Researched and Written
By a servant of the Servant
Dhanesvara das
"This is a tale of murder in its lowest, most despicable state, for who but the most heinous of characters could think even for a moment to kill a great soul whose only business was to relieve mankind of their material bondage by teaching that greatest of all life's blessings, love of God? Yet it happened, and you will hear the irrefutable proof directly spoken from the mouths of those who actually did it, and confirmed by those who were there at the time. It is these direct confessions heard in Reverse Speech that have convinced me that Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada was indeed brought to death’s door by poisoning, and I believe that after you hear the evidence and read the story that you will agree with me also."
The Discovery and History of Reverse Speech
The discovery of Reverse Speech, like so many important discoveries in this world, came as an accident, or perhaps we should say, serendipity. Its discovery came about as a result of an intentional act, a marketing ploy by entertainers who led a generation with their creative endeavorsthe Beatles. Perhaps as a means to turn around their failing popularity as a result of a serious faux pax, saying that they were more popular than Christ, the Beatles intentionally dubbed a soundtrack in reverse onto one of their recordings. The idea was to challenge fans to see if they could find hidden verbal messages. It worked. All over the world people were buying Beatles albums and recordings of other performers and manually rotating their turntables backwards to see if they could hear the messages. The surprise however, was that along with the messages that were intentionally placed in reverse, other messages, references to Satan, were also foundmessages which seemed to confirm what some had believed all alongrock and roll music was inspired by the devil!
Messages intentionally recorded in reverse came to be known as "backward masking" and when the recording was played in reverse they were as intelligible and clear as any forward recording was. When the record was played in regular forward mode the backward masking was usually "buried" among the guitar riffs so as to be "masked," and not meant to be heard well. These messages varied among performers from straightforward communications to cryptic and mysterious messages which may have had no factual meaning.
The search for backward masked messages led to the surprise findings of other intelligible sounds, and many references to Satan. The morality of people in the 70s was still such that this was shocking to many people (Good thing it wasnt discovered in the 90sit might just have been written off as "normal"). Such findings led to the thorough examination of hundreds of rock music recordings in reverse, and the findings of many references to Satan and hell. Parents became concerned that their children were being unwittingly subjected to satanic programming, ministers railed against the decadence of rock and roll music, and legislation was even introduced in California to require record publishers to warn listeners of any records which intentionally had backward sounds recorded.
One Person Listened Further
While the sensation of backward masking and satanic messages was tormenting the more righteous among us, no one it seems had the curiosity of looking at the phenomena furtherexcept for one inspired individual in Australia, David John Oates, a former insurance broker. Working at the time as a youth counselor, those in his charge had come to him with the shocking news. David, in an effort to dispel the idea, rigged a tape player to play in reverse, and found out that it was indeed trueintelligible messages were found when recording were played in reverse. He also had the initiative to see if the phenomena was limited to music, or if such messages were also present in other forms of communication.
He began to play all types of recordings backwardsspeeches, conversation, arguments, infants cooing and babblingand made what will surely come to be known as one of the most significant discoveries of all time: all human verbal communication has not just a public face, the one meant to be shown, but it also has a hidden side, one that is covert but which communicates nonetheless, additional information which is just as, or perhaps even more important than, the sounds which we consciously hear.
David became very involved in the study of speech reversals and eventually labeled this form of communication "Reverse Speech," a very descriptive moniker. His study became very thorough. He documented a variety of forms and structures of reversals and categorized them, and connected the voices of the reversals with the understanding of the subconscious and collective unconscious as put forward by Carl Jung. The study became quite deep and detailed, and gradually evolved to a general theory of verbal human communication. The theory, developed over a decade of research, contributes immensely to our understanding of the communication process, and brings to humanity a new and bright horizon in communication to see and explore.
The Theory of Reverse Speech and Speech Complimentarity
Oates called his general theory of verbal human communication The Theory of Reverse Speech and Speech Complimentarity and it addresses the significant features of Reverse Speech. It states that 1) Human speech has two distinctive and complementary functions and modes, and 2) these two modes of speech are dependent upon each other.
The Overt, or Conscious, Mode is spoken forwards and is constructed by conscious cognitive processes. The Covert, or Unconscious, Mode, spoken simultaneously with the Overt Mode, is a reversal of forward speech sounds constructed by subconscious processes. Together they form an integral part of communication, and both modes of speech together communicate the total psyche of a personconscious as well as unconscious.
But How Does It Happen?
How does Reverse Speech happen? How does the human mind construct cognitive, meaningful communication in reverse while speech goes on forward? Oates research has shown that speech reversals occur with greater frequency when the speaker is more emotionally charged. Formal speeches have very few reversals, perhaps one every two to three minutes. As a person speaks in a more informal and relaxed environment the reversals increase in number. And when a person is highly emotionally aroused the reversals will occur with a frequency of every 2-3 seconds.
These findings show that emotions play an important role in Reverse Speech. Emotions have been shown to be a function of the right hemisphere of the brain. Hence, Reverse Speech Theory suggests that while the left side of the brain generates the overt, forward speech, it is the right side of the brain which contributes the covert, reverse speech. The right side of the brain then must work in conjunction with the left side of the brain so that the words chosen in overt communication will create sounds which form the intelligible sounds of the covert communication. An amazing feat! This can account for a speakers pauses, stammerings, and fumbling over the choice of words as he speaks. The words are we choose to express our conscious mind are in part selected by the unconscious mind to communicate our unconscious thoughts.
