Dr. Jeff Tarrant is known for his pioneering work in the field of integrative mental health, blending traditional psychology with mindfulness, neurofeedback, and other alternative therapies. He is a leading expert in the use of technology and meditation for mental health and has authored several books on the subject. Dr. Tarrant's journey from skeptic to innovator has earned him recognition as a thought leader in holistic mental wellness. His latest book ‘Becoming Psychic’ received the Spring 2024 First Place Award in the Body, Mind, & Spirit: Parapsychology category from The Book Fest.
If you haven’t had time to listen to ‘Unveiling the Mysteries of Psychic Minds’, presented by Jock Brocas on his award-winning Deadly Departed podcast, please feast your mind on a selection of expansive highlights from his compelling discussions with Dr. Jeff Tarrant. They candidly discuss their respective journeys from skepticism to belief in psychic phenomena, the neuroscience behind psychic experiences, Dr. Tarrant's compelling mediumship research, and the potential connection between psychedelics and spiritual development.
Neuroscientific Talking Points
~ Dr. Jeff Tarrant's research on mediumship and psychic abilities challenges traditional scientific perspectives on consciousness and the mind-brain connection
~ The role neuroscience plays in validating psychic experiences, and brainwave activity can offer insight into the validity of mediumship and psychic perception
~ Trance mediumship vs Glossolalia, light language and channeling energy
~ How Dr. Tarrant's experience with psychedelics influenced his understanding of spirituality, interconnectedness, its potential impact on psychic development, and how ethical studies could be conducted in a controlled and responsible manner
~ Dr. Tarrant's work with non-directive healing modalities like biodynamic craniosacral therapy reflects the interconnectedness of energy and the potential for healing within the context of psychic and spiritual experiences
~ How Dr. Tarrant's findings on brainwave activity in relation to psychic experiences serve to broaden our understanding of consciousness, memory, and accessing information from broader fields of awareness
~ How the findings and discussions can contribute to ongoing research and discourse surrounding the relationship between consciousness, brain function, and the development of psychic and mediumistic abilities
Part 1 of this 3-part series focuses on the neurosience of Mediumship, glossolalia and channeling. Listen to the podcast. (Run time: 1 hr 07 mins)
Transitioning from ‘I want to believe’ to ‘I do believe’
Dr Jeff Tarrant: ‘As a kid, I was totally into all this stuff, and, I loved it… all I kind of cared about was the weird stuff. But then, as I got older I started questioning things and learning more, and trained as a psychologist and a neuroscientist. I attribute a lot of my professional training to kind of beating that out of me, so to speak, and kind of encouraging the idea that, ‘well, if we can't prove it in a laboratory, then it doesn't exist. It's not real.’ And so, there were many years where I was a pretty hardcore skeptic.
And then, as life does, it presented me with some opportunities to actually study this. And now I've come back around to the other side again. I've become more of, I do believe as opposed to I want to believe. I've still got a significant skeptical nature, but I've seen too many things, and it makes too much sense to me at this point to try to deny it.
Jock Brocas: You go through loads of examples in the book, and I love the fact that you get so excited. You can't wait to get a hold of measuring people's brainwaves and their activity... But there had to be one pivotal moment where the information... just didn't make sense, right?... That point you were like, there's gotta be something more in this because this doesn't materialistically make sense in the world. What was that pivotal moment for you?
Dr Jeff Tarrant: There's probably been several of those... I think it's been a building process of lots of weird little moments that don't make sense or don't fit with a strictly materialistic viewpoint. But when you were asking the question, the thing that jumped into my brain was, when I first was able to measure Laurel Lynne Jackson, a well-known medium…
The thing that really stood out with her that was so interesting and unique, especially from a neuroscientific standpoint, is that she has this very distinct way of how she perceives information when she's doing a psychic reading versus doing a mediumship reading. For her, they're two very different processes.
When she's doing a psychic reading, she sees it on her inner screen, she calls it, on the left visual field. And when she's doing a mediumship reading, she sees it in her right visual field... this is just something she's noted about herself often. But what was really cool is that when we measured her brain while she was doing a psychic reading and a mediumship reading, that's exactly what showed up - the opposite sides of the occipital lobe where the visual processing was happening corresponded with exactly what she was reporting.
That was a really interesting one where I was like, wow, wait a minute, she's not seeing anything out here. Like, we're just in a boring conference room, but her brain is processing information and it's processing it exactly the way she describes. So for me, even though it doesn't prove anything, it’s pretty convincing that something is going on here.
This isn't just make-believe, right? The brain is processing information even if I can't see it.
