Friday May 02, 2025

Autism and Psychic Experience EP 10

Is there a relationship between autism and psychic experience?

A connection between autism and telepathy has been reported by the families of some nonverbal autistic people. As a late diagnosed autistic this interests me because intuition has been a guiding force in my life.

Like all many areas of parapsychology, more research is needed, but I think it’s a topic worth discussing.

In this episode I talk about my own person experience, what other people have to say, the idea of psychic ability as a spectrum trait and a bit about parapsychology (from what I have learned at the Rhine Institute).

This is my first time talking about this topic, I’m going to be talking about it more in the next couple of podcasts!

Resources for this episode include:

If you like my content, please follow the podcast!

Visit my blog at Writing On The Spectrum (https://barbaragraver.substack.com/)

Full transcript follows. If you need closed captioning, please listen via the podbean app or at AutisticPOV.com (https://www.autisticpov.com/).

E10 PISODE TRANSCRIPT

If your podcast provider cuts off the transcript, you can see the full transcript for this episode at AutisticPOV.com
 
Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. everybody this is barbara graver thank you for joining me today on autistic pov today we're going to be talking about autism and psychic experience as most of you
0:30
know i tried to write an autism memoir and i talk about this in an episode i'll link to it telling our autism story but i tried to write this memoir And I realized that I kind of couldn't stay in the autism lane. I was talking about autism, but I was talking a lot about the paranormal,
0:51
my psychic experience, past spiritual experience, metaphysical topics, all this stuff that to my mind then, didn't have anything to do with autism. And I thought, I can't do this. This is supposed to be an autism memoir. And nobody's going to want to read all this if they're looking for autism memoir.
1:13
So I set it on the side, but it kind of kept pulling at me. So Not long ago, actually a few weeks ago, I decided, you know what, I'm just going to write it. I'm just going to do it. I mean, it's actually written. I thought I'm just going to edit it and finish it and do it.
1:32
And after I made that decision, I thought maybe I should do a little research on this topic, this topic. Is there any connection between autism and psychic ability? And I had never really thought that there was. To me, the metaphysical, actually parapsychological is the correct term, was always a special interest. It was just a special interest.
1:56
It didn't really have anything to do with being autistic. And maybe it doesn't. I don't know that for sure. But I do know that when I started to research, I found a book. by this guy named William Stillman. It's called Autism and the God Connection. And this was an interesting book to me.
2:14
There's some pros and cons on it, which I'll talk about in another episode, but it was a really interesting book to me because it addressed this idea that there's a relationship between telepathy and autism. And in particular, William Stillman, who is on the spectrum and does have psychic ability, I think has worked as a medium.
2:36
But William Stillman worked primarily with nonverbal autistic children and teenagers, maybe adults, but nonverbal autistic people and their mothers. And a lot of these moms were saying, my kid could read my mind. And of course, everyone's like, That's ridiculous. People are even saying really mean things, like horrible, cruel things.
3:02
And that's like part of the culture of just dismissing what is essentially at its core the inner experience of the autistic, which we'll talk about more. But William Stillman didn't dismiss it. He wrote a book about it, and it's a really interesting book, and he's an interesting guy, and he shares a lot of anecdotes about
3:23
And he mentions in the book this podcast called The Telepathy Tapes, which I listen to. And that also is about telepathy and nonverbal autistic people. And it's really compelling. It's super compelling. And it is based on and around the work of this, actually, she's a medical doctor, neuroscientist, Diane Hennessy.
3:46
And she got interested in autism and telepathy and decided to research it. And she said that she knew when she made that decision that it was the end of her scientific reputation, she knew it. And so it was. They even found a way to take her medical license away from her for a while.
4:05
And it's interesting because this is the culture. And it's almost like there's a double prejudice when you talk about this issue. There's the prejudice of dismissing the inner the inner reality, the lived experience of autistic people was just systemic. And then in the scientific community, there was the prejudice against parapsychology, also systemic.
4:31
And it's really, really interesting because I've studied parapsychology. I took courses at the Rhine Institute, which is... was started by J.B. Rhine, who did the original experiments in ESP. But I took courses there. I think I'm going to take some more, actually. And it's interesting because that prejudice towards parapsychology is so ingrained in the scientific community,
