Reverse Speech Analysis: Interview with David John Oates

Imagine being able to hear a person's real unconscious thoughts as they speak. What are the possible implications of an analytical technique that  can literally break through to the deepest levels of the human mind, revealing its unspoken secrets?

David John Oates is the Australian-born founder and developer of Reverse Speech Analysis. In 1983, Oates first discovered Reverse Speech when he heard religious fundamentalists preaching that rock and roll music played backwards produced subliminal messages, often called backward masking. This inspired him to rewire his tape recorder so he could begin hearing backward messages, which he now refers to as "reversals". What he discovered is that there is a whole unconscious communication that is simultaneously taking place as we consciously speak, revealed in the backward sounds of our speech. These speech "reversals" always relate to the words which are being spoken forwards at that time. Oates believes that language and communication is bi-level, operating both backwards and forwards synchronously.

The potential of such a therapeutic tool is endless, as it holds the possibility for unveiling a much deeper understanding of so many mysteries, including extraterrestrial abduction, paranormal experiences, human communication and assisting in holistic healing.

The following conversation took place October 26, 1998.

Deborah Lindemann (DL): I'd like to start out by focusing a bit on how Reverse Speech Analysis might be used to help reveal a deeper understanding of abduction and the UFO subject. I realize that you are not a UFO researcher and this is an area of Reverse Speech Analysis that you haven't spent a lot of time studying. But the implications of this new tool are far reaching, not only for discovering what a politician might "really" be thinking, but also for counselling and therapeutic uses, right?

David Oates (DO): Right, absolutely.

DL: Potentially, Reverse Speech could be a big threat to anyone who has anything to hide. I understand that in the past you had your life threatened over the exposure of this? You don't have to talk about it unless you want to. And your old house in the San Diego area was burned down?

DO: Yes. Well, I've had numerous problems. I had a contract on my life in Dallas, and my whole family was living in terror for two months before it played itself out. My San Diego home and offices were burned to the ground on April 3rd of 1997. We got a phone call the day before hand, advising me to basically stop my work, and to make sure I got it there would be a message delivered to me the next day. Well, there was, my home was torched. It's been rather a shock to me to say the least. I'm just a normal regular Aussie, and I came to America with an amazing technology that I felt everyone would be very excited about, and it's been nothing but an uphill battle ever since.

DL: Do you have any idea at all of who was behind the burning of your home?

DO: I have no idea. No.

DL: To the best of your knowledge are there any government agencies or groups that are actually already using Reverse Speech?

DO: There is no confirmation about that. There is all sorts of rumours floating around. The only thing that I know is that in 1991 I taught a five day workshop in Washington D.C. to mid-level representatives to the F.B.I. and other agencies. They expressed interest in the field. They were going to contact me soon to head up a research project, and I never heard from them again. And that's the only thing I know. I've heard all sorts of rumours. But I have no confirmation on that at all.

DL: Would you say that Reverse Speech is literally a tool for indicating whether someone is telling the truth, or would you be more inclined to say that it tells what someone really thinks about a particular subject?

DO: Well, it's even deeper than that. In order to answer the question a person needs to understand what Reverse Speech is, and what is speaking. It is coming from many different levels in consciousness. It is coming from the unconscious as well as the soul level. On the surface level, yes, if someone has lied forward, you'll get the truth in reverse. But in order to really understand Reverse Speech, you need to understand that what is speaking is what Reverse Speech itself calls the heart or the spirit of man. It is constantly speaking "Truth" with a capital "T". It is comparing its conscious self and its conscious perceptions with the actual truth or the actual perceptions. So, if our conscious mind is out of alignment with what is true, then it will correct that. If our conscious mind is in alignment with what is true, it will confirm that. If the conscious mind is believing a lie that it is saying, it will both confirm the conscious mind belief in the lie, as well as correct it. In other words, if someone is a pathological liar, and they believe their lie, the Reverse Speech will validate and confirm the fact that this person does not think they are lying, but will nonetheless communicate the truth anyway.

DL: How fascinating.

