My very learned and perceptive guest today is Dr. Peter L Nelson - author, psychologist and seer. Peter is an explorer of non-ordinary awareness, a very similar notion to what I'd call integrated intelligence. In Peter’ case, this allows him to directly know someone’s psycho-emotional state and the forces that shape it.
Peter began his scientific career in the early 1960s, exploring perception and consciousness. Later he became a social scientist and focused his research on how people create a picture of reality, including the visions of mystics and the highly intuitive, who seemed to be able to see directly into the minds and thoughts of others, as well as the last and future.
I stumbled upon Peter a year or so ago, when I read his wonderful book, The Way of a Seer. Peter’s explanation of how he employs integrated intelligence is incredibly insightful. There are a lot of philosophers and scientists who cover this topic these days, but not so many who actually know how to facilitate the art of the seer, and who have extensive personal experience of using it.
I caught up with Peter a few days ago. In my chat with him you will find out why he threw in a perfectly decent and potentially promising career as neuroscientist, why he believes that Rupert Sheldrake is wrong about morphic fields, and how reading a letter sent ten years into the future changed his life forever.
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PODCAST TIMELINE
3:57 What is a seer?
4:30 There is a non-ordinary stream of consciousness which seers can tap into.
4:50 The difference between a “psychic” and a “seer.”
5:50 “How did you become interested in these other ways of knowing, given your science background?” Peter tells the remarkable story of how he was inducted as a seer.
6:40 Peter re-tells of a dream he had as a young man, of flying over rolling hills. He immediately recognised the place as Devon, England. He came to this realisation the following evening at a movie. He then had a very strong urge to travel to England.
10:00 While working as a graduate programme in neuroscience, Peter meets a wealthy woman, who helps take him to England.
12:30 Peter quits the programme and flies to England with the woman.
12:50 Peter decides to look up two groups in England which were interested in the psychic domains.
15:40 The psychic medium tells him to "go to the other place.”
18:00 Librarian says she has some interesting notes from a trance medium, Peter refuses.
18:45. Librarian again insists he sees the notes, reads him incredible details of his life.
25:00 She offers to train him.
26:10 Example of Alice (his teacher) reading his and another woman’s mind. (Good example of mind reading.
27:10 There are two streams of perception. Inwards, and outwards.
28:50 difficulty in social adjustment, offending people. Alice taught him.
31:00 Peter had to learn to keep quiet, and avoid scaring others with his perception.
31:00 While appearing on a German TV show Peter accidentally shocks a contestant by revealing facts about his brother’s suicide.
39:30 He had to learn how to properly articulate what he saw in others as a seer.
40:30 The nature of fields, biofields. These are not the four known fields of nature.
42:40. You have to learn to feel the field. Only a higher order system can detect the field, e.g. a human being.
44:40 Fields define living things. We impregnate things with our fields, such as a place where a person dies violently.
47:40 Sheldrake’s morphogenic fields theory is not entirely correct. e.g. How a fertilised egg become s a blastular, does not require fields.
53:00 Why Deepak Chopra is on the wrong track.
54:00 What I'm interested is the psychology of attention. I'm not interested in training psychics.
54:30 Discussion about attention. Fixed attention vs expanded perception.
Why fluid attention is very important.
59:50 This is very useful for any people in problem solving fields.
1:03:00 Our society teaches us to pay attention to certain things, esp competition, making money and so on.
1.04:30 Education. We don't train for attention. Students are shaped. High achievers are usually highly fixed. But this is useful for certain things.
1:05:40 Steve Jobs and his fixed perception
1:07:30 Peter recounts his Albert Einstein dream, and how it influenced him to question whether special relativity theory is theory of perception?
1:11:30. Why theorising is arrogant,
1:14:40 Peter states that we can never really know the world. That's outside of human knowing. Is interested in engaging experience deeply.
1:17:10 Is there an evolutionary process with consciousness?
1:18:10 “What is the benefit for humanity in developing our capacity for seeing?