The Many Parts of Reverse Speech
Reverse Speech is as universal a language as forward speecheveryone speaks it, and we all hear it. However, Reverse Speech differs in many ways from normal forward speech. Thousands of hours of studying many tens of thousands of speech reversals by Oates has revealed significant variety in:
* the information content of reversals spoken,
* the language of Reverse Speech,
* the syntax of reversals,
* the tense,
* and the intended audience for the reversals.
It should be noted that this work has been pioneered largely by David Oates but has subsequently been confirmed by dozens of Reverse Speech investigators over the years. This report adds nothing original to Oates’ work, but reports what he has learned through years of tedious research.
Information Content
The information content of speech reversals may be similar or it may be quite different than the information conveyed in forward speech. Speech reversals are very direct in their content and languagethere is no need for politeness, the need is to communicate. Consequently reversals are direct and to the point, frequently profane, and unabashed, communicating our psyche in the most direct and explicit way. Additionally, an amazing fact is that speech reversals are never deceptive or untrue. This bears repeating. The information content of speech reversals is always the truth, and as such are a most effective "truth detector." What is heard in Reverse Speech is always the truth. When forward speech contradicts Reverse Speech this indicates that the speaker knowingly spoke a lie. This has been confirmed by thousands of reversals analyzed by dozens of investigators of Reverse Speech.
The information content of Reverse Speech has been shown to be what was on the persons mind (the conscious mind or the unconscious mind) when they spoke. This frequently, but not always, relates to or compliments what is being said in forward speech. It may also expand on, and add additional information to the conversation.
Complementary relationships between forward and reverse speech can also appear in a number of ways. The reversals may be what has been termed "external dialogue" meaning that it is meant to be communicated to others, or may be "internal dialogue" or "self-talk" directed to ones own self. Amazingly, single reversals may even be constructed by two or more speakers who will each construct a portion of the reversal, this has been given the label of "Link Reversal" and there are several Link Reversals presented in this analysis.
An important category for the topic at hand is that of comparative reversals, reversals which discuss events and/or emotions that are outside of the topic of the forward speech. They are not complimentary with the forward speech, but they compliment the emotional state of the speaker. Comparative Reversals will also often reveal an event or belief in a persons life (past or present) that has similar emotions attached to it. Given that all of the dialogue analyzed in this study was recorded in the immediate vicinity of Prabhupada as he lay emaciated and close to death there was intense emotions experienced by everyone. These emotions drew out many comparative speech reversals that spoke directly to the cause of Prabhupada’s circumstancethe poisoning.
When people first hear of the phenomena of Reverse Speech it seems so fantastic and beyond belief that there is a tendency to assign it to coincidence. The frequent challenge is that anyone saying a specific phrase forward will create the same speech reversals. Very brief experimentation shows this to be false, and a very notable example is found in the speech reversals on the words "Srila Prabhupada" herein. These same words said by the same person gives totally different reversals in some cases, and the same in others; just as two or more people saying the same words forwards will create very different words in reverse. This makes Reverse Speech even that much more phenomenal.
There are many aspects to spoken sounds beyond the words we hear. Speech researchers have identified the various features of acoustic analysis of speech as frequency, amplitude, harmonic structure and resonance. Beyond that there are co-articulation effects, accents, and cadence. It is all of these rich features of speech which work together to produce in reverse either meaningless sounds, or meaningful words and sentences. The nature of speech is so extremely complex that creation of voice recognition systems have been one of the greatest challenges in the computer industry. The simple fact is that the subconscious mind assists in the way we produce sounds so that they will form meaningful, grammatically correct statements or words in reverse, and this action of the mind-brain connection is not something which is repeatable by others.
There are certain words whose reversals generally do sound the same for everyone who speaks them, but those words are limited to about 40 in number, and they have no presence in the reversals presented here.
The Language of Reverse Speech
Reverse Speech uses very efficient, and often not polite, words and phrases. It is not uncommon for Reverse Speech to contain explicit sexual words rather than the innuendo appropriate to socially polite conversation. More significantly however, reverse speech makes great use of metaphors to communicate efficiently and effectively. Just as we use metaphors to convey concepts and ideas in forward speech we do so in Reverse Speech. Additionally, these metaphors are used in a universal manner making Reverse Speech a unique language unto itself.
David Oates twelve year study of many thousands of reversals have shown metaphors to be particularly significant in communicating messages from the individuals own subconscious, and even perhaps, from the "collective unconscious" described by Carl Jung, or what Prabhupada’s followers understand as the Supersoul. Unlike the conscious mind with thinks in language, the unconscious mind "thinks" in pictures and communicates those pictures as the metaphors heard in Reverse Speech. Reverse Speech metaphors are verbal descriptions of pictures that are currently being viewed on an unconscious level, and an understanding of the metaphors of Reverse Speech gives us great insight to the workings of the unconscious mind. Because of their use of communicating the emotions it is found that the metaphoric content of speech reversals increases as the conversation becomes more emotionally charged.
*THIS DVD INCLUDES ON IT, SOME NICE FREE PRABHUPADA AND 911 MATERIAL.
*THIS DVD IS FOR A PC WITH A DVD DRIVE! NOT FOR DVD PLAYERS!