A conversation with David John Oates by Sydney L. Murray, January 1997
From Visions Magazine
Can you imagine a world where truth and honesty were the accepted byproducts of a society who could no longer practice deceit and dishonesty without detection? Think how our cultural mores would shift. David Oates believes he has discovered the equivalent of the mythical truth machine which is called Reverse Speech. Karen Boone aptly describes it as: Reverse Speech is the unedited voice of the unconscious. It cannot be manipulated or directed by the conscious mind, but instead reflects soul’s purest viewpoint. It is raw truth, blunt and to the point. Occasionally beautiful, often ugly generally poetic, Reverse Speech is about to emerge as the phenomenon of the century, jolting an unwitting humankind into the Age of Awareness.” I personally was struck by the haunting yet melodic quality to the reversals that felt like something from another world; or of this world but of another dimension. Once I heard several reversals the phenomenon of Reverse Speech seemed quite logical to me given the potential and depth of the unconscious.
Vision Magazine: How does Reverse Speech work and what would a normal therapy session be like?
David John Oates: Reverse Speech is another form of communication that is automatically generated from the human brain. This activity or language has been previously undocumented and undiscovered. Essentially, my theory is that the process of language is two fold: As the human brain is constructing the sounds of speech, the individual is putting them together in such a way that we are receiving two messages at once. One is forward, consciously, and the other one is in reverse, unconsciously. My theory is that the left brain is speaking forward and the right brain is speaking backwards. And in the communication process we are receiving it as we speak.
It’s a communication process and all of us are receiving it every time we speak. It explains many aspects of intuition. It is a communication of the other 95% of human consciousness.
Forward speech of the conscious mind is composed of about 5-7% of the total psyche and Reverse Speech is the other approximately 93-95%. It is a radical discovery, an amazing discovery, it taps into the totality of the mind. It allows us to see the human psyche in a way we’ve never seen it before. I ‘ m amazed that no one has discovered this before, quite frankly. I am constantly stunned it hasn’ t been researched before.
Vision: What are the origins of Reverse Speech and how did you first experience or discover it?
DJO: I’ve been researching this for thirteen years. It started in 1983. I was running a halfway house for street kids in Australia and there was an evangelist traveling through preaching that rock and roll was the devil’s music and that if you played these records backwards you would hear satanic music. So, I had some kids on my hands who were pretty scared and I thought the whole thing was ridiculous. I went home that night to show the kids this was a whole lot of rubbish. I’m an amateur radio operator and had been involved in electronics for many years, so it was easy for me to rewire some tape players. I started running these tapes backwards to prove these words weren’t there and they were! I was hearing very concise English words and phrases backwards, phrases that were grammatically correct. I was immedi- ately curious as to how it got there-was it technical tricks, imagination or coincidence?
This started as a hobby and rapidly turned into an obsession. I ruled out technological tricks al- most immediately and also someone imagining the phrases. I ran several blind tests and asked the participants what they heard. I was getting some pretty consistent results. I also ruled out random chance. Once I focused on speech and began to run speech backwards I began to find these phrases every ten seconds or so, I was stunned . Once every ten seconds, or so, you can hear these clear and precise phrases, five words in length and gram- matically correct. They usually relate directly to what is being said in forward speech.
Vision: Do they always relate to the forward speech?
DJO: Not always, but about 70% of the time they do. If they don’t relate directly to what is being said at that stage, it may be some other part of the conversation. Or it may be something appearing before it has been spoken forward. I might be thinking I want to get something to eat and give a reversal that says I am hungry and then 3-4 min- utes later I’ll say, “Listen I’m hungry I’m going to go get something to eat.” So in that case it’s not directly related at that tirne but is part of the whole conversation.
It is a totally revolutionary discovery. I claim it will change the whole state of civilization. That is my whole intention. There are so many levels to it. On the one level it means that the human mind is no longer private, whatever you’re thinking or feeling is found in your Reverse Speech. I’ve done work with the police and we’ve found the names of accomplices of a crime and the location of a murder weapon, revolutionary stuff! I’ve been doing this for thirteen years and given the extent of what I was claiming, I was reluctant to go public for a long time. I wanted to document all of my research, catalog everything.
