Three sides of a coin

Coins, when you think about it, do have three sides. Certainly, we’re more accustomed to seeing the familiar, flat heads or tails surfaces, but there is also that narrow, curved rim that connects the two. In rare circumstances, that is where our attention can be focused. It’s to that slender band that I wish to turn my attention today.

Background

(Skip this if you already know this part of the story)

My friend and co-writer Asher is an autist. I’ve known and closely observed him from childhood. I’ve watched as the battles raged within his psyche as he struggled to fit into the materialistic, ‘logical’, neurotypical world into which he was born, while trying to make sense of the very different experiences and awareness that flooded his consciousness. The two were as far apart as anything could be, and it messed with his mind.

Once, when he was in his teens, his difficulties could almost have passed for mood swings. One day Asher would be eagerly and earnestly chatting to me about his latest OBE or asking for my take on other dimensions, the next he’d be brushing such things aside angrily and doing his best to mask his autism and fit in with his peers at school.

I got used to dealing with the two faces of Asher. I learned to recognise (most of the time) when to talk about metaphysics and when to keep my mouth shut. If I got it wrong, he’d sneer nastily at me and tell me I was delusional. The two sides didn’t seem to recognise each other.

As he grew into adulthood, at evenings and weekends he would send me long, self-composed articles on all aspects of the paranormal and engage in spectacular remote viewing experiments. When, though, like some comic book superhero, he was not wearing that costume, he would ignore his special powers and apply himself diligently to performing his role as a normal and unnoteworthy citizen of the early 21st century.

The divide between his two personas had become, if possible, even more intractable. This is how he explained it in our book, A Mind Beyond Words:

I believed, in equal measure, that I was able to access The Realms and that I was sick and delusional. It simply became impossible for me to maintain these two opposing views of myself. For years — since my teens — I’d been swapping between the two, but finally the split became inevitable. I doubted all the wisdom I ‘knew’ and wrote. I couldn’t take the strain of that and needed to release it.

His way of achieving this was unconventional. He opted to stop writing or speaking about his metaphysical side. That involved breaking all such contact with me. However he did begin making full use of the backup system of communication we had used in the past; he chose to discuss The Realms and all things paranormal with me via telepathy.

Watch the 1 minute video below for an explanation…

That’s how things have been between us for several years now.

In the meantime, though, the solid, materialist, reductionist 3D world has been changing. There’s been a subtle shift in perception, as pioneering scientists, educationalists and thinkers have started to take some aspects of psi phenomena more seriously.

A new paradigm

Like reincarnation and near death experiences before it, the mystery of autistic perception was starting to be noticed and considered by ‘ordinary’ people and a few ‘experts’.

An award-winning director and documentary maker in the US — Ky Dickens — fell down this particular rabbit hole, and decided to create a podcast series exploring the links between autism and telepathy in a careful, thoughtful and scientifically-based manner.

If you have even a passing interest in either, or even if you’re a hardened sceptic intent on debunking the whole subject, do listen to it. The series is being released in weekly instalments on all major podcast sites. Links can be found here:  www.thetelepathytapes.com

Finding the place where the two faces meet

Long story short, Ky Dickens asked to interview me for the series. She also asked whether Asher would be prepared to answer some questions for her. In the interests of being authentically journalistic, she wanted a response from the physical him, rather than just what I said his telepathic self had told me. I saw her point.

I also saw the faintest glimmer of hope that this might grab his physical self’s attention.

I wrote a fairly lengthy email to Asher, explaining the situation. I emphasised that the experiments were being conducted by a Johns Hopkins trained neuroscientist who went on to work at Harvard.

I gave him the option to respond to the questions via email or to pass on his thoughts to me via telepathy, but to write to acknowledge that it was him who had sent this.

A written message came back from Asher saying he didn’t want to deal with this telepathically. That was followed, some hours later, by an email containing his answers to Ky’s questions.

Here it was: that narrow place where the two faces of Asher were able to meet.

Up to this point, apart from agreeing with me about getting our story published, that side of him has taken no part in any of the publicity or activity involved in it. I honestly don’t recall the last time Asher emailed me. It was many years ago. Ever since that split, his physical persona has ignored all my questions and comments about his psychic skills. Yet here he was, willingly and honestly answering questions about autism and telepathy and asking ‘out of curiosity’ to be copied into any future correspondence between Ky and myself.

I asked him, telepathically, what had brought about this change of heart. Here’s his response:

Asher: My reasoning for opting to reply to the questions in worded language was that the research was being conducted in a rational and scientific way. That allowed my Earth-based self to feel comfortable with the enquiries. Email felt like a logical way to respond.

Telepathy defies traditional theories, yet Ky’s studies made a strong case for its existence. In a way, it ‘gave permission’ to my Earthbound self to accept my psychic skills as undiscovered science, rather than to reject them as illogical. One could say it expanded my worldview.

I’m very hopeful that Ky’s groundbreaking podcast series will have that effect on many others. I’m also delighted that my dear friend, dissociated for so long, may have taken the first steps towards reconciling his two personas.