Another visit to David Perkins’ home, another interview. Perkins has been studying the mutilation phenomenon longer than perhaps anyone in the world. Starting in the mid-1970s, he was performing field investigations and writing up his findings. Noted mutilation researcher and author Chris O’Brien considers David his mentor and guru in the field (and the next post will feature both of them together in conversation.) This time, David decided to posit a premise that we could kick around: “The paranormal is a key to understanding consciousness and cattle mutilations are the key to understanding the paranormal.” We explored the permutations of this idea, and how science is beginning to recognize the role of the observer and the participation of consciousness in maps and conceptions of reality. In a wider sense, the Gaia hypothesis contends that the Earth can be seen as a conscious being, and David proposed that one of the ways that the planet is trying to wake us up to environmental damage is though an “unrecognized natural force” that may be behind the mutilation phenomenon. We also discussed mutilations and other aspects of the paranormal as “memeplexes” and how pervasive ideas begin, mutate, and propagate. Always fun to kick around radical ideas with a seasoned researcher and deep thinker such as David Perkins, but as he says, don’t worry, because “everything I say is a provisional theory.” LISTEN/ DOWNLOAD