DO: And that's a big misconception out there about Reverse Speech. The conception is that it is what we are consciously thinking, so that if we believe our lie, it will conceal our belief. That is not the case. What is speaking in Reverse Speech, is the deepest self, the spirit that knows all, and understands all, from all perspectives. Beyond that conscious understanding. It is almost correcting us. It is like the voice or conscience within us that is constantly calling us, as a moral guide or truth. It is not subject to our beliefs or perceptions which may or may not be correct. Does that make sense?

DL: Yes, it does. And I think you've just help answer a couple of other questions I was going to ask you. But I'm going to ask them anyway to get your slant on this. At this point in your research, how do we know that the unconscious mind is always telling the truth? How do we know that the unconscious mind cannot be reflecting it's own misinformation or belief systems?

DO: All right, in order to answer that question, I need to clarify something here. My general statement publicly is that it is the unconscious mind that is speaking in reverse. That has probably left a misconception in people's mind. I've used the term "unconscious mind" primarily because I have not wanted to link Reverse Speech as a spiritual type phenomenon, because of the publicity of the old "backward masking" satanic, cultic messages in rock and roll. What ever the unconscious mind is, it's a vast unexplored region. But Reverse Speech is coming from an area deeper than the unconscious. And I only started stressing this publicly in the last two or three months. I've been very reluctant to state this up front. But what is speaking backwards is the spirit or the heart, which is beyond the unconscious. It is the raw essence of who we are, that spark of us that exists outside of time and space. It is constantly always there. And religious writings talk about this all the time, "...the voice of the spirit" and "...out of the abundance of the heart, so does the mouth speak". And that is what is speaking. So it is not subject to the false perceptions of consciousness or even unconscious repression.

DL: At least that is what your grasp is on it currently?

DO: That is the understanding I'm moving into more and more with fifteen years of work. I'm a researcher and I'm looking for the truth and for answers. I'm looking to understand what Reverse Speech is. The more I explore, the more I do it, the more I understand itself more. And Reverse Speech itself, describes itself as the voice of the soul. It describes itself as being influenced by the living force of God, to use it's own words. Reverse Speech describes itself as the verse of the living God. That's the terminology it uses. And when you ask Reverse Speech, "Who are you and what is speaking?", it always comes back to that deep knowing wisdom that exists timelessly. And it's discovery now, right at the brink of the millennium is extremely significant, given to humanity I think for the first time.

DL: It's very exciting what you are talking about, and sometimes it's very difficult to put that type of thought into words.

DO: It's very hard to put into words, which is why I've used the term "unconscious mind". It's been my cop-out, and you can quote me on that if you want. It's been my cop-out explanation for want of a better understanding.

DL: Well it's a term that is more scientifically acceptable or understandable.

DO: That's true. And when I first went public with this I was fighting against a major prejudice against all backward messages, which all came from the fundamentalist Christians in the late 70's, calling this a satanic or cultic phenomenon. So I deliberately tried to avoid all references to "spirituality".

DL: I remember all the talk about backward masking on rock music. How would you say it differs, if at all? It would seem we're talking about the same thing here.

DO: Yes, we are talking about the same phenomenon. What they heard in rock and roll was the very first rumbling of the overall dual communication process. [But] the fundamentalist Christians' whole research approach was: Rock and roll is satanic, so let's look at all the occult bands and run their music backwards and prove it. Back in 1984, when I first began listening to the reverse messages in this music, it was obvious to me even in the first week that these were not satanic messages. When you look at gospel songs you'll get gospel messages. If you look at love songs, you'll get messages about love. Reverse Speech is across the board. It's reverse message is [always] complimentary to the forward message. So if you look at a band that says their Satan worshipers you'll get back a reverse message that confirms it.

DL: I first heard you speak about this back in 1991 in San Diego and it impressed me greatly then. Building on some of your earlier statements, if a person is convinced that a particular event is real and happened and it did not, or if they have a false belief about something, you are saying that Reverse Speech goes even beyond that?

DO: Yes it does. I think reversals can be used to recall past events, I have done some work with that, but I tend to use it more to validate the validity of someone's present tense belief of a past event, then to explore a past event. Does that make sense?

