Autism, Ayahuasca, and The Telepathy Tapes

To say that people with “disabilities” are treated poorly would be to insultingly understate the reality of what’s happening. Not only are many assumed to be essentially worthless and thus cast aside and ignored, but in some places, they are systematically exterminated to the point of extinction.

Inside the country where Down syndrome is disappearing (CBS)

This is tragic. If you’ve spent time with down’s syndrome people, then you’ve seen their unique gifts of unbridled joy and positivity. They are some of the happiest, most optimistic people on the planet. We should be cherishing them and learning from them, not snuffing the life out of them because of a twisted set of priorities or our own arrogant assumptions about intelligence. This is a small subset of the population, but it leaves no doubt about how we view and treat each other.

People with down’s syndrome are not so different from you or me. They talk. Their motor skills allow them to walk through the world like a “normal person.” The differences are fairly superficial, if you ask me.

But people with severe autism often appear much different than you or me. They may not speak. Their motor skills might now allow them to move through the world with ease. They are the silent ones who have been labeled “stupid” or “retarded” or “incompetent” or any number of bullshit lies that are easier to accept than to explore the possibility that our own (mis)understanding of them is our limitation, our problem, and that inside their spirits exists an intelligence and ability beyond what we see in ourselves, and so we reject it.

The incredible gifts possessed our silent brothers and sisters became evident my first day working at L.S. K-8 in their self-contained special education classroom. Elle, a third grader with autism who was verbal but didn’t talk much, had just finished a piece of art. When I suggested that she write her name on it while sitting at the table across from her, she smiled, and then, with her eyes staring off in the distance, wrote her name upside down and backward so that it appeared on the page as if I had written it from my position opposite her. Perfect penmanship, regardless of the fact that she wasn’t looking at the paper and had to invert and reverse the letters.

Through the years, there have been countless examples of students stunning me and others with their incredible and often unexplainable abilities.

When I began working with these students, I had yet to drink my first cup of ayahuasca, nor had I experimented with other plant medicines or psychedelics. Once I did, there was no denying the commonalities between the worlds of ayahuasca and autism. In fact, I now question whether or not these two worlds aren’t one and the same. My first experience drinking ayahuasca was a 3-night ceremony. The first night, I felt nothing. Night two began with some sensations of drunkenness, but those quickly faded, and then the real work began. Sitting in a chair, I started to feel the medicine disconnect me from the physical world, and then the devil appeared in my periphery. Terror struck. The shamans had instructed us that in the case of fear or panic, we should try to go inward. So, I tried to go inward as best as I understood it. Instantly, my students appeared, and the devil vanished. The rest of the night was so overwhelming it can only be described as being swept away on the biggest wave imaginable in an ocean that has no end. Night three, I changed from atheist to believer after conversing with God for several hours. And from that weekend on, I have looked at my students not only as intelligent, interesting people but as spiritual warriors with a special purpose that is often misunderstood or perhaps entirely incomprehensible to the rest of us.

So, to recap, my first time entering the spirit world via a thousand-year-old plant remedy resulted in meetings with my students with autism and God.

Maybe that was just a coincidence, and there is no connection between the spirit world and autism, but other overlaps make me think that these two phenomena are deeply connected.

Some people with autism will temporarily adopt very odd patterns of breath. It can seem like they’re imitating a panicked person or perhaps trying to make a musical beat as they breathe. Other than in moments of extreme stress or as part of a planned exercise, I can’t think of a time when people would adopt these super strange breath patterns. However, in the ayahuasca world, this manifests in people who do not have autism. When I’m doing work in the ayahuasca realm, my breathing could be described as a loud, stressed metronome regulating my body so that I can better connect with the spirit world. If you had no context but just witnessed my behavior, you might assume I had autism or some other “disorder” that made my breath and body act abnormally, when in reality I would just be trying to connect with God.

A nonverbal student I worked with was famous for dragging teachers into hours-long games of hide and seek anytime he saw an opportunity to make a run for it. “Runners” are very common in these classrooms.

At this point, I wasn’t trying to psychically communicate with my students and hadn’t even heard that psychic communication was possibly occurring within the autistic community, but I was actively aware that my inner state was the most important factor when working with non-verbal students. Before going anywhere with “the runner”, I would pause, take a moment, and remind myself of where we were going. I would do a visual walk through in my mind’s eye, imagining us moving calmly through the school to our destination. It was amazing how well this worked. Other teachers were still running all over the place trying to get a hold of him almost any time they left the room, but once I started implementing my mental preparation, he and I had no more issues. We could exit the classroom and casually walk through the halls or even outside with no problems. A night and day change from what was the norm with this student, and the only difference was what was happening in my mind. How could that cause such an impact? Was he in my head? Did my body give off some sort of signal following this mental exercise?

Another non-verbal student in that classroom would often make loud noises for long periods of time that annoyed everyone else in the room. When he was asked to stop this, he would either completely ignore the request, or he would pause momentarily to laugh and hide his face before resuming the vocal projections. After a few weeks of working with him, we had developed a “psychic” rapport to the point where we could accomplish the day’s tasks without any misunderstandings. When his yelling would start, I’d focus my attention on him with pure compassion, knowing that these annoying outbursts would alienate him in the eyes of his peers and generally cause people to judge him negatively. Somehow, focusing my mind on his actions with compassion would cause the yelling and gestures to settle and cease, or at least to stop long enough that he could go elsewhere to continue ‘channeling the Gods or whatever it is that’s happening,’ without bothering others. These noises were paired with wild hand motions that looked like an orchestra conductor had just smoked ten bags of crack and then tried to give the most passionate performance of a lifetime. Alarming to witness. But seeing this through the lens of the ayahuasca, the sounds and movements could easily be viewed as a method of communication or connection with an entity that most of us cannot see or hear or feel.

These students might not speak, or speak very little, but they undoubtedly understand spoken language perfectly well. So why the need for anything other than words from my end? I don’t know. I have no doubt that my students understand my words, but the positive, compassionate mental posture that I adopt seems to have a far greater impact than anything I say.

My “psychic messages” to these students were not psychic messages at all, as far as I was concerned. I just noticed that my focus and intention translated in a way perceptible to them.

Did I ever psychically communicate with my students? Not that I’m aware of. But during the hundred or so nights that I’ve spent drinking ayahuasca, there have been reports of people occupying the same mental plane in the spirit world. They describe sharing visions or thoughts with other people in the ceremony. I have no way to confirm this, but if you talk to the shamans who are endowed with generations of stories and wisdom surrounding the ayahuasca, they will tell you that telepathy, or thought sharing, happens with regularity during the ceremonies.

The Telepathy Tapes is an investigative, story-telling podcast that explores psychic powers possessed by autistic people. The claims are extreme. Mind to mind communication. Ghosts. Predictive powers. Do I believe these claims? No. But I don’t discount them either. I know for certain that people with autism are intelligent, and loving, and gifted, and in many ways are a far more perfected version of mankind than us neurotypical masses, with or without telepathic powers. You can write these claims off in the same way that modern, western society has always written off people with “disabilities,” but that would be incredibly foolish. The root of wisdom is the recognition that we don’t know shit. All the advancements in understanding our world through science and technology have done nothing to further our humanity or understanding of God. To ignore these people and their gifts is to ignore God.