DiCarlo: “Paradigm” is a term that is being bandied about quite freely these days. Could you please offer us a working definition of what a paradigm actually is, and delineate the emerging paradigm as it relates to business?

Ferguson: Paradigm is a fashionable term for a working perspective. It’s your method of explaining something to yourself. For example, there are paradigms in science, where the term first came into use. It is a mental model which makes it comfortable for people to explain things. But since all our knowledge is incomplete, the paradigm ultimately has to be replaced by another one. Eventually it must yield to new information. In The Aquarian Conspiracy, I used paradigms in science as a model for the fate of new ideas in general-paradigms of relationship, education, heath care…

What we know from science is that even people who are supposed to be professionally objective, are very resistant to new information-even if the newly discovered information is more powerful and better explains the data.

DiCarlo: Was there any particular event in your life that served as a trigger, and caused you to look beyond the party line of the traditional and dominant world view of our society?

Ferguson: Well, my parents were people who questioned the establishment a lot. My parents used to talk scathingly about the “almighty dollar,” and yet they gave me the sense that I could be anything I wanted to be. I suppose I was fortunate in that my parents were the children of immigrants from Italy on my fathers side, and Germans Russia on my mother’s. When families have to make it on their own in a new country, they have somewhat of a different perspective.

You see that a lot in the children of immigrants, even today. They are often more ambitious than the natives, even though they’re poorer. When I began to question what was going on in this society, perhaps it was because my father had questioned too. Pointing out how ridiculous the commercials on the radio were for example. Challenging the predominant paradigm came with breathing. I was a poet and later a non-fiction writer. I got interested in the cultural paradigm in 1968 when I wrote a book called “Champagne Living on Beer Budget,” a book about how to live well on a modest income. I was kind of looking behind the scenes there, “Who makes brand x?” for example. When you look into institutions, you become increasingly aware of their moral paralysis. There’s no point in blaming. We got here through our collective ignorance. I also wrote for trade journals and I was a stringer for Time. I got a sense of how creative business people saw things, which was contrary to the conventional wisdom.

When my children were tiny, I became interested in the work of Berkeley scientists who found that the brain changes in response to stimulation. I was amazed too, at the early research on Transcendental Meditation. My next book, The Brain Revolution. looked at the mysteries of the brain and mind-the interface of the tangible and intangible. The physical brain, which is so complex-the most complex bit of matter on earth and so mysterious-and the mind, which is completely intangible.

” If all of this is true about our potential, if human beings can learn as it appears they can learn, why aren’t we doing something,” I said, “about it?” One thing led to another.

I was writing radio commercials at age 17, so I was already peeking behind the curtain that hides the Wizard of Oz. There was this paradox, of this society in which we let people sell us things all the time, and how intelligent and educated are we going to be that we are going to question what it is that we are being sold?

About the time of the Brain Revolution I was also meditating. I also discovered the formal research of parapsychology. This validated psychic experiences I’d had.

After a particularly poignant paranormal incident, which had to do with my fathers death, it occurred to me that what we in Western society think of as being “real”, is a very limited view of the world. From time to time, we all have experiences in everyday life that hint all is not what it seems. Henri Berkson had spoken of the brain as a filter, reducing this whole large body of information to something manageable. Alter the chemistry a little, as William James said, and a whole other kind of experience can happen.

DiCarlo: So even with that book-though you may not have been thinking of it in those terms-you were challenging the predominant paradigm?

Ferguson: Yes I was. Years later, Luis Muchado, who started the first Ministry for the Development of Human Intelligence, a Cabinet position in Venezuela told me The Brain Revolution had inspired him to action. I’d said in conclusion, “If this is all true, why doesn’t somebody do something about it?” So he did.

We have to believe we can throw ourselves into life and change things. If there is something wrong with the product, if there is something wrong in the community do something. “Drive-by shootings” are only a symptom of a “drive-by culture.” We and our leaders really need to stop, take stock of things and ask, “Is this really right or not?” People are doing that more.

DiCarlo: In The Aquarian Conspiracy you discussed at length the paradigm shifts taking place in many sectors of society, from science to education. How would you characterize let’s say, the emerging paradigm in business?

Ferguson: The passing paradigm saw business as the ‘be-all’ and ‘end-all’ of society rather than one of its tools for functioning. Economic needs had been seen as foremost, superseding considerations of family, quality of life, health and so on. It seems that we have gotten confused about just what the ‘American Dream’ is all about. We think it was about rags to riches and Horatio Alger, but the original dream was based upon the freedom to dream. And to make your dreams come true as long as you did not hurt anyone else. It was not to simply ‘get rich’.

Now some people dreamed of amassing considerable financial wealth, but that wasn’t the point. Our founders were a diverse group. They were in a sense, the children of dissenters-people who had emigrated for political or religious reasons.

How this relates to the emerging business paradigm? For a couple of hundred years commercial interests have dominated. As early as the 1800s people were complaining that their Congressional representatives were bought and sold by special interest groups. So the good of the whole has not always been taken into account.

Quite suddenly, the policy makers, the real movers and shakers, have recognized more the increasingly crucial role of education. It is rather ironic in a way, that because of our entertainment industries- music, videos and television-a couple of generations of people have been raised who are not accustomed to finding pleasure within themselves, thinking for themselves, even imagining for themselves. Education per se could not compete with this extra stimulation, the advertising, the glitzy images. With the declining level of educational standards and performance, these very people who become ‘vegged-out’ through socialization, are no longer adequate workers for skilled or even semi-skilled positions.

Another example of this kind of ‘business karma’ occurred in the early 70s when General Motors bought and shut down the main public transportation system in Los Angeles. They had cynically reckoned that Southern California was the biggest potential market for automobiles.

DiCarlo: Just where are we then, in the process of discarding the old paradigms and embracing the new?

Ferguson: At a crisis point, I’d say. If we started doing everything that needs to be done-right this very moment in terms of the environment-it might already be too late. Somebody has said that if it weren’t for the last minute nothing would ever get done. Maybe this is the last minute. Suddenly we’re saying, “Oh my God, the rain forests!” “The ozone layer.”

DiCarlo: Do you find then that these environmental crises are popping up and forcing us to rethink what’s really important in life, to rethink our values and priorities?

Ferguson: The Exxon Valdez oil spill could be seen as a metaphor for our whole society. The captain had gone to his cabin to do paperwork. The third mate who was left in charge was not qualified to steer the ship in such a dangerous area. When he was asked if he could handle it he said that he could. There was no watchman on the bow of the ship and the speed of the vessel was increasing rather than decreasing as they headed for the reefs.

It seems to me that collectively we’re in that same situation. Things are happening faster. Meanwhile, we are the captains who have gone off to do paperwork.

DiCarlo: As gloomy as things appear, would you not agree that they serve a useful purpose in galvanizing mankind to action, and also to a higher state of being? This idea of emergence through emergency?

Ferguson: Yes. Somebody said the other day, “You have to reach breakdown before you can break through.” The chaos we’re experiencing now is just a symptom that the forms that we have been operating under have outlived their usefulness. The health care system isn’t producing health. The schools aren’t producing educated people. Issues of extreme corruption have been coming to light world wide. Our lack of an action is already making a difference.

A challenge shows us what we can do. It’s a shame that we have to wait for a life or death crisis before we wake up. But once we are awake, we find that it’s actually fun. Too often we think, “Someday I’ll have my act together”, as if there is some kind of ‘never-never’ land which awaits us where everything is going to run smoothly and we won’t be challenged. As we begin to see that each person has a heroic capacity, we discover that each of us has a destiny to fulfill.

DiCarlo: Are there any signs that people are getting the message?

Ferguson: The polls suggest that the public is way ahead of the leaders on most of these issues. The so-called average person is more likely in a way to hold, and I hesitate to use the word “radical”-but it is radical position.

An animal rights poll showed that about half of the people in the country embraced the position that the experts would call radically pro-animal. 65% of the people according to this week’s Times magazine, believe that angels exist. 48% believe that they have a guardian angel. Either the New Age phenomenon went wild while nobody was looking, or people had been keeping their thoughts to themselves.

The animal rights people were startled at this. I’m sure the angel-rights people were startled too. The general public, through the polls, have said that they would favor higher taxes if it really helped the homeless and the money wouldn’t be wasted. When Clinton proposed the health care plan, a poll afterwards showed that the majority of people supported it, even though they didn’t think they would necessarily benefit. So there’s more imagination and grace in the populace than there is generally acknowledged by the people who run the institutions.

DiCarlo: Let’s get back to your comments about developing a vision. There’s certainly been a lot of talk about vision lately. There is a verse of Proverbs in the bible which reads, “Where there is no vision the people perish.” From your perspective, just what is the vision that seems to be emerging?

Ferguson: Well, it’s not a vision of just one particular thing. It’s really about the use of our visionary capacity. The formula to achieve this consists of getting you to go deeper into yourself. If we want to get out of the mess that we’re in, then we must realize that our old solutions to problems, our old worn ideas of how things ought to work, are not going get us there.

DiCarlo: We have to rid ourselves of ‘linear’ thinking?

Ferguson: Yes, thinking which is unimaginative, and thinking which lacks common sense. For example, when fire engulfed Yellowstone park in 1988, the foresters adhered to a “Let burn” policy because foresters basically believe that it is better for the ecosystem to let the fires go. But what they did not take into account was the fact that there was a drought. The fires raged out of control as a result. The following year they decided to put out all fires because they were so severely criticized and the tourist industry was so badly hurt. So we seem to lack the ability to make these subtle distinctions. We haven’t been educated to think in terms of third choices, or how to create an alternative if you do not like the way things are. I think that is what this talk of vision addresses itself to. Take the example of kids playing. It is the kid who has an idea of something to do on a boring day who becomes the leader. When leaders lack vision then we have to have our own. This is the kind of grassroots leadership that I had originally talked about in the Aquarian Conspiracy. You can begin to make “mini-revolutions,” people striving to improve things where they are. Out of that might emerge a shift that may eventually cause a change in authority.

DiCarlo: What advice can you offer to those people who want to take a vision and make it a reality?

Ferguson: Let me take some of the key points from some of the chapters of Radical Common Sense…. Improve your ability to visualize. Be sensitive to your gut feeling. It isn’t just the original vision that is involved. There are steps all along the way. You have to become aware of your intuition and your instincts, these guide in the process of implementing the vision. And you also need to be awake. All of a sudden the world changes and your vision has to change too. The vision needs to be continually defined.

DiCarlo: What’s the main difference then, between a vision and a goal?

Ferguson: A vision is a tentative goal. You could even have little goals that you set in order to bring about your vision. For example let’s say you’re a magazine publisher. Your goal could be that by the end of the year you will have ‘x’ number of subscribers. But that isn’t a vision. A vision is a mode of something working-a kind of dynamic.

So that might mean that you see yourself serving your potential subscribership, envisioning what your publication will do for them; what they might understand from it; and how that might affect their lives-what they do and how they think. You could even stretch this to include what might happen in society so that you have an even larger purpose.

Tune your vision to the whole. You might say, “I want to publish a glossy magazine, ” but if there is no market for it-if people don’t want it-then the vision isn’t grounded in cultural reality.

Things don’t generally come out exactly as we envision them-sometimes they’re much better. And sometimes they’re just different, or even disappointing. The important thing is to not give up on your visionary capacity just because one little vision didn’t work out. And realize that no matter the outcome, you are wiser. Most of us fail to cultivate our visionary capacity. Still, most people do have some kind of dream or a vision. But they don’t take it seriously. So they resign themselves to humdrum, everyday lives. Therein lies the dis-ease. With a vision, people get better, not older.

DiCarlo: Is there any other advice you could give people about developing a powerful vision?

Ferguson: Well, I would add that we need to work on our communication skills and quality discrimination. Find out, for example, if anybody else is doing the things that you would like to do. And if they failed, why they failed.

Your vision may be to work for a company because you like their vision. Even if your job is not, in itself as challenging as you would wish it to be, you can “fine-tune” yourself so that you become really good at what you do. It may even be that you find your vision in your private life, to find some cause that you really enjoy-saving the dolphins for example. You might pick up litter around the lake because it makes you feel more alive, as though you are doing something worthwhile. “How do I make my children’s school better?”, or “How do I make my neighborhood better?” So the secret is service.

DiCarlo: Do you have examples of “cutting-edge” visionaries of our times?

Ferguson: Gorbachev, Ted Turner, Mandala….We can look to entertainment or sports heroes who have become very much involved in “Save the world” activities. Turn to the local feature section in the newspaper, the stories of people who are making things happen locally. The “cutting-edge” visionaries I would say, include the people who are stepping forth to help their neighborhoods.

DiCarlo: So, a vision would never be founded upon the mundane pursuit of money?

Ferguson: We got into this situation by first thinking of our personal profits. We only win through each other; we don’t win over each other. We triumph as a group, not alone. In the past it was the “joy of victory” and “beating” one’s adversaries. I recommend a book called Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse. The author suggests that we think in terms of winning or losing the game of life. But the real purpose is to keep the ball in play. That’s a whole other way of looking at things. For example, what would happen if you were so successful in business that you buy out all your competitors and completely dominate the market?

Now what?

DiCarlo: In 1980, you were decidedly optimistic about the brightness of the future of mankind. Do you still feel that way?

Ferguson: There’s a quotation from Virgil that has become a sort of motto for me-“They can because they think they can.”

We have to act from faith. If we are going to go out, at least let’s go out trying our best to save this situation, knowing that we did our best.

Why do the same themes keep getting played over and over again? What are the lessons of history trying to teach us? One of the lessons seems to be that we don’t learn the lessons of history very well.

Right now we would be wise to focus our attention on how basic human beings behave in basic selfish ways. What is there in human nature that impels us to act in certain ways? We need to teach people how to parent, how to get along with each other. Common sense tells us that we are going to have to be more visionary and more compassionate if we are going to survive. That is not ‘Blue Sky’ talk. Nothing short of being imaginative, creative and compassionate is going to save us.

I’m placing my hope in those people who are awake and who have the courage and conviction to see how many other people they can wake up. If that happens, then we will have a Renaissance. Listen to those leaders who encourage us to be better people, not those playing to our fears. As I see it, either we are going to have a very rapid decline into a “worst-case” scenario, or else the dream of a new Renaissance will be made a reality. The choice is ours.

Russell E. DiCarlo is a medical writer, author, lecturer and workshop leader who’s focus is on personal transformation, consciousness research and the fields of energy and anti-aging medicine. His forthcoming book is entitled “The Definitive Guide To Anti-Aging Medicine” (1998, Future Medicine Publishing). DiCarlo resides in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Copyright 1996. Epic Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

DiCarlo: You have been a major researcher of non-ordinary states of consciousness for the past thirty-six years. What got you interested at first?

Grof: My interest in this field of research started when I volunteered for an LSD experiment in Prague, Czechoslovakia. My original training was in Freudian psychoanalysis and reading Freud inspired me to study medicine and become a psychiatrist. However, early in my professional career, I developed a deep conflict in relation to psychoanalysis. I continued to be very excited about psychoanalytic theory which seemed to offer brilliant insights into the human psyche and fascinating explanations for various otherwise obscure problems, such as the symbolism of dreams, neurotic symptoms, religion, and what Freud called “psychopathology of everyday life”. But I became increasingly disappointed with psychoanalysis as a practical tool of therapy.

About that same time, the psychiatric department in which I was working received a supply of LSD-25 from Sandoz, a pharmaceutical company in Switzerland. They asked us to conduct clinical research with this experimental substance, assess whether or not it had some therapeutic value, and to give them a report about our findings.

They gave us two initial suggestions regarding its potential uses. First of these was that, in very miniscule doses, this substance could produce “experimental psychoses” — various perceptual, emotional, and mental changes that occur spontaneously in psychotic patients. And the second suggestion was that this substance could be used as a unique experiential training for psychologists and psychiatrists. It would make it possible for them to experience for several hours the inner world of psychotic patients and to return from there with profound first-hand insights into that world. I became one of the early volunteers in this research program and I had a very profound confrontation with my own unconscious psyche. In a sense, that experience inspired me and influenced the course of my entire professional development over the next thirty six years.

I spent twenty years conducting clinical research into the therapeutic potential of psychedelic substances, first in the Psychiatric Research Institute in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and then in Baltimore, MD, where I served as Clinical and Research Fellow at The Johns Hopkins University. During the second year of my fellowship, Russia invaded Czechoslovakia and I decided to stay. I was offered the position of chief of Psychiatric Research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center in Catonsville, MD. I remained there until 1973, heading the last surviving government -sponsored psychedelic research project in the United States.

In the last seventeen years, my wife Christina and I have developed “Holotropic Breathwork”, a powerful non-drug approach to self-exploration and therapy that uses very simple means, such as faster breathing, evocative music, and a certain kind of energy-releasing bodywork. Non-ordinary states of consciousness induced by this method involve experiences that are very similar to those observed in psychedelic sessions, however, occuring in a much more controlled way. Beside psychedelic therapy and Holotropic Breathwork, I have been also interested in related areas, such as shamanism, Eastern spiritual systems, mysticism, rites of passage of aboriginal cultures, near -death experiences, and psychospiritual crises (“spiritual emergencies); the common denominator in all these situations is that they involve non-ordinary states of consciousness.

DiCarlo: Through your pioneering work, you have developed a means of triggering non-ordinary states of reality in individuals. What might be the value in doing this?

Grof: Non-ordinary states of consciousness are certainly a unique source of deep insights into the deepest recesses of the human psyche. In my opinion their potential significance for psychiatry is comparable to the importance of the microscope for medicine or the telescope for astronomy. It is hard to believe that this area has been largely ignored by traditional psychiatrists and psychologists. I myself have been particularly interested in two aspects of non-ordinary states.

First, it has been their extraordinary therapeutic or healing potential, naturally, if they are used properly and under supervision of an experienced guide. Since I am a clinical psychiatrist, this was my primary area of interest. Second, it has been their heuristic potential, that is, what we can learn in or through these states about the psyche, the unconscious, human nature, and the universe.

DiCarlo: In browsing through some professional psychological journals, I noticed that increasingly, some of the prevailing assumptions of traditional psychology are being called into question, such as “Psychological development largely ceases once biological adulthood is reached;” or “Psychological health is nothing more than not being sick;” and “transpersonal or mystical experiences are at best insignificant and at worst, signs of mental illness.” As one of the principle architects of the emerging paradigm of psychology, what does your work suggest about the validity of these assumptions?

Grof: To your first point: Transpersonal psychology has amassed ample evidence suggesting that human psychological development can proceed far beyond a good interpersonal and social adjustment and adequate sexual functioning of a mature adult. The author who has written about this in the most articulate way is Ken Wilber. In his books, he offered an impressive and comprehensive synthesis of various schools of Western psychology and Eastern spiritual systems. He described in great detail additional stages of psychological development – the subtle, causal, and absolute. Since all these levels involve the spiritual dimension as a critical element, they require that spirituality be understood as a healthy and evolutionary manifestation, rather than an indication of lack of education or psychopathology.

As far as your second assumption is concerned: The attitude of Western psychiatry that sees mental health as simply the absence of symptoms certainly has to be radically revised. In the new understanding, emotional and psychosomatic symptoms are seen as expressions of the healing process of the organism, not as manifestations of disease. Obviously this applies only to “functional” or psychologically determined disorders and not to clearly organic conditions, such as tumors, infections, or hardening of the arteries of the brain. Nor would it apply in certain states which are clearly manifestations of mental disease, such as severe paranoid conditions.

This new understanding can be described as “homeopathic”. In the alternative system of medicine known as homeopathy, the symptoms are the seen as expressions of healing, not the disease. Therapy in homeopathy consists of a temporary intensification of the symptoms to achieve wholeness. This approach results in profound healing and positive personality transformation rather than the impoverishment of vitality and functioning that accompanies pharmacological suppression of symptoms. The emphasis on constructive working with symptoms instead of their routine suppression is the first major difference between the strategies based on modern consciousness research and those used in mainstream psychiatry.

With the new strategies, we can do much more than remove the symptoms or reach the goal of psychoanalysis-as defined by Freud in his famous statement : “to change the extreme suffering of the neurotic to the ordinary misery of everyday life.” That certainly is not a very ambitious plan, particularly if you consider the amount of time, money, and energy that it takes to undergo psychoanalysis. However, to achieve positive mental health — increase of zest, joi de vivre, vitality, creativity — requires to open up to the spiritual dimension of existence. Abraham Maslow conducted extensive research in many hundreds of people who had had spontaneous mystical experiences, or “peak experiences” as he called them. He showed that they were conducive to self-actualization and self-realization and much higher levels of development and functioning than those that conventional psychology talks about.

This brings us to your third point, the problem of spirituality and mystical experiences. This is an issue, which represents the core difference between traditional psychiatry and transpersonal psychology. Mainstream psychiatry is based upon the Cartesian-Newtonian materialistic world view which maintains that the history of the universe is basically the history of developing matter. The only thing that really exists is matter and life, consciousness, and intelligence are its accidental and insignificant side-products.

In this kind of a world view, there is no place for spirituality. To be spiritual means to be uneducated, unacquainted with modern scientific discoveries about the nature of the Universe. It means to be involved in superstition, in primitive, or magical thinking. Traditional psychoanalysis explains spirituality as a regression, as a fixation on the infantile stage -a step backwards in development rather than a step forward. In this context, the concept of God is interpreted as projection of your infantile image of your father to the sky. Interest in religious ritual is seen as analogous to obsessive-compulsive behavior of a neurotic and explained as a regression to the anal stage of libidinal development.