In the early years I mostly taped the TV. Then in 1988 or ‘891 began to use it in therapy. I am a counselor by profession, and I began to start taping my therapy sessions and using the voices from those sessions, which led me into a whole new world. One of the biggest problems in therapy is finding out exactly what is causing someone’s problem: What is it, why they’re doing it, what are the submodalities involved in that? People can spend years and years in therapy and not get to the source of their problems. Reverse Speech will get to it in one taped session. Also, most of my research in the last eight years has been from therapy.
Vision: Does knowledge of its use preclude an honest reading ?
DJO: Well that depends on how well you’re trained. I personally can relax people pretty much straight away, and gain an instant rapport and most people forget the tape player is playing. But some people do freeze up and the reversals drop off. If you’re very conscious about what you’re saying you’ll shift into your left brain and reversals will drop off, too. A reversal once every ten seconds is not entirely accurate, but more of an average. If you’re in an emotional situation they’ll be once every two or three seconds. Say someone is reading from a script, you’ll get it once every minute or so.
I’m very meticulous and very serious about my work and have documented as best I can my results. We’ve done electroencephalogram tests in the brain tracking the reversals, tracking the receiving and the response to them. We’ve also done numerous blind tests to find out whether or not you can actually hear them. And we’ve proven beyond a shadow of a doubt as far as I’m concerned that they exist. Once people begin to take Reverse Speech seriously, which is really just starting, it will revo- lutionize rnany aspects of our lives.
Vision: What are the various uses you envision Reverse Speech to have?
DJO: Law enforcement and therapy we’ve touched on. Employee selection or even who you choose as a business partner could be aided by hearing the reversals of the potential candidate. Reverse Speech can also detail the state of the physical body. I’ve encountered reversals warning someone of cancer six months before it was diagnosed. Disease prediction and disease prevention alone are huge possibilities. When you consider that the human mind knows all, following Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious, the human mind knows the physical body, it knows the emotions, it knows the soul. Reverse Speech taps into that wealth of knowledge. This is what we’ve been looking for, for centuries. It is the holy grail. How many therapies are there that are seeking soul? Well it’s been there all the time. Reverse Speech gets right into the whole spiritual arena and our relationship with god-the state of our soul.
Vision: Would you consider releasing it to a government entity and if not, why?
DJO:When I came to America I came with the express purpose of giving it to the government. I was a naive Australian, very bright eyed and bushy tailed . I did a couple of lectures in Washington. DC. I didn’t think they took me seriously, but later I was tailed and my phones were tapped. I was generally harassed for a couple of years. I worked with the FBI in Waco and the day after the compound burned down they told me to shut up about my involvement with them or they would crush me. I worked with the Dallas Police for a while. I just got abused and bullied and I was recently contacted by the police and I said no. This is technology for the people. It’s very cheap, anyone can do it, just buy a machine for $165; it is very cheap technology and puts truth detection in a very powerful way in the hands of the public.
Vision: How has it helped you in your life?
DJO: It’s helped my life immensely and not so easily sometimes. It’s not so easy looking at yourself. We have all of these preconceived notions as to who we are. It has taught me humility and it’s taught me to listen. And to be honest, particularly to be honest. It’s also taught me surprisingly enough that we all have the power of God inside of us. We can all change the world if we choose to. When it first came up, I didn’t think I was the right man to do it quite frankly. I was looking for someone to market it, or I went to the government or the university to find anyone else but me. And in Reverse Speech it kept coming back to “Listen, you can do it, you can do it.”
Vision: Any one reversal which stands out?
DJO: Ah, there are so many of them. I loved it when I found the reversal on O.J. Simpson. He was saying that if you taped yourself while having an argument with your girlfriend or wife or whoever and then played it back you won’t believe that that is you. That reversal says “I skinned them all.” And skinned has two different meanings: one which obviously very much fits the crime. The second is an African-American slang term meaning conned. “I conned them all.” My very first police case there was a reversal that said, ” The bar arm is off the cellar.” And based on this information, the police searched the house and found the weapon in question, in a little alcove off of the cellar.
I really enjoy it when my clients have a breakthrough. The reversals go to the source of the problem and they also tell you how to fix it. It’s a fully built in diagnostic tool. It’s not me diagnosing the problem and it’s not me telling you how to fix it. Once I do the first tape and find out what the problem is, then I go back and ask how do I fix this? And reversals tell me. It is a totally independent, bias-removed, therapeutic process that works dramatically. I spoke to a lady today who asked “Why do I have asthma?” And she played it back and heard a really clear reversal: The message is stress. And that alone taught her that: “I’ve got to calm down.”
