Kazuki Hirano was a desperate man by the time he arrived in Santa Fe in April.

The 34-year-old laborer from Yokohama, Japan, had been hearing voices in his head for seven years and he didn't know what to do about it, Hirano told jurors Wednesday after taking the witness stand in his own trial.

The voices were like a dream, like being hypnotized, and they squawked at him over and over, as if they were parrots, and told him bad and seemingly incomprehensible things, said Hirano, who faces a charge of attempted first-degree murder for allegedly stabbing the keynote speaker April 2 at a Santa Fe conference.

Sometimes he said he imagined eating glass and could feel the glass in his stomach. Or, he said he might feel what it was like for a "terrorist" to shoot him in the head. At other times, it was as if someone was sneaking up behind him, Hirano said.

The voices elicited wholly negative and painful feelings in Hirano, including splitting headaches, he said.

"They were always constantly attached to me," Hirano said through a Japanese interpreter brought in from Los Angeles for the trial. "They were like a machine attached to me. When I'm conscious, this thing is attached to me all the time."

In order to explain the voices, Hirano said he gradually came to the conclusion that telepathy was responsible, and that someone was trying to control his mind. When he typed the word "telepathy" into Internet searches, he came upon the work of British biologist Rupert Sheldrake, he said. Sheldrake has researched telepathy for years.

Hirano said he initially thought Sheldrake seemed like a nice man from his picture, but he listened to a lecture on the Internet in which Sheldrake appeared to be making fun of a Japanese man who was living in London and experiencing a "psychic experience." This not only made him think Sheldrake was a "two-faced, nasty man," it made Hirano think Sheldrake was talking about him because Hirano had lived in London at one time.

However, Hirano still thought Sheldrake could help him because the biologist specializes in telepathy. So he traveled to Santa Fe, where Sheldrake was scheduled to speak at the 10th International Conference on Science and Consciousness at the La Fonda Hotel, in hopes of finding out how to block the telepathy he believed was plaguing him, Hirano said.

At the conference, Hirano managed to corner Sheldrake in a hallway outside another lecture and said he asked him about telepathy and how it could be counteracted. Sheldrake told him to ask a Buddhist and he'd get his answer, Hirano said.

This answer made Hirano think Sheldrake was "talking down to me" and "joking with me," he said. He also said it made him believe Sheldrake hires people with telepathic ability to use their powers on others.

"I believe that to a pretty high degree," Hirano said.

Still, Hirano went to Sheldrake's keynote lecture the next day hoping to hear some kind of clue — possibly hidden — that might help him.

"I felt he was the only person who could resolve this problem," he said. "I couldn't just go back to Japan like this."

However, the lecture proved clueless to Hirano. So he said he thought that if he could "draw (Sheldrake) into my world," he could get the point across that "the problem is going on and I could get others to take an interest in what was happening to me," he said.

So, Hirano said he stabbed Sheldrake in the leg.

"I didn't want to kill him at all," Hirano said. "I felt I was being trapped into hurting him."

He admitted to prosecutor Joseph Campbell that he bought the buck knife he used to stab Sheldrake after his first interaction with the doctor. He said the only resolution to his situation was to stab Sheldrake and "try to find out who's trying to control my mind."

Sheldrake, who flew to Santa Fe from London for Hirano's trial, testified that telepathy is a real science, but it is not a very reliable form of communication. He said it cannot convey complex thoughts or streams of information.

Sheldrake said he thinks hearing voices is a sign of psychological trauma and has nothing to do with telepathy. When Hirano asked him for help with the voices in his head the time they met in the hallway, Sheldrake said he thought the man appeared distressed but told him he couldn't help.

"I thought it was very unlikely that someone was beaming thoughts into his head," Sheldrake said. "If I could have (helped Hirano) I would have. But I couldn't and that's why I said I couldn't."

Sheldrake said that when Hirano stabbed him, it felt like a "karate chop" on his leg, and that he was astounded to look down and see a knife handle sticking out of his thigh. He said he still suffers from stiffness in his leg and a swollen foot as a result of the stabbing.

Richard Nasef, a Santa Fe psychotherapist who is fluent in Japanese, examined Hirano and said he found Hirano suffers from a nearly textbook case of paranoid schizophrenia. The only hallucination Hirano apparently hasn't suffered is olfactory, he said.

"A person who feels this creates a reason why it's occurring," Nasef said. "He has a very prominent and well-conceived delusional system he uses to explain (the hallucinations)."

Hirano faces up to nine years in prison if he's convicted. He is competent to stand trial because he understands his surroundings, can help his lawyer and knows right from wrong, said Campbell, the prosecutor.

The trial is expected to end today.

Contact Jason Auslander at 986-3076 or :jauslander@sfnewmexican.com.