4:55
like even Rupert Sheldrake, who's that. I think Cambridge-educated biophysicists, he would submit papers when he was doing his research on morphic fields. He would submit statistically valid, well-designed scientific studies and write a paper on it and submit it to these academic journals. And they would send it back without even reading it.
5:17
They would say, we know this can't be true, so we're not even going to read your paper. Like that's the scientific community at its worst. And parapsychology brings that out. It just brings it out so much. And it's kind of interesting because on Diane Hennessey's website, she actually quotes from this paper.
5:38
And just give me a minute here and I will find it. So this paper was written by molecular biologist Jonathan Jerry in critiquing Diane Hennessey's work with autism and telepathy and what is interesting. interesting about it for the purpose of our discussion, is that he begins by talking about parapsychology. And he says, and this is a quote,
6:03
parapsychology is a grab bag of powers and experiences like telepathy, telekinesis, and precognition that involves some weird transfer of energy or information that currently exist outside of our scientific understanding, if they exist at all. And this is like kind of an interesting way to characterize parapsychology because it's not a grab bag of powers and experiences.
6:29
It's an actual science. And I'll just quote from the Ryan Institute's website on parapsychology. Like, what is parapsychology? Parapsychology is the scientific study of interactions between living organisms and their external environment that seem to transcend the known physical laws of nature. Parapsychology is a component of the broader study of consciousness and the mind.
6:53
parapsychologists study five broad areas, telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, PK, psychokinesis, and survival studies. So you can see the difference here in perspective, and you can see the prejudice of the scientific community towards parapsychology. I'm not saying that the telepathy tapes is a scientifically valid study. Like, I don't know that. I couldn't even really analyze that.
7:18
I suspect it probably isn't, but The point is, anecdotal evidence is still evidence. And it's kind of systemic of popular culture as a whole to just dismiss out of hand the lived experience of autistic people. So it's not really surprising that this telepathy in nonverbal autistic people is just going to be dismissed out of hand.
7:42
None of that's surprising. And probably when I mention all this, you're thinking, but wait, that's been debunked. It hasn't been debunked. It hasn't been properly studied, perhaps. But that's the most you can say about it. You can't say that it's been debunked. So I found that really interesting.
7:59
And essentially what Diane Hennessey and the telepathy tapes and William Stillman are all saying, some people at least on the autism spectrum have telepathic abilities. And this is like widely reported by mothers of kids that are nonverbal saying, you know, my kid could read my mind. And you think that's ridiculous. That can happen. It's a normal reaction.
8:26
I'm a skeptical person. The only reason I believe the things I believe is because of direct experience. I don't really believe anything. metaphysical other than stuff I've had direct experience of. So I'm kind of like that too. It's human nature, but it's problematic.
8:45
It's problematic when it means you can't take a look at things from a reasonable perspective. And that's essentially the problem. That's a big part of the problem. And so on the telepathy tapes, they're nonverbal autistic individuals who are communicating their spellers. They call it spellers. They're communicating via assistive devices, which is part of,
9:10
it would definitely be a challenge in setting up a study for various reasons, but they're communicating. And some of the examples, like you really should check it out. I'll put a link. Some of the examples are really, really compelling. And That's not saying, again, they're scientifically valid. It's saying they're compelling.
9:28
And the way parapsychology works is that parapsychology looks at things that happen, quote, in the field, spontaneous events, apparently paranormal, apparently psi. They just call it all psi for ease of communication. Apparently psi events that happen in the field, they take those events and then they do a study where the scientific community
9:51
looks at those events and just dismisses them out of hand. parapsychologists look at them and then they do a study. They don't just accept them. Like that's not how it works. And their studies are actually, and I know this from my courses at Ryan, their studies are actually more rigorous than your average scientific study.
10:10
