Videos
Sources for the text and video content can be found in the descriptions of each video on the Youtube channel Psychology of the Strange.
Terrifying Encounters: Alien Abductions or Sleep Paralysis?
There is a long history of people claiming to have been abducted by extraterrestrial beings. This is often the subject of ridicule and derision because this phenomenon also has a long history of being categorized as a myth. Mainstream science also rejects this phenomenon as real because it is too "extraordinary" and requires hard, physical proof. This bias leads to the immediate acceptance of explanations such as "sleep paralysis", a dream-like state that arises when an individual is conscious but paralyzed either while waking or going to sleep. Sleep paralysis is known to often be associated with hallucinatory experiences. However, many cases of "alien abductions" cannot be so easily explained away, and remain a mystery.
There is NO death: True Story of Rebirth
(Past Life of a Young Girl)
A child spoke of a previous life when she was only 3 years old. In this podcast, Michael, her father, tells us how she recalled being an old woman, reporting on details that were strangely coincidental. Michael also had his own near-death experience (NDE) in high school, and an out-of-body experience (OBE) when he was only an infant. This compelling story of reincarnation culminates in the inevitable conclusion: past lives are real, and consciousness continues beyond death.
This NDE Will Give You Chills: Full Experience
On this podcast, I would like to introduce you to Devon who has a fascinating story to tell us about a near-death experience that taught him something about the nature of reality. This NDE was also life changing. Devon suffered from a stroke, lost consciousness and left his body (OBE). Amazingly, his faithful Labrador responded to and saw his disembodied self. What happens afterwards is beyond amazing, including reaching an understanding of mathematics and the laws of nature. I’m thankful that he was able to relay that experience to us. There are over 9 Million NDEs in the US alone and they show dramatic similarities. Experiencers typically report having gained knowledge about life, the universe, and reality in general. They also report a feeling of being at peace, connected, and gain a sense of purpose. Also common during these events are perceptions that are beyond our brain’s normal functioning.
Verified Past Life: Amazing Story of a Young Boy
This is the story of a young boy by the name of Katsugoro, a six year old Japanese who had a past life recollection before his death in 1810. He was able to remember his parents prior to his reincarnation, the house they lived in and how, also as a young boy, he had died during that other life. He also remembered what had happened in between lives, similar to a near-death experience. All of the details he cited were verified.
5 Reasons Near-Death Experiences are Real: Consciousness Survives Death
There are 5 aspects of the near-death experience and the accompanying out-of-body experience (OBE) that are intriguing for three reasons: 1) These experiences are common to most who have gone through the process of dying (as defined by the brain's lack of activity) 2) They are so specific and 3) the reported details are exactly what you would expect if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain, but separate from the brain. Near-death experiences are controversial because they are so subjective and one must accept NDE stories without evidence. This is generally not acceptable to a scientist. The hypothesis that consciousness is not dependent on the brain has been put forth for centuries, but here I argue that this hypothesis makes predictions that are witnessed in the shared experiences of NDEs. This does not just support NDEs as a phenomenon that is worthy of scientific study, but also suggests that what near-death experiencers report are grounded in reality, and not just hallucinations.
She Found The Impossible (Amazing NDE Evidence )
There are 5 aspects of the near-death experience and the accompanying out-of-body experience (OBE) that are intriguing for three reasons: 1) These experiences are common to most who have gone through the process of dying (as defined by the brain's lack of activity) 2) They are so specific and 3) the reported details are exactly what you would expect if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain, but separate from the brain. Near-death experiences are controversial because they are so subjective and one must accept NDE stories without evidence. This is generally not acceptable to a scientist. The hypothesis that consciousness is not dependent on the brain has been put forth for centuries, but here I argue that this hypothesis makes predictions that are witnessed in the shared experiences of NDEs. This does not just support NDEs as a phenomenon that is worthy of scientific study, but also suggests that what near-death experiencers report are grounded in reality, and not just hallucinations.
This is WHY Near-Death Experiences are REAL: What a blind person saw in the afterlife.
What do people see after they die? Are near death experiences real? The case of Vicky Umipeg offer new evidence of life after death. She was blind from birth, so that it was impossible for her to see, imagine, or dream the experience. Yet, she saw precisely what other NDE experiences do: a world of light, a feeling of complete acceptance and love, people she knew who have passed and welcomed her, and a life review. Before she crossed over, she also saw herself from above, and the scene of the accident that lead to her "death". It is such cases that are difficult to explain away. How could Vicky suddenly be able to have an experience her brain could not have created?