DiCarlo: So it is a sort of reductionism, taking what lies beyond our current models of how things work and reducing them to the existing framework and what we already know?

Grof: Yes. And here lies the fundamental difference between traditional psychiatry and transpersonal psychology which considers spirituality to be an intrinsic dimension of the human psyche and a critical factor in the universal scheme of things. This conclusion is not some kind of irrational belief or a speculative metaphysical assumption. It is based on systematic study of non-ordinary states of consciousness in which we can have direct experiences of the spiritual dimensions.

These experiences fall into two distinct categories. In the first one are experiences of the Immanent Divine; they involve direct perception of unity underlying the world of separation and a realization that what we experience as material reality is actually manifestation of creative cosmic energy. The second category includes experiences of the Transcendental Divine; here we perceive dimensions of reality that are normally hidden to our senses, such as visions of deities, or archetypal figures as C.G. Jung would call them, and of various mythological domains.

DiCarlo: Could you give me some other examples of the categories of transpersonal experiences that have been described by the thousands of people you have studied over the years that would tend to shatter the assumptions of materialistic science and the traditional world view?

Grof: Traditional psychology and psychiatry have a model of the psyche that is limited to the body, more specifically the brain, which is seen as the source of consciousness, and to post-natal biography, that means to the history of the individual after he or she was born. It tries to explain all psychological processes in terms of the events which took place in infancy and in childhood. In addition, we also have the Freudian individual unconscious, which is basically a derivative of our life experiences. It is a kind of “psychological junkyard” that harbors various unacceptable tendencies that have been repressed.

The model of the psyche that has emerged from modern consciousness research and from transpersonal psychology is incomparably larger and more encompassing. It has additional domains that are extremely important from the theoretical, as well as practical, point of view. For example, the cartography of the unconscious that I have suggested on the basis of my studies of non-ordinary states has, beside the biographical level, two vast additional domains, which I call perinatal and transpersonal. The perinatal level has as its core the record of traumatic experiences associated with biological birth. The memories of the emotions and physical feelings that we experienced during our delivery are often represented here in photographical detail. However, the perinatal level also functions as a kind of gateway into the next domain of the psyche, the transpersonal.

For example, people who relive different stages of birth, often experience simultaneously elements of what C.G. Jung called the “collective unconscious”; this can be either its historical or mythological aspects. Thus people who re-experience the stage of birth where they were stuck in the womb before the cervix opened, might identify with different people throughout history who were in a prison, or who were abused and tortured, such as the victims of the Inquisition and people who were in Nazi concentration camps. Similarly, the reliving of the desperate struggle to free oneself from the clutches of the birth canal after the cervix dilated can be associated with images of revolutions and with experiential identification with freedom fighters of all ages.

These experiences of one’s birth can also open into archetypal visions of the collective unconscious. People who feel stuck in the womb can experience themselves as being in hell, with actual experiences of the demonic figures or of infernal landscapes as we know them from mythology and from religious art. Similarly, individuals who re-experience the difficult propulsion through the birth canal at the stage of birth when the cervix is open often describe archetypal visions of various deities who represent death and re-birth such as Osiris, Adonis, Attis, Persephone, and Dionysus. They might also have the visions of crucifixion or actually experience death and resurrection in full identification with Jesus Christ.

Beside the perinatal level, we have another vast transbiographical domain, the transpersonal level. As I have described earlier, some people can first get in touch with the transpersonal realm in connection with the death-rebirth process; however, others experience it independently in a pure form. The spectrum of transpersonal experiences is extremely rich. Beside the already mentioned elements of the historical and mythological collective unconscious, it is possible to experience convinced identification with various animals, plants, and other aspects of nature and of the cosmos.

A particularly important type of transpersonal experiences are karmic or “past-life” memories. These experiences can suddenly catapult us into another century, another country, and another culture. They are extremely vivid, intense, and convincing and are typically accompanied with a sense of personal remembering (“what I am experiencing now is not happening to me for the first time, I once actually was this person living in that historical period”). In many instances people are able to bring from these experiences astonishing and accurate new information about the times and cultures which they had visited. We have also observed that past life experiences have an amazing therapeutic potential.

DiCarlo: Why should a person consider that the types of experiences you have just described are more than simple fantasies and imaginations produced by the brain?

Grof: This is the attitude that is usually taken by those people who have traditional scientific training. But if you really study these experiences, as I have done for the last thirty-six years, you find out that the situation is much more complex.The information that these experiences tend to provide is often incredibly rich and specific and of such a kind that it could not have possibly been acquired through the ordinary channels. It is not something that one can get from teachers, books, movies, or television. Identification with animals typically involves dimensions that can not be conveyed by traditional means, for example, specific non-human instinctual feelings, body sensations, and emotions. In experiences involving other cultures and historical periods, it can be very detailed information about architecture, costumes, weapons, and social organizations of various societies. In some instances, the information concerns specific historical events and can be verified by independent research in historical archives.

Also, people frequently discover that their past life experiences are in some way connected to their present life situation. For example, certain emotional and psychosomatic problems which could not be explained or alleviated by various forms of traditional therapy, disappear after a profound experience of this kind. In addition, karmic experiences are often associated with meaningful synchronicities.

For example, a person has a difficult relationship with another person and has a past life experience that shows the two of them engaged in some sort of violent conflict. One of them is the victim and the other the aggressor. If this person completes reliving that incident and reaches a sense of forgiveness, his or her attitude towards the other protagonist changes in the positive direction. That is in itself impressive and interesting. However, what is quite extraordinary is that at exactly the same time a significant change in the same direction often occurs in the other person, whose attitude is also radically changed. This can happen even if there was not a conventional communication or connection of any kind between these two persons.

These observations suggest that the belief in reincarnation is not a product of wishful thinking or some superficial metaphysical speculation; it is clearly a pragmatic concept, reflecting an effort to understand the complexity of these experiences that spontaneously emerge in non-ordinary states. Psychiatrists who deny that the phenomenon of reincarnation is a fascinating and legitimate field of study are obviously not very familiar with non-ordinary states of consciousness and, more specifically, with the complex and fascinating nature of karmic experiences.

DiCarlo: Would you say your cartography of the psyche tracks the perennial philosophy-the inner teachings which all religions throughout the ages seem to share? Does it correlate with the experiences of saints and mystics who have peered into these other domains?

Grof: Very much so. I have written a book called The Cosmic Game that specifically explores the insights from non-ordinary states of consciousness regarding the “Big Picture” of life. The book shows the deep similarities between the experiences that many people have reported to us in our research and those described by different systems of perennial philosophy. The book also shows how the insights into the nature of reality — matter, time, space, consciousness — strikingly converge with the concepts that characterize what has been called the new or emerging paradigm in Western science. In other words, the insights that people get into the nature of the cosmos in non-ordinary states are in fundamental conflict with the old, Cartesian-Newtonian world view, but are very similar in nature to descriptions that we find in quantum-relativistic physics and other avenues of the new paradigm.

DiCarlo: Could you briefly state what some of these insights have been?

Grof: For example, the Newtonian understanding of the world is that matter is indestructible, objects are solid, time is linear, and space is three-dimensional. The universe is a totally deterministic mechanical system, where everything is connected through chains of causes and effects. In the worldview of traditional science, the material world exists objectively in an unambiguous way. The observer reflects more or less accurately this “objective reality”, but his or her presence does not change anything – the world is uninfluenced through the act of observation.

In non-ordinary states, the material world is experienced as a dynamic process where there are no solid structures and everything is a flow of energy. Everything is perceived as patterns of energy and behind patterns of energy there are patterns of experience. Reality appears to be the result of an incredibly precise orchestration of experiences and the observer plays a very important role in the creation of the universe. This is exactly the picture that is now emerging from various areas of new paradigm science.

It has become apparent that consciousness has a very fundamental role in the cosmos. It is not a side-product of inert, dead, and inactive matter that somehow appeared in the universe more or less accidentally after billions of years of evolution. Consciousness and creative intelligence permeate all of nature and the entire universe has an underlying master blueprint. This is also an image that comes very close to the mystical worldview and to the understanding that one finds in the Eastern spiritual philosophies.

DiCarlo: So you would be in agreement with Willis Harman’s M-3 metaphysical assumption, that consciousness is primary, that it existed before matter?

Grof: Very much so, in view of my own findings, it is the only perspective that makes any sense. As I briefly mentioned earlier, in transpersonal states of mind, one can subjectively experience identification with other people, with animals, with plants, and even with inorganic materials and processes. Everything that one can experience in the everyday state of consciousness as an object, has in the non-ordinary state of consciousness a subjective correlate.

This shows that the psyche and consciousness of each of us is, in the last analysis, commensurate with “All-That-Is”, because there are no absolute boundaries between the bodyego and the totality of existence. In this sense, we can experience ourselves as anything between the bodyego and the totality of cosmic consciousness, or the creative principle itself. That is very reminiscent of the message of the Upanishads, “Thou Art That” ( You are Godhead, identical with the creative principle of the universe).

There exists substantial evidence that consciousness is not a by-product of matter, an epiphenomenon of the neurophysiological processes in our brain, but a primary attribute of existence. The material reality is a creation of cosmic consciousness. To use modern terminology, the world we live in is “virtual reality”, created by the technology of consciousness. In the course of this century, quantum-relativistic physics has seriously undermined the belief in the tangible and unambiguous nature of our material reality. It has thrown a new light on the ancient Buddhist idea that form is emptiness and emptiness is form. In the subatomic analysis, matter in the usual sense of the word, disappears and what remains is pattern, relation, mathematical order — elements which we would certainly associate with consciousness rather than matter.

DiCarlo: Would you suggest that the transpersonal domains of the psyche which you describe, are other-than -physical realities, with a life and vitality of their own? That independent of the person who may be perceiving them, these domains of experience exist with their own inhabitants, their own natural laws and their own phenomenon?

Grof: Traditional science claims in a very authoritarian way that the material universe which we experience through our five senses, is the only existing reality. And if we experience other realities, such as historical or archetypal elements of the collective unconscious, these are seen as illusory experiences derived from the perceptions and memories of this world. In other words, transpersonal experiences are fantasies or hallucinations. This position is presented as an evident scientific fact that has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt, but a closer examination clearly shows that it is an unfounded metaphysical assumption. Modern consciousness research actually has brought ample evidence that there are other experiential dimensions of reality with specific and demonstrable characteristics. To borrow an analogy from electronics, material reality is just one “holographic cosmic channel”. There are other “channels” that are equally real or unreal as this one.

DiCarlo: Would you also be in agreement with people such as Robert Monroe who has reportedly explored different dimensional levels of reality in his “out-of-body” experiences?

Robert Monroe has developed some very effective means of inducing non-ordinary states of consciousness, with special emphasis on those that are conducive to out-of-body experiences. In non-ordinary states, the sharp difference between what is “real” and what is “unreal” tends to disappear. Our ordinary material world appears less real and the world of the archetypal beings and other aspects of the transpersonal world become very convincing and believable. Careful study reveals that they are more than fantasies or hallucinations. Once we realize that in both instances we are dealing with “virtual realities”, the distinction between what is “real” and what is derived becomes rather arbitrary. In view of all that we have discussed earlier, at least some of the experiences that Robert Monroe describes represent legitimate and relevant dimensions of existence.

DiCarlo: What would you say is the new image of the human being that is emerging from your research and also from the new sciences?

Grof: The traditional point of view of Western materialistic science is that we are Newtonian objects, made up of atoms, molecules, cells, tissues and organs, that we are highly developed animals and biological thinking machines. If we seriously consider all the data amassed in the last few decades by modern consciousness research, we discover that this point of view is incorrect, or at least incomplete. It is just one partial aspect of a much more complex picture. It can be maintained only when we suppress all the evidence from parapsychology and the study of non-ordinary states of consciousness, such as mystical , psychedelic, and near-death experiences, or trance phenomena and meditation. In all these situation, we can also function as fields of consciousness which can transcend space, time, and linear causality.

Quantum-relativistic physicists have a definition of sub-atomic matter and also of light that combines in a paradoxical fashion two seemingly incompatible aspects of these phenomena. This is the wave-particle paradox described by Niels-Bohr’s principle of complementarity. To understand the nature of subatomic matter or light, you have to accept that they are phenomena which can have characteristics of both particles and waves. These are two complementary aspects of the same phenomena and each of them manifests under different circumstances.

We are now discovering that something similar applies to human beings. We are Newtonian objects, highly developed biological thinking machines, but we are also infinite fields of consciousness that transcend time, space, and linear causality. These are two complementary aspects of who we are and each of them manifest under different circumstances, the first in the ordinary state of consciousness, the other when we enter a non-ordinary state of consciousness.

DiCarlo: In your work, you discuss “spiritual emergencies”. What are they, and how are these episodes dealt with in the old paradigm of psychiatry?

Grof: The most important thing is to realize that traditional psychology and psychiatry do not make a distinction between a mystical experience and a psychotic experience. From a traditional point of view, all forms of non-ordinary states of consciousness-with the exception of dreams where there is a certain tolerance-would be interpreted as pathological phenomena. Strictly speaking, Western psychiatry has pathologized the entire history of spirituality.

Transpersonal psychology, on the other hand, is interested in spirituality, which is something that you find in the mystical branches or in the monastic branches of the great religions. Spirituality is based on direct experience of the transpersonal realms or “numinous” dimensions of reality, either in terms of the Immanent Divine or the Transcendental Divine, as we discussed earlier. “Numinosity” is a word that C.G. Jung used in lieu of such expressions as religious, sacred, or mystical that might be confusing and have often been misunderstood.

At the cradle of each major religion are direct spiritual or transpersonal experiences of the founders, saints, and prophets. Buddha meditating under the Bo tree experienced the onslaught of Kama Mara, the master of the world illusion, and his terrifying army. The Koran and the Moslem religion were inspired by the “miraculous journey of Mohammed”, a visionary experience during which he was guided by archangel Gabriel through the seven heavens, the paradise, and the infernal regions of Gehenna. Similarly Jesus, according to the Bible, had a powerful visionary encounter with the devil during which he was exposed to his temptations.

Both the Old Testament and the New Testament abound in descriptions of transpersonal experiences reflecting connection and communication with God and with angels. We have seen many similar experiences in the holotropic breathwork sessions, in psychedelic therapy, as well as during spontaneous psychospiritual crises (“spiritual emergencies”). We could add to the list St. Theresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Anthony, and many other Christian saints and Desert Fathers, as well as Ramakrishna and Shri Ramana Maharshi-they all had powerful visionary experiences of one kind or another.

According to traditional psychiatry, all these people would be seen as psychotics or people suffering from some other serious psychiatric condition. We actually have many psychiatric articles and books that discuss which psychiatric diagnosis would be most appropriate for the founders of various religions, their prophets, and saints. Franz Alexander, a famous psychoanalyst and founder of psychosomatic medicine, even wrote a paper entitled Buddhist Meditation as an Artificial Catatonia, putting spiritual practice into a pathological context.

Similarly, anthropologists argue whether shamans should be viewed as hysterics, epileptics, schizophrenics, or maybe ambulant psychotics. Many people who have transpersonal experiences are automatically treated as psychotics, people suffering from a mental disease, because psychiatrists do not make a distinction between a mystical experience and a psychotic experience.

The concept of spiritual emergency suggests that many episodes of non-ordinary states of consciousness that are currently diagnosed as psychoses and treated by suppressive medication are actually crises of transformation and spiritual opening. Instead of routine suppression through drugs, we should give these people support and guidance to help them through these experiences. When properly understood and properly guided, these states can result in emotional and psychosomatic healing and positive personality transformation.

DiCarlo: So far from being a sign of illness, such episodes presage unfoldment of our true spiritual nature, allowing for the full expression of that aspect of who we are?

Grof: Yes, my wife Christina and I wrote a book The Stormy Search for the Self, in which we expressed our belief that the possibility of spiritual emergence – spiritual opening, growth, and development – is something inherent to human nature. And that the need for spiritual experiences represents a very strong force in human personality. Andrew Weil expressed a similar opinion in his book the Natural Mind ; he suggested that our need for the transcendental experience is a force that is more powerful than sex. If you look back at human history, you will find that many people have invested enormous amounts of energy in the spiritual quest .

They have also made tremendous sacrifices for this purpose — the sacrifice of material possessions, professional careers, as well as of personal and sexual life. In transpersonal psychology, the impulse toward spirituality is viewed as a very natural and very powerful drive in human beings. In Western culture, we have lost all socially sanctioned contexts in which people can experience non-ordinary states of consciousness and have spiritual experiences. Our attitude toward spirituality is certainly peculiar. There is a bible in every motel room and even leading politicians pay lipservice to God; but if a person would have a powerful spiritual experience in the church, an average minister would send them to a psychiatrist.

DiCarlo: Would you say that someone has to have this contact with the transpersonal to shift their world view? Can a person change their world view simply by reading a book that causes them to change their beliefs about the way things are?

Grof: You generally will not convince people, particularly Westerners, about the significance of the spiritual dimension just by giving them books to read. The critical factor in a genuine spiritual opening will probably always be a direct personal experience, since it is very difficult to describe the spiritual dimensions in a way that is meaningful. The obvious parallel that comes to mind is sexuality. It would be very difficult to explain to a pre-adolescent what sexual orgasm is like, convey how important sexuality is in adult human life and why, or to discuss the difficulties that might be associated with sex. They would not be able to understand, since they do not have an experiential frame of reference. But once the person has a sexual experience, there comes an instant understanding of that entiree domain.

However, there are many people who go through spiritual emergence in a much more subtle way than the one we describe in our book, The Stormy Search for The Self. William James calls such a gradual opening “the educational variety”. It can begin by reading some books and hearing some lectures, attending spiritual groups, and undergoing some subtle forms of transformation in meditation and other spiritual practices.

DiCarlo: Abductions by extraterrestrials, encounters with angels, Near-Death Experiences, past life memories..is there any underlying significance to these phenomena that ties them all together in your view?

Grof: From my point of view, all of these experiences represent different forms of contact with the transpersonal dimension of reality, with the historical and archetypal domains of the collective unconscious. Under favorable circumstances, they can have very positive consequences, but they are also associated with definite risks and pitfalls. Experiential contact with the archetypal domain in and of itself is not necessarily beneficial. It is possible to get inflated by identifying with an archetype, and it can leave you in a state of grandiosity.

For example, some people who experience identification with Jesus Christ , which is a very common experience in non-ordinary states, can end up believing that they are actually the historical Jesus. Another common pitfall is to experience one’s own divinity (in the sense of the Tat tvam asi of the Upanishads) and attaching this insight to one’s body ego (I am God and that makes me special). Many difficulties result from indiscriminate talking about the experiences with friends, family, or business associates who are unable to understand them. Unfortunately, in view of the present ignorance concerning non-ordinary states, this group also includes traditional psychiatrists.

In general, if we have transpersonal experiences, have the right context for understanding them, and are able to integrate them well, we are learning about important dimensions of reality and that has to be beneficial and enhancing. Fortunately, as the sophistication in regard to non-ordinary states is gradually increasing in general population and among professionals, more and more people will be able to experience the transpersonal realm with adequate support and under favorable conditions.

Excerpted from the book Towards A New World View: Conversations At The Leading Edge with Russell E. DiCarlo. The 377-page book features new and inspiring interviews with 27 paradigm pioneers in the fields of medicine, psychology, economics, business, religion, science, education and human potential. Featuring: Willis Harman, Matthew Fox, Joan Boysenko, George Leonard, Gary Zukav, Robert Monroe, Hazel Henderson, Fred Alan Wolf, Peter Senge, Jacquelyn Small, Elmer Green, Larry Dossey, Carolyn Myss, Stan Grof, Rich Tarnas, Marilyn Ferguson, Marsha Sinetar, Dr. Raymond Moody, Stephen Covey and Peter Russell.

Russell E. DiCarlo is a medical writer, author, lecturer and workshop leader who’s focus is on personal transformation, consciousness research and the fields of energy and anti-aging medicine. His forthcoming book is entitled “The Definitive Guide To Anti-Aging Medicine” (1998, Future Medicine Publishing). DiCarlo resides in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Copyright 1996. Epic Publishing. All Rights Reserved. Cell Anemiaal U3? ) (?¹

DiCarlo: You are a master in the art of Qi Gong, which is rapidly gaining in popularity in the United States. Let’s define our terms first, what is Qi Gong?

Cohen: Qi Gong is literally “chi” work, or working with chi. “Chi” can be defined as life energy and it has certain measurable components. For instance, life energy is often related to air and some people speak of the life breath. It’s probably related to the electrical messages that flow through the nervous system and perhaps to the electro-magnetic field that surrounds the body.

We know that the electromagnetic field varies according to an individual’s state of health and state of mind in the same way that the Chinese say the chi field varies according to state of health and state of mind. But nobody can say exactly what the chi is. Although there are measurable components, I don’t think we should reduce it to what can be measured and nothing more.

“Qi Gong” is working on the chi. It can be defined as a way of using posture, breathing, visualization and meditation along with gentle movements to cleanse, gather and circulate the chi, or life energy. Some people have compared it to biofeedback. Like biofeedback, a person becomes aware of, and thus learns to regulate or control processes in the body, such as heart rate, that are normally beyond conscious awareness and control.

For example, if a person has poor circulation in the hands and feet, there is a way of becoming aware of that area and using gentle movements to improve the circulation. As a result, the person will actually experience greater warmth in the hands and feet. This can be used to treat a variety of metabolic disorders as well. But that’s the basic definition of Qi Gong, using breath, posture, movement, meditation and visualization to cleanse, gather and circulate the chi. Generally for improving health and strengthening the immune system.