Like a regular scientific study might do a double or triple blind. Parapsychologists will do quadruple blind. Like they really, because they know everybody's going to do their best to discredit them. I mean, it's an ongoing thing. So it would be great if we could get some parapsychologists to take a really good look at this.
10:29
But people are looking at it. And I just don't know enough about the work of Diane Hennessey really to comment on it. But it's very interesting. And the telepathy tapes are very interesting. And the idea that autistic people are receiving information via telepathy is fascinating to me. And I'll tell you why.
10:52
When I first got diagnosed with autism, the idea of the spectrum was confusing to me because I thought, first of all, I had people telling me, well, what you have used to be Asperger's, but now they put it all together kind of so they could bill for things. That was the explanation I sort of got.
11:11
So it seemed to me like maybe it's just all these different kind of neurobiological things grouped together. And it's a spectrum, but it's not necessarily a linear spectrum like we're going from point A to point Z on this spectrum. It's just kind of a hodgepodge.
11:29
I always sort of thought that and then when I found out about the telepathy tapes my opinion just suddenly changed because I realized this is a little bit like what I've been doing through my whole life but intuitively always and that is the way I
11:48
get information even in everyday way I've always been very sensitive to what I call energy what the weird energy that Jonathan Jerry mentions. But even when I was a little kid, like I used to have a sense of people that was, it, it was, and is, cause I still get it an actual palpable thing.
12:11
It felt like an energy, like almost like pins and needles would feel like kind of like energy. It felt like that. And yeah, I remember as a little kid, like trying to explain that to my friend and them looking at me like I was insane. And that's when I realized other people don't do this.
12:28
Other people aren't doing this. Other people aren't getting information this way. And it's like, I'm not very good at conversation. Like I could do this podcast because I edit it. And because I'm not looking at anyone, I could do it. But when it comes to conversation and I'm still all over the place,
12:45
but when it comes to conversation, like I'm horrible at conversation and it's, Yet a lot of times when I'm talking to people, especially certain people, there's almost like a subtext. There's a conversation beneath the conversation. Like even if somebody's saying something, somebody could be saying one thing and then there's the subtext and that's intuition.
13:08
So it's not the same as what the nonverbal autistic people are doing where they're actually You have to watch the podcast. It seems like they're actually reading minds. I'm not doing anything like that. But it's a similar kind of thing. It's a similar way of getting information.
13:26
And I'm thinking about this, and all of a sudden I'm thinking, it really is a spectrum. It actually is a spectrum because this is part of who I am. And my special interests that I always kind of put out to the side, like it's this random thing that doesn't have anything to do with me.
13:43
My special interests have always been since the time I was a little kid, like the Ouija board, ghost stories, gothic fiction, tarot cards, astrology, everything along that line, witches, dark shadows, everything along that line just spoke to me, spoke to me, spoke to me. And it's not really something that's off to the side.
14:03
And it's not a problem. I don't think that I put it in my memoir because it's kind of central to who I am. And I'm like seeing the spectrum for the first time. So I just wanted to share this. I'm going to do some more podcasts on this topic because I think it's fascinating.
14:20
And I'm going to write my weird hybrid kind of memoir, too. But I'm going to do some more podcasts on this. I want to talk a little more about William Stillman and the telepathy tapes and my own personal experience, like with the paranormal and paranormal investigation and mediumship and all this kind of stuff that I explored.
14:41
And it's who I am. So why shouldn't the memoir be that too? And why shouldn't I talk about it here? I mean, I hope people consider it relevant. I don't know for sure, but I'm going to come back to it. I'm definitely going to come back to it.
14:55
So the next episode is going to be on this topic. I don't know specifically what, but it's going to be on this topic. And I'm going to keep talking about this. So if it's of interest to you, please consider following the show. I'm on most popular podcast apps. I'm also, I have Substack, which is barbaragraver.substack.com.
15:16
I call it writing on the spectrum, but you can find it there. I'll put links to that. Please feel free to follow the show or comment or share it. All that helps more than you could know. And I will be back on the third Friday of May, and we will be talking more about autism and psychic experience.
15:36
So until then, this is Barbara Graver of Autistic POV, and thank you very much for listening.

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