Autistic Genius Translates Egyptian Hieroglyphics

In this episode, Joe Rogan and Jesse Michaels uncover a bizarre case involving a non-speaking autistic child who reportedly understood ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics without ever learning them.

You know who else is I mean uh the inspiration for Rainman, Kim Peak, similar thing.

You’d be like, “What what was the weather like?”

Uh, you know, November 7th uh 1681 and like Yeah.

It’s [laughter] like insane like that.

And often it occurs after a traumatic brain injury for whatever reason.

That’s weird.

It is weird.

And and it points to maybe the receiver, the transmission theory of consciousness stuff, right?

You know, like it rattled something loose.

Exactly.

Yeah.

There’s a lot of people that develop mathematical abilities after head injuries.

Like people that have never been good at anything and all a sudden they could do physics, right?

Like where does that come from?

What is that?

Or these, you know, nonverbal um often autistic children and the telepathy tapes.

I know you had Kai Dickens on where they’re very kind of disembodied and, you know, it’s it’s kind of sometimes hard for them to navigate the world, but they just they’re ability to glean knowledge.

It’s like they’re shortcircuiting our knowledge pathways.

Like they’ll know like certain Egyptian hieroglyphics without ever having learned about them in school and they can read them.

And they can read them and they meet up on this telepathic hill.

It’s like they have abilities that we don’t and they’re actually in some ways more disembodied.

And so it’s like there’s something about like we’re we’re ported into our bodies but our senses like you when you when you gain a sense you lose your former sense or something.

And so they’re disembodied.

It if you’re in a VR you know system or whatever you’re not going to like understand what’s going on outside of it.

But if you’re this non-verbal autistic child who again other people might call them, you know, not like maladaptive for the world, not, you know, unable to navigate the world, they’re actually geniuses on this whole other level.

Like they can sort of short circuit the way we learn, right?

And they don’t get in their own way the way we do.

They don’t.

And there’s no traditional neuroscientific model that explains that.

You have to go into the sort of Tom Campbell area.

Yeah.

I’ve often wondered if maybe what we’re seeing from non-verbal autistic people and just people on the spectrum in general is instead of it being like instead of it being like the way we look at it is like like you said maladaptive like that these people have an unfortunate situation that’s happened to them but maybe what we’re looking at is an emerging type of consciousness and like if you think about what is wrong with the human race.

Well, you know, a lot of it has to do with ego and what we were talking about earlier, these territorial primate instincts, the the desire to accumulate resources and the desire to, you know, to dominate and to to get status and all all these different things that human beings are in captured by.

Well, these people aren’t captured by those things at all.

And if we want to get past where we are now, well, what better way than you introduce some new whether it’s natural selection or some random mutation or whatever it is or maybe even some sort of environmental adaptation that allows them to become a different kind of person.

Like maybe that is the future.

It totally could be the future.

And and you watch or you know uh listen to the telepathy tapes and you’re like we’re we’re maladaptive like they are so heart centered it’s almost like they’re living in the future.

Yeah.

If you look at you know if if if any of the UFO stuff points to a future modality of like how we learn maybe the this sort of intuition and telepathy sort of gets selected for and our sort of you know prefrontal cortex reasoning actually gets selected against.

I don’t know.

Yeah, I don’t know either.

But it’s odd that it’s emerging as a part of a a you know much more so now because of you know various debatable factors whether it’s vaccines or environmental exposure to co to toxins or whatever you have a a much higher incidence of this taking place now as our society becomes more and more complex and as we move closer and closer to this like balancing act between like nuclear war and utopia like where are we going to land you know like Well, you know, maybe we’re going to have to get past whatever it is that we have clung to about being a person, this this thing that we think is so important.

There’s a great book by the great Arthur C.

Clark called Childhood’s End.

And he talks about um aliens sort of incepting the world through telepathic children.

And it’s so it’s again interesting how fiction sort of can mirror reality maybe where a lot of these kids actually in the telepathy tape see other beings.

They see other worldly beings and it’s sort of casual to them.

