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January/February 2012 Alternative Health
Reverse Speech: Voices From the Unconscious

by David J. Oates

Watch Watch a video on what astronaut Neil Armstrong said during his moon walk.

The unconscious mind — it’s that mysterious part of the psyche that lies below the level of consciousness. Even though more than 90 percent of the mind is unconscious, very little is known about its functions or what it actually does.

What we know about the unconscious mind is buried in dreams, heard in whispers using hypnosis, and studied by body language, hand writing analysis and other such disciplines. But what if there was a more reliable way to access the unconscious? What if you could actually hear it speak in an audible voice? Ask questions and get answers? That’s where Reverse Speech comes in.

David J. Oates

Reverse Speech is the name given to an unusual phenomenon of language where hidden backwards messages are buried in the sounds of human speech. If human speech is recorded and played backwards, mixed in among the sounds of gibberish can be heard clear and precise intelligent phrases.

These phrases are the voice of the unconscious mind speaking. According to Reverse Speech theory, the process of spoken communication is two fold, and that embedded into the sounds of speech there exists another form of covert communication.

I first stumbled across this phenomenon in 1984 while I was running a halfway house for street kids in Australia. Some of them had been playing their records backwards and getting quite scared by what they were finding. They asked me for my opinion.

My initial reaction was this is nonsense — the product of some over-active teenagers’ imagination. But being an electronics enthusiast, I rewired a tape player to play backwards and checked out some of their tapes. Much to my surprise, I could hear the phrases they were talking about. A couple of months later I accidentally stumbled across the phenomenon in regular human speech.

The first example I found was astronaut Neil Armstrong’s speech when taking his first steps onto the lunar surface. As Armstrong says forwards, “That’s one small step for man,” in reverse he says quite clearly, “Man will space walk.”

I was stunned. I checked out more recordings of speech and found backwards messages everywhere. These messages were quite clear, could be heard by others and usually related directly to the forwards speech.

Reverse Speech, at one level, will reveal whatever is on the mind of the speaker. If a lie is spoken forwards, the truth may be communicated in reverse. If pertinent facts are left out of the forwards speech, these likewise may be communicated in reverse. These observations alone make Reverse Speech an awesome tool in the field of forensics and investigations. However, its real power and uses, in my mind, lie in the area of therapy and the studies of consciousness.

In the 28 years that I have been doing Reverse Speech, I have discovered that many of our behaviors and actions are formulated in the unconscious mind sometimes long before they become conscious.

One client who was talking to me about her desire to be successful and wealthy, had a speech reversal that said, “I am wanting new grief.” On further questioning, I found out that her life was full of grief and she did not know why. The reverse message gave the clue. At some stage in her life she had learned that grief was something no one could avoid. She believed this so much that she had manufactured her life around it.

In my work with Reverse Speech, I have also uncovered some amazing facts about the unconscious mind. For a start, it is primarily responsible for our creation and manifestation processes. In many cases I have found reversals with a client that talk about future events and these events have subsequently come to pass.

In one married couple that I worked with, I found a reversal with the wife that said, “I will shift the bedroom.” A few weeks later she had rearranged the bedroom of her house and had a new partner. Her future actions were seen in the reversals.

So, are we a slave to the unconscious? Are we doomed to follow its edicts? Sadly, in many cases this is true. If the unconscious patterns are not addressed and dealt with, we are destined to follow these commands.

This is one of the most powerful uses for Reverse Speech. It allows us to see inside the unconscious mind — to make conscious what was once only unconscious, and with this knowledge change can be accomplished.

True manifestation according to our conscious desires can only happen when we embrace the unconscious mind, and become congruent with it, for it is the unconscious that creates our reality.

David J. Oates is the founder and developer of Reverse Speech technologies based in Adelaide, South Australia. He is a certified hypnotherapist and trainer, and currently attends to his therapy and corporate consulting business using reverse speech techniques. Visit www.reversespeech.com.