DL: Yes. And because you cannot control what the unconscious mind thinks, or as you say "what the soul thinks", this could be a very important tool to use in Ufology and for those working with abductees or "experiencers".

DO: Absolutely. I am amazed that the UFO community hasn't jumped on to this, far bigger than what they already have.

DL: I am particularly interested in using the potential of Reverse Speech in my hypnotherapy practice, working with people who have had unusual encounters. This could be a very important tool to use in Ufology and for working with abductees

DO: Yes. Reverse Speech is far more complex than anyone realizes. Maybe part of that is my fault. Perhaps I have put out that it's as simple as playing a tape backwards and hearing them. It's not that easy. You've got reversals coming at different tonalities and different levels and it takes great training and understanding to be able to hear them. And then you get into different metaphors and archetypes, and what they mean. So the experienced analyst can determine whether someone's experience (say a UFO abduction experience) was real or a hallucination, or whether [what] they think happened was really some [other] issue they need to work through. You can tell by the type of language and terminology which events were real, or imagined, or a blatant lie.

DL: So this could be extremely useful in weeding out what has actually happened. Plus help determine what the person was really feeling about the experience.

DO: Right, exactly...correct.

DL: I understand that you had a sighting yourself back in San Diego, your first and only sighting.

DO: Yes, and what a sighting it was. It was an orange golden shaped object on the horizon. My children and I watched it for a good half an hour, slowly moving across the mountain tops. It was huge, and when I say huge, I mean huge. We were watching the planes at San Diego's airport take off and land; we could see the runways from our house. The planes were just like pin pricks of light against the size of this massive big object. I got out my telescope. It was two saucer shapes on top of each other, with like a connecting corridor in between, sort of like a yo-yo. It was going very slowly; it was in no hurry. It was glowing a brilliant golden colour, [but] the edges were very defined. It wasn't hazy around the edges. It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life. My kids were in awe.

DL: Did you do speech reversals on your own descriptions of the event?

DO: I did, and it did validate that we did see it and it did happen. And there was this tremendous spiritual thing to the whole experience. It was talking about the arrival of the Eve, and the healing of the soul. Out of all the UFO experiences I've looked at -- and there's not many yet, because I'm not a UFO researcher -- the underlying theme in every case is about the spiritual state of our planet, how our soul is extremely sick and diseased. And somehow these UFO experiences are connected with all of that, as well as the redemption of mankind.

DL: As people describe their experiences or encounters to you, is this the bottom line theme or message in all of them?

DO: Yes, and the word "bridegroom" has come up at least half a dozen times in UFO experiences. The arrival of the bridegroom.

DL: That's interesting because just recently an abductee shared that through all her experiences, she felt there was sort of a culmination about to take place, that there was sort of a speeding up of things and she stated she felt as though "It was time for the wedding to take place".

DO: Well, the word "bridegroom" has come up several times, along with "the soul is sick", and "time to heal the soul". And getting off of the UFO subject for a moment, but pursuing that spiritual side... my whole intent when I went public with Reverse Speech has been solely to get the technology out there. To say, "This is my research I've compiled. This is the evidence I believe validates the reality of this. And my entire intention has been more to present the technology, rather than to talk about its message. But the last two or three months, my lectures are changing. I don't know why, it's just happening. I'm starting to talk about the overall message of Reverse Speech.

DL: Well, I would think it would be difficult not to talk about the content of these reversals, which up until now has remained hidden, it's pretty amazing material.

DO: Well, now I'm getting there. And if there's one over all theme in Reverse Speech, it's that the human race is in a sick and sorry state spiritually. We are spiritually corrupt. And that as a race we are so far off track from where we should be on a spiritual path. And it is time for change. It is time for us to look at our soul, to look at our heart, to look at the lies and incongruities that we all have, to accept responsibility that it is our own internal spiritual state of you, me and everyone else that is causing our planet to be sick. It is time to take the next evolutionary leap in order for us to move to the next stage of human history. We've got to realize that where we are now is bankrupt and change. And that is the over all message in Reverse Speech, and that is the over all message I'm getting in the whole UFO field as well.