Displacement and unawareness during mediumship work
Dr Jeff Tarrant: I've seen Laurel work several times and a lot of times it's a group situation where she's doing a gallery reading, where she's kind of just picking up whatever she picks up in the room and goes over there and does a short reading and then moves along. And when I've seen her do this, and she's described this to me... she's kind of not there. Like she's doing it, but she's almost unaware of the external environment. And so it lends me to sort of believe that maybe she's not really tuned into her body as much when she's in that zone, that it's like she's kind of out here somewhere.
Jock Brocas: … That correlates to my own experiences and my wife's experiences. We used to serve and run our own church back in in the UK. And the way I can explain it would be, if you were up on platform or you were doing… a gallery setting... you would have no idea where you were going to, but all of a sudden, you get up and… you're not there, and… you know exactly where you're going. You know exactly who you're going to, and you know what's actually happening. So, it's interesting because it is almost that there's a sense of displacement of the self or whatever we want to call that… it displaces and then something else takes over and, boom, you're in that flow.
Trance states Spontaneous tribal languages
Jock Brocas: In your book, you talk about...the trance states and xenoglossia and the ability to confirm, and you worked with a woman who developed...
Dr Jeff Tarrant: Janet Mayer.
Jock Brocas: Janet Mayer, yeah... What you experienced there, would that be similar to what they call speaking in tongues or... this whole idea of light language, which is not something that I'm drawn to in any way. Or was there some kind of coherent intelligence behind what she was what she was bringing through?
Dr Jeff Tarrant: Yeah. And so just to give kind of a quick background to Janet and what her story is. She was the very first person that I worked with in this field. And, it’s funny because we're still friends and we still talk periodically. And I jokingly blame her... I'm like, it's your fault that I'm doing this…in a good way, of course.
Janet is a wonderful psychic medium. About 15 years or so... she had this experience during a holotropic breath work exercise... It was a group environment. You're breathing rapidly. There's evocative music. Anyway, she sat up in the middle of this session and what sounded like a language just started coming out of her and she had no idea what was happening. She couldn't really control it. She didn't even know if it was a language for sure because she didn't know she was saying something.
After this experience, it kept happening… when she was in the grocery store and when she was cooking dinner and driving her car, right? This language would just kind of come through. It took four years before she found somebody who would actually listen to her… some experts… linguists, and anthropologists.
She finally found somebody who would listen to her tapes and this person was an anthropologist at the Smithsonian, who was also a shaman in a previous lifetime in South America and recognized her language and so over time, translated several of her tapes. She was speaking up to four different South American tribal languages. Usually when they were translated, they were prayers or healings or teachings. A lot of it had to do with honoring Mother Earth and being connected to nature and important spiritual ways, things like that.
But it was interesting because she... she still doesn't know what she's saying. She can turn it on or off now, but she has no idea what she's saying...
Dr Jeff Tarrant: You brought up speaking in tongues, which, you know, the official term is glossolalia and… it's a Pentecostal kind of a thing, right? Where people get worked up into a religious fervor and they start saying something that sounds like a language. And so for Janet, a lot of the people that she approached, professors and what not said, oh, that's glossolalia....and kind of dismissed it because glossolalia is not an actual human language… so there's nothing to translate. Right?
Jock Brocas: Yes. That's the difference.
Dr Jeff Tarrant: So for me, it can't be glossolalia because these are actual languages and she's actually saying something that could be translated. And it sounds funny when I say this, but the only logical explanation is that she's channeling some kind of either shamans in South America or some other entities but somehow she's able to allow that energy to move through her. How that works… I've got some ideas about how it might work, but that's the only explanation because otherwise, it doesn't make any sense. She's gotta be getting information from somewhere.
Jock Brocas: I want to go into your ideas because I find that fascinating, especially from trance conditions and channeling because I have my own feelings on it. But I think it's important for anybody who's listening out there to make the distinction. And I've said this many times, and you can hate me if you want, guys but this light language stuff that goes out there is just… glossolalia. It's the same as anything that's on the Pentecostal side and... for me... my personal opinion, and you can write in all you want... there is no evidence. And you all know me. I'm very hard on evidence. I need evidence... whether it's scientific evidence or spiritual evidence, there has to be continuity. There has to be a pattern. There has to be a serious evidence. We don't see that.
What is interesting is that... and I think this is fascinating, and I think this gives credence as well to a mediumistic aspect of it, she had no idea what she was speaking. She had no idea at all, and it took a shaman to be able to bring that forward and really say this is the language, and there is a coherent intelligent pattern to it. And I think that's really important. This is not gobbledygook. There was an a a coherent pattern.
Thinking about this, I love how you're getting at channeling because that's my next thing. People are gonna hate me for this as well. I have an issue with channeling. I don't seem to have an issue with trance conditions and going into a trance state because I've had experiences of that myself as well... I know that when the trance condition happens and we allow that connection, that melding of energies, whether the spirit's coming through. There's intelligence. And often, a really, really good trance medium - I don't like to use the term trance channel - but the trance medium…they don't remember. They have no idea of what's going on. There's a sense of disassociation that happens - and this is another argument people come up with - they separate the idea of self going away and an intelligent force or intelligent being that will come in and communicate.