DiCarlo: How do most people experience chi or life force?

Cohen: There are four sensations, which of course are subjective states. In Chinese, they are known as the Chi Gan, meaning chi feelings, or chi sensations. These are the four signs that chi is flowing. One of them is warmth. The second one is weight, weight in the sense of feeling very grounded or rooted. The third one is vibration. Some people express this as a kind of tingling sensation. I should qualify this: there is good and bad vibration.

Tingling that feels like greater aliveness is the good kind of vibration. If it’s tingling from poor circulation and numbness then that’s not a chi sensation. That’s a sign of illness, or that an individual is standing or holding a certain posture that is cutting off the blood supply. So we have warmth, weight and vibration. The last one is termed expansiveness, a feeling that the dimensions of the body have changed as though you are not sure where the air ends and your skin begins. Or a feeling that your feet reach into the ground, or that your head reaches up into the heavens. These are the four sensations that students often experience, sometimes even early in their Qi Gong training. Often, first or second class they will have one or all of those sensations.

DiCarlo: Is chi mentioned in any other cultures aside from Chinese?

Cohen: All over the world. This is a universal concept. What’s unusual about the Chinese is that they are unique in having developed a systematic and very sophisticated way of purifying and accumulating chi for self-healing. But the concept of chi is found all over the world. An example in the Western tradition would be the Ruach, the divine breath with which God supposedly breathed into Adam to create life. We read in genesis that God breathed over the waters. That comes at the very beginning of our myth of creation, before God says, “Let there be light.” The ancient hebrews interpreted this to mean that breath or energy is the foundation of existence.

In classical Greek, chi is referred to as “pneuma.” It is called “prana” in India. The philosophy of yoga speaks a great deal about purifying and gathering the prana. The bushmen of South Africa talk of the boiling energy known as “Num”. In a way analogous to the Chinese, they say that “num” is stored in the lower abdomen and is made to “boil,” moving throughout the whole body when a person is healing. American Indians also have similar terminology. Every ancient culture in the world knows about this life energy.

DiCarlo: Is Qi Gong easily absorbed by the Western Mind?

Cohen: There might be some difficulties in translating philosophical concepts because of the history behind Chinese literature and the different connotations of words in Chinese or English. For instance there is no single word that captures all the varied meaning of the word “chi”. But in terms of practice, I don’t see any problem whatsoever. The nature of the human body is really the same. A Westerner practicing Qi Gong healing techniques is going to get the same benefit, at the same speed as a Chinese practitioner. The practices are very easily adopted by Western society.

DiCarlo: What are some of the benefits to the person who practices Qi Gong?

Cohen: On a very general level, improved health and vitality. There are some interesting studies in China which suggest Qi Gong turns the natural killer cells, the “NK cells” -which are the body’s first lines of defense against invading pathogens-into “smart missiles.” They go more quickly and accurately to anything foreign in the body. That’s one explanation they are using as to why Qi Gong seems to improve the immune system. There is also some literature from China which suggests that Qi Gong creates greater bone density, and perhaps makes bones less likely to be broken. It can possibly slow down the development of conditions such as osteoporosis.

We also know that Qi Gong causes a slowing of the brain waves, going from the usual distracted beta state, towards the greater focus and relaxation that is alpha and theta. This would be of great benefit to everyone in the west for reducing stress, or at least dealing more intelligently with stress so there is less damage to the body.

There is also a tendency towards brain wave synchronization, or coherent patterns in the brainwaves. This is an indication that the person can maintain a quiet and calm center in the midst of a storm. That, I think, would be very valuable for westerners, it might help prevent cardiovascular problems which we know are very much related to stress and lifestyle.

DiCarlo: What would you say is the ultimate goal of the practice of Qi Gong?

Cohen: Are you talking spiritually, or physically or both, or whatever impression I have?

DiCarlo: Both.

Cohen: On a physical level, I think it’s optimum health. I wouldn’t call it perfect health because that sets up the possibility of despair, or the feeling of not reaching one’s goals. I don’t believe there is such a thing as perfect health. But there is an optimum level of health for each person. That doesn’t mean total elimination of disease, although I think practicing Qi Gong helps one get over illnesses much more quickly, and gives one a much better fighting chance against many of the long term chronic and debilitating diseases that western medicine cannot cure. So the physical goal is optimum health and vitality.

On a spiritual level, it would be developing a feeling of harmony with nature, perhaps nature in both senses-one’s own inner nature, that is, self-awareness, and also the surrounding environment. A feeling of harmony and belonging. Certainly Qi Gong is an excellent cure for alienation.

One of my teachers use to say that by practicing Qi Gong and practicing some of the breathing techniques, you are taking the external world as air, into the body, and you are releasing it. You’re not treating it as a possession, but as a gift. And to the extent that one allows the easy interchange of the external environment into the body, and releasing it back into the external environment-to the extent that one can do that-one tends to feel spiritually in harmony with that environment. Changing the person’s breathing pattern, changes the person’s psychology and spirit. Whenever we feel removed or alienated, that is reflected as physical holding of the breath.

DiCarlo: How does Qi Gong relate to other American forms of exercise, such as jogging or aerobics?

Cohen: It’s compliments them. Of course it’s somewhat different. I think it is important for a person to have some form of aerobic practice and also do something to develop basic physical strength. But the Qi Gong exercises really specialize in “internal health’ and that’s where western calisthenic tradition has been lacking.

The Chinese poetically say that if you focus too much on the outside, that is, too much on muscular tone, complexion, appearance and so on, but neglect the internal health, such as one develops through the practice of Qi Gong, then “the outside becomes hard, but the inside rots.” So we need to compliment the aerobic and muscular training of western calisthenics, jogging and so forth, with the internal healing exercises of Qi Gong.

DiCarlo: How do we imbalance ourselves, or deplete the level of chi in our systems?

Cohen: This is sort of like asking me, “Why do people get ill?” I will summarize; obviously I don’t have time for a comprehensive response. First of all, the Chinese say that chi is part of a trinity of energies in the body. The lowest, or most yin form of energy is the sexual energy. The middle form is called chi, the uppermost yang form is called Shen or spirit. They say that if sexual harmony with one’s partner is lacking, the jing or sexual energy is lost, wasted and leads to illness. So this is one aspect of ill health that is not sufficiently dealt with in medical literature.

Sexual harmony is a key to health. The chi, in this model of the body, is wasted through excess, through not observing the rule of moderation, whether it’s excess eating, excess exercise-any kind of excess. Especially through excess talking. This is quite interesting. In the model of the three treasures, which I am presenting to you now, the way to conserve and accumulate chi in the body is to breathe quietly and slowly and to observe long periods of silence. That could be a very important piece of advice for many westerners, where we tend to suffer from an almost exclusive, left-brain verbal emphasis in our education.

The spiritual energy, Shen, is wasted or lost when we don’t spend enough time looking within. When we are so outward and material oriented. That’s one way of looking at why a person becomes ill.

The Qi Gong philosophy is very much in harmony with the philosophy presented by most holistic health practitioners. Lifestyle has a great deal to do with health or illness. Diet is extremely important also. In Chinese medicine, it is advised that one eat foods that are very high in energy but that do not take a lot of energy to digest. In other words, there is a recommendation to balance various food types but to avoid foods that are deep fried or cooked in heavy sauces or a great deal of oil because that would be difficult to digest and thus take energy away from bodily processes.

Lifestyle, diet, sexual and emotional relationships, getting a proper balance of exercise and rest-these are all important. Also, too much Qi Gong is probably worse than not doing enough. I’ve seen people who have developed Qi Gong diseases from going to extremes. There’s an unfortunate tendency in the west to think that if a little bit is good for you, then more must be even better.

Imagine if you applied that philosophy to medications or antibiotics. It’s not true. There is an optimal dose. As with any medication, you have to tailor the dose to the patient. So it’s important when a person practices Qi Gong that they find out what is the amount that helps them to improve their health and state of mind, and not assume that more of that is necessarily going to be even better. Again, moderation is seen as one of the keys to good health.

DiCarlo: In his book Encounters with Qi Harvard Professor Dr. David Eisenberg describes some extraordinary experiences with Qi masters, such as moving lanterns with Qi, lighting up a fluorescent bulb, even frying a pork chop. Do you have any similar stories?

Cohen: A few, but I must say that even in spite of the experiences I have personally had, I tend to be extremely skeptical of many of those stories. The Chinese have had a tendency since the third century BC-and probably even earlier than that-to exaggerate certain things in order to make a point. As an example, there are many anecdotes concerning the Buddha or concerning the early Taoist saints that are not meant to be taken literally, but which simply illustrate that the world is not as we conceive it. I tend to interpret the Qi Gong stories in that light.

Also, the Chinese often do not have the strictest protocols and controls in their science There is certainly some excellent Chinese science, but there is also some fakery, such as a master using his breath creating a fine stream of air to move an object which he is supposedly moving with his hand. So I need to know under what circumstances some of these fantastic events were demonstrated. I am not saying that they are impossible, I just have a healthy skepticism.

Nevertheless, I have experienced some things…I’ll give you one example. In 1971 I was in an advanced private, martial arts class with a famous T’ai Chi master. We both had boxing gloves on, and we were applying the principles of T’ai Chi in full speed combat. It was a cold winter day. The studio where I was studying had solid concrete floors and I had worn my hiking boots to the school. I had forgotten to bring some lightweight tennis shoes, which is what we normally wore when we sparred.

Naturally, I didn’t want to wear these hiking boots because they had a steel-reinforced toe. I was worried that if I accidentally hit my teacher, which had never happened, that of course this could injure him. So I was taking off my boots, and my teacher said, “What are you doing?” I replied, “I’ll just fight barefoot.” He said, “No, no no. Floor is cold. You probably not hit me anyway. Let’s just spar.” So I kept these steel-reinforced hiking boots on. Well, like anyone, even a T’ai Chi master can have an off day.

I suppose he was a little bit tired. We had an early morning class and he was up late the evening before. At one point I raised my left knee as though I was going to extend my left foot to kick him. He started bending down to block what he thought would be a left front kick, and I was already jumping in the air and couldn’t stop myself at that point. His head was moving straight down towards a flying front kick with my right foot. I hit him in the face with my steel reinforced toe full-force as his head was coming down. There was no way to stop it because his head was moving towards my foot.

I must have looked as though I was going to pass out. My face was totally white. Here was my teacher, a respected master and one of the gentlest, kindest people I had known and I thought that I had broken all of his teeth. So I stopped and he looked at me. He said, “We are timing this. We are sparring for three minutes. Time not up.” We continued sparring. Three minutes later we stopped, and I looked at him and said, “Are you OK?” He showed me his teeth and said, “At times like this, the chi helps.”

Meanwhile, the big toe, of my right foot-inside of a steel-reinforced hiking boot- swelled up so much that I still remember limping out of his studio. While the toe wasn’t broken, there was clearly a reversal of power. There was absolutely no damage to the teacher’s face. This is one of the extraordinary things I have seen in the use of chi for martial arts training.

In terms of chi in healing, I have also seen some extraordinary things. I do think there are physical explanations. There is a specialized aspect of Qi Gong called “external chi healing.” A practitioner projects chi to a client who is ill. Of course he would first diagnose the state of the person’s chi or life energy to find the places of imbalance. He would also take a case history and find out the symptoms that were present. After doing all of this, he would project specific types of healing chi directly into the patients body.

As a practitioner, I have personally witnessed some extraordinary results. I’ll give you one example. Though it’s not a healing, it stands out in my mind as a shining example of what chi can do. I was in Toronto in the early 80s giving a T’ai Chi workshop. One of my students asked if I would consider doing an external chi healing on a friend of his, a Chinese woman in her 30s who was very ill with cancer. The cancer had already spread throughout her body. It was in the lymph, it was in the liver, it was in the lungs. She had gone through the required rounds of chemotherapy and radiation.

At that time she was home, basically waiting to die. Her physician had told the family that she would not live the rest of the week. She was in absolutely extreme, excruciating pain. No matter what medications or morphines were given to her, it didn’t seem to reduce the pain. My friend asked me to consider working for her for several reasons. Not to cure her. They did not expect that to happen; nor did I, and that certainly wasn’t the result. But rather to help her reduce the pain, to help her experience a decent quality of life in the short time she had left and perhaps to lengthen the amount of time she had left. And also to help her pass on with more dignity and more ease.

We need to remember with all healing systems, including Qi Gong, that the healing occurs more often on the psychological, social and spiritual levels than on the physical condition. There is no healing system in the world, including traditional western medicine, that can claim to heal all conditions. But at the very least, external Qi Gong can enhance the quality of life. So with this woman, I administered about twenty minutes of external chi. When I started working with her, her respiratory rate was a quick pant, her resting heart beat was at about 110.

When I finished the twenty minute treatment, her breathing was normal, her heart rate was eighty and she began to cry. She said this was the first time that she was totally without pain in at least three or four months. She remained without pain for the next two weeks, up until the time she died. She passed over very peacefully and calmly. Even though she wasn’t physically cured, I consider this a profound example of what chi can do.

DiCarlo: How does this practice of projecting chi to another individual in Qi Gong relate to therapeutic touch or magnetic healing?

Cohen: There’s a very close connection. Many people have classified external chi healing as non-contact therapeutic touch. It’s very similar to the technique that Dolores Kreiger has developed and made popular with, an important difference: The external chi healer has a systematic way to train the purification and gathering of his or her own chi. The healer can increase the effectiveness of treatment based on an internal practice. I think that’s a tremendous advantage that external chi healing has over therapeutic touch. Also, external chi healing utilizes a specific system of health assessment (diagnosis). Furthermore, rather than relying almost exclusively on intuition in treatment, there are specific guidelines for how to create certain types of healing energy needed by the client.

DiCarlo: What researchers have produced the most compelling evidence of external chi healing?

Cohen: One published study at the National Research Institute of Sports Medicine involved sixteen rabbits whose left forearm bone were broken with a gap of three millimeters. There was a treated and untreated group studied. The researchers were measuring the rate of healing of the broken bones. They measured the bone density and they used other parameters as well to measure the rate of healing. They found that the group treated with external chi healed much more quickly.

There was also a study which demonstrated brain-wave synchronicity between a healer and a group of patients. Every time the healer went to a characteristic Qi Gong state-noted by high amplitude alpha waves with background theta waves-the same brainwave change would occur in the patients. I found that to be a very eloquent study.

Another good study took place at the Shanghai College of Traditional Chinese medicine, where mice were inoculated intravenously with B-16 melanoma cells. Those are cancer cells. They seemed to have been protected by external chi treatment, and I’ll read this for you, “as manifested by reduction of the number of metastatic nodules over the lung surface, significantly as compared to the untreated group.”

Researchers have also tested the pain-reducing effects of chi on animals. These animal experiments are very significant, because if they work on animals, then it dismisses the claim that some physicians have made in the past, namely that external chi healing is just the placebo effect and related to a person’s expectation and belief that they might get well. We assume that the animals in the studies don’t believe in the efficacy of chi healing!

There have been quite a number of experiments, including about 800 abstracts in English. There have been studies on tissue cultures, studies on the effect of external chi on human lymphocytes, and tumor cells from the same individuals. They have found that the chi stimulates the activity of the lymphcytes but destroys the tumor tissue.

DiCarlo: Could you comment on the work of people such as Valerie Hunt, Motayama and others who are attempting to come up with physical correlates of the human energy field?

Cohen: The work of those scientists is extremely significant. Motayama of course was one of the real pioneers, especially in looking at differences in skin conductivity, in looking at the end points of some of the energy channels, and also in looking at other physiological correlates of chi.

Unfortunately, the way the health care system is in the United States, unless we can produce some hard data and show measurable aspects of chi or chi healing, it’s going to be difficult to change both the insurance coverage for alternative health care providers and even more importantly, to change medical school education. I think that’s where a lot of the focus should be. The problem as I see it, is not so much at the highest levels of research or government.

I have met people with high positions at the National Institutes of Health. I’ve had students from various levels of government come into my workshops and they seem to be quite aware of the benefits of alternative medicine. At one healing conference I met with the former commanding general of the United States Army, Intelligence and Security. He came into one of my Qi Gong workshops. Although he is now retired, and is not officially representing the United States army in any capacity, the fact that someone from that high a military background should be very actively involved in complimentary medicine is extraordinary.

I think the real difficulty is the rigidity of mainstream, average physicians who never learned about these things in medical school. I am in strong support of research. I think we need a lot more of it, and to do that we need funding.

DiCarlo: How would you define the emerging field of energy medicine?

Cohen: “The effects of energy and energetic fields to enhance or perturb health.” This could include the effect of one human field on another, as in the external chi healing we spoke about. It could include the harmful effects of electromagnetism, or for that matter the healing effects of the earth’s natural electromagnetic field on your body.

Energy medicine is an apt description of where this new paradigm of medicine is going. We’re looking much more at the interaction between energetic fields, rather than on what we previously considered measurable phenomena-the discrete particles of biology and chemistry that could be seen under the microscope.

I think Dr. Elmer Green is correct when he suggests that, when you consider the ecological state of the world today and the difficulty or slowness of changing governmental environmental policies, it becomes all the more imperative for an individual to gain some control over their internal environment in order to dampen the harmful effects of pollution, electromagnetism and stress. So one of the promises of energy medicine is learning more about self-regulation techniques-ways of becoming aware of and regulating inner metabolic processes to improve health or to prevent harmful external influences from causing illness.

DiCarlo: In your view, what are the implications of all that we’ve discussed in terms of improving quality of life and also of human potential?

Cohen: The native Americans have this wonderful term for health, it’s “all my relations.” What they mean when they say that, is that we should learn to live in such a way that we feel at home in our environment. That we feel a sense of kinship, not only with our human relations, but with the earth itself, with plants, animals. I see that as very much a goal in Qi Gong healing, achieving that same state of mind.

Qi Gong and the study of energetic interactions can restore community. And I am using community in a very broad sense. Community not only among humans, but between humans and their natural environment. There are so many hidden things in our technological society that tend to disturb that harmony. It’s not enough to simply practice Qi Gong and think that is going to do the whole trick. Know about the effects of high tension wires, the effects of geomagnetic or sunspot activity on states of mind.

The journal Subtle Energies a couple of years ago had an article on a measurable connection between geomagnetic activity and crime. So there are many hidden variables in our environment and in our technology that can disturb the functioning of a healthy community. We need to learn about these things, know how to protect ourselves against harmful pathogenic influences, how to create change in our society towards health, community and caring,and we need to, of course, work on ourselves with practices like Qi Gong.

Excerpted from the book Towards A New World View: Conversations At The Leading Edge with Russell E. DiCarlo. The 377-page book features new and inspiring interviews with 27 paradigm pioneers in the fields of medicine, psychology, economics, business, religion, science, education and human potential. Featuring: Willis Harman, Matthew Fox, Joan Boysenko, George Leonard, Gary Zukav, Robert Monroe, Hazel Henderson, Fred Alan Wolf, Peter Senge, Jacquelyn Small, Elmer Green, Larry Dossey, Carolyn Myss, Stan Grof, Rich Tarnas, Marilyn Ferguson, Marsha Sinetar, Dr. Raymond Moody, Stephen Covey and Peter Russell.

Russell E. DiCarlo is a medical writer, author, lecturer and workshop leader who’s focus is on personal transformation, consciousness research and the fields of energy and anti-aging medicine. His forthcoming book is entitled “The Definitive Guide To Anti-Aging Medicine” (1998, Future Medicine Publishing). DiCarlo resides in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Copyright 1996. Epic Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

DiCarlo: Please describe the origins of the human potential movement… What was your involvement and what sparked your interest in the exploration of human potential?

Leonard: In the mid-60s, I was a senior editor at Look Magazine, one of the most prestigious and award-winning magazines of its day. I was also west coast editorial manager and I had done lots of award-winning feature articles on education, starting in 1956 with “What is A Teacher?” I did a piece in 1964 called “Revolution in Education”. In the last paragraph I said something about “human potential”. As a result, we must have received at least one hundred letters from readers, which essentially said, “That’s what we really need to do, focus upon the human potential.” It occurred to me put in a request to do an article on the human potential and my request was granted.

Those were the golden days of journalism. Look writers had total authority to do anything they wanted to do. So I began criss-crossing the country. When I was finished I had interviewed 37 experts on the subject of the human potential. Psychiatrists, psychologists, brain researchers-even theologians and philosophers. Not one of them said we were using more than 10% of our capacity. In later years, I came to realize that was a very conservative estimate-we’re using about 1% I would guess. Maybe less.

During the 7 months in which I was criss-crossing the country, I had heard something about Michael Murphy and this little institute called Esalen in Big Sur, California, the programs of which ran under the banner, “Human Potentialities.” When I finally had the opportunity to meet Michael, we hit it off immediately. We went to the house of a woman we both knew to have dinner. After we had left, we kept on talking, till three in the morning. We’ve been talking ever since. I met Mike February 2, 1965 and it changed my life.

He was really into the subject of human potential and we had what you might call a dovetailing of interests. I knew quite a bit about various social movements, such as the civil rights movement, I covered that story from Little Rock, right on through Selma and Ole Mist-the whole thing. I also knew a lot about brain research and behavioral psychology from the work I had been doing on this human potential article. Mike was very well versed on Eastern philosophy and religion, humanistic psychology and some of the more frontier developments of the day, such as biofeedback. So when we started exchanging stories, everything seemed to go together. It made a complete picture. So we just immediately started brainstorming, saying what could we both do and what should be done. A number of the events of that time indicated to us that some sort of transformation really wanted to happen. Of course these were the 60s when such things seemed imminent. So we would just toss out ideas, which I would scrawl down on a piece of paper and throw onto the floor. The accumulated paper looked like a snowstorm, we were throwing so many things. At one point I said, “How about this….we’ve got a civil rights movement and we’ve got a free speech movement…how about a human potential movement?” So I just wrote it down and threw it on the floor. I guess that was the beginning of it.