DL: That was very well stated. What would you say to a sceptic, or someone who asks, "What can you say that proves to me that this is an accurate science and that it works?"

DO: Well, there's several things. For a start, reversals are occurring at least once every five to ten seconds of speech. They occur in grammatically correct sentences that relate directly to what is spoken forwards. And so, I think just the mathematical odds alone of such coherent, constant thoughts occurring in such regularity in direct context with forward dialogue -- I mean, the odds of that occurring by pure chance is... over the top. Secondly, reversals have a very unique wave-form frequency signature that can be recognized and traced by computer software. We're doing beta testing now on a software package that will locate reversals. So I'm saying that we can prove electronically that these phrases do exist. Thirdly, we've done electroencephalograph (EEG) testing back in Australia where we can actually see the brain receiving and responding to reverse phrases.

DL: What has been done to document, for example, that someone's reversals did "pan out" at some point in the future, or did reveal its accuracy?

DO: Interestingly enough, we just began compiling my track record since I went public two years ago with this. In regards to my own personal track record, I work with this in therapy all the time and there's not a week that goes by where I don't find in reverse the name of someone's friend or lover, what they did last week or the week before last. All of which is information that is verifiable. But just look at some of my own track record since I've gone public with this.

I've talked about the Clinton sex scandals back in January/February of this year (1998). And I said, "Yes, he is involved in this, and it is far worse than we realized. We have a sick man here who is involved in sick sex acts." I was torn to pieces about that back then, but since then it has all come out. There's been a reversal posted at my website now for two years from Bill Clinton, talking about severe trouble in his presidency coming up in this term. The reversal said, "The world will come and damn you", which I interpreted as meaning he would come under major pressure and his presidency itself would be threatened. On the Art Bell show, we exposed a fraud that was perpetrated by a man who supposedly saw colour photos of the face on Mars, you may remember that. I did reversals, we played it on the air and this guy rang into the Art Bell program an hour later, live on the air and said, "Yes, that is all true, I'm a bastard. This is accurate".

DL: He called in and said that on air?

DO: Yes absolutely. He rang into the Art Bell program an hour after I played the reversals, and quite chilled and said that he was stunned at the accuracy of the speech reversals.

DL: I'm surprised he admitted it.

DO: He did! He said he wanted to come clean. And I can cite case history after case history. Based on Mike Malin's reversals prior to imaging the face on Mars, I stated on Jeff Rense's program that these Mars photos of the face are going to come down as obscured by cloud cover, which they indeed were. [Michael Malin is a private contractor who built and operates the main camera on Mars Global Surveyor.] And [I stated] the photos will be significantly degraded in quality, which they indeed were. And that was all said on the Jeff Rense show several weeks before the actual pictures came down, based on Mike Malin's reversals. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I've got a two year track history of radio broadcasts where I have quoted reversals, and the only two which haven't been validated so far have been the Ramsey [murder] case and the TWA 800 story, but these stories haven't been verified either way yet.

DL: That is impressive. You have talked about how you also use this in your hypnotherapy practice. I'm wondering if you have ever done reversals on information that comes out in hypnosis. And I'm curious about how the reversal information might be affected from within hypnosis, if at all. Based on what you're saying about Reverse Speech, the reversals shouldn't be affected.

DO: No, a hypnotic state does not affect the reversals in either way. They are coming in at a level that is even deeper than the hypnotic state. But I have a different form of hypnosis altogether, a technique which I have developed solely by myself. It is not traditional hypnosis. The vast majority, or about eighty percent, of all the language in Reverse Speech is metaphorical or archetypal in nature. As a result of my work with Reverse Speech, I am proposing the theory that at the base level of consciousness, the human mind thinks in pictures and images or metaphors and archetypes. All of those mental, psychological [or] physical functions are formed or reflected from the base metaphorical structure. So my therapeutic approach is that if someone has a problem, let's find out the metaphorical structure that is creating their problem, and let's go in and change that metaphorical structure to change the outcome. Does this make sense?

DL: It does to me.

