What is Reverse Speech?
Verbal communication happens on two levels simultaneously. There is ‘normal’ speech, which happens overtly – we are all familiar with it – and there is ‘covert speech’, which happens outside of our control, on an unconscious level, which only few are familiar with. When we talk, the unconscious mind complements the conscious mind with statements embedded in reverse in the forward speech. These statements can be made audible by recording the forward speech and then playing it backwards.
The reverse statement mostly relates to the forward statement, either confirming and reinforcing it, or negating it. Given the fact that the unconscious mind is not capable of deviation, or ‘lying’, we can expect reverse statements to give clues to what is really going on inside a person’s mind. [1][2]
The reverse statements or ‘messages’ are largely metaphoric in character, depending on the level of the unconscious mind where the statement originates. [3]
Reverse statements occur mostly in ‘uncontrolled’ speech, i.e. casual conversation or emotional speech. Every ten to fifteen seconds one or more reversals occur. In public speeches or song texts, where speech is less spontaneous and more controlled, reversals occur less. This seems to indicate that the right brain hemisphere is responsible here. [4] This has been confirmed by EEC investigation.
BUT WHY REVERSED?
At first it does not seem to make sense. Think about it. Imagine your unconscious mind involuntarily talking forwards, while you are voluntarily trying to make a statement. Great confusion, conflict, and eventual insanity would be the result. No intelligent organism would do that to itself. It seems logical that when the unconscious mind chooses to communicate verbally [5] simultaneously with the conscious mind, it has no other option but to do it backwards. In that way it does not interfere with the communication of the conscious mind.
Reverse communication is understood by the unconscious mind, on a level that we call ‘intuitive’. Whenever we ‘instinctively’ or ‘intuitively’ understand what another person really means, the understanding may have transpired through reversed speech.
Reversed speech complements forward speech and thus makes verbal communication complete. ‘The whole of the psyche is communicated effectively’. In the growing phase of the human being, reverse speech develops before forward speech. Children already talk backwards at the age of 3-4 months!
Thanks to the (German) invention of the tape recorder, we are now able to let our conscious mind eavesdrop the unconscious mind and hear that which was actually not supposed to be heard. The conscious mind is not always going to like this, and may react in certain ways. [6]
The History of Reverse Speech(TM)
Reverse speech must have existed as long as there has been verbal communication between people.
The first time backward recording was used commercially was in the song ‘They Are Coming To Take Me Away Ha Ha’ by an artist called ‘Napoleon XIV’ in 1961. Side A of the single consists of the song played forward, and side B consists of the song played in reverse.
John Lennon was the first to experiment with mixing forward and backwards recordings. ‘Rain’, an early sixties Beatles song, at the end contains a short bit of John singing backwards. The technique of mixing backward recordings in music became known as ‘back masking’. It has been used to some extent by rock celebrities such as the Beatles (‘Rain’ ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’), Soft Machine (‘Third’; ‘Spaced’), Robert Wyatt (‘Matching Mole’), Spirit (‘The Twelve Dreams of Dr Sardonicus’), Pink Floyd (‘The Wall’), Frank Zappa (‘Them or Us’ [7] ), a.o.
Back masking in the sixties led to a whole craze of playing rock music backwards and listening for ‘secret messages’. Many people will remember the secret hints about Paul McCartney’s alleged funeral. But there were not only backmasked messages. There were ‘real’ ones, too; messages that were not engineered in the studio! [8] Fundamentalist Christians were quick to denounce these as the Work of the Horned One. [9] In spite of Satan’s involvement here, there was one man who started to seriously research the phenomenon. This was David John Oates; it was in Australia, and it was as late as 1983. He found that reversed messages were to be found not only in rock records, but in all forms of human speech!
In 1987 Oates was joined by an old friend, Greg Albrecht, and they started to correlate their findings so far, and wrote a book ‘Beyond Backward Masking: Reverse Speech and The Voice of the Inner Mind’. It was not before Oates moved to The United States in 1989, that Reverse Speech gained some public interest. When he discovered the secret code word for Operation Desert Storm in reversing one of George Bush’s speeches, he was asked to keep a low profile and stay out of the public eye for a while.
He went on training students and developing therapeutic applications of Reverse Speech. In 1995 he returned to the public eye with a new book: ‘Reverse Speech: Voices from The Unsconscious’. He got quite some attention through American radio and TV, until the reactions started to become worrysome. Oates returned to Australia in 1999 and settled in Adelaide, where he lives today, training students and maintaining an active therapeutic practise.
Reverse Speech is continued in the US by Jack Johnston (Ashland Orgegon) and Terese Johnson (San Diego). Reverse Speech is now accepted as a course by a major Oregon University [10] and this course is accepted by the Oregon State Police as credits towards their training.
More information:
Footnotes
1 Therapeutic benefits immediately become apparent here.
2 I am careful in using the term ‘truth’ here; truth is a relative concept that mainly depends on the viewpoint of the person claiming the truth.
3 The mind can be divided into the conscious, the subconscious, the unconscious, the collective unconscious and at the deepest core, the spirit, soul, or divine mind.
4 The left hemisphere of the brain, corresponding with the right side of the body is thought to be the seat of logic, while the left hemisphere, which corresponds to the left side of the body, is thought to be the seat of imagination and intuition.
5 Ands this is actually no surprise, given the ‘babbly’ or ‘chattery’ nature of the mind…
6 Reversal reactions, such as anger, denial and transference have been described in detail by the founder of Reverse Speech TM , David John Oates,
7 The vocals on the song ‘Ya Hozna’ consist of the entire German version of the classical Mothers of Invention song ‘Sofa’ played backwards!
8 Examples of genuine speech reversals: ‘Now he uses marijuana’ (The Beatles, Help); ‘I believe in my cool woman’ (Creedence Clearwater Revival); ‘Plaaaaay backwards, hear words sung…’ (Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven)
9 It was already known for a long time that ‘jazz’ music comes from the Devil. Interesting to note here is that the enlightened Master Osho denounced jazz and rock music as well. He maintained that this kind of music is coming from the ‘lower chakras’. Hmmm, Devil or Lower Chakras – is there a difference?
10 Unfortunately I don’t know which university that is….