They’re like, “Yeah, of course, aliens.”

You know, like it’s it’s not even a thing to them.

And so they might already just be living sort of in the in this future kind of expanded epistemology that we’re we’re sort of limited if if the Campbell thing is right.

Like our consensus collapsing function is just narrower and theirs might be just wider.

While Jesse Michaels explores the possibility that some non-speaking autistic people may have access to abilities we don’t fully understand, one case takes that idea even further.

Filmmaker Kai Dickens says she encountered reports of autistic children knowing languages they had never been taught, including one girl who reportedly understood Portuguese, Spanish, and even ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Here’s how Dickens says they tested her ability.

And and when you see it and when you talk to enough parents who are saying all you need to do is go see it, it’s not like it’s not like does it show up or like will it appear?

It’s like for the parents and teachers to report this as happening.

If you go work with a spell, you just see it.

So that was pretty phenomenal.

And then the first person we saw um being able to to do it was this girl Mia.

And she was still in the early stages of learning to spell to communicate.

So she was being touched.

It often helps like first with the wrist and then here and then here and then on the head and then often then there’s no touch at all.

Right?

It’s just like learning that body and learning those supports to control your motor.

So um so Dr.

Powell was like h no scientist will take this cuz she was being touched.

And I think a lot of us in the room are like wait people think she’s her mom sending Morse code like they’re the plan.

I mean of course that’s ridiculous.

It really is.

But then the next individual could do it across the room and wasn’t being touched.

And you know anyone that we saw thereafter wasn’t being touched.

So that was pretty remarkable and I don’t think touch actually has I think telepathy is still really cool if you’re being touched you know but um so telepathy was the first one and then I think the second one was uh the language stuff and a lot of parents saying you know we have no idea how but she’s speaking Portuguese and no one in a house speaks Portuguese or people talking about you know and this has been documented.

It’s quite common actually.

Um and these are nonverbal kids.

Non-speakers.

Yeah, non-speakers.

So, what is the difference between non-verbal and non-speakers?

Well, I think non-verbal is this idea, right?

Like that you’re um not able to make uh like language, you know, in a way where like speaking is just like they they can be verbal, they can communicate, they just can’t speak it.

Okay.

They just can’t speak it.

Okay.

Without the supports of a communication partner like, you know, that is um uh they the goal is to type independently.

Do they make noises?

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean I think especially with Araxia, there’s often a lack of body control, um voice control.

So, so there is like a a beautiful soundtrack that I’ve come to love of non-speakers that will often be like um some grunting or or just lack of body control.

And actually, I think if someone sees a non-speaker out in in public, one of the most loving things you can say is like, I know you can’t control your body.

I know that I know that’s not you.

You know what I because the person in there might want to be doing XYZ but just cannot control their body and imagine how frustrating that would be.

Yeah.

Um so these people they’re they’re nonverbal and when you say that they can speak Portuguese, they they understand Portuguese.

They do they write it?

Like how how does this manifest itself?

Yeah.

So, I mean, there’s one young girl I’m thinking of in particular, but there’s this again, this has come up now with I don’t know 15 non-speakers that I’ve met.

Um, but the girl I’m thinking of, uh, her, you know, she will work during the day with a paraprofessional and a, um, spelling coach.

You know, there’s a, you know, the education system, there might be two or three people in the room and three people were in the room this day.

And she started spelling in a language and they didn’t know what it is.

So, they looked it up and it was Portuguese.

And then she started spelling in Spanish and they were like, “This is wild.”

And she also said she knew hieroglyphics and what?

Yeah.

[laughter] And then they were like, “How do we test this?”

Because if we know the answer, she’ll read our mind and know.

So they had to just which is wild already.

Like you have to worry about this kid reading your mind.

It might be So they had to like [laughter] look up pictures of hieroglyphics and not know what the pictures were representing to be like, “Okay, here’s the feather.”

I mean, I don’t know what whatever a feather on top of a stone or whatever the picture was of and here’s this picture and this picture and then she identified them and then they looked them up and they were right.

Wow.