DO: My techniques are designed to rewrite the unconscious mind. Through want of a better description, I do this by way of a shamanic journey through the metaphorical structure. They might take a journey through a desert and they might fight dragons and go to Camelot and take the Holy Grail. And through these metaphoric journeys I am shifting and altering their metaphoric structures by the pictures and the images I use. So I don't do the type of hypnosis that you're asking me about.

DL: On the subject of abduction, "experiencers" often talk about "screen-memories"...

DO: Oh, I've heard the term.

DL: In theory, experiencers are somehow given or implanted with "screen-memories" by the abductors, to mask what really happened during an abduction encounter. So, if we were to use Reverse Speech while an experiencer talked about what they remembered, consciously or even unconsciously from within hypnosis, are you saying it should by-pass those screen memories?

DO: Let me say, for starts, that I have not worked with any specific case on that, so I'm speaking here only on theory. Yes, my whole understanding is that with Reverse Speech, people by-pass those screen memories and go right down to the actual memory. I would have to work with several of these cases, but I would be very surprised if you could actually alter the deep structures of the mind. I'm sure you could alter the conscious and maybe the unconscious structures, but not down to the metaphorical levels.

DL: And that's one area that Reverse Speech Analysis really needs to do some research with, because if we can truly by-pass these screen memories and get to the actual memory, it will be extremely beneficial in this field. I've heard you mention, in past interviews, that during our normal forward conscious communication, others can unconsciously hear the backward reversals in our voice. That apparently may account for at least one way we get those "gut-level" or intuitive feelings about someone, despite what they are consciously saying.

DO: Right, yes. Reverse Speech is a communication process. We all hear reversals in each other's talk all the time. That is evidenced by instances of entire conversations in reverse, where questions are asked and subsequently answered. Electroencephalograph testing, as I've mentioned earlier, shows the brain responding to reversals. I believe that many of our human intuition experiences, at least the one-on-one type that we have with people, is a direct result of hearing their speech reversals on an unconscious level. We feel the feelings and emotions and call that intuition, but actually we are unconsciously processing the speech reversals.

DL: That brings up something else which is quite important. If we are unconsciously hearing these speech reversals, the question is, what kind of influence does a therapist have on their client or patient? How does this affect the type of information that is coming out in hypnosis, or in any other type of therapy when the therapist's belief systems or expectations may be unconsciously picked up by the client?

DO: Absolutely correct. I've documented cases like that where the therapist's unconscious belief systems, even though they consciously say they're not influencing their client and not feeding information to them, are feeding information to them through reversals. Particularly in a hypnotic state, where the person can be susceptible. Yes, the therapist's belief systems will be transferred to the person by reversals, and it will influence that person's conscious recall or approach to the situation.

DL: This may partially explain how it is that certain therapists or researchers, with a particular mind-set or belief system about the abduction phenomenon, may attract or have clients whose experiences mirror the same mind-set. Many have mentioned that connection as they have observed the varying views of researchers and therapists such as Dr. John Mack, Budd Hopkins, or Prof. David Jacobs.

DO: We gain unconscious rapport; we are attracted to those who run similar metaphorical structures. That is why one group of people will attract a certain type, and another group of people will attract another type. And we discount the unconscious interplays that take place in this attraction process.

DL: It would be next to impossible, then, to operate as a therapist with absolute clarity, with no reversals present in our communication.

DO: It's tough! One of the things I [do] in my program is [have] my analysts look at or analyze their own reversals, or get another analyst to analyze their reversals too. A lot of my trainings are spent teaching the therapists themselves to become very much aware of their beliefs and their biases that would be transferred by speech reversals to their client.

DL: What type of acceptance are you gaining from the field of science and psychology?

DO: Well, more and more, particularly in the therapeutic community. The psychiatric head of Mercy Hospital here in San Diego, California, has been using Reverse Speech now for two years. He has submitted my name to the Nobel Committee for consideration for nomination. It's still in the consideration phase. I have a large proportion of therapists and psychiatrists, I mean qualified people, who have taken my training course. That's in the therapeutic field. In the main stream scientific community, either they're not interested or if they are, they're scrambling for cover, trying to explain it.

When I first went public with this, one of the criticisms thrown at me was this was only imagination or projection. That criticism has faded now. People are admitting that these phrases are there. And now they're trying to work out what they are. Is it just major coincidence coming together or what? So the scientific community is either not interested or they're puzzled and don't know what to do.