We started talking about the human potential movement almost jokingly. And that was about the same time the national media discovered Esalen. I never did a story in Look specifically on Esalen, because I thought, “Maybe I’m too close to this and maybe I shouldn’t do it. Maybe somebody else should do it.” Sure enough, by 1967 and 68, the media was in full force, and they picked up the term “human potential movement.” About four years later, Mike and I looked around and said, “My God, this is not what we had in mind at all.” In the beginning, like a child who is attracted to the brightest toy on the floor, the media was fixated upon the mixed baths, hot tubs and encounter groups. So they assumed that the human potential movement must have a lot to do with people getting into hot tubs and crying or yelling things at each other. So we said, “Let’s un-name this movement.” We told others there was no such thing as the human potential movement. But we found that it’s much harder to un-name a movement than it is to name it.

Over the years we have come to accept it, and actually it’s a wonderful term. What we had in mind was not just the emotional side of human experience. We had the idea of integral transformation-of mind, body, soul and heart- from the very beginning. So that’s how the human potential movement started.

DiCarlo: In light of the many years you have been at the leading edge of the human potential movement, I’m wondering if you can help put things into their proper persepctive. More specifically, how have the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s set the stage for the new paradigm which is now emerging?

Leonard: First of all, I must say that a lot of people don’t want to take a look back at the 60s. All the big 60s books really haven’t sold well. We still haven’t come to terms with that decade. I think that many people are still afraid of the 60s and the ideas that were presented. Some people think the 60s were a period in parenthesis-a decade that really didn’t count-when our whole culture suddenly got out of step. But I don’t think that’s true. I think the activity of the 60s was a very much needed and long overdue reaction and at certain times over-reaction, to years, decades, and centuries of repressiveness and injustice. In think what the 60s basically did was set the agenda for necessary change that we still haven’t gotten around to. And I’m hoping the 90s can be a time when we get to work on that agenda.

Look at all the things that came up in the 60s-the whole idea of ethnicity, race, of gender. The women’s movement. The gay movement. The environmental movement. All of those things began in the 1960s. There was a sudden sunburst before the powers-that-be reacted by clamping down on much of it. There was a counter-60s movement. To use a body metaphor, it is true that many of us during those years were kind of short sighted, but we were literally ahead of ourselves. And a lot of things were done without too much wisdom. But it was a very euphoric and crazy time that clearly and powerfully set the agenda for change.

The 1970s, on the other hand, was a period of what I would call “cultural diffusion.” The ideas that had been circulating around college campuses-mostly in certain enclaves on both coasts but also scattered throughout various pockets in the country-began to diffuse throughout the whole culture. Some of the ideas were better absorbed than others. The sexual revolution, according to Yankalovich surveys in the late 70s, was the most pervasive. Certain sexual practices that were only being promulgated by hippies and the like on the West Coast began to show up wildly throughout the culture- in Des Moines and in Texarcana-wherever you wanted to look. Many have said, “Well, these ideas were co-opted. They have lost some of their fine purity.” Well, that’s OK. Compromise is part of change. But there was a tremendous cultural diffusion.

Also, the 70s was a period of rationalization and commercialization of a lot of good practices. Organizations like “est” took ideas from gestalt therapy and Zen, and so forth, and packaged it very neatly and put it out in hotel ballrooms. I think those organizations probably did more good than harm. But here again, it was a little too pro-forma, it was a little too pat. Of course some people who wouldn’t go to Esalen might go to a hotel ballroom where they could still wear their coat and tie where they could see there was another world and that other possibilities could exist. And we really are a bizarre culture in not recognizing these other spiritual possibilities that have been our birthright since the human race became human. Humankind emerged on this planet with vision, with tremendous vision of an unseen world, of a spiritual realm that held meaning and guidance for us all. The consequences of lack of vision are quite clear- “Where there is no vision the people perish” as the bible says. So all these things were part of the cultural diffusion. Some of these new, “old” learnings, which go way back yet seemed new in the 60s, spread. Ideas found in Eastern philosophies were introduced in the 1960s and spread widely in the 1970s.

Then in the 1980s, it continued spreading quietly, but at the same time, there was a tremendous backlash against it. The twelve years of Reagan and Bush presented much opposition. They were very, very opposed to many of the ideas. Of course, a lot of democrats were also opposed to the ideas of the 60s. It’s interesting, Reagan was elected to be governor of California on the basis of his promise to clobber the University of California. That was his primary platform. And he did it. He held back the free-speech movement. The Reagan administration sent helicopters to drop tear gas not only on the university but all over Berkley. I was over there during the People’s Park uprising and I was gassed-we were all gassed. All the Look people were trapped right in the middle of the campus. We were the only ones there on The Terrace who were watching this battle unfold beneath us. It was very bizarre. But there was that kind of backlash. So the movement entered into national politics in the 80s.

Now, during the 90s I think we are kind of teetering on the brink. We can go forwards or backwards, but I feel necessity will force us to realize that the old ways are simply not working. That repressiveness is not the answer. On the other hand, total license is not the answer either. Total freedom to do anything, the freedom to buy assualt weapons or do anything one wants, doesn’t work. There has to be some kind of long-term, disciplined practice. There has to be this understanding that that’s the way things work. I think there are quite a few hints that’s now happening.

DiCarlo: Do you think the 60s represented a kind of a “dress rehearsal” for the true transformation taking place in the 90s?

Leonard: The 60s certainly put the agenda for transformation up there. Now we’ve got to do it. There is so much more transformative activity going on now than in the 60s. Everybody thinks the 60s was radical. What was considered radical back then is kindergarten stuff compared to what’s going on now.

DiCarlo: What are some of the more hopeful signs that you see that we will move forward?

Leonard: A lot of things…. For example, never before in human history has so much of the great wisdom teaching of all ages and all cultures been so available throughout the world. It really is a global village. You can go to the corner drugstore and buy the Tibetan Book of The Dead. The easy availability is something new. Even a thinker as wise as Hagel did not have as much access to Oriental thought as an average college student does today. And of course a lot of information is being spread throughout the world via the satellites, through the communications network-the bad as well as the good. And that is something new. Very revolutionary. It contributed towards the downfall of communism. Havel said rock-and-roll caused the Berlin Wall to go down. That was his quote.

Another significant development is all the understanding we’re getting now on human evolution. You see new headlines constantly about the new male Lucy, the early ancestor of our species, for example, and the understanding of the power of the evolutionary process. One of the hallmarks of the project that Mike and I are working on, is the idea that evolution has not ended. The Future of The Body is about the next step. We are still evolving and I think things are really moving.

We have such a rich legacy of positive accomplishments. Just consider the Eskimo, Aruba tribesman, East Indian, Japanese Samurai, Christian Desert Fathers, the shaman, the Penitenti, Victorian Novelists, 20th century scientists…consider all the different kinds of governments, governance and philosophies that we have had. Embedded in this flamboyant richness, we’ve always had hints of further evolution. But now, all this diversity is becoming accessible everywhere on the earth. No one living before the mid-20th century-even the privileged king or monarch or greatest scientist of the time-has had as much access as we do today to the descriptions of metanormal capacities in people. Never before was there a medical science that could precisely measure the physiological changes produced by transformative practice. At no other time have so many people practiced so many different disciplines for growth and transcendence.

In public meeting places you find people practicing Sufi exercises that were once reserved for initiates. This stuff is really happening. Shamanic practices of Stone Age people are offered at workshops. It’s really spreading, more now than ever before. There’s a magazine called “Common Ground” published in the San Francisco area that has advertisements for literally hundreds of these activities. It is incredible. In the 60s this was simply not available. We have much, much more of this paradigm-busting lore now than we had back then. It’s not even close-it’s a thousand times more than what we had in the 60s.

Psychoneuroimmunology has had a powerful influence in the medical profession and is showing that emotions and feelings influence every aspect of bodily functioning. Ideas of the mind-body connection grace the covers of the news magazines now…The Bill Moyers Special, “Healing and the Mind” has had a very powerful influence on a relatively large audience. Not like Roseanne of course, but it doesn’t take all the people to make changes. It takes some of the people who are controlling the instruments of power, like those in the media.

A lot of experiments are going on, even though mainstream science is very loathe to admit it, which demonstrate that the minds of individuals can influence living tissue at a distance. They can influence bacteria, plants and other human beings. And these have been demonstrated in good, rigorous experiments, where the protocols and the procedures are much more closely monitored than they would be in a normal scientific experiment, where people are not so suspicious.

The anthropologists and sociologists have made so much progress too, in showing how our facial expressions, the way we walk, the way we move, how these things are influenced by culture. And how we can break out of these cultural traps.

Such martial arts as aikido, which I think is transformative, is now spreading throughout the world. It is a very transformative martial art that is based upon love and harmony. And that’s a very radical idea.

DiCarlo: Qi Gong also..

Leonard: Qi Gong and T’ai Chi continues to spread.

Very quietly the shift is occurring.

Also, the attitude of the media towards things such as Esalen has greatly shifted since the 1960s. In the very beginning before they knew what was happening, there were some wonderful articles about Esalen. Then by the 70s everybody who wrote about Esalen would talk about “touchy-feely” things while sticking their tongues in their cheeks. There was so much sticking of tongues in the cheeks that on Madison Avenue they had to develop a special operation to plug up the holes. But now, I have a whole press kit of articles that were written in 1987 about Esalen and every one of them is favorable. Part of the favorable response was simply a celebration of survival. Esalen endured and that’s pretty good. Nobody expected that. And when it hit its 30th birthday in 1992, there were even more favorable articles. It’s almost as if it’s now in the mainstream, an edge of the establishment. Recently Vogue and the New York Times all had very nice articles about Esalen. Today, Esalen is packed-you can’t even get in. So very, very quietly these “new/old” ideas are integrating into the very fabric of our society. It’s about something that appears to be almost essential to humanity. Without vision, without the understanding that there is the realm of the spirit that can give us guidance, that can give us meaning to life, I don’t think we can do anything. Life that is just consuming is totally an empty life. You can never get enough of what you really don’t want.

DiCarlo: Speaking of this realm of the spirit-Do you think there are beings that exist on different levels of reality that somehow guide the unfoldment of human potential?

Leonard: Well, I don’t think there is any question. What an impoverished universe it would be if what we see with our senses, and what we can pick up with our instruments of science represented all that there is in existence. Before the understanding of radio waves anybody who said you could hear a message from someone far away would have been labeled a kook. Are we arrogant enough to say that now our instruments have picked up all the emanations of life that exist? Of course there are more! Wherever you go, there is always more. And I don’t know what they are. I am not one of those who follows the idea of aliens and angels, but I would by very surprised, in fact, it’s unthinkable to me that our science and our senses have now picked up all the forms of life or energy that exist. There’s no question about it.

In my own L.E.T. work, Leonard Energy Training, we do exercises that are absolutely reliable, where average, untrained folks can wander around the room with eyes covered with cloth so they cannot see. When I clap my hands, the great majority of these people can point to the location of their partner who might be anywhere in the room or even outside the room. It takes a little induction to get people ready for this. One half hour-that’s all. But this is now routine. This is not special. This is not extraordinary. This is routine. We call this, “The Synchronization Process”.. I describe it briefly in the back of my book, The Silent Pulse.

So obviously, there is some kind of energy there that is not in the electromagnetic spectrum. We don’t want to be electro-magnetic chauvinists you know. There’s got to be more to the world than the electro-magnetic spectrum.

But there’s no question, there are other beings. There have got to be.

DiCarlo: Do you think scientists who are attempting to map and measure these other dimensions of “subtle” energies are heading in the right direction?

Leonard: Yes. Many years ago, myself and my ex-wife went to the University of California at Davis and were measured as we attempted to move our life energy from the right to the left hand. I still have the graphs. They were picking up electrical potentials off the back of each hand, and just by intention alone…we would say, “move energy right” and you would see the pulsations going up, up up, above the mid-line on the graph. Then we would say, “now bring the energy to the left” and you would see the line on the graph go down and over to the other side. Now, how is that done? I don’t know.

So I think, yes, let’s try to measure these things. You have to keep trying or else you’re not a real scientist. You’re not a scientist on the edge of discovery. I think it’s a wonderful idea.

DiCarlo: Could you elaborate on the integral practice for the development of human potential you have developed with Michael Murphy?

Leonard: Mike and I have written a book called The Life We Are Given. In a sense it is the follow upto Michael’s, The Future of The Body but it can stand totally alone. You might say that it is a book of instruction for the average person, which tells them what they can do to begin an integral transformative practice. Integral means, to integrate “mind, body, soul and heart.” Transformative mean that it’s based on positive change. Practice is a wonderful word, meaning something you do on a regular, disciplined basis. Not primarily for the goodies you get out of it, but primarily for the sake of doing it. A practice is the path you walk. You do it for its own sake. Paradoxically, the people who follow a practice for its own sake are the ones who get the most extraordinary results.

In part three of The Future of The Body Michael posits that the best way to achieve metanormal capacities, of perception, communication abilities, vitality, volition, etc. is through integral transformative practices. So for two years, throughout most of 1992 and 1993, we ran an experimental class. There were 33 people in the first group and 30 in the second group. We met for just two hours every Saturday but everybody had a number of commitments, things that they had to do every week. We kept very close statistics. We also had affirmations as to positive changes in their life and especially in their bodies. That’s something a lot of human potential workshops and experiments don’t do. They don’t keep close statistics which helps make things more understandable. We are offering a way for the average person to embark on this practice, just through reading this book and getting together with other folks.

DiCarlo: So this is a step-by-step methodology for individual transformation?

Leonard: Well, we have developed a step-by-step methodology for integral transformative practice. By doing that-and you can’t be sure-the odds are very good that you will get some positive transformation, because almost everybody, especially in the second cycle in 1993, got some very, very significant, positive changes. The amount of change is really quite spectacular. All sorts of wonderful changes in their body, some of which would have to be called metanormal and extraordinary.

DiCarlo: What would be some of the key elements of this practice?

Leonard: First of all, before we started these classes, I developed a less than 40 minute “kata”. Kata is just a convenient term in the martial arts which simply mean “form”. It’s a specific form where you go through a certain series of moves, always in the same sequence.

We asked that everyone in the course perform this kata at least 5 days a week. Some people did this seven days a week. It takes only 40 minutes because from the very beginning we wanted to make this a “householders path”. That is, a practice that can be engaged in by people who have jobs and a family. Not just people who live in a monastery or go on a retreat. So we wanted to do something that was feasible, and that was an important part of the experiment. These people all had jobs and families of sorts-they had a life other than this practice. But by doing the practice they got really remarkable results.

We asked all the participants to attend the class punctually and regularly. Also, we asked that everyone do at least three hours of aerobic exercise every week, in no increment less than 30 minutes. Everyone was also asked to be conscious of everything they ate, and a very low fat diet was recommended. We also recommended strength training but that was not absolutely required. We asked that everybody stay current in their emotional relations with all the people in the class, the teachers, and the people in their lives. We also did some emotional group work in the class, but we allowed people to do whatever they needed to do to handle that and report on it. Staying current in other words. Not letting things build up. Keeping the emotional information flowing to the appropriate people.

We also had affirmations. Everyone made four affirmations near the beginning of the class. These affirmations were written in the present tense, and went something like this, “I George Leonard, intend to see that the following circumstances have occurred by November 21, 1992.” Then, the rest is written in present tense, and for affirmation number one, we asked people to do things that are normal-not metanormal by any means. In other words, something that if you just did what you were supposed to do, you would achieve it and nobody would be surprised. It would be quite understandable through all the canons and concepts of present day science and medicine. For example, a person might affirm in writing, “My waist measures 32 inches” whereas it might measure 34 inches in the beginning.

All participants fill out a record of their affirmations, which is kept in a file. At the end, on November the 21st using this example, they would make note of their progress. If they have really watched their diet, and if they have done the aerobic exercises and perhaps the strength exercises, no one should be surprised that they have achieved this intended outcome.

The second affirmation for the first year was what we call, “exceptional”. Something that could still be explained by modern, mainstream science, but which would be an exception. Such as, “I measure 5 foot 6 inches” and your measurement right now is 5 foot 5 inches. Well, to grow an inch at age forty is kind of unusual isn’t it? I think most people can grow about a third of an inch or a half of an inch just by improving their posture. But to actually grow measurably a whole inch would be kind of exceptional.

We rated people on a scale of zero to ten to see how well they achieved their affirmations. We tried to make it as objective as possible with measurements. We didn’t restrict it to the objective because that would be too limiting, but we had people make it objective as much as possible. In other words, if a person were affirming an improvement in eyesight, we asked them to go to an eye doctor and have the eyes measured and have a record of it in the beginning and again, eleven months later. Incidentally, in that particular case we got remarkable results.

The third affirmation was the metanormal, something that could not be explained by traditional science and something that rarely happens to people. For example, a metanormal affirmation might be to grow two inches. And we got fascinating results. In fact, during the 1993 program, the success in achieving affirmation number three was 6.67 on a scale from zero to ten.

The fourth affirmation was the same for everybody, “My entire body is balanced, vital and healthy.” We wanted to cover this base because we didn’t want someone to achieve an unusual metanormal state at the expense of their health and balance. And that was one that we really excelled at with an 8.2 overall improvement in health on a zero to 10 scale.

Taking a look at all this gave us some ideas for some very practical applications. We cannot solve our health care crisis in a financially viable way. It is impossible to do it no matter what method we use, as long as we continue to use our present method of medical technology, which is sickness based and relies upon expensive drugs and expensive technology. The only way we can make it work is through a radical change in lifestyle. And if we can change the lifestyle of a group of ordinary Americans, improving their health by 8.2 on a scale of 0 to 10, we can save hundreds of billions of dollars in this country. So it’s very practical.

So we asked that everyone fulfill their affirmations. In other words, they continued to speak their affirmations in various ways. In practice we used focused surrender, which was one of our best methods and inductions for achieving these meta-normalities.

DiCarlo: Focused surrender? What’s that?

Leonard: While writing The Silent Pulse , I noticed there seem to be certain magical moments in life, which I call periods of perfect rhythm, where everything seems perfect. If you go one way that’s exactly the right way and you’ll find something marvelous there; if you go the other way that’s the right way, and so forth and so on. These moments of perfect rhythm generally come in a period where you have concentrated very hard on something. You are really focused. After this period of intense concentration, you surrender. You let go of that which you were focusing upon. Focused surrender is a combination of these two actions.

There’s a big debate going on right now: Is the petitioned form of prayer, where an individual requests something specific, like a cure from an illness, more effective than accepting prayer, thanksgiving prayer, like “Thy Will Be Done”. There has been research studying the effectiveness of various kinds of prayer on various kinds of organisms. The debate is still open. Some people come down on the side, “Thy Will Be Done” as the best way to go about it. In other words, surrender.

Now what I have done-and I did this way back in the 70s-is to devise a way where you really get both. A combination of the two. And it’s really at the point where you surrender that magical things might begin to happen. Extraordinary things. What I call this is a “mental-material interface”. In Integral Transformation Practice training we have an activity where we sound a gong. As long as the participant can hear the gong, they are to focus with all their power on making whatever state they want to achieve absolutely real in their consciousness. This is real in the present moment in this universe, because your consciousness is a part of this universe. If you want to experience yourself as being an inch taller, you see yourself as an inch taller. That exists in your consciousness and it’s real. Take the example of the wiring diagram of a little radio. The radio itself is real. No one would dispute that since it is concrete and exists in three dimensions. Of course, if you drop it and step on it, it won’t work anymore. It’s broken. There’s also a wiring diagram. That’s real too, it’s just on two dimensions primarily. Now, how about the diagram as it exists in the mind of the inventor, of the person who works on that radio. Is that real or not? My argument is that these represent three different forms of reality, but they are all equally real.

So next, the person is instructed to follow the tone of the gong down into the void itself, into the nothingness. When it reaches that void and nothingness from which all things arise-the creative void-they completely let go of whatever they are envisioning. The way we do it, you are lying on your back and you hold your left hand up over your abdomen as long as you can hear the sound. If you can no longer hear the sound, drop it. Say, “I give up.” What we have found-and we can’t prove this-is that at the moment of surrender, the mental-material interface somehow clicks in. In other words, what was real in the mental realm, to some small extent becomes real in the material realm. Of all the methods we have tried, focused-surrender has turned out to be our most effective induction.

The great warrior works to achieve control, then acts with abandon. In aikido, I have worked and worked and worked on certain techniques, but when I’m being attacked, if I think about the techniques, I’ve had it. You have got to let go totally. Just let it happen. Achieve control, then act with abandon. Many great sports achievements, and many great achievements in the world, I think, result from the combination of the two.

DiCarlo: I like that because then you get a blend between personal will and perhaps Higher Will. There’s no conflict, just a creative dance between the individual and the universe.

Leonard: Boy, you’ve got it exactly. It’s not one or the other. The idea of focused surrender in which the mental and material can touch, individual will finally letting go to grace. As Mike said in his book, “The winds of grace are always blowing, you just have to raise your sails.”

DiCarlo: What sort of metanormal capabilities have manifested for some of the people?

