Two years after discovering his telekinetic ability in March 2011, Robert Allen launched a YouTube site in October 2013 under his moniker Trebor Seven (Allen, 2013). As of March 6, 2025, this site had 50,500 subscribers, 5,302,340 views, and 302 videos of Robert demonstrating a wide variety of what he calls “TK moves” on objects of increasing size and weight, discussing his journey in learning and experimenting with telekinesis alone and with his family, promoting his classes and other websites, and interviewing other content creators in subjects adjacent to his unexpected path. As Robert writes in his “Welcome to my Channel” video on Bitchute, “Helping people learn Telekinesis is not my hobby; it is my passion.” (Allen, 2018). Robert Allen’s Trebor Seven YouTube channel is arguably the first and longest-producing channel on human telekinesis on the Internet. Many telekinesis content creators have sprung up since his first video showing Robert appear to psychically move various feathers balanced upon rocks of different sizes all as Robert provides commentary on the mindset and conditions needed to successfully perform telekinesis (Allen, 2013). New viewers of his channel are amazed at his practically nonchalant display of his abilities. Here is a siddhi, long rumored in Yogic circles and elsewhere, not only on full display for the quick-to-bore, modern online audience but also taught to anyone who wants to practice through a straightforward, self-effacing, and humorous style. The hook is the promise of the development of the ability, but many students of Robert’s soon discover that while attempting to express what he calls a natural human skill, they begin a journey of spiritual awakening where a host of religious topics immediately open up with just the confirmation from one twitch of a precariously balanced piece of aluminum foil.
This paper will perform a short survey of Robert Allen’s YouTube channel as an example of the intersection of religion and technology where the display screen becomes the communal space and Robert (as Trebor Seven) the patient elder teaching, even initiating, new community members into an exciting realm of human experience. Through a review of the videos and the comments section on his videos, interviews with Robert and some of his students, and an analysis of the themes of how Robert teaches telekinesis, the author will briefly explore the historical, social, psychological, and religious dynamics of using the Internet to confirm and transmit siddhis to anyone with online access. Through a combination of video examples from his YouTube site and instruction from his TelekinesisSchool.com site, the transmission of a previously secret or closeted skill will be discussed and a common spiritual journey will be outlined as a result of Robert’s instruction on the initial steps for learning telekinesis by employing his keys of empathy, mindset, and energy (Allen, 2019).
Further, this paper will take a phenomenological approach where the author will interweave the above analysis with a report of their own efforts over approximately three months following the instructional program that Robert offers and will relay the lived experience of someone looking to replicate what Robert so easily displays. Whether this will result in the author being able to demonstrate the ability in some way, through pre-recorded video or live at the conference, remains to be seen, but the challenge to do so will add an additional element of “being-in-the-world” to the training through an ever-present relationship with future AAR conference attendees. In fact, this paper will argue that the phenomenological approach is the best approach from an anthropology of religion perspective towards engaging with the proliferation of claims of the paranormal on YouTube, which have only snowballed since Robert’s inaugural video. Robert Allen has opened the mystical door to over 5 million viewers towards human transformation from a purely materially viewed being to a spiritually expressive being capable of being freed from the restrictions of perceived disconnectedness from the Universe as Other. Through his displays and his teachings, Robert repeats the mantra that “All is One” as, for example, when this is flashed in the last second of the “Welcome to my Channel” video (Allen, 2018). That mantra is a primary key through which his students can step through the door into a new realm of additional possibilities via deeper relationships with all elements of the Universe we collectively live in. In order to be successful in telekinesis, practitioners must embody this connection as well. Telekinesis cannot be done as a purely mental activity, Robert explains, solely imagining waves or rays or any sort of mental weaponry rushing at the target to knock it over. Instead, one must improve one’s physical health, form a deeper awareness of one’s own flesh-and-blood self through appropriate diet and exercise, and begin to develop and utilize qi as described in Chinese medicine and martial practices before one can hope to connect to and move an object as an extension of one’s self. Lastly, breaking the barrier of “Other” is a radical step required in honing one’s telekinetic skill. Once the lessons of radical Otherness towards the TK targets are incorporated as an achieved spiritual state, one can then confidently perform telekinesis as Robert does not just on objects like paper, toy cars, and rocks, but also on candle flames, light bulbs, analog watches, even the branches of trees through a deep connection to the wind. From the seemingly simple tasks of the first telekinesis lessons, the lives of practitioners are often fundamentally changed through an audio/visual medium which began as a way to connect people, but through Trebor Seven’s passion can awaken and connect far more.
References
Allen, R. (2013, October 25). Trebor Seven. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@TreborSeven
Allen, R. (2018, March 15). Welcome to my Channel [Video]. Bitchute. https://www.bitchute.com/video/DN1GE8bva7Ef
Allen, R. (2013, October 25). ツTelekinesis ツ Fun With Feathers, LEARN Telekinesis, TK, Psychokinesis, [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxJ397m-CuE
Allen, R. (n.d.). Lesson One. TelekinesisSchool.com. https://telekinesisschool.com/lesson_1.html
The Trebor Seven YouTube website is the longest-running site teaching telekinesis on the Internet. It’s creator, Robert Allen, not only demonstrates his abilities through hundreds of “TK moves” but he also aims to teach telekinesis through his channel and other websites. As students begin their exercises to unlock their own abilities, hoping to join the ranks of the virtual Jedi, they are introduced to a religious perspective which is a precursor to success at telekinesis. In this paper, the author will adopt the phenomenological approach and take the role of the new student, reporting on the process of learning telekinesis through “being-in-the-world”, embodiment, and radical Otherness from Robert over a period of three months. Combined with interviews of Robert and his students, this paper will examine YouTube as a meeting point of community, spirituality, initiation, and educational empowerment, particularly for sites which claim to teach psi abilities.