Vision:Are there similarities to NLP(Neuro Linguistic Programming)?
DJO: Oh sure. I’m a master practitioner of NLP, so obviously I’ve incorporated a lot of my NLP techniques. John Grinder has come out and publicly endorsed Reverse Speech. It has many similarities. It was Milton Erikson who taught, I believe, that there are lots of hidden messages in language and Reverse Speech is a manifestation of this. Reverse Speech is very much a metaphoric language and much of my work has been documenting the metaphors of the unconscious. I believe that in shifting the metaphors you can shift behavior. And a lot of that is based on some of the simple NLP reframing and reanchoring techniques that I believe are far more effective using Reverse Speech, because we are going straight to the core metaphor which is creating the issue.
Vision: How do you respond to the people who are skeptical of Reverse Speech?
DJO: Look at the basis for Chinese Medicine, the yin and the yang. For every thing there is an opposite and Reverse Speech is from the same theory. It is very logical that it exists. I understand the skepticism, I really do.
Vision: How much intelpretation is there in what the reversals sound like ?
DJO: Obviously imagination comes into it. I’ve developed some very stringent criteria for what is genuine and what is not. My students have to follow this criteria and be sure that the syllable count is there; the vowels and the consonants have to be clear and concise. The real trick is understanding the different tonalities; genuine reversals have this etheric type sing-song quality to it. Yes, imagination and interpretation do come into it, it’s like any new language, it takes you some time to get used to the various sounds. I need to train someone for at least a year so that I’m confident they are hearing accurately and cleanly. Then it takes another year or so before you hear most of them accurately and cleanly. And as they occur every ten seconds they’ re very quick and very fast and you need to listen in a special way to what appears to be gibberish. The skeptics throw that up and I do understand they’re criticism. Yet, I know that every ten seconds or so there is a very genuine phrase.
Vision: When you speak of the unconscious and the subconscious could you define and differentiate the two?
DJO: Ultimately we’ re talking semantics, yet I believe there is a difference. The subconscious mind, the way I understand it, is that it is the area of the mind that is most hidden away from the therapist. This is the part of the mind just below consciousness where most automatic functions are carried,but the unconscious mind I see as being the totality of the mind below consciousness. So you have consciousness, the subconscious and then the unconscious which is the vast realm underneath, that is very alive, very active, very intelligent, very dynamic. A lot of people say that the subconscious mind has no intelligence and no independence which I find very insulting. The unconscious is all the areas below consciousness.
Vision: Where are you developmentally with Reverse Speech, with reference to research or lecturing?
DJO: I’m at the point where I’ve developed the technology so that it can be used practically. I understand the metaphors pretty well and am just about to release a Reverse Speech Dictionary that I’ve spent years compiling, which will come out early next year. The technology is now at the point where it can be utilized by the public. We’ve just been approved by the Department of Labor for the Occupational List of Titles as of last week. Remember it took acupuncture 20 years to be listed and massage is still not listed. We were approved in about a year which is just stunning, mostly because we had compiled so much evidence which supported its veracity. This really legitimizes the whole field tremendously. We’ ve approached three universities to offer Reverse Speech as course material and one has already agreed. It will be a major force of the 21st Century, at least if I have anything to say about it.
Vision: What are its implications for changing the dimensions and structures of our world?
DJO: Radical. I’ ve been called evangelical in my approach on this and I’m not sure if that is a compliment or an insult quite frankly. We need truth and honesty on this planet so badly. We are going downhill so fast. We’ ve got to get back to the truth, we’ve got to get back to personal integrity and honesty and that is the job Reverse Speech forces us to do; I don’t know how long it will take, how many years before it catches on, but as it begins to grow and expand people will have no choice, but to be honest. Jesus said, “Every secret hidden in the hearts of man will be shouted from the highest mountaintops,” and I think this is a fulfilling of that prophecy, which eventually will represent a whole new age. It also tells us how light speed works, it talks about the energy fields around our bodies that create our world out there. It tells how our force creates our own reality; it delves into all the mysteries and secrets we’ve been wanting to find for eons.