Leonard: There’s one woman in her mid-40s whose grandfather on her mother’s side went practically blind from cataracts. This was before the condition could be treated through surgery, and this man could barely see. Her mother had the cataract operation in her 40s. This woman has three older sisters, and each of them had the cataract operation while they were in their 40s. It was an absolutely genetic condition. When this woman in the class had achieved the age of 42, she developed cataracts, which was noted in her yearly examination and she assumed she too would have the operation since one of the cataracts was near the middle of the cornea.

So she made an affirmation in the 1992 class that her eyes were free of cataracts. Unfortunately, when she went in for the first examination, she told the eye doctor. He scoffed at the idea. He said, “well, you can change some things, but cataracts you can never change.” Still, she was a good student and did that work and every time she did the kata she would take the palms of her hand and place them three or four inches from each eye, kind of stroking the eyes with the energy in the palms of each hand, saying, “My vision is clear. My eyes are free of cataracts.”

When time at the end of the 92 cycle came, this woman just couldn’t face going in for her eye exam because the doctor had been so certain the condition could not be healed without surgery. If you’ve ever wondered why people don’t achieve their potential, this is one example. The cultural pressure of the current paradigm is extremely powerful and is enunciated in so many different ways by the experts and the acknowledged authorities in each field.

Although the woman had given up on it , she continued doing the affirmation every time she did the kata, which was five times a week. Near the end of the second year of the program, she needed some prescription sunglasses and her old prescription was out of date. She went to the same hospital as before and after she had the exam she waited for the usual cataract lecture. The doctor said, “Do you have any inherited eye problems?” She responded, “Don’t you know? How about my cataracts?” “What cataracts?,” said the doctor. They were gone.

DiCarlo: That’s an incredible example of realized human potential. I’m wondering, how does this potential, which is inherently in us all, get blocked? You’ve already mentioned cultural pressures…

Leonard: Let me give you some examples…. You know how as schoolchildren, we all worried that we didn’t have enough ability. We weren’t sure that we were going to do well enough on the achievement tests. Well, I really believe that the biggest threat to the establishment is not underachieving, but rather it’s the threat of overachieving.

When I was covering education back in the 1960s, I was going around the country doing an article on programmed education. In fact, it was that same story , “Revolution in Education” that gave me the idea for the human potential story. It was in Roanoke, Virginia, where I had heard about this student at a local junior high school who had taken a simple programmed course on solid geometry home for a long weekend. He finished one semester’s worth of work over that period, Friday until Monday. Now do you think the school system would cheer about that?

DiCarlo: You would think they would marvel at the accomplishment..

Leonard: No, they thought, “what the hell do we do with this guy?” What do you do with the kids who come into first grade reading very fluently? The system is set-up to keep everybody in lock-step. Those who are not in lock-step are a threat to the system.

I think that humans natural tendency is to learn. We are learning animals. We are put here on this planet to learn. We are genetically endowed to learn a great deal over a lifetime rather than having to wait through the mechanisms of evolution, of mutation and selection and so forth. Because of this, changes can be made during one lifetime. But unfortunately, there is actually very little positive reinforcement, and much adversive conditioning which is opposed to people achieving their full potential.

DiCarlo: Would you say that it’s a control issue?

Leonard: Control?

DiCarlo: In so far as certain people in society wanting to control us in certain ways…

Leonard: I don’t think it’s any conscious control. In my book, The Transformation I offer the whole idea of the human individual as being a component of society as an example of one of the inventions of civilization. The first pyramid building gangs you might say. We specialize and standardize components so they are reliable and predictable. A true learner is none of those things. A learner is eternally surprising. Unpredictable. Not necessarily reliable to do the same job the same way every time. So the entire system works against the full development of human potential. The system works against learning. Our present school system actually set-up to stop the human organism from learning in a really radical and deep way.

To learn is to change. Education is a process which changes the learner. How much are we willing for our students to change in school? You know, they see, “Two plus two,” and before they have learned elementary addition they will just look at it with a blank expression on their face. After being taught they can say, “four.” And that is a change. So that’s definitely a learning. Our children are learning certain amounts of symbolic manipulation and the memorization of a bit of the common cultural material, but in learning to be a learner, and learning to create, in learning to love, in learning to feel deeply, there is a tremendous constraint against learning, if learning is any kind of significant change. And if learning is not any kind of significant change, then what the hell is it? In other words, if you don’t change after a learning experience, if you are not different from when the learning experience started, you have not learned much. Learning is not truly respected. Education as it is now constituted really works against learning in the deepest sense. You don’t want people to change deeply because it would be very worrisome to the system.

I have often thought about this: Let’s say that learning is done in segments. I am not sure that’s even the right way to do it, but if learning is done in segments in school, at the end of each segment, the teacher should not be necessary. In other words, the teacher should fade from prominence. Maybe one of the jobs of a teacher is to set the learners on a course of learning, and then gradually fade himself or herself, so that the last day, the students wouldn’t even notice the teacher there.

DiCarlo: That would be a switch..

We need to cultivate a real respect for learning. You know, people’s thought of the human potential movement does not normally include calculus. I think it does include calculus. Mike and I both feel that way. Another requirement we had in our Integral Transformative Practice Club (ITP), was that everybody would agree to read assignments and write essays. That doesn’t sound very New Age does it?

DiCarlo: Not at all…

Leonard: But that’s integral transformative practice-it’s across the board. We feel that to neglect any of those four aspects of being human-mind, body, heart or soul-is a big mistake. People will do things if they know why they are doing them. If they have some kind of vision as to why they are doing them. We need vision. Every viable culture and every successful individual needs at least two guardian angels-vision and practice. Both of those have been totally lost. They have become endangered species in the culture of the freeway and shopping mall.

Vision is given away to obsession with short term goals; practice is given away to the quick fix. “The One Minute Manager”, “Total Fitness in One Week”. Almost all “how-to” books; New Age books are mostly quick-fix books. And you don’t learn anything by the quick fix. It takes long-term regular practice.

There’s an old Eastern idea that “where there is no practice, nations fall into ruin.” I think we have to get the idea of long-term, regular practice for everybody, rather than “10 Easy Lessons” or “Fast, Temporary Relief”-all the slogans you hear in this culture.

Just take a look at the areas in which we have our biggest problems: the economy; health care; politics; pharmacology; crime; and environment, the most important one of all. Look at each of these. The factor that is common to each problem involves long term versus short-term. In all of those, we tend to do what seems best on the short term, but what we are really doing is losing the long term. Almost always, the short term is inimical to the long term. Sometimes you have to do both, but we’ve almost totally neglected the long term. So I think that factor, long term versus short term is something people need to take a look at.

When you adopt a practice, you’re in it for the long haul. You work, and work and work on a thing. You diligently keep practicing the same thing over and over again. You are not getting anywhere- or so you think. But you are getting somewhere. It doesn’t show itself. Then finally when it clicks in, you have this little spurt of apparent progress. But where did the learning take place? It took place on the plateau.

Just think about all those years people worked against the whole communist system. Then in a period of a few weeks, the Berlin wall goes down. Then a few months afterwards most of the eastern satellites had given up communism. Some said, “My God, change occurred very fast.” But in reality, that change was occurring over the last 20 or 30 years. The change occurred because of long time learning. And the learning occurs on the plateau. So if I have any message, I want to preach the plateau…you have to preach the plateau to young people. Just hang in there.

Excerpted from the book Towards A New World View: Conversations At The Leading Edge with Russell E. DiCarlo. The 377-page book features new and inspiring interviews with 27 paradigm pioneers in the fields of medicine, psychology, economics, business, religion, science, education and human potential. Featuring: Willis Harman, Matthew Fox, Joan Boysenko, George Leonard, Gary Zukav, Robert Monroe, Hazel Henderson, Fred Alan Wolf, Peter Senge, Jacquelyn Small, Elmer Green, Larry Dossey, Carolyn Myss, Stan Grof, Rich Tarnas, Marilyn Ferguson, Marsha Sinetar, Dr. Raymond Moody, Stephen Covey and Peter Russell.

Russell E. DiCarlo is a medical writer, author, lecturer and workshop leader who’s focus is on personal transformation, consciousness research and the fields of energy and anti-aging medicine. His forthcoming book is entitled “The Definitive Guide To Anti-Aging Medicine” (1998, Future Medicine Publishing). DiCarlo resides in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Copyright 1996. Epic Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

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DiCarlo: In your work you describe three eras of medicine: Era 1, Era 2, and Era 3. Using that as a framework, could you explain the emerging paradigm of medicine as you see it?

Dossey: I formulated this three era approach to medicine basically to make sense of all the therapies that are out there and to characterize the way that we define ourselves as human beings. If you start at the time when medicine first became scientific, which began in the decade of the 1860s and move forward from there, at least 3 different eras “shake-out” in terms of the nature of health-care and how we think about the nature of who we are.

Era 1, which began in the 1860s, is plain old mechanical medicine. It looks at the body and the mind as purely physical, as purely pursuing the blind laws of nature. The therapies that shake out of that approach are medications, surgery, radiation and so on. The body is not functioning properly, so the “doctor-mechanic” uses whatever tools of treatment are available to fix the problem.

In the 1940s, a different way of thinking about who we are emerged as people started talking about psycho-somatic diseases. This was the second era, Era-2, or what is today called “Mind-Body Medicine”. Originally, it suggested that negative thoughts can do bad things to the body, thus the term psycho-somatic disease. Now, this has been sort of turned on its head and we recognize that thoughts, emotions, attitudes and feelings can really be used to make people healthy. You can even make dreadful diseases go away by activating these positive emotions. An example of this is the scientific work of Dr. Dean Ornish in reversing coronary artery disease. So basically Era 2 is the impact of thought, feeling and belief within an individual.

DiCarlo: Would you say then, that television programs, with titles like “Healing and the Mind” and “The Heart of Healing” are basically rooted in Era 2 medicine?

Dossey: Almost totally Era 2. One of my frustrations with these types of TV programs is that they neglected a tremendous body of evidence which supports putting a third era on the table, Era 3, which I want to call “Transpersonal Medicine” or “Non-Local” medicine. This emerging era of medicine–although it has probably been around as long as human beings have been here–is contingent upon the ability of the mind to function non-locally. That is to say, the ability of the mind to function beyond the person, beyond the individual.

In Era 2, you are concerned about what your thoughts, feelings and attitudes can do to your body. Period. That’s what most of these television programs have centered upon, and that’s great. But there is compelling evidence, such as the evidence for the effectiveness of distant intercessory prayer–that the mind has some quality which allows it to reach out across space and time to affect the physical course of a distant living organism–whether that’s a human being or something else. So many people in the alternative health care movement think that Mind-Body medicine is just about as far out and exotic as the new model is going to get. But I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We need to begin to focus upon and acknowledge this emerging Era 3-type data which shows the ability of the mind to function at a distance–irrespective of the spatial separation from the object of its concern. We need to begin to ask questions about what this may mean.

Prayer is not the only body of available evidence which supports the ability of the mind to function at a distance. In the book, “Healing Words” I look at several categories, among which is transpersonal imagery. Most people think this is just the use of positive images to you do something nice for your body. That’s one definition and one use. But Dr. William Braud has shown that people who hold positive images of a distant person in a way that is caring, compassionate and prayer-like can actually bring about physical changes in that distant person.

So you see, we can differentiate three different categories or eras to define consciousness, and its relationship to the body which exists in space and time. Although my personal interest in the 1970s and 80s centered on Era 2, “Mind-Body” medicine, today, my interest has been captured by the emerging Era 3 medicine. There is a lot of neglected data that I want to make public. And secondly, I think there is more philosophical, spiritual, and practical “bang-for-your-buck” in this Era 3 medicine. Era 2 can still be explained based upon the chemistry and the anatomy of the brain and body. And you can still say, “So what? That’s great while you are alive, but take away the brain, and you’ve got nothing.” So there’s nothing more following death when the mind is confined to the brain. But in Era 3, the stakes are completely different. You can’t hold on to the idea that it’s all brain and body. If you honor this Era 3-type data, it is patently obvious that consciousness is capable of things that brains are incapable of. In other words, you cannot completely account for the workings of consciousness by studying the brain. This means there must be something about the psyche over and above the brain and the body. Working out the implications of all this has been my task.

DiCarlo: I’m wondering what might have sparked your interest in research the effects of prayer?

Dossey: As a child I was naturally curious. I grew up in a Protestant religious community in Central Texas where a lot of praying went on all the time. I was involved in that. At sometime or another I think that most people who pray wonder if their efforts are working, and ask themselves “Is it doing anything?” I was curious about that.

After I became a physician, I began to notice that some people got well even though no medical treatment had been rendered, except prayer. Sometimes these people had fairly dreadful diseases. So one wonders again, “Is the prayer operative? Did it do anything or is this one of those funny coincidences?”

I think many physicians have this sense of curiosity. I was propelled forward again when I discovered a 1988 controlled study out of San Francisco General Hospital which involved nearly 400 patients in the coronary care unit. The group that was prayed for appeared to do much, much better than the group which received no prayer. I went to the medical literature to see if there had been any previous studies involving prayer to support this. I was astonished to discover over 130 studies in this general area showing that prayer really does something remarkable–not just in human beings but in a great many other living things, from bacteria and germinating seeds, to rats and mice and so on.

So it was a curiosity which propelled me to the discovery of scientific data in the area of the prayer and its observable effects.

DiCarlo: What would you say has been the essential finding of your research?

Dossey: The essential message is that belief in prayer is no longer just a matter of faith. We’ve always said, “You can believe in this stuff if you want to, but you are on thin ice and shaky ground. It’s no longer just a matter of faith. There is overwhelming evidence that if you take prayer into the laboratory and subject it to testing, you can show that it works. So, that’s the big news. This information has been marginalized and it is practically unknown, even to physicians. It is not taught in medical schools. But it’s out there. Through my work I hope to bring this information forward, so that it can be placed out on the table for discussion and dialogue.

My primary interest is not the practical applications of prayer to make diseases go away. It’s really the larger message about who we are, and what our origins and destiny may be. How consciousness manifests in the world. Those are the real issues that go far beyond whether you can use prayer to bail yourself out of a difficult situation or illness.

DiCarlo: How do you define prayer?

Dossey: The prevailing notion that prayer is asking for something–basically talking out loud to a cosmic male parent figure who basically prefers English–either for yourself or somebody else is woefully incomplete. I want to get away from that common way of looking at prayer. Prayer for me is any psychological act which brings us closer to the transcendent. It’s not the territory of any specific religion. Belief in a personal God is not even necessary. For example, Buddhists pray all the time, but Buddhism is not a theistic religion.They don’t even believe in a personal God.

Prayer may involve words. We don’t want to disenfranchise people who like to talk when they pray. That’s fine. It’s just that it goes deeper than that. It can involve silence, non-activity. It can even be done in the subconscious or when we sleep at night. So I prefer to use the term “prayerfulness” to capture those activities we have traditionally called prayer. One of the common features of prayerfulness that really makes a difference in the world is empathy, caring, compassion, love and so on. This has been demonstrated in the laboratory. It is clear that the experiments don’t work very well if a person does not have empathy, love, compassion and caring for the object or subject they are trying to influence. The experiments work so much better if there is an empathic connection, a unity, a caring bond.

DiCarlo: So in the case of these experiments that you have uncovered, love was found to be more than a nice sentiment or feeling–a real force critical to the healing process itself?

Dossey: Let’s say this. Love is a felt quality that can change the state of the physical world. We are beyond metaphor and poetry here. We are talking about something that literally can make a difference in outcomes in the world.

DiCarlo: I have to say that I was struck by the comprehensive number of studies you have reported on.

Dossey: That’s one of the things I have taken pains to do. Every book I have ever written has at least 20 pages at the end which list references–mostly from scientific journals–to exemplify the fact that we’re not just talking anecdotes here. This stuff flows out of science. If you want ammunition, there it is.

DiCarlo: How would you respond to the materialists who explain away the concept of realms of existence that go beyond the physical? That the mind is the brain and nothing more?

Dossey: I think the best response is to play science. You see, the theories and hypotheses of the materialists work fine as long as you restrict yourself to a certain class of data and ignore other data. The materialists cannot account for non-local events. There is currently nothing within the field of biological science that can explain distant, non-local, consciousness-related events. Period. To discover an explanation, you have to revise the materialist manifesto, which states that there is nothing beyond matter, there is nothing beyond what is perceivable through the five senses.

The problem is, the skeptics and the materialists won’t look at non-local data at the level of biology and psychology. They will grant you that non-local phenomena occur at the quantum level–the level of the very small, such as atoms and subatomic particles. That has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. But the notion that these things can happen at the level of the psyche and at the level of biology is just not being entertained. They have some classical ways of dismissing the kind of data that I have been focusing on. They paint it with the term, “parapsychology.” They will say, “Oh, that’s just parapsychology.” But it doesn’t matter what it’s called. The real question is, “Is the data good?” And if the data is good, then the materialists are in a world of trouble, and the materialist way of looking at things by saying that “It’s just all matter and energy” falls flat on its face.

Let me tell you why. These non-local manifestations of consciousness–among which prayer is one type–display characteristics that are not displayed by any known form of energy. For example, prayer, transpersonal imagery effects, an so on, are not a function of the amount of distance a person is from their target. These activities are just as effective when done on the other side of the earth as when they are done close up. All known forms of energy display something called “The Law of the Inverse Squared” which means that the farther away from the source of the energy you get, the weaker the energy becomes. Prayer doesn’t do that. Transpersonal imagery effects don’t demonstrate that principle of physics either. Robert Jahn’s data at Princeton doesn’t display dissipation with distance. Furthermore, you can put the object of the prayer in a shielded Faraday cage lined with lead, which for all practical purposes shields out electromagnetic energy of all types, and the prayer still gets through. The transpersonal imagery still works.

What I am saying is that the psyche has ways of manifesting far beyond anything known to materialistic science. You need to get a feel for what’s at stake here. The reason that many of the dedicated materialistic scientists are so infuriated over the mere discussion of prayer and distant healing, is that it really begins to call into question their world view. It calls into question the adequacy of materialistic science, upon which these people have staked their careers, self-identity and self-esteem. And when you begin to question somebody’s world view, that’s more inflammatory than making derogatory comments about their mother. It generates tremendous animosity and really draws a line in the sand. If the data is right, then the materialist’s model of the universe is inadequate. It’s down to that. That’s why you see people libeling and slandering other people over these issues in the scientific journals. These are really fighting words, and that’s why people get angry about them.

DiCarlo: In a lot of respects, I would guess that a lot of researchers in this area have been forced into a catch-22 situation. Prestigious scientific journals will not even publish the research, and if an individual is not able to publish, they are essentially put out of business. No money for further research will be available.

Dossey: It’s slowly changing…if it were all as intractable as it seems at times, things would never change. But historically, science and medicine have been dynamic and world views do change. Thomas Kuhn’s work at Harvard regarding paradigms demonstrates this. Up to a point, everything seems secure and people are locked-in to a particular world view, but gradually the exceptions that just don’t fit the prevailing world view tip the scale. And when the scale gets tipped, the paradigm switches rather rapidly. I personally get the feeling that the data is mounting up inexorably on the other side of the scale. The tip is visible in the not-too-distant future. I just think you can never put this genie back into the bottle. According to Kuhn’s model of scientific revolution, it’s predictable that the critics and the skeptics are never more vocal and hostile than right before the switch in world views.

Right after I began to attract the attention of cynics, materialists and skeptics in medicine, I pulled a book off my shelf called “Garrison’s History of Medicine” which was written back in 1929. It’s one of my favorite books. I went back and I looked at the way the great medical authorities of the day treated Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was among the first to suggest handwashing. He was vilified for proposing the silly idea that washing your hands could cut down on the incidence of infections and death following childbirth, in spite of the fact that there was supportive scientific data which had been collected from the hospital. It showed that the practice of physician hand-washing tremendously lowered the death rate following childbirth. The data was in, yet in spite of that, this man was unbelievably hounded by other leading orthodox obstetricians.

This kind of response never changes. It has been played out time and again in the history of medicine. You are seeing it again here, and I will tell you, it will probably make the objections to hand-washing look very tame in comparison. You have world class researchers and a great many other philosophers saying all this stuff is silly. And they will claim that they have carefully looked at the data and it’s all baloney. What we have is a basic disagreement. Although this may not be perfect science, I believe that a great many of these experiments are so clean and tight, with such great controls that you can take them to the bank. Look at it this way, if just one of these 130 experiments that I mention in the book is right, the materialists viewpoint is bankrupt.

DiCarlo: Marcel Truzzi , a self-acknowledged skeptic, suggests that the focus needs to be on the preponderance of the evidence, not simply isolated studies. Would you say that the preponderance of the evidence in the studies that you have researched indicate that prayer works and that the prevailing materialistic paradigm is inadequate?

Dossey: Yes. I would emphasize the word inadequate. I don’t want to say invalid. We haven’t thrown away Newtonian physics just because quantum physics came on to the scene, but it certainly did show Newton’s view was incomplete. I love Truzzi’s phrase, “preponderance of evidence”. There is variation in all areas of scientific work. I don’t care what area it is. All the studies in any given field never show exactly the same results and this is true in the 130 experiments I have identified. Over half of them showed statistical significance that something phenomenal was going on. But the skeptic will say, “Ok, well look. Half of them show significance, but half don’t. Trash the whole thing.” That’s not fair. That’s not the way science is played. One must look at the preponderance of evidence.