All of them 100% accurate.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

So, and I’m not saying of course what the hell is going on there?

Not every um what is that?

Well, I mean like that is that’s beyond bizarre.

Did you give her cuniform?

I mean I wasn’t there for this.

I I you know her mom reported it to me and it has the email that she received from the staff and so you know the staff is just like this is what happened today.

According to Dickens the girl identified the hieroglyphic symbol and the answers were checked afterward.

It is an extraordinary anecdotal claim not a controlled scientific demonstration but it raises the central question behind this story.

Where could that knowledge have come from?

Joe’s conversation with cognitive neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge pushes that mystery further.

Mossbridge describes non-speaking individuals who reportedly produced highly specific information that surprised the people around them, including references to private thoughts and unfamiliar concepts.

One classroom story is especially striking.

During a discussion about Gothic art, a student used a word his teacher did not recognize.

She assumed it was a mistake until she looked it up and discovered that the word was real and had been used centuries earlier.

Here’s what happened.

I mean, at this point, right?

Well, there’s that thing that they kept talking about in the telepathy tapes where they all meet on the hill psychically on the hill.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, I had and they [clears throat] all talk about it independently like it’s not something that has been taught to them like, “Do you meet on the hill?”

“Oh, yeah, I do.”

No, they they’ve talked about it independently, which is very weird, right?

And one way so odd concept well I I turn on my scientist hat when I think about that and I think okay well they could have heard it on the telepathy tapes and then they started talking about it but that’s not how it seemed to have worked but I I have my own experience of that particular student I forget whether I called him participant four or participant five at the end he and I became um I had a good understanding of his mind and we had some good conversations and I had a dream one night where Um he came to me and all he did was show me this like it was like a it was like a sun where you could see the sunspots and it was just slowly turning and it was beautiful and he just gave it to me and then the next day I was working with him over Zoom and so I asked Maria I said can I ask him a question you know and she said sure and I said you know last night you gave me something you gave me a shape what was the shape because I didn’t I hadn’t told Maria about the dream or anyone else.

It was just my dream that I wrote in my journal.

Um, and I was thinking he would say ball or sphere, and that would either be a good guess or it would be telepathy, but he goes, [laughter] I can’t I still can’t get over this.

I sent you a a pre-revolutionary orb with four stars on it, slowly rotating.

What is a pre-revolution?

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

[laughter] I don’t know.

I mean, with four stars on it with four star stars on it slowly rotating, but that’s not exactly what you saw in the dream.

Well, there were these sunspots.

So, see, he’s see there’s a poetic license that they have.

I I would say that’s 80% correct.

So, it was slowly rotating and there were these sunspots that I were calling I was calling sunspots.

He was calling stars.

And it was definitely an orb.

What does pre-revolutionary mean?

I don’t know.

They talk about, and I talk about in my book, The Love Revolution, this idea that we’re moving towards a time when we can actually use love in our lives to communicate and to connect people, but maybe that’s what he means.

Um, and then, so that’s one instance.

So, I sort of go, okay, that was interesting.

And it kind of blew my mind that he used that language.

He’s very, he’s just gifted at interesting language.

And then this other non-speaker who worked with Natalia who is the young woman you saw on the left who also works with a lot of spellers um just decided to start reading my mind like we did he started I asked Natalyia I said can we just do an experiment where I’ll be doing something and I’ll know what I’m doing at that time and you just ask one of your students to to read my mind and then no one else will know what I’m doing and she won’t know what I’m doing.

And so what I was doing was doing this remote viewing uh for a friend.

And so I knew exactly what I was doing during that time and what I was thinking.

But what I was thinking about was remember that comet Threeey Atlas.

Mhm.

So I was thinking I was kind of obsessively thinking about Three Atlas like what is it?

What’s the deal?

You know, it was during that exact time in December last year.

And he comes back with some stuff I don’t understand like poetic license.

I call it poetic license or just it’s wrong that I don’t understand where it came from.

And then he says, um, oh, and three eye atlas and he talks about this owl that I saw in a video when I was doing the remote viewing.