Monash University, a major university in Melbourne, Australia recently replicated a lot of the blind tests that I've done. Amazingly enough, they have come out with even better tests than I have done to validate that this technology actually exists, as opposed to not exists. They have published a report that is circulating on the internet. In this testing I chose three separate groups of people. For all three groups I played ten different reversals. In group one, I told the person what to hear. In group two, I fed them a control phrase. In other words, if the reversal said, "This is an example", I asked them to hear, "The sky is blue" or some other statement. In group three I asked the group to tell me what they heard. The testing that I did showed that nearly eighty percentage of the people in group one could hear the phrase when told what to hear. In group two, there was no one that could hear the control phrase. If it didn't exist they couldn't hear it. In group three, they would pick an isolated word here and there. The purpose of these tests were to show that these phrases actually do exist, as opposed to being auto-suggestive. So Monash University repeated the tests and actually came up with better results than what I did. Under more rigorous conditions they found that yes these phrases actually exist. They can he heard and if you suggest a phrase that doesn't exist, it cannot he heard. Yet despite that, they spent well over half of their report saying that this is against all linguistic theories and David Oates has no academic background, (which I don't), so how can they take this seriously? So they validated the tests, but they balked at the technology because it went against accepted linguistic theories. So that's where we're essentially at and what's happening now. The consensus is "they" [reversals] exist, but heavens, it doesn't fit any of our current understandings so therefore it cannot be real.

DL: That is so typical of the evolution of all new sciences.

DO: Oh, it really is. I don't understand it. If the theories don't fit the facts, than you don't throw out the facts, you modify the theories. That's something the scientific community does not seem to understand.

DL: You would think that in retrospect of how all sciences have evolved, that they might be a bit more open minded.

DO: You would think so.

DL: Have you ever used this in helping people diagnose their own health problems?

DO: Yes, just remarkable. I have some tremendous case studies in this, a very exciting area. You are tapping into the collective unconscious with Reverse Speech, the universal store house of all. The unconscious mind cannot only diagnose physical problems, but also give physical cures for it. I remember a woman we were working with for asthma. We were looking for the source of her asthma. And in the reversals we got a very bizarre reversal that said, "under the floor there is fungus in my head". So what on earth did that mean? The next day we under her house floor boards, and there was a foot of mold growing under the entire house. It had been growing there for years.

DL: And this would be something that she wouldn't consciously know.

DO: No. They cleared out the mold from under the house, and within two weeks her asthma improved to the point where now she says she rarely has attacks any more. So here was the unconscious knowing what was causing her asthma and pinpointing the source. I've had reversals that have given herbal remedies, such as "take basil".

DL: I would think it would also be a matter of asking the right questions, to elicit the right answer.

DO: Yes. You're exactly correct. Asking the right questions. And knowing what to listen for. I'm not an herbalist. I'm sure there's reversals that I'm not even recognizing because I don't know the terminology. Yes, I believe that the potential with Reverse Speech for disease diagnosis and cure is very exciting.

DL: On a slightly different topic, but it really goes to the heart of what Reverse Speech is all about, in earlier lectures you've talked about how babies will elicit clear audible words in reversals, before they are even able to speak. And apparently it is always in their native language, so one would hear German words coming out of a German baby and English words coming out of an American or English child?

DO: Correct.

DL: That's quite amazing. What do you think is going on there?

DO: Well, it's quite simple really. The unconscious is learning to speak in reverse before it is speaking forward. It's no surprise to me because the unconscious mind is what develops before the conscious mind. And that's it. It follows the same development as forward speech development. You'll get a word here and there from four months of age on. You'll get words like, mummy, daddy, hungry, health and the words just gradually increase as forward language does.

DL: Also, the child is inside the mother's womb for 9 months and it has been shown that they hear their parents language and words. When regressed back in hypnosis, adults can recall words and feelings that were expressed by their parents while they were still living in their mother's womb. So what we don't know is just how much children are learning even before they are born. Thank you so much for sharing this with our readers.