In any given field, one looks at the most precise and accurate experimental protocols. You don’t look at the experiments that are not as well designed. You look at what the best-designed studies show. And I would be willing to say that the best studies in this field offer the best evidence. They show the most powerful effects. Actually, there are about three or four areas of parapsychological research which have been subjected to “meta-analysis” a powerful form of statistical analysis by people with world-class reputations like Robert Rosenthal at Harvard. Rosenthal has made a career in figuring out how to do this kind of analysis in tough subject areas. He was invited to analyze parapsychological studies by the National Research Council (NRC), which is a materialistically-oriented organization,which was putting together a report on human performance. After looking at several areas in the parapsychological literature, Rosenthal concluded that the level of quality of the research in those areas was extraordinarily high. This so angered the NRC that they asked him to withdraw his statement in their report. He refused and they eliminated it anyway. This is an example of the ends to which people will go to keep the prevailing paradigm propped up. Physicist Max Planck, commenting about the controversy surrounding quantum physics around the turn of the century said that, science changes funeral by funeral. That’s a clever way of stating that some people are never going to change their mind.

DiCarlo: What evidence exists to support the assertion that a new paradigm is emerging within the field of medicine?

Dossey: You can get a feeling for the profound changes taking place within medicine by looking at Dr. David Eisenburg’s 1992 Harvard survey which found that over 60 million Americans went to alternative therapists that year–one-third of the adult population. That sounds like a huge shift to me.

DiCarlo: It’s interesting that a lot of the change that is taking place in medicine is occurring through forces outside of the medical profession.

Dossey: One of the great examples of that is the way the Office of Alternative Medicine became established within the NIH. It came about as a result of outside political pressure. Senator Tom Harkin from Iowa was the prime advocate. And I think it’s still true that most doctors within the National Institute of Health wish that this office didn’t exist and would go away. But it has been established by order of law. It really is a landmark development and it does illustrate your point.

DiCarlo: What is the purpose of the Office of Alternative Medicine?

Dossey: First of all, it is not an advocacy group. It’s not advocating anything. It’s purpose is to dispassionately evaluate alternative forms of medicine in this country to see if further exploration is warranted. It’s intended to apply science to areas of therapy other than drugs and surgery, which typically get evaluated within the rest of the NIH. It really is a window of opportunity to take a look at therapies that otherwise would not be evaluated.

We want to see what will shake out. There are basically three questions that we must ask of any alternative therapy:

1. Does it work?
2. What’s the downside or side-effects?
3. Is it cost-effective?

And that’s the role of this office. It’s not to advocate anything.

DiCarlo: Are there certain assumptions that we have about ourselves as human beings that your research would tend to reject?

Dossey: Yes, I think we have been laboring under some fairly dismal and erroneous assumptions about ourselves. The most erroneous assumption is that we are separate individuals. By definition, if something about minds is non-local and there aren’t any boundaries around them, at some level there cannot be some five and one-half billion individual minds walking around on the earth all safely separated from one another. At some point, they are one. This was the point that was put forth by Erwin Shroedinger back in the 30s–a Noble Prize-winning physicist.

Now, I would propose to you that if people could really “get it”–that at some point we really are not separated but instead we share identity at a certain psychological dimension– this would constitute a radically different ethical and moral imperative. It could have the effect of reducing a lot of international anger and war. Why would you want to go and make war on another individual if at some level you and they were the same? I think this raises brotherhood and sisterhood to a new level. It takes it out of the dimension of just being nice towards another person. It really does take it out of the level of metaphor to the level of fact. It makes it very, very real.

I think that this could have a transformative effect on business. For instance, as a natural urge, why wouldn’t you want to make the very best possible product for another human being, if at some level you and they were the same? You are not doing this for somebody who is totally different and isolated from you. You are doing it for yourself, to yourself. This makes literal for instance, the Golden Rule imperative, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Why? Because at some level they are you. And so I think you can see how non-local implications of mind reverberate through virtually every human activity we can think of.

DiCarlo: Are there any other limiting assumptions many of us tend to have?

Dossey: I think that a lot of people in this culture have been deeply brutalized by the false assumption that there are only two ways you can live a life and you have to choose one or the other. You can choose to be intellectual, rational and scientific on the one hand, or on the other, you can live your life intuitively, spiritually. It’s being either the scientist or the artist or mystic and there is no way to get those two abilities together in your life. This schizophrenic assumption has caused immense suffering for people in this culture and I think that’s a false divide. If you look at the implications of these prayer studies for example, where you can show under laboratory controlled conditions that things like empathy, compassion, love, and caring can make a difference, and that there is some aspect of the psyche that is eternal, non-local, immortal–spiritual if you will-the fact that we can show that scientifically suggests that this great divide between science, religion and spirituality is false.

I would hope that this dialogue over Era 3, non-local aspects of consciousness, can help heal this gap between science and spirituality. But to do this, you have to have the courage and integrity to honor this data and go through it, instead of around it as we traditionally have done.

DiCarlo: Some people make a distinction between being a healer and being a doctor. Is there a difference in your view?

Dossey: There certainly seems to be in this culture. Healing is a word that is practically forbidden in medical schools and hospitals. You don’t talk about healing. You talk about the mechanics of medicine. It’s really that simple. If you were to actually use the word healing the way you just used the word, people in these places would look at you with very strange facial expressions.

The very possibility that some doctors might have healing capacities unshared by others is a foreign idea. My wife, who is a cardiovascular nurse and an author who is widely known in her profession, got a fax today from a nursing chairman at a major US hospital. It said, “Dear Barbara Dossey, although we do not plan currently to invite you to our next annual nursing conference at our hospital, I can assure you that we will do so in the future when we get into healing.” My wife came and showed me that and said, “What do you suppose they are into now?” So, figure it out for yourself. It’s all mechanical. The idea that there are these other qualities that could be called healing potentials, healing powers, healing skills–it’s an idea that has not yet come for hospitals. It’s changing though.

DiCarlo: Weston Agor has been doing a lot of ground-breaking work in the area of intuition in business. Has intuition played a significant role in your work?

Dossey: Well, I think intuition has played a major role. One of the ways that surgeons have of describing internists, of which I am one, is to call them crystal ball gazers. This is not intended as a compliment. This is one of the labels that is always levied by surgeons to the internists because “They think too damn much.”

But I think there may be an element of truth to it. I believe that doctors frequently make intuitive diagnoses that have nothing to do with the known facts, physical examinations, and assessment of lab data. I had a long section on this subject in my previous book, “Meaning and Medicine.” There was a phenomenon called “snap diagnosis” that was the rage on this continent back in the late 1700s up to the mid-1800s. The great teachers in the medical schools would vie with each other in making accurate diagnoses with a minimal amount of information. Napoleons’ physician was one of the best at this. These individuals would have diagnostic information just come to them from within. They would walk past a room and say,”The patient in that bed has this disease.” Or they would look at a portrait and say, “This is what the diagnosis is.”

Well, few people will talk about snap diagnosis because that’s been laid to rest. You have to dig that out of history books. But here’s a connection you can consider. If there’s some aspect of consciousness that is non-local, that cannot be confined to space and to time, if the mind can reach into the future–which a non-local mind by definition can do–and if there is no separation between minds at some level, then this intuition takes on a whole new luster.

For example, if a diagnosis will one day be known, why can you not intuit it right now if there are no temporal barriers? If someone in the world knows the diagnosis, why couldn’t you know it too if consciousness is omnipresent and there aren’t any divisions at some level? So intuition takes on a whole new flavor through the lens of non-locality. Where this becomes practical is illustrated in a series of experiments by Dr. Norman Shealy with Carolyn Myss who is an intuitive. Carolyn is 93% correct at a distance in her diagnosis of 100 patients. I know of no internists, relying upon the data and physical exams, who are that accurate in the early stages of diagnosis. So if you can make intuitive diagnosis with that degree of accuracy, this is no longer a laboratory fluke. It is no longer an irrelevant plaything or a stage trick. This has stunning medical implications.

DiCarlo: “Who are we?” and “what is the nature of the Universe in which we live are questions that cut right to the heart of the shift in perspective of the emerging paradigm. In light of your research,what is your response?

Dossey: For at least the last 200 years, our culture has embraced an idea, born of science, that the universe is a pretty dismal place. When we die, that’s it. There’s nothing that survives. Life is all a matter of chemistry, anatomy, and the physiology of the brain. When the brain and body die and rot–that’s it. That’s a very dismal outlook, and that doesn’t sound like a very friendly universe to me.

On the other hand, if you take seriously the implications of these prayer studies, and other categories of experiments that have been done in addition to prayer, the research seems to suggest that consciousness can violate time and space. It seems to be non-local. It seems to be infinite in space and time in the way that it behaves. If you take those experiments and data seriously, then you can arrive at a completely different conclusion regarding the nature of the universe. You are able to say, for instance, that there is some aspect of the psyche, of consciousness, that is not confined to time and space or to brains and bodies. It is apparently infinite in space and time. And if it is, then by definition it must be omni-present, eternal, immortal. This turns the tables on the dismal, traditional view of science. It says that something about us survives. It has no beginning. It has no ending. It is eternal and immortal. Now I will grant you that we don’t have any “soul meters” to give you a direct read-out on whether or not anything like the soul exists, but we’ve got the next best thing. We have reasonable empirical evidence that is indirect, that something about us is non-local in space and time. That to me sounds like an extraordinarily friendly universe.

DiCarlo: So you are suggesting that science has provided evidence for the existence of an immortal soul? That’s astounding.

Dossey: I would add the word indirect to it–because the evidence is indirect. But I think it is absolutely sensational. I have thought about these implications for a great many years and I believe that the reasoning here is as straight as an arrow. I do not know how to take this data seriously and come to any other conclusion. This information is so positive and so potentially transformative that it should be shouted from rooftops. It is that promising. I happen to believe that the fear of death and extermination has caused more fear, pain, agony and suffering in human beings than anything else in the history of the human race. This information has a way of neutralizing that fear. It gives positive answers to those fears. I think this information is what I would call the “Big Cure” for the “Big Disease”–the fear of death. This is no exaggeration. I believe that this kind of reasoning is that potentially sensational. There’s a tremendous pay-off here, spiritually and practically for people.

DiCarlo: Do you feel that it’s important at this juncture in our collective history that we recognize this aspect of our being?

Dossey: Well, the choice is to continue muddling along with this clinical depression that seems to be affecting our society, our culture and our species. That, “we’re bogged down, the planet’s going to hell in a handbasket and we’re going right along with it.” I think that a recognition of these inherently divine qualities can have a rejuvenating effect on our definition of who we are, our collective self-esteem, our sense of empowerment, and what we might be able to do in whatever time we have left on this planet. And I choose these words carefully. I think there is some sense of urgency involved to get this information out, to re-define who we are as individuals and as a species.

DiCarlo: What are the beliefs about “the way things are” that you hold that you feel are especially empowering in the turbulent times we live in?

Dossey: The most important is a felt sense that no matter what happens, at some level it’s OK. I basically give a “yes” answer to what Einstein once said is the most important question in the world,” Is the universe friendly?” I think there is a pattern. I think there is a process and design in the universe. I think there is place in the universe for enduring human consciousness. I think that the most essential aspect of who we are is immortal. In view of that, the overarching and most important fact is, I think that what happens on this scale is relatively less important. That doesn’t mean I am not going to work my fanny off while I am in this form of existence, but I basically think that Gary Snyder, the Pulitzer Prize winning American poet had it right when he said, “The only people who are fit to work truly for the survival of this planet, are those who have the wisdom to see it go to hell in a handbasket.” I don’t plan to do that by the way. I intend to be as active as I can before I sign-off.

The important thing is the nature of human consciousness and whether or not it has a home in the universe. I think it does. This belief has contributed immeasurably to my mental peace and my serenity. For me, the notion that whatever happens is OK, drives me to even greater activity, not less.

Excerpted from the book Towards A New World View: Conversations At The Leading Edge with Russell E. DiCarlo. The 377-page book features new and inspiring interviews with 27 paradigm pioneers in the fields of medicine, psychology, economics, business, religion, science, education and human potential. Featuring: Willis Harman, Matthew Fox, Joan Boysenko, George Leonard, Gary Zukav, Robert Monroe, Hazel Henderson, Fred Alan Wolf, Peter Senge, Jacquelyn Small, Elmer Green, Larry Dossey, Carolyn Myss, Stan Grof, Rich Tarnas, Marilyn Ferguson, Marsha Sinetar, Dr. Raymond Moody, Stephen Covey and Peter Russell.

Russell E. DiCarlo is a medical writer, author, lecturer and workshop leader who’s focus is on personal transformation, consciousness research and the fields of energy and anti-aging medicine. His forthcoming book is entitled “The Definitive Guide To Anti-Aging Medicine” (1998, Future Medicine Publishing). DiCarlo resides in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Copyright 1996. Epic Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

DiCarlo: In the Celestine Prophecy, by James Redfield, there is a sentence that reads, “History is not just the evolution of technology; it is the evolution of thought. By understanding the reality of the people who came before us, we can see why we look at the world the way we do, and what our contribution is toward further progress. We can pinpoint where we come in so to speak, in the longer development of Civilization, and that gives us a sense of where we are going.” Would you care to comment upon that in terms of your book, The Passion of the Western Mind??

Tarnas: The Passion of The Western Mind is a history of Western thought from the ancient Greeks to the postmodern period. I had several different motives in writing the book but one of the motives was this: if we are to understand where we are now in our history, if we are to understand our moment in history and where we are potentially going in the future, we need to know what brought us to this point. That means recovering the sources of our world and our world view. I think the two go together. A world view has a tremendous influence in configuring the way the world turns out to be. The way we approach reality will influence the kind of reality we create. It’s very important to know what are the basic principles and presuppositions in our world view because they will go a long way towards revealing how our world has been constellated. A big motive in writing the book was to understand all the different impulses and strands of thought and cultural influences that have gone into creating the way we look at the world and the way our world has come to be in our time.

One of the paradoxes of the Western intellectual tradition is that though it is seen at any given point as “a tradition” and therefore a tradition of conservative elders with an established, authoritarian and therefore potentially oppressive, or stodgy or too traditional character-in fact the major thinkers who have made up that tradition have all been counter-cultural rebels and revolutionaries in their own time, whether we are talking about Socrates, Descartes, Galileo, Nietzsche, or Freud. The rebel in one generation becomes the ruler in a later generation, just as, archetypally speaking, the son becomes the father. We see in the West’s whole evolution that we are in many ways deeply informed by this tradition, even when we are rebelling against it. The very principle of critical response to an intellectual tradition is absolutely basic to our Western tradition. Even at the moment we rebel against it, we are fulfilling this grand tradition.

One other general point I might make here: The Western intellectual and spiritual tradition, up until this generation, has been a patrilineal tradition. For the most part it’s been constituted by men, who were usually writing for other men. This has had a great influence on the nature of the Western mind and the nature of the Western world view. It has tremendously affected our understanding of the human being, of the relationship of the human being to the world. It’s affected our understanding of the divine and the human being’s relationship to the divine. It’s had a radical influence on our history.

DiCarlo: How would you define a world view? If we are to say that a world view is a paradigm, are there different paradigms for different fields, such as a scientific paradigm let’s say, or is there an over-arching, meta-paradigm that is perhaps more basic, and upon which the others are constructed?

Tarnas: I think there are different levels of paradigms. A world view, which is the most general level, is a set of values, of conceptual structures, of implicit assumptions or pre-suppositions about the nature of reality-about human beings, about the nature of the relationship between human beings and nature, about history, the divine, the cosmos- which constellate an entire culture’s way of being and acting. There are many levels to a world view, many inflections to it and many ways it can be differentiated. So for example, there can be a general scientific paradigm which is allied with and in some ways reflective of this larger cultural world view. There is a give-and-take relationship between the two. It’s not a one way street. Scientific paradigms can affect the cultural world view, but also, the cultural world view can go through shifts such as it is right now, which will in turn affect scientists and how they go about doing their work and how they go about making sense of reality. So it goes both ways.

Not only is there a scientific paradigm, there are many scientific paradigms. There’s a different paradigm, say, operative in evolutionary biology than there is in quantum physics or depth psychology. All of these have claimed to be scientific paradigms, and they may have a more or less conscious relationship with each other, but they are all scientific paradigms. Even within each field, such as depth psychology, or quantum physics, there may be several paradigms within that discipline. For example, there are eight different paradigms of reality in quantum physics that are currently in the arena of discussion. So there can be many different paradigms even within a given field.

I would suggest that at any given time in a culture, in a civilization’s history, there is usually one overarching meta-paradigm that underlies all the rest and that affects all the rest and is in a reciprocal relationship to all the “sub-paradigms,” let’s say, which can be active in science, religion, philosophy and so forth.

DiCarlo: How do world views change?

Tarnas: Many factors are involved in a world-view shift. I believe that you can never say that it’s a specific rational or empirical factor that shifts a world view. For example, let’s say new data comes in through a new scientific instrument, such as the telescope, which revealed the heavens in a new way through Galileo’s interpretations and helped bring about the Copernican revolution. I would say that, generally speaking, it’s never an exclusively empirical or rational process. Many factors converge to make possible the world-view shift. There are sociological changes that take place and make it possible, including things like the death of old-paradigm thinkers in a given field. As they die, their authoritative views disappear with them and the younger thinkers in the field bring with them a more flexible perspective that hasn’t had a life-long investment in a given world view. As a result, what is purely a matter of sociology and demographics has an influence on the cultural world view. There can also be shifts in the religious and psychological orientation of a culture which bring about a shift in world view. There are so many factors that go into it.

For example, in the Copernican revolution, there seems to have been a kind of vast psychological shift that occurred in 15th century Italy, that we now regard as the Humanist Renaissance. This brought with it a certain sense of the world as being numinously alive with divine order and meaning. This helped to create a context within which Copernicus and Kepler’s thinking could develop in such as way that the Copernican revolution was made possible. It included the mathematization of the world, the spiritual exaltation of the sun, and the idea that the cosmos could be best understood as the emanation of a divine intelligence whose language was one of supremely beautiful, mathematical order. These are basic presuppositions that were in the air in Renaissance Italy that affected Copernicus, Kepler, and later Galileo, Newton, and Descartes in such a way that the entire Scientific Revolution was deeply influenced by what many scientists would consider non-scientific factors.

So many factors go into a world-view change. Personally, I believe that world views change when the archetypal configuration of the collective psyche-or the collective unconscious, to use Carl Jung’s term- goes through some fundamental shift. That shift is only partly responsive to human free will. To a great extent it takes place with a certain autonomous, organic power that we as human beings participate in, and are influenced by. Certainly we are not entirely in charge of this process, although I think we play a crucial role and have a crucial responsibility for its unfolding.

DiCarlo: So there’s a shift that takes place at what we would refer to as the unconscious level of the psyche-although unconscious is a misleading term since it is unconscious only in the sense that we are not yet directly aware of these levels-that sort of percolates up to the level of conscious, normal everyday awareness?

Tarnas: That’s right.

DiCarlo: Now you’ve mentioned that a world view would not likely shift simply as a result of the taking in of new scientific data. Expanding on that thought, would you say that a person’s world view might change by reading a book, let’s say on quantum physics, which might cause them to revise their thoughts on a subject. Must such a shift in world view be preceded in some way by a personal experience which reveals to them that “things are not the way they seem?”

Tarnas: I don’t think it necessarily has to be preceded by an experience like that, because sometimes reading a book on quantum physics or on Eastern mysticism can itself suddenly precipitate a shift. But I believe a shift in the individual person’s world view can happen only when there has been a certain development-however hidden it may have been-that has brought that person to a point of preparedness, or readiness, or ripeness. In this sense, the book serves as sort of an activating trigger or impulse.

The book itself can play a major role in precipitating a shift in world view, but that shift is not just a purely intellectual process. In a way, I think it is a moment of grace that uses the book as the efficient cause, but ultimately, it was something that person was ready for. He or she was ready to be drawn forth in that way, ready to be led forth. The original meaning of education was “to be led out from within”-to have one’s own truth be led out from within by skillful teaching. In that sense, education, or a change in a world view is never something that can be simply imposed from without or that takes place simply due to instruction by an external person or book. It is something inside that is ready to emerge, ready to be born within the individual’s consciousness.

DiCarlo: In his ground-breaking work on paradigm shifts, Thomas Kuhn goes so far as to say that a shift in world view is actually a conversion experience. Why is it so profound, seeming to affect an individual at their very core?

Tarnas: A world-view shift is something that reflects a very profound archetypal dynamic in the psyche whereby one goes through what closely resembles a perinatal process-a birth process. One has been within a “womb,” that is, a matrix of thought, a conceptual matrix, a conceptual womb for quite a while. You’ve developed within it, you’ve seen the world by means of it, and you have gotten more and more developed, complex, large, differentiated, until that conceptual matrix is no longer large enough to contain your evolving mind. It becomes seen as a problem, or constriction. It is seen as something to be overcome and a crisis is created. In the course of a very critical period of transition, of tension, of deconstruction, of disorientation, a sudden new birth is precipitated into a new conceptual matrix. There is a sudden revelation of a new Universe, which seems to open up. I think that this experience of a shift in a world view is such that one in many ways has re-experienced one’s own birth on an intellectual level. It involves this very deep archetypal death and re-birth process. So whether it’s a shift in a world view or a religious conversion experience, both participate in this larger perinatal sequence, this archetypal dialectic, which I believe underlies what Kuhn calls “the structure of scientific revolution” and which underlies radical spiritual transformations, such as what St. John of the Cross called “The Dark Night of The Soul” and experiences of spiritual rebirth. A similar death-rebirth process can be recognized in the dissolution of the communist empire in eastern Europe and the sudden euphoric birth after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It can manifest in many different ways.

DiCarlo: Would you say that in terms of human development, we re-capitulate these
historical world views in our maturation from infant, to child, to adolescent and to adult?