Alien Encounters with Children. New Information on the Ariel School Incident.
In 1994, 62 kids at Ariel School in Zimbabwe were visited by UFOs and saw aliens come out of the ships on school grounds. Some of the kids interacted directly with the aliens and reported telepathic communication with them. John Mack, a Harvard psychiatrist became very interested in this event, and interviewed the kids, verifying that they did in fact experience something that frightened them. As adults, the former kids from the Ariel School incident maintain their story. In this video we examine if the kids were lying or somehow influenced to report what they reported. We also examine what a "whistleblower" claims when he says he made up the whole event. But we also report new evidence that shows that a UFO may in fact have landed where the kids reported seeing one of the ships. The Ariel School incident is one of the strongest evidence we have to date that we are, in fact, being visited by non-human beings, possibly from another world.
Time is a Perception, and not real. Time is Strange.
In this video, I discuss what psychology has to say about time perception, how time does not pass, and how the phenomenon of time is entirely a creation of our brain. Time is discussed with the analogy of a movie in which the illusion of motion, or the illusion of change, is in the mind, due to the brain stitching together different still frames of reality to create what we experience as time. The flow of time is relative and depends on many conditions. Time does not flow but is experienced as passing at different rates depending on those conditions. The passage of time and how fast time passes depends on age, the species of animals, and even how fast your heart beats for example. In addition, the brain changes how you perceive time so your experience makes sense to you, even when it must distort what actually happens in reality in order to do so. I offer a theory of time as given by philosophers that is consistent with the belief of many scientists interested in time. Time does not exist the way we experience it; time does not flow; time is an illusion.
The Illusion of Time: Time does not flow and change is an illusion.
While we all have a powerful intuition that time flows, and that it does from past to future, there is no good evidence that it does in reality, and there is, instead, good evidence that the passage of time is a phenomenon controlled by the brain. According to mainstream physics, past, present and future fall on a timeline that exists in addition to the spatial dimensions, and they all exist at once. Change from past to future, or time flow, is an illusion, and the source of that illusion is the brain. Without consciousness, there is no passage of time. This video is the first part of a two-part series. In this video, I discuss time in the external world, specifically how change is an illusion, and how time only exists in terms of past and future. Past, present and future all exist at once and time can be understood as individual still frames. In the next video, I will discuss the role of the brain in creating the illusion of time flow.
Reality is Created by Your Brain -- It is Only an Experience in Your Mind.
Reality is a creation of your brain and perceived in your mind as the experience you have of the world. Nothing you experience exists as the way you see, hear, feel, touch or taste it. The experiences your brain gives you is based on information it receives from the world, but is designed to help you survive in it, not give you an exact replica of that world. Your senses are, in a way, illusions. In this video, I examine what happens in the brain that creates this illusion of living in the reality that you experience. Mentioned in the Video: The Checker-Shadow Illusion Once you’ve viewed that video, I’ll explain what’s going on, but watch it first. Checker-Shadow Illusion (Edward Adelson): https://youtu.be/z9Sen1HTu5o Okay, so in this video, you saw a square in shadow — let’s call it square 1. This square looks like a light square. There’s another square — square 2 that is under the light, and this one looks dark. When square 1 is moved into the light, it looks like its shade darkens to match square 2. In fact, it doesn’t change at all. It is your brain that changes what you see. There is no magic trick here. Your brain literally made you see square 1 as lighter so you can see it best in shadow, then your brain darkens its shade when you move it out of shadow so you can see it best in the light. It’s a matter of contrast. The brain’s visual system loves contrast and will do whatever it takes to increase contrast so you can see the object best in its immediate environment. Do you still trust your senses? See this next illusion. Spanish Castle Illusion. Follow the instructions by fixating the center dot of this black-and-white castle, and wait until the black-and-white version appears. Once again, I’ll explain what’s going on after you’ve seen it. The Spanish Castle Illusion (John Sadowski): https://youtu.be/MUbraNFEHkA If you’ve done this correctly, and your eye didn’t move too much away from that center dot, you saw green grass and a blue sky applied to a black-and-white picture. These colors obviously can only only exist in one place: your mind, not in the picture itself. Do colors always exist in your mind? Yes they do. The world is not colored at all. It’s not even in black and white. But the light that bounces off objects behaves differently in such a way that the “chitchat” in your brain will use that behavior (wavelength) to know which color you should experience.