Magical Meetings with thought leaders advancing humanity’s understanding of consciousness

– Visiting Charlottesville, Virginia, USA in September 2025.

I visited my dear friend Dr. Bernard Beitman, whom I call Bernie. He is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist and specializes in the study of meaningful coincidences and has written three books on the topic:

Bernie had visited me twice in Denmark after he found my thesis on Ayahuasca (Daime), in which I write about synchronicities, and I visited his podcast ‘Connecting with Coincidence’ as a guest several times. Now it was time for me to pay him a visit back.

Bernie and I spend a lot of our time together discussing his newest project. He is writing a book where he is investigating how we can create a psychotherapy modality for the collective human mind. He is such a philosophic and curious thinker always wanting to understand exactly what I mean, when I say things like “I am doing energy work with my colleagues to support the merging of the collective energy fields of the peoples of the planet”. His questions has led to fruitful conversations that I look forward to reading the results of in his coming book.

One very special experience Bernie and I shared was this: One day we decided to take a walk in the forest. Bernie has a couple of places that he often visits. At these locations he has developed a relation to the trees. He likes to talk, dance and sing to them. This september day we went and sang to the trees. He sang two songs and I sang two. Here and there an acorn was dropping while we were walking and singing, and the squirrels were busy collecting a stash for the winter. But right at the exact moment, when Bernie and I had finished singing and we got up and said goodbye to the trees, they immediately started shedding their acorns so much that it felt like it started hailing! I looked up to see if the wind had started to blow, but it was just at quiet in the tree tops as it had been all day. We stood flabbergasted for a few minutes until it the acorn-hailing had stopped, and we realized what had happened: The trees had responded to our gift of songs by giving us their gifts in return. That was at least what it felt like to us. It was surely hard to explain away as a mere coincidence.

Visiting DOPS – a global epicenter of psi-research

Back in the days Bernie moved to Charlottesville, Virginia to work in corporation with the open-minded scientists at DOPS, Division of Perceptual Studies at University of Virginia.

The people of DOPS have been a lighthouse to me, and I have followed their scientific breakthroughs for many years. They are studying topics such as Children who remember past lives, Near-death experiences, Out-of-body experiences, Telepathy, Psychedelics and more. DOPS is one of the few official university departments that does research within the realm of parapsychology.

Writing my thesis, working with SoulKey Therapy (regression to past lives and more) and helping create the TV program ‘Gaias usynlige ven’ I have studied published research of DOPS scientists Ian Stevenson, Jim Tucker and Philip Cozzolino pretty intensely.

Therefore it was a big event for me finally to be visiting DOPS with Bernie. Here I met many of the researchers who work there. I mainly got to spend time with Marina Weiler, Ph.D. She is a wonderful person with a bright mind and an open heart. She is especially focused on Out-of-Body Experiences (OBEs). Currently she is cooperating with Dr. Diane Powell, famous from the Telepathy Tapes podcast, designing research where the statements proposed in the podcast can be scientifically proven. Statements that say that non-speaking severely autistic people can have extraordinary telepathic abilities and other savant skills, that they can convey through the communication technique called ‘spelling’.

This research has in my opinion huge implications. If they can prove that these people with autism have these telepathic abilities – which everything points to that they will – it will further support the transmissive theory of consciousness. This theory says that consciousness is not produced by the brain, but rather the brain works like a radio that receives a signal of consciousness. The brain’s job might even be understood as filtering out information that is not currently relevant but is always transcendentally accessible. The people featured in the telepathy tapes are not only able to communicate telepathically with precision, but some access the akashic records, some write music and others convey messages from spirits. I imagine that we will get to see scientists corporate with these young savants in developing new inventions that might help us solve some of humanity’s major problems. But the first step is to have their abilities proved, which Weiler and Powell are working on now.

I think, that if the world knew and really understood and took seriously the results that are coming out of DOPS, we would be setting a whole new direction as a society. The implications are huge: The soul reincarnates, consciouness exists before and after death, telepathy is possible and so much more. It should be enough to finally shift the concensus towards a post-materialistic worldview, which again should urge us to make wiser and more sustainable choices. We are going to come back and deal with the consequences of our actions in our next life time, so why not think a little further? We never know if we will come back in the same part of the world or a different part, so why not start treating all people equally? Also because we are starting to scientifically grasp now that we are all connected so deeply that when some people are suffering, we are all suffering.

Having lunch with an awakened neuroscientist and a facilitator of sacred sound

Bernie also introduced me to two other amazing people: Dr. Eben Alexander and Karen Newell. Eben is world famous for his book “Proof of heaven” (in Danish: “Til himlen og tilbage”). In it he narrates how he went from being an atheistic neuroscientist to having severe meningitis and a long and detailed near-death experience (NDE) while traditional neuroscience would say that his brain would not be able to experience anything at all. Even though Eben had his NDE back in 2008 he is still completely radiant, glowing with that divine light that he encountered during his experience.

After his NDE Eben was a changed man, and he then met Karen Newell, a woman with beautiful energy radiance and an angelic voice, who has been interested in spirituality all her life. Being more experienced within the field of spirituality, Karen became both his life partner and co-author on their book ‘Living in a Mindful Universe’. Karen has founded ‘Sacred Acoustics’ that produces Binural Beat-like sound files that help meditators find deeper states of consciousness.

Karen and Eben are amazing thought leaders, who help people understand the nature of consciousness as transcendental. Meeting them was a beautiful experience where I felt how they were walking their talk of divine love in all its forms. They gave me the feeling that they were meeting me at eye level in mutual understanding, being souls that are here on Earth at a crucial time, all contributing our pieces to the puzzle of how to elevate our collective human consciousness.

Bernie and Eben had a laugh about how Karen and Eben knew, that Bernie would love the new, colorful shirt that Eben was wearing. They were right. Bernie’s nickname is “Doctor Coincidence”. Bernie has been a “part-time hippie” since his weekends on haight-street in San Fransisco in 1968, and this nickname and alter-ego of Doctor Coincidence is just as colorful as Eben’s shirt.

These meetings were for me a wonderful experience of getting to know the real, colorful people behind the science and the work they are putting out in the world helping us all understand better the true nature of consciousness. It was an honor for me to meet them all and I love being able to contribute for my small part in this collective investigation into the unknown depths of what consciousness really is.

To me consciousness is our deepest identity. Our soul is consciousness, and when consciousness is unlimited, it sees connection and oneness. It is love.

Blessings to these wonderful beings, to DOPS, the Telepathy Tapes and all the scientists and lightworkers out there putting energy and effort into the shift of consciousness, making us leap forward as a species becoming awake and aware of what we truly are and inspiring us on how to move forward with that understanding.

Thanks for reading and blessings to you too!

With love,

Julie Mariel

Videnskab

Magical Meetings with thought leaders advancing humanity’s understanding of consciousness

Review of the book “Life Changing Synchronicities” by Dr. Bernard Beitman