Tarnas: Yes. I think that’s another way we can better understand this process, that what a whole culture goes through in some way reflects what each individual goes through. For example, Wordsworth’s great poem “Intimations of Immortality” is a beautiful rendering of a person’s gradual shift in world view, from the numinous, sacralized, enchanted vision of the child, who is born trailing clouds of glory, still having that kind of archetypal consciousness in early infancy and childhood, and then gradually, as one gets to be more and more of an adult, more and more socialized into the conventional ways of looking at the world, of experiencing separation between the human being and the world. There’s a kind of disenchantment of the world to the point where the adult human being looks out on “the light of common day” to use Wordsworth’s terms. So there is a certain way in which this individual process very beautifully describes the trajectory that Western civilization has traveled.

It has gone from the enchanted world view of the pre-Greek indigenous cultures, and even to a great extent the Greeks-the Homeric sensibility-where we can find a certain sense that heaven and earth were not totally separated in the Greek consciousness. In both ancient Judaism and Christianity, and even in the medieval period, there is a certain enchantment of the world. But as the Western mind develops, as in the eighteenth century Enlightenment, with the sovereignty of the rational and scientific-there is a gradual and thorough disenchantment which eventually leads to the crisis in world view in our own century-and, I believe, the potential for a second birth.

DiCarlo: Two births?

Tarnas: Yes, there are two births to consider. First there is the literal one, the physical one: the birth of the human being out of nature, the birth of Western civilization out of the ancient archaic cultures of the Mediterranean. Then there’s a second birth, which comes only through a death. And that second birth is a spiritual birth. It’s the initiation of the twice-born. And that requires a sacrifice. It requires a death, which I believe we, as a civilization, are deep in the middle of right now.

DiCarlo: If as some leading edge scientists are suggesting, consciousness can affect reality, then is it not true that whatever a person’s world view is, he or she would
be able to gather evidence to support it?

Tarnas: I do believe that consciousness has a tremendous role. Each individual’s consciousness, and also the collective consciousness of a culture and its basic presuppositions and a priori principles, plays a large role in constellating reality.

When you are in a given world view, you discover data and you gather evidence that will be to a great extent configured in accordance with the basic principles with which you are approaching reality. There is a sort of self-reinforcing circularity to the process of human knowledge. This is why it is so important to become conscious of the presuppositions with which you are approaching reality. If anything, this insight increases human responsibility in creating one’s world.

The spectator theory of reality, which William James and many 20th-century thinkers have criticized, says that we can see, know, and test reality as someone who is fully, objectively separate from that reality-that we can be spectators outside of it. Yet in fact, we are always in the middle of reality. We are affected by it as we are affecting it. So subject and object are much more mutually implicated than it otherwise might seem to the naive empirical mind. This perspective puts an even greater burden of responsibility for becoming conscious of one’s principles of interpretation. It is also tremendously freeing. It shows that reality is not a “given” that we are trying to know from outside, as it were. Rather, we are playing a role in creating it, and therefore we need to bring the values and the aspirations that we believe would create the most life-enhancing world and world view. We need to bring that to the epistemological equation.

So things like faith, hope, empathy, and imagination and aesthetic sensibility are critical human faculties and values that play a role in how we know reality, and therefore play a role in what reality becomes for us.

DiCarlo: If I am understanding you correctly, you are implying that a world view can be selected?

Tarnas: I believe we do play a role in selecting or forging our world view. It’s a participatory role, it’s not a “Captain of My Ship” role with absolute autonomy. It is participatory.

DiCarlo: What criteria would you use for selecting a world view?

Tarnas: The criteria I would suggest are: does it serve a larger understanding of self so that it’s not just the narrow “skin-encapsulated ego,” to use Alan Watts’s terms? Does it serve a larger sense of self that connects each human being with the rest of the human community, with the rest of the community of living beings and with the rest of the cosmos? So there’s a larger and larger sense of identity that can become encompassed and served in our world view.

DiCarlo: It strikes me that a given world view is more or less appropriate given humanity’s collective stage of development, which would therefore suggest that all world views are relative-there’s no right or wrong world view. Would you agree?

Tarnas: That’s a very tricky question. They are all relative, but relative to what? They are relative to each other, they are relative to changing values. I believe that the world view of Dante in the 14th century is a different world view than, say, Thomas Jefferson’s in the late 18th century, but that doesn’t mean that one is superior to the other, or that one is right and the other is wrong. Each world view needs to be approached, in a sense, as a great work of art, so that we try to understand it with as much empathic appreciation as possible, to understand its human consequences, to let its meaning unfold rather than making some sort of snap judgment or even a judgment after a period of time, but one that somehow puts one world view in a lower position than another, or judges that one is wrong and another is right. I think reality is much too complex, too ambiguous, too mysterious to be making those kinds of judgments, and in fact my sense is that reality itself is shifting. World views are relative to that evolving reality that is ultimately coming out of some great mystery of the cosmos.

DiCarlo: If, as you point out in your work, the fields of science, philosophy and religion have helped to sculpt the traditional Western world view, what have been the major influences behind the development of the emerging world view? Who have been some of the more prominent personalities in this unfolding drama?

Tarnas: It depends how far back we want to take it. For example, in a way you can go back all the way to people like Socrates and Moses who are still affecting us in terms of the basic Promethean impulse of rebelling against oppressive structures and creating moral and intellectual autonomy for the human being. This is still an operating, underlying impulse in our current world view shift.

More recently, the thinkers of the late 19th century and early 20th century, like Freud, Darwin, Marx, and Nietzsche, set the stage for the postmodern transitional period. I use the word “post-modern” to describe the era that we’re in, with the understanding that the term postmodern describes a transitional era. It is an age between world views. Everything is pretty much up for grabs right now. There are many world views in contention. There is much transition. There’s a sense of disorientation. There is a deconstruction, or tearing down of many long-established principles, and this is as it should be. This is what marks the period of radical transformation that a cultural world view needs to go through in order to re-constellate itself with a higher level of coherence and greater depth of meaning. And today we now seem to be reaching a new moment, a cyclical acceleration, in this transformation, and perhaps a culmination.

There was a speech that was given by Vaclav Havel a while back that was printed in the New York Times. It’s amazing how close his vision of the transformation is to my own. Often when I read Havel I feel like he’s a brother. He points out that with the ecological crisis, with the collapse of communism, with the collapse of the conventional scientific assumption that science has or will have in time complete, objective, comprehensive answers to the problems of human reality-these great collapses are happening right now, while new forms of thinking are emerging such as the Gaia hypothesis and the anthropic principle, and, I believe, the tremendous shift in terms of the masculine/feminine dialectic that I mentioned. Look at what’s happened in the last 30 and 40 years, in terms of the human exploration of space and seeing the earth for the first time from without-these are all signs of really radical, major shifts that are occurring in our self-understanding and in our world view. What’s going on right now is virtually unprecedented. There are some partial precedents, such as the end of classical antiquity, or the beginning of the modern era, or even the beginning of Western civilization, but the fact is, the human species is facing its own mortality on the planet in a way it never has had to before. And this suggests that we are at the end of a long trajectory that is coming to some kind of dramatic climax right now.

In science, in philosophy, in religion, the arts-in all of these are major signs of this shift of world view. It’s taking place on all these levels.

DiCarlo: What would you say is the essence of the traditional world view-the prevailing and dominant paradigm as it were-and how has it contributed to some of the problems we are now facing?

Tarnas: That world view has been defined by an emphasis on the progressive advance of the human being in history and its relationship to nature, in which the dominant impulse has been to increase knowledge of the world in order to gain control of that world and nature for human benefit. It is reflected in a Promethean impulse towards greater and greater human autonomy, freedom, self-determination, an adventurous exploration of new horizons, an impulse towards always overcoming the past. And it has emphasized individualism, promoted the separation of the human being from nature, and elevated reason over emotion, imagination, and communal identity.

Now this impulse has been valuable and essential to much of the best of who we are and what we’ve accomplished, but it has also caused great problems, especially in the one-sidedness of this development which has resulted in a disenchanted world view in which the human being is ultimately alienated, existing in a world that is seen as having no intrinsic spiritual meaning, no intrinsic purpose. We are not at home in this world, we’re simply an ephemeral species that lives on a meaningless speck of dust on the edge of one galaxy amongst billions.

This world view has created major psychological and spiritual problems for humanity and an enormous ecological crisis and we clearly need to be addressing what it is about this world view that has created these problems. In many ways, the problems and the crises that are arising are too big for human beings to fix using the old engineering model of, “Well, we’ll just figure out the cause of the problem and fix it using our rational intelligence.” Clearly, every move that is made to fix one thing, such as antibiotics, creates new problems that we could not have predicted in advance. So these events are in fact making way for a new world view. You have to go through a sacrifice, you have to go through a death, you have to go through some kind of destruction and deconstruction of a whole world view if something new is going to be born. That just seems to be the way of the cosmos. I have deep faith in the ultimate positive character of what this transformation will be; on the other hand, I don’t know how much suffering, how much of a global crisis, we will have to go through before this new world view emerges. A lot of this is still in question. It’s a race, as someone has said, between education and catastrophe. How aware will we become of the role we are playing in creating the crisis? How much inner work do people do? How much inner exploration? How much psychological, interior work do people do to make possible this great transformation on an interior level so that it doesn’t have to be naively and destructively acted out in the world? Because some kind of death has to happen. There’s the death and rebirth of a sacramental initiation, and then there’s the death that is acted out on a much more destructive and problematic way in the world.

DiCarlo: You had alluded to the fact that we have accrued certain benefits from the dominant and prevailing world view and I’m wondering from a human developmental perspective, what has that world view allowed us to achieve?

Tarnas: It has allowed us to achieve autonomy. We have a responsibility in playing a role in our evolution, so that we can play a conscious role in that evolution-this is new. We also have a freedom to evolve in a certain way, to choose what kind of a world and world view we will grow within. All of us value that ability to revise our world view, to revise ourselves, to be endlessly self-revising in an attempt to become a better person and create a better world.

Another way of looking at this long development is in terms of the divine marriage, the hieros gamos that Jung spoke about. In order to have a marriage, you have to have a differentiation for the two to come together autonomously and join with one another in an act of love. This is also true for the human being in relationship to the divine and in its relationship to the world: that having fully differentiated itself, it is now in a position to embrace the matrix of its being freely and consciously. Rudolf Steiner used two words to sum up what he saw as the evolution of consciousness, and those two words were “freedom” and “love.” I think that goes a long way towards describing what we are involved in right now. Having achieved our freedom, we are now in a position to embrace the whole in a kind of loving surrender of self to a larger whole which will preserve autonomy while also transcending the alienation that has been the downside of our forging an autonomous self.

DiCarlo: Would you say that the emerging world view is a regression in some way to that which was held during medieval times?

Tarnas: Of course there is more than one world view in the medieval period, but let’s take Dante and Thomas Aquinas as representing the most comprehensive, rich, articulate renderings of the medieval world view….In this view, the human being had a central role in a meaningful, spiritually informed cosmos. It was a fixed and structured and hierarchical cosmos, and there was also a further ambiguity that was present. On the one hand, there was a negation of this world-the world, the flesh, and the devil were seen as something one needs to transcend in order to move towards the good Christian, celestial destiny. On the other hand, there was often a sense of the universe, nature and the human being as constituting an organic whole that the scientific and industrial revolutions destroyed.

I don’t see what we are experiencing right now as a regression, although there are elements from the past, from the medieval. But there are also elements from archaic, ancient, traditional, and indigenous world views that are coming up once again to manifest in a new way. It’s less a circular regression and more a spiral that takes up certain impulses and insights from these earlier periods and integrates them with all that has been positively achieved in the meantime. In that sense, there is an element of regression, but there is also a sense of moving forward. This is what one would call a dialectic, in which something from the past and something from the present come together and create the future. Two opposites converge to a create a third higher synthesis.

DiCarlo: You stated earlier that the Western mind has been characterized by the masculine perspective. What would that perspective be?

Tarnas: That perspective is driven by this heroic impulse to differentiate the human being from its primordial unity with nature and with the divine to form an autonomous, rational human self. It reflects an archetypal masculine impulse which, as I mentioned, has brought us to a point of great power, great critical intelligence, great autonomy, and also great crisis. There is something that Jung calls “enantiodromia,” which is a term he draws from the ancient Greek Heraclitus, which has to do with the spontaneous shift of opposites. When you get to one extreme, then the opposite emerges, and this recovery and resurgence of the feminine that is happening in our time is an example of that.

DiCarlo: So the emerging world view I take it involves the re-claiming and integration of the feminine aspect of nature?

Tarnas: Yes, and the movement towards overcoming the alienation of the individual human being and human mind from the universe, from the world, from the matrix from which it has arisen. It is characterized by the breakdown of the subject-object dichotomy and the movement towards a more unitive, participatory, world view.

DiCarlo: Could you elaborate on that?

Tarnas: The Western intellectual and spiritual tradition has been influenced by an archetypal masculine impulse that has been informing and impelling the Western mind since its inception with the ancient Greeks and the ancient Hebrews. This in many ways has led us to this very dramatic point of transformation.

The masculine, differentiating approach to the world, to the nature of reality, and to the nature of the relationship between the human being and the world has reached a point of crisis. Yet, we also see now, in many ways, the potential for great transformation and healing, a coming into wholeness by the tremendous resurgence of the feminine archetype. This is visible on many levels, and not just the obvious ones of feminism and the empowerment of women and the new openness on the part of men to feminine values. It is also visible in a whole different approach to life-our scientific theories of the human psyche, the new sensibility of how human beings relate to nature and other forms of life on the planet-all of these reflect the emergence of the feminine archetype on the collective scale of the culture which is manifesting as a new sense of connection with the whole. This ideally could result in the “hieros gamos”-the divine marriage-the coming together of the masculine and feminine on many levels: between the human being and nature, between intellect and soul, between men and women. It’s an extremely multi-leveled, complex transformative process we’re involved in right now.

DiCarlo: What might be some of the specific ways individuals can reclaim the feminine?

Tarnas: One way is through inner, psychological exploration, through experiential methods of psychotherapy, through meditation, through the holotropic breathwork that has been developed by Stan Grof. These are ways of mediating the reconnection with the unconscious, where, for many people, the feminine has been repressed and suppressed.

Another way is through parenting, through playing an intimate, participatory and caring role in the raising of one’s children. Being present and being as conscious as possible, at the birth of one’s own children helps us reconnect to the feminine dimension of the psyche that’s in all of us. In relationships between men and women, that extra degree of awareness, treating women as having the same degree of autonomy and richness of spirit and intelligence and potential as every man.

In spiritual terms, becoming more aware of the feminine dimension of the divine, whether through studying other eras-the Goddess spirituality that is being uncovered archaeologically and historically-or through one’s own spiritual path.

Also, in becoming more aware of one’s body, and honoring and caring for it. Honoring the imagination. Perhaps above all, approaching nature in a new way. Not as something that is unconscious and purposeless and without any intrinsic value except as raw material for human exploitation, but rather, viewing nature as our mother, as something we have been born from, possessing at least as great a mystery and intelligence and soul as we ourselves are embued with.

DiCarlo: You have stated that the Western mind, as it begins this fundamental shift in world view, must be willing to open itself to a reality, the nature of which could shatter its most established beliefs about itself and about the world. Could you mention some of these beliefs?

Tarnas: One I just mentioned, that nature is completely mechanistic and unconscious and impersonal, and that somehow the human being is utterly unique in being the sole locus of conscious intelligence in the universe. There are a lot of developments challenging this assumption, such as the Gaia hypothesis, which goes a long way towards making sense of evolution and life on earth in ways that refute the presupposition that the only kind of entity that can act with a self-regulating intelligence is the human being or other individual organisms but not the earth itself.

Depth psychology, which in the last 20 or 30 years has evolved into transpersonal psychology and archetypal psychology, coming out of the work or Freud and Jung, has moved to a place where a lot of basic modern presuppositions-the separation of the psyche from the world, of the individual human being from the community of human beings-are all being shattered. We are just starting to see that within each individual human being, his or her psyche is rooted in a much larger psyche, that our consciousness participates in a collective consciousness that is shared by all human beings and is rooted in nature, the world, and the cosmos. This sense of separation of the individual mind is something that is gradually being shattered right now.

DiCarlo: Would you say that the emerging world view tends to reduce the gap between science and religion?

Tarnas: Very much. It’s remarkable how traditional scientists, often in their mature years, when they no longer have to prove anything to anybody-when they’ve already gotten their Nobel Prize-start developing their spiritual side and start connecting it with their scientific interests and insights. Many of the most cutting-edge scientists, like the late David Bohm or Rupert Sheldrake, are clearly informed- as was Einstein-by a spiritual understanding.

To the extent that Western religion is hung up on a fundamentalist, literal interpretation of the Bible, there is always going to be a major problem in reducing the gap between science and religion. Problems also arise from fundamentalist scientists who get hung up with the idea that their particular view of reality, or their particular view that they think mainstream science approves, is reality. They take that view as literally and absolutely true, rather than as tentative, partial, and fallible. There will always be a major gap between science and religion as long as science and religion are authoritatively led by fundamentalists of each stripe.

But more and more sophisticated thinkers in both the religious and scientific worlds are way past that. There’s a great quote by Robert Bellah in his book Beyond Belief which I use in my book: “We may be seeing the beginnings of the reintegration of our culture, a new possibility of a unity of consciousness. If so, it will not be on the basis of any new orthodoxy, either religious or scientific. Such a new integration will be based on the rejection of all univocal understandings of reality, of all identifications of one conception of reality with reality itself. It will recognize the multiplicity of the human spirit,” and I would add the multiplicity of reality, “and the necessity to translate constantly between different scientific and imaginative vocabularies. It will recognize the human proclivity to fall comfortably into some single, literal interpretation of the world and therefore the necessity to be continuously open to rebirth in a new heaven and a new earth. It will recognize that in both scientific and religious culture, all we have finally are symbols. But there is an enormous difference between the dead letter and the living word.”

Certainly in psychology, through people like Jung and Grof, there has been a real awakening to the spiritual dimensions of the human psyche. An awareness that as you get deep enough in there, you transcend a purely secular understanding of the human mind and start seeing the reality of religious experience, of spiritual beings, of a spiritual level of human experience that is absolutely basic. To deny that is to live in an artificially constrictive world view.

The religious consciousness of our time is shifting through the influences of Eastern mysticism, of psychedelic experience, of eco-feminist spirituality, of liberation theology-all are coming in and playing a major role in shifting the Western world view. The old secularized, scientific perspective which viewed the world as being mechanistic and purposeless, and basically run by chance and necessity, as being simply material forms moved by mechanistic forces, where God was an unnecessary hypothesis, is in radical decline right now. There is a growing recognition that our whole scientific strategy was propelled by a very idiosyncratic, temporary, local way of viewing the world, one that filtered out all possible spiritual dimensions in the universe, by ruling them out a priori as being not scientifically valid. With that world view breaking down, it becomes possible to look at the universe in new ways. As a result, new ways of understanding spirituality are beginning to emerge.

DiCarlo: How did that gap between religion and science occur in the first place?

Tarnas: The gap between religion and science started taking place in the West in the modern period because the basic conception of the world that had been passed on by our religious tradition was not being confirmed by the advances of empirical science and rational philosophy. This began soon after Thomas Aquinas, who was one of the last great integrators of Greek philosophy and science on the one hand and the Christian world view on the other. After that, with the late medieval Scholastics and with the early modern period, there was increasing sense of tension between science and philosophy on the one hand, and religion on the other. There was no preparation for the Copernican revolution in the Christian Bible. So if Copernicus was right it seemed to call into question some literal interpretations of the Bible. With Darwin, that reached a climax. So the scientific world view seemed to be inhospitable to the Christian perspective, at least as literally understood from the Bible by fundamentalist Christians. As a result, certain forms of Christianity tried to repress the modern scientific impulse, as it did with Galileo and as it attempted to do with Darwin. Similarly, scientists began to see religion generally-and Christianity in particular-as being oppressive, limiting and superstitious, although there are many exceptions to this. There are many scientists and religious thinkers who saw value in the other and saw the necessity to integrate the two. Still, the general drift of modern times has been towards a separation.

DiCarlo: Wasn’t a “deal” struck between the church and science in general, where science could have the outer world, and the church would take the inner world of soul and spirit?

Tarnas: Essentially what happened is that there was a kind of division-the church got Sunday and science got the rest of the days of the week. The religious consciousness pays attention to the inner soul and science covers the outer world, the place of human beings in the world, our understanding of nature, and so forth. But that created a dichotomy that eventually became unliveable-a kind of schizophrenia between inner and outer-between the human spirit and the world in which the human spirit finds itself located. Eventually, that created a double bind of consciousness that was impossible to live with, and I think that’s why there is such a strong impulse to find a new unity.

DiCarlo: What would be the relevance of this change in world view that is taking place to the average person. How does that affect for example, the way a person runs a business? Or how does it affect a person in their personal relationships?

Tarnas: There are many ways in which it is strongly relevant. Business is in many ways the dimension of human experience in society right now that is playing one of the most crucial roles in what the future of the human being and human species is going to be on this planet. It is businesses that are cutting down the forests, and it is business that is looking upon the profit motive and bottom line as being much more important than the support of human community, or the support of ecological diversity and richness and a sensitivity to all forms of nature on the planet as being valuable in themselves. Business is absolutely crucial with respect to how it’s all going to turn out. What individual business men and women have to do is look deeply into themselves and recognize that, first of all, if they are going to be true to themselves they need to make their 9 to 5, Monday to Friday life reflect their deepest values and aspirations and not live with one set of ideals at one time, and live another way as part of a cold, calculating corporate climate during the rest of their life.