Um, and I was like, so Natalyia didn’t even know what threei Atlas was.

She had to look it up.

And the parent didn’t know what threei Atlas was.

And he spelled it three ey atlas.

Right.

Wow.

So it was phonetic.

Yeah.

And then later, a couple weeks ago, I get a text from Natalia that the same student, who apparently has now felt perfectly fine reading my mind, tapped into my mind when I was thinking about a medication that my stepmom was taking.

And he used her name, which Natalyia didn’t know, and told me that she would be okay on the medication, that it would help her.

And then told Natalia to text me, and so she did.

The three eye atlas in writing it as eie is very strange.

Well, that’s hard.

That’s because that’s not how it’s written anywhere.

Yeah.

Right.

So, the fact that he wrote it i e means he was hearing you.

It’s how it’s how you would hear it.

What the hell?

Yeah.

How weird.

So, there’s no way I can explain.

Oh, also he came up with my son’s name, which Natalyia didn’t know.

So, that could have been from her, but still he read her mind.

Did you ask him more about this pre-revolutionary orb with four star?

Do you like why did you give me that?

What does that mean?

I wish I I did.

One thing I know with this particular participant is that he’s so gifted and his family asks him a lot like about um to do mediumship stuff like what does grandpa think about this or whatever.

And in fact, grandpa’s dad.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And to him there’s not a lot of difference.

And so and so Yeah.

And and they also like the the grandmother um had a had a lung transplant and they asked who the donor was and he identified a probable donor who lived in the area who had died that day and they they won’t know for a year if it was the actual donor because it takes time to learn who the donor is, but they’re pretty sure that it probably is.

But so boy, if they if it turns out that he’s right and you can’t find out for another year Yeah.

Or they won’t release the information, you know.

Yeah, my husband had a double link translate.

It just takes a while.

Everyone has to agree that they want to release the information.

But um in any case, he’s just really good at this.

Like he’s very skilled and I didn’t want him to feel like he was a show pony and I wanted to get on with his lesson and so I didn’t want to ask other questions.

I feel like, you know, he’ll probably just show up in my dream and tell me at some point.

Yeah.

But do you think that he even would think of himself as a show pony?

Like wouldn’t it just be communication?

He doesn’t.

But I didn’t also I wanted like I feel like I would want to know.

Why’d you give me a call?

Of course I wanted to know.

But also I was pre-revolutionary.

What do you mean?

I agree.

I mean he he’s the kid who I mean there there there are some we worked with six kids.

They are all gifted and amazing.

But he’s one that um showed up in telepathy tapes as do you I don’t know if you remember this story.

It’s so wonderful.

Um his teacher so Maria what she does is like they’ll read a paragraph about a topic and then he’ll ask you know the students like okay let’s you know talk about the topic just like in school but he has to spell out his answers and so I think the topic was um like Gothic art and so um excuse [clears throat] me I’m going to have a drink of water so the topic of the paragraph was gothic art and she says so you know what was the purpose of gothic art and he said, “Oh, it it apherizes the masses.”

And she says, “Uh, I don’t think that’s a word.”

And then she thinks, “Well, I better look it up because he says it’s a word.”

And so she looked it up and it was only a word that was used in the 1600s.

[laughter] Oh my god.

And and so and it means like it appeases them.

So that’s he wrote out it means it calmed them down.

And and she said, “Well, how do you know about the word?

It’s it was only used in the 1600s.”

He said, “Or the 1400s or something.”

And he writes out, “Oh, I was talking with a a magistrate from that time period.”

From a girl reportedly identifying Egyptian hieroglyphics to a non-speaking student using forgotten historical language, these stories all point toward the same mystery.

People who were once assumed to have limited understanding may actually possess incredibly complex inner worlds and in some cases knowledge that surprises even the people teaching them.

Whether these abilities ultimately come from extraordinary memory, unusual learning, or something science has yet to explain, the cases discussed by Joe Rogan raise a fascinating question about how much we may still misunderstand about the autistic Mind.