in a, you know, a respected medical setting. It's really rare. I think most people don't even know that this type of thing is going on. Yeah. So thank you so much. Is there anything about DOPS or your work that you would like to plug before we go? I just say thank you for this interview, this opportunity. And if people are interested, please reach out. Hopefully you will provide some of that information as well, the website and things.

we're always interested in hearing from individuals. All right. Well, Dr. Kim Pemberthy, thank you so much for speaking to me. It was great to meet you. You too. Take care. Okay. Thank you so much to Dr. Kim Pemberthy for speaking to me.

Thank you as well to Dops and Maggie Guggenheimer for helping put this together. I am so excited to know that there is serious research being done on some of these incredible things that come up on other world. Like I said, I'm hoping to interview several more researchers from DOPs throughout this year. If you would like to learn more about Dops, visit www.U-W-A-D-A-Dops.org. That's U-V-A-D-O-P-S.org. Thank you for listening. Otherworld is executive-produced and hosted by myself, Jack Wagner.

Our theme song is by Cobra Man. This episode was edited by Theo Krantz and engineered by Theo Schaefer. Our artwork is by Coltisack Studios. Production help by Nikki Kate Delgado and Haley Pearson. Please show us your support by subscribing, leaving a five-star review, and telling your friends. If you want to hear bonus episodes of Otherworld, you could become a patron at patreon.com slash Otherworld.

Our social media is at Otherworld Pod. Thank you to the team at Odyssey. J.D. Crowley, Jenna Weiss-Berman, Leah Reese Dennis, Rob Morandi, Eric Donnelly, Matt Casey, Moora Curran, Josephina Frances, and Hillary Schuff. Follow and listen to Otherworld Now for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

And finally, if you or somebody you know have experienced something paranormal, supernatural, or unexplained, you could send us to your story at stories at otherworldpod.com.