WHEN THE FUTURE WHISPERS
How Bernhard Reicher's remarkable life illuminates Bentov's model of consciousness, practical magic, and the imaginal realm.
Imagine you’re standing in the bathroom, brushing your teeth, when a thought suddenly arrives, seemingly from nowhere:
“You should apply for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”
It isn’t your dream. It isn’t even something you’ve been thinking about. It simply pops into your head during a quiet moment of reverie and you wonder...
“Should I?”
Very much like I listened to “that voice” when it came for me, Bernhard listened too.
So he applied.
He got on the show.
And he won.
Not the million...but he won big time.
Now that’s already a wonderful story. But now imagine this...
Seven years later, during a deep magical ritual, something extraordinary happens.
You find yourself watching your younger self in the bathroom, brushing your teeth. You recognize the moment instantly. You realize that the mysterious thought hadn’t come from nowhere at all.
It came from you.
From your future self.
Across time.
Standing inside the ritual, you whisper into the mind of your younger self:
“You should apply for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”
And in that instant...
...the loop closes.
Since we're on a Bentov tear at the moment, I suspect Bentov would say that during the ritual Bernard briefly stepped outside the ordinary experience of time. Instead of living one moment after another, he found himself in a place where his younger and older selves were both present at once. From there, whispering an idea into the mind of his younger self was simply connecting two points that had never really been separate.
Think of a vinyl record.
The needle experiences the music one note at a time.
The entire symphony already exists on the record.
The needle thinks it is creating the future.
The record already contains every note.
Bentov believed consciousness occasionally lifts off the groove.
For one brief moment, the needle sees the whole record.
From there, it becomes conceivable that an intuition appears from nowhere because consciousness has briefly escaped the illusion of linear time.
This is why Bentov suggested that intuition often arrives as complete packets of information rather than logical deductions.
So in Bernhard’s story, the “loop” is really just a glimpse of a higher geometry.
The younger Bernhard always received the thought.
The older Bernhard always delivered it.
From inside time it looks impossible but from the outside it is all one coherent pattern viewed from different points along the line.
I actually think this is one of the most elegant illustrations of Bentov’s model.
And perhaps that’s why I find Bernhard so fascinating.
He talks about Magic in the way a botanist talks about plants. This is simply the landscape he’s spent his life exploring. He grew up in a family where conversations about ghosts, near-death experiences, magic, and the unseen world were as ordinary as discussing the weather. Guided by a grandfather who treated the invisible with remarkable practicality, he never learned to separate the magical from everyday life.
By fourteen he was systematically training his intuition, studying hypnosis, and exploring altered states of consciousness.
Decades later he founded his Magic School based in Austria and has become one of Europe’s most fascinating teachers of practical magic.
He is also a gifted remote viewer, and perhaps you’ve already read my account of his remarkable visions of a future beyond anything most of us can presently imagine.
Besides immensely enjoying his company, he always has me giggling…the thing that moves me most about Bernhard is that he gave me a piece of magical technology that has genuinely changed my life.
He calls it the Magick Castle.
It is a protocol that teaches you how to enter the imaginal realm…the causative realm…where seemingly impossible outcomes become surprisingly simple.
I have used it many times, but twice I turned to it when facing what felt like critical health interventions.
The first was at the dentist. A girl doesn’t want to lose a tooth, right? Mine had been declared beyond saving.
The second was far more serious. Every eye surgeon I consulted shook their head with a kind of sympathetic resignation, warning me that the outcome would likely be disappointing….if not catastrophic!
So while the medical professionals were doing their work, I quietly slipped into my Magick Castle and did mine.
I swear that both the dentist and the surgeon practically high-fived me afterward. In each case, they told me the results had turned out “better than they could possibly have imagined.”
Now... I wonder why that was. 😉
For this gift I am eternally grateful!
Oh and this came through time travel too! Like Jung..on a train!!!
Finally, there is one thing about Bernhard that I get an absolute kick out of.
He possesses an extraordinary form of synesthesia.
Do you remember that scene in When Harry Met Sally where she says, “I’ll have what she’s having”?
Well... that’s me watching Bernhard eat olives.
The man experiences such obvious ecstasy that I find myself wanting to hand him another one just so I can bask in the sheer delight radiating from his face. It’s as though he’s tasting something from another dimension, and for a brief moment you almost believe you can absorb the experience by proximity alone.
If olives are capable of producing that level of bliss... perhaps I’ve been eating them all wrong : )
But in all seriousness, his synesthesia also allows him to experience stories as living beings.
Living intelligences. How simply wonderful : )
To Bernhard, stories shape us. They shape civilizations. Perhaps they even shape reality itself.
I confess, part of me wants to run the experiment: a bucket of magnificent olives, a beautiful edition of One Thousand and One Nights, and an evening watching someone experience both with such extraordinary intensity.
There are very few people who seem capable of meeting beauty with that kind of openness. Bernhard is one of them.
I have a feeling you’re going to love him.
Bernard will be joining me on July 21st 9AM CEST, 8 AM BST, and 3 PM in Bangkok, WITH OLIVES!!!!
He is part of The Living Inquiry Symposium celebrating the release of Chance Gardners new double feature picture show, How to Know What’s really featuring Rupert Sheldrake, Robert Temple, Bernardo Kastrup and Thomas Brophy
I hope there is a recording available of the recent zoom discussion!
What is the Magick Castle, I have to know! :) You are a beautiful writer and human. Thank you for sharing!