My issue with the channeling side of things is… are they channeling and it's coming really from their own perceptions, their own knowledge, their deep un-subconscious? Because I can perceive a massive difference between someone who's in deep trance, to someone who's just channeling wisdom, that they're saying is coming from such and such. But I feel I discern that it's coming from them, and it's coming from their intellect and their knowledge of maybe what they've studied or what they've been interested in. Where do you fit in that side of things?
Dr Jeff Tarrant: That is a tough one. That's a really tricky one… I've been able to work with quite a number of mediums now. I've not kept track, but… let’s say 20 or 30. And these are pretty high-level mediums, for the most part. And it's interesting because they seem to have levels of trance. Most of them will say that they're at least in a light trance or what they would characterize as a light trance.
And that might be like what Laurel experiences. Because, you can get her attention. If she's doing a reading, and she's kind of in her own zone. It's hard to get her attention. I can be jumping up and down in the background going Laurel, Laurel…
Jock Brocas: She's in the flow.
Dr Jeff Tarrant: She's in the flow. She hadn't even seen me. But eventually she will, right? She'll kind of click in... And so a lot of them talk about being in a light trance but those are… what I would consider... more mental mediums. Where they're in telepathic communication with these other entities, and then they're translating it. So they're getting this information in their own head, theoretically from another entity, and then they're translating it and trying to make sense out of it and put it in human words. I've only worked with... a handful of what we might consider trance mediums where their voice kind of changes a bit, they're much more disconnected, a lot of times they have no memory whatsoever of what they've said. And, I kind of have mixed feelings as well…
Jock Brocas: Awesome, alright, let's get into it. Yeah. (Laugh) Let's go there.
Dr Jeff Tarrant: Certainly I've been sitting with people where they've done this and there's just something in my gut that's like, this feels weird. This feels like they're kind of making stuff up... but then there have been other times where I've not had that feeling and it does feel like a higher wisdom of some kind, right? But all I've got to go on is my gut feeling and this is part of the problem. From a scientific perspective, I can't prove any of it one way or the other. And that's where I have trouble… especially trouble from a scientific perspective… you know, people say, oh, I can communicate with angels or fairies or aliens or… It's like, well, that's cool, but I can't prove anything there. There's nothing… Yeah, I just have to trust them or not. But… usually I'm just agnostic about it.
At least with mediumship where you're talking to somebody who's deceased, you could verify some things… you could verify that the things they're saying make sense and in the physical world. And that there's some way to sort of demonstrate that like, oh yeah, they did have that relationship, or they did live in this place, or they did go by that nickname, whatever. So it's tricky, you know? I don't know… it sounds like maybe you're even more skeptical than me. I don't know.
Jock Brocas: Yeah. I'm like you. But, I've been a professional medium for over 2 decades. I have experienced seances and trance and all sorts of things, but I have a very discerning nature when it comes down to it. And like you, I've been in conditions where I'm like, okay - pardon the French anybody who's listening now - that's bollocks, that's coming from them or, wait a minute, that has got substance to it.
And I am really fascinated. I have a passion for the trance condition and part of the reasons why I'm now on an academic path is because I want to understand more of psychosis, obsession, I want to understand permitted possessive states such as in the trance condition and I'm really fascinated about where can we go with this scientifically.
I think there's a potential bridge in terms of evidential research that can maybe go into it. If we go back to, you know, SPR studies, way back in the day, where we had cross correspondences where people were in trance conditions and was able to identify verifiable evidence that distance and time made no real the problem. I think there's a possibility that we can look more into the science of it… which brings us into your whole realm as the brain and mind connection.
Because I always say to people... when Lisa (Miller) and I were chatting , and I wrote an article on PDN about this, Defending the Soul, but my whole idea is that your mind is a psychological building block to your reality. That's how I feel. And so I always ask the question, is the mind in the brain, or is the brain in the mind? And this is like one of these massive arguments...
So I feel for me, there's a great deal of miscommunication and misunderstanding in mediumship or even in psi when it comes down to channeling, trance, and things like that. But I think there's an exciting possibility to move forward in doing further research in the trance conditions, and there's very little of it. There's very little science research in psychometry which I find fascinating from my own experiences.
So I think there's an element that we haven't really dove into deeper, and I think we can. How do we do it? I don't know. Maybe this is where you come in with the whole idea of the brain and the cerebral and working with mediums that are legitimately in trance conditions and not making it up. And that's the difficulty.
Resources:
Dr Jeff Farrant websites: Psychic Mind Science & NeuroMeditation Institute
Article: Dr Lisa Miller Sparks a Paradigm Shift in the Science of Spirituality