It’s also to the business world’s long-term advantage to not act myopically for its short-term profit, because it will not be able to sustain that for very long. They need to think as the indigenous tribes of America thought, “How will this decision affect seven generations from now,” rather than, “How does this decision affect next quarter’s bottom line?” Next quarter’s bottom line is not going to be very relevant to that businessman’s or woman’s children or great-grandchildren. These are immense responsibilities that the world view shift we are going through right now highlights.

The relationship between male and female in the business world, between human beings and the natural environment, between individual self-betterment and the values of the larger community-these are all crucial issues. Each person has great responsibility for working out that relationship in such a way as to help ensure our future.

DiCarlo: What would you say would be the natural consequence if someone decides to be like an ostrich with their head buried in the sand and say, “Well, maybe there is a shift in world view taking place but it really doesn’t affect me. I’ll just continue living my life the way I’ve always lived it.”

Tarnas: Psychologically it will eventually take its toll…Whenever one is in a state of denial, what’s being denied will eventually have its day and will cause great internal problems. There will be a great sense of internal division, a sense of self-impoverishment, a sense that no matter how much one consumes or no matter how much money one makes, there is a greater and greater sense of emptiness, so the greed gets magnified with less and less satisfaction. This is because one is denying one’s roots, one’s connection with the rest of the human community. One’s connection to the feminine. One’s connection to one’s feelings and emotions. One’s connection to nature and the planetary environment we are rooted in.

There will also be rather concrete business problems which will emerge, whether it happens this year or in ten years. They will emerge because one can only exploit and ruin one’s foundations for so long before they will cease to bring forth what one wants. That’s what the lumber companies are facing today, even though they try to place the blame on environmentalists. People who know what’s going on recognize that the reason many people in the lumber industry are losing their jobs has to do with the fact that the lumbering companies went on an exaggerated, hypertrophic clear-cutting spree over the last 20 years. They just haven’t acted in a way that was wisely conscious of the environment.

Also, there’s the whole spiritual dimensions of things, which I think becomes most appearant to people when they start facing their own death, whether that happens at age 30 or 60 or later. It’s been said that when one is on one’s death bed, one seldom has the great regret that one wishes one had spent more time with one’s business. Other values become much more apparent at that point-the values of love, of connecting with one’s family, with the human community, with one’s inner life, with aesthetic and natural experiences, in nature, in art and culture. These become more important than making a profit and trying to prove oneself in the business world, which in retrospect prove to be rather narrow and empty goals. Joseph Campbell used to talk about climbing a ladder until you get to the top and find you had it up against the wrong wall. These are all reflections on how important it is, for their own advantage, that business men and women today become aware of what the shift in world view is all about. It affects them in both their personal and business lives.

Excerpted from the book Towards A New World View: Conversations At The Leading Edge with Russell E. DiCarlo. The 377-page book features new and inspiring interviews with 27 paradigm pioneers in the fields of medicine, psychology, economics, business, religion, science, education and human potential. Featuring: Willis Harman, Matthew Fox, Joan Boysenko, George Leonard, Gary Zukav, Robert Monroe, Hazel Henderson, Fred Alan Wolf, Peter Senge, Jacquelyn Small, Elmer Green, Larry Dossey, Carolyn Myss, Stan Grof, Rich Tarnas, Marilyn Ferguson, Marsha Sinetar, Dr. Raymond Moody, Stephen Covey and Peter Russell.

Russell E. DiCarlo is a medical writer, author, lecturer and workshop leader who’s focus is on personal transformation, consciousness research and the fields of energy and anti-aging medicine. His forthcoming book is entitled “The Definitive Guide To Anti-Aging Medicine” (1998, Future Medicine Publishing). DiCarlo resides in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Copyright 1996. Epic Publishing. All Rights Reserved.
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DiCarlo: You’ve been president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences since the mid-70s. Could briefly talk about the origins of this organization and its mission?

Harman: Yes. While Edgar Mitchell, one of the Apollo astronauts was on his way back from walking on the moon, he had a kind of spiritual experience. It struck him that traditional science didn’t allow for the kind of non-ordinary experience, nor with what they meant to the people who had them. In general, science didn’t handle the topic of consciousness very well. So he set up this non-profit organization called The Institute of Noetic Sciences to work in this neglected area of science by focusing upon consciousness related phenomena and experiences.

As the years have gone on, the Institute has chosen two main tasks. One is leading-edge research in consciousness related fields, such as spontaneous remission of cancer, the mind, meditation, healing in general and research on creative altruism. Secondly, and with the aid of a couple dozen scientists and philosophers, the Institute has studied the question, “why does science have the particular characteristics that it does?” and “what sort of changes would have to take place in order for science to be better suited to handle these areas of consciousness?”. In scientific jargon, we’re seeking a different epistomology for science. Put another way, we are wanting to answer the question, “how do we know what we think we know scientifically?”

DiCarlo: Let’s talk about healing since that’s an area of interest for the Institute. What’s the bottom line message that scientific researchers are telling you about the relationship between the body and the mind?

Harman: The evidence suggests that the mind plays a much greater role than has been recognized by the scientific and medical community. This is the heart of the issue regarding complimentary medicine and alternative forms of health care. Most, if not all of them, hinge upon the powers of the mind. This isn’t necessarily obvious in an area like homeopathy or acupumcture, but there’s a suspicion at least, that the powers of these types of approaches depend upon the body being much different than the mechanistic view that has prevailed in the medical community thus far.

DiCarlo: Energy medicine seems to be an emerging area of Institute interest that seems to offer exciting possibilities in the treatment and prevention of physical and even psychological illness. What is it?

Harman: Energy medicine is a term that is used by some people who believe that there are fields around the human body that are influential in the healing process and in other ways. They propose that through the study of these fields, much knowledge can be obtained to help treat and diagnose people who have the potential of developing an illness. Other people use the same term, but really leave open the question as to whether these fields and influences are really physically measureable or are whether they exist in some other domain, some other dimension so to speak.

I think there is some advantage in leaving the term open-ended at the time being. At the very least, the energy field involves the exploration of faint electrical magnetic fields around the body and their relationship to health. It may have to do with much more than that.

DiCarlo: In your view, are these energy fields metaphorical or are they real? Who has produced the most compelling scientific evidence to date that these fields exist, that we are more than the physical?

Harman: Well you see, that hinges on the definition of scientific evidence and that’s precisely why the epistological question, “how do we know what we think we know scientifically?”, is so important. According to the world view of many, many scientists, what is “real” is only what is physically measureable. All their scientific concepts and theories are derived from that assumption. That implies the use of the physical senses in the usual sense. George Solomon, who coined the term, “Psychoneuroimmunology ” and who is one of the leading experts in that field, includes among our senses the immune system because he claims that it’s sensitive to things that the other senses are not. Others would go still further and say there’s whole realms-levels of consciousness-spirit and what have you, which have not been included in traditional science but which are real in the sense that they produce real effects. Since we apprehend these realms with the deep mind or the deep intuition and not the usual five senses of taste, touch, smell, sight and hearing, they are not physical in the usual sense. So the epistomological question about the “rules of evidence,” asks, “Beyond the five senses, how much you are willing to include as being a legitimate organ of perception?”

In fact, what is really at issue, is a total world view and the beliefs we hold at unconscious levels. Every one of us resists the change of our own internalized assumptions. We’re being called on to answer the deeper questions, like “what is the nature of reality? Is it the same as conventional science has been saying? Or is it more like what is contained in the perennial wisdom of all the great spiritual traditions, in which the material world is only one end of the spectrum-or continuum-with spirit at the other end? That the human being is potentially capable of exploring the whole.”

DiCarlo: What does conventional science tell us is the nature of reality?

Harman: Well, according to science, about 15 billion years or so ago, there was a big bang and the universe began to evolve and this was an evolution of stars and the planets and then elementary life forms on at least one of those planets. This all happened accidentally; that is, things were behaving according to scientific laws and coincidentally, certain chemical elements came together in such a way as to create the first elementary life forms. Then, with other coincidences of random happenings and natural selection, we finally get this evolution up to the present human being with this very complex network of neuronal cells in our crania and out of that, we get something that we call consciousness or mind or spirit. Then, from this basic story, come other conclusions: you are your DNA; you are whatever was given to you genetically-that’s the essential you-the programs in your DNA. And of course, everything that has ever been said about religion and spirituality now has to be re-examined in the light of this dominant story, which we all accept as true, because we were all taught it in school. We know the authority of modern science, especially now with quantum physics and chaos theory, and it looks as though it’s on the edge of really explaining everything. This dominant myth infuses our education system, it infuses our health care system, it infuses our legal justice system-every institution in society.

So, what if it were wrong? It would affect everything. Now that’s a pretty bold statement-and remember that I was trained as a scientist too and I have a lot of respect for science in terms of what it does. But what we’ve done, in modern society, is to take this scientific world view which was really aimed at prediction, and control, and creating technologies, and we’ve given it so much prestige and power that we put it in the position of a world view to try to live our lives by, and guide our societies by, and shape our powerful institutions by, and that’s where it gets to be misleading. I could quibble and make it sound a little bit better if I just said “incomplete” or a “little bit off” but I don’t want to say that. I want us to think seriously about the possibility that there is a fundamental error in there and that it’s important for ordinary citizens to recognize that.

DiCarlo: Could you expand on that thought?

Harman: Science for three and a half centuries has been built on the premise that consciousness as a causal factor does not have to be included. Now nobody has every lived their lives on the basis of such a contrary premise. Nobody has ever said “I’m going to live my life as though my consciousness-my mind-weren’t capable of making decisions, weren’t capable of making choices, weren’t capable of taking action.” Science is exquisite for getting a particular kind of knowledge-the kind of knowledge that you need if your main purpose in life is to generate new technologies, to manipulate the physical environment-but the idea that consciousness might be causal in any sense was left out.

If what I really am is a collection of physical and chemical processes, modulated by some program in the DNA-if that’s the essential nature of my being-then it follows that when those processes stop, when I come to the point of physical death, then I am no more. All the meanings and purposes I thought I stood for, are no more. There’s little wonder that we then tend to fear death and have all sorts of other fears that link to the fear of death, or the fear of non-existence, but if you really look carefully, you will see that our whole education system teaches us- among other things-the fear of death. So imagine how much of a difference it would make if somehow, culturally, we came to conclude that death is a transition to something else-not to be feared-and that means that most of the other fears in our lives really have no basis either. Well, there’s lots of evidence to suggest that that’s a pretty credible point of view. For example, a lot of people have Out-Of-Body Experiences. Now, I don’t mean a lot in the terms of tens, or dozens, or hundreds-I mean tens of millions of people in this society have had Out-Of-Body experiences. You can take a poll in any group and you will find a pretty good sampling. What that means is that they’ve had the experience-and it’s very real-it’s the difference between dreaming and being awake. This one experience has been known to change the lives of many people simply because if you have once experienced yourself as not totally identified with your physical body, then there are lots of implications of that in terms of asking the fundamental question – “Who am I?”

Well, if you don’t want to look at that area, we’ll put it on the table. But then there’s this whole matter of, so-called perennial wisdom of the world spiritualist traditions. Now, it turns out-and of course nobody was really interested in comparative religion until a half or three quarters of a century ago-that when you examine the various spiritual traditions around the world, there tends to be, even though they have obvious differences in their public or esoteric forms, the inner circle, esoteric, hidden form of the various spiritual traditions are much more experientially based. It has to do with peoples’ experiences in deep meditation or yoga-and that tends to be more or less the same in these different spiritual traditions. So a Christian mystic and an Islamic mystic and a Hindu mystic don’t have any real trouble communicating with one another, if you pardon my use of that particular word. Those who seem to be understanding the inner circle, esoteric understanding of the tradition, recognize that there are differences in emphasis but there’s an awful lot that can be agreed upon. But then, inherent in this whole perennial wisdom-which we very nearly discarded by the middle of the century which is now coming back-central to that, is the assumption that we do persist. That there is purpose and meaning in all of this; that this is a particular learning experience on this planet, but we go on with our learning; that we don’t go somewhere else when we die, we simply remember where we’ve been all the time. And so this area, which has been a political and educational “no-no,” something that you couldn’t even talk about on university campuses not too long ago, is, I think, also a part of this shifting belief system.

DiCarlo: As you have mentioned, intuition can been regarded as an organ of perception to augment our analytical, reasoning mind-certainly that’s been true in Eastern cultures where it is more highly valued. Isn’t intuition unreliable?

Harman: Everything is unreliable, especially your physical senses. Of course intuition is unreliable….it’s as unreliable as your eyesight. You can be fooled by optical illusions and you can be fooled by listening to something you thought was your deep intuition and it turned out to be your internalized mother or something else. And there are ways of checking. We don’t believe everything we see, or think we see. We check it in various ways. Similarly, you don’t believe everything that is perceived as some sort of inner vision or inner voice. You apply appropriate tests. And in that sense, intuition can be extremely reliable, but it’s not necessarily so. Especially if you haven’t been using it much, and all of a sudden you hear some inner voice speaking to you that may come from any source.

DiCarlo: Has intuition played a significant role in your work?

Harman: Oh it’s absolutely central. I think that’s probably true of leaders in almost any field though they don’t always say so.

DiCarlo: In your view, what is the essence of the new paradigm that you write about? How does that contrast with the average person’s view of “The way things are?”

Harman: Well, in modern society, we’ve all been pretty well schooled in a world view in which material goals and the insights of physics, the closest thing to ultimate reality we know, have both been considered to be quite important. It’s true that we have had a lot of religious influences, but let’s limit ourselves to what is put across in the public schools. Let’s say that represents the world view of this society and its built upon a very mechanistic and materialistic foundation.

Onto that platform we have built an economy with a lot of assumptions which relate to that materialistic worldview. We convince ourselves that the economy won’t even work unless we are being good consumers and gathering all the goodies we can.

The paradigm that’s emerging-and I think it’s sort of foolish trying to describe it since it’s still emerging-but at the most fundamental level, it places the cause of things not out in the material world at all, but at non-measureable, spiritual levels. Therefore, the source of meaning and the source of values is out in that spiritual realm, and it’s precisely in that realm that our official science doesn’t know anything and can’t know anything. Nevertheless, it turns out to be the most important area of our experience to know about.

So at one level, the emerging world view is almost upside down, when you compare it to the world view of positivistic science. One of the big shifts-it’s obvious to everybody-is the shift from separateness as a way to understand things, to the concept of everything being connected to everything else. We really have to think of things in ecological terms, as whole systems. That’s part of what the feminist movement is all about. Certainly a big part of the ecological movement is conerned with that. Even the new spirituality, and so on.

Then another shift is from authority being externally “out there”-whether it’s the Pope, or the Encyclopedia Britannica or the white gowned scientist-to much more reliance on inner authority, inner knowing. At a still deeper level, the cause of the things that happen to me is not “out there” somewhere. In some very, very deep sense, the cause is inner, and subjective.

That’s a very, very profound shift. It’s not obvious to a lot of people who are partly in the new paradigm that it goes as deep as that, but as nearly as I can read the signs of the last 30 years, that seems to be the direction we’re headed. That is the direction of the perennial wisdom, so it’s been around for a while. Maybe it’s not too surprising that we should be heading there.

DiCarlo: For many years, you were a futurist for Stanford Research International. In your view, what are the major trends impacting us at this time, and what do you suppose the future has in store for us?

In terms of the new paradigm, nothing is impacting us. It’s all coming from within. But in the more practical terms in which you meant the question, I think we really have two fundamental problems. One is ecological sustainability. And the other involves the coherence of our society in view of the tremendously powerful alienating forces that are coming about. This sense of alientation is very much related to the increasing rich/poor gap, and the increasing awareness on the part of the poor that it’s not an accident.

The combination of those two is going to require a total re-definition of society and the social contract. Most people aren’t really ready to think in those terms yet.

DiCarlo: All that we have been discussing is revolutionary in its implications. How would you respond to the individual who says that this new paradigm talk is utter nonsense?

Harman: Well, some of it is! Some of the more sensational aspects of the New Age are partly passing fads. The spiritual traditions have been fairly clear on this issue. As you go along the inward path, you are going to find a lot of temptations to explore. There are those who get involved in psychic phenomena, or get totally fascinated with one thing or another that somehow relates to all of this. Those are really digressions from the main task of discovering what Alan Watts called the Supreme identity-your own oneness with the Oneness.

So some of the New Age stuff is probably that. Some of it is becoming commercialized so it’s pretty well corrupted. But underlying all of that, is this powerful current of cultural change, and that seems to be, in a historical sense, both new and necessary. It’s wholesome. And in a certain sense, it’s a wedding of the inward looking of the Middle Ages to the excessive outward looking of the modern era. It’s more of a balancing of masculine and feminine, inner and outer. Material and spiritual.

In fact, if there’s any one thing that characterizes the emerging paradigm, I think maybe it is this concept of balance-it’s not black and white, good and evil-there’s a balance in here somehow.

Russell E. DiCarlo is a medical writer, author, lecturer and workshop leader who’s focus is on personal transformation, consciousness research and the fields of energy and anti-aging medicine. His forthcoming book is entitled “The Definitive Guide To Anti-Aging Medicine” (1998, Future Medicine Publishing). DiCarlo resides in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Copyright 1996. Epic Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

Dr. Elmer Green is the former Director of the Voluntary Controls project at the Menninger Institute in Topeka, Kansas. He and his wife Alyce are pioneers in the field of biofeedback training, authoring the classic book “Beyond Biofeedback.” His most recent project, “The Copper Wall,” explores possible electromagnetic coorelates of the human energy field.

DiCarlo: Was there any particular event in your life that served as a trigger, and caused you to look beyond the party line of the traditional scientific paradigm?

Green: No, there was nothing in my life that was like that, and the reason is, I was aware of the essence of this emerging paradigm from the time I was young. There never was a time I wasn’t aware that there was a collective unconscious. I knew about this from the time I was about three years old. Since I knew about it, I took it for granted.

When I first started reading Carl Jung, I thought, “Wow, this guy really knows something. He’s writing about things that I know about, so I know he’s right.” I thought that was pretty funny when I found out later who he was, I mean, the creator of the idea of the collective unconscious. When I first read him as a kid, I just thought, “Well, yes he’s right. He knows something.” I already knew about it from an experiential point of view. But I had never known that anybody had written about it.

So there was no event that I know of in my case, but you are right, for a lot of people, it’s sort of like, something happens. Sometimes it might be the death of a friend, or a family member that all of a sudden triggers them into the awareness of a larger reality.

DiCarlo: Over the past several years you have spent your time on a project you have named “The Copper Wall Experiment.” I have to admit, that sounds very intriguing. Please explain.

Green: When I was a student in the department of physics at the University of Minnesota, I had read about the use of a copper wall that meditators would sit in front of to induce deeper meditative states in the book called “The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnet. ” It occurred to me, if people were meditating in a really potent way, they may very well be generating electrical voltages in their body. Over many years, the idea stuck in my mind, until about ten years ago, when we finally had the chance to test it. So we set up a copper wall which people sit in front of, with their body facing true north. They are isolated from ground by glass blocks. They have a bar magnet over their heads. After doing all this set-up work, we began to measure the voltages that developed on the walls as a way of finding out whether or not their body changed voltage. I didn’t want to put wires directly on the body for a number of technical reasons. If you change the voltage of an electrical object in a room, it has an effect on others things too. So I just wired up the wall to see what was happening to the human body.

DiCarlo: How do you know that these voltages being measured were not attributable to normal electrical fluctuations of the body that have been commonly observed?

Green: In the first place, the person is sitting alone in the room, isolated from ground. The normal body voltages that are generated in a situation like that are usually in the milli-volt range, which is very small. Also, you would expect a person’s body voltage to drift by as much as two volts from a buildup of static electricity. So you expect some fluctuation.

But the voltages that we were getting connected with a healing were shooting up and then returning to baseline by as much as 200 volts on occasion. The healer voltages are not normal body voltages. They are at least 1,000 times bigger. So that’s the problem. We asked ourselves, “In the first place, where did all the voltage come from? In the second place, where did it go to when it disappeared?” Generally, the pulses of electricity in the body of the healers lasted only 4 or 5 seconds. So a huge voltage would appear then disappear. I thought that was quite fascinating.

DiCarlo: Were these surges in electrostatic charges accompanied by an intention to heal?

Green: Generally speaking, yes, the healers were trying to heal, although over a period of years, they had generated so much of this kind of phenomenon with their bodies, that even when they weren’t trying to heal people-if for example they were just meditating in the room- we got electrical pulses from their bodies.

In 6 meditations sessions, one of the healers produced only one pulse of voltage. But in the first of the healing sessions, there were 15 to 20 pulses generated, and that was connected with the intention to heal. And that was generally true, although one of the healers was bursting with energy to such a degree that this pulsing phenomenon occurred even in the meditation sessions.

DiCarlo: Fascinating! Well, what sort of conclusion have you drawn from these experiments, recognizing that the research is not yet complete?

Green: Well, in the first place, I have accepted that healing at a distance is a fact. I think that the religions of all times which have talked about this are not wrong. Of course, these anecdotal types of accounts do not constitute scientific evidence. But I think that there has been enough research now regarding the effects of prayer at a distance to indicate that it really is happening. So I accept that. That’s the first point.

Second point is, that whatever the energy is that does the healing, one of its correlates is electrical phenomena. I am not saying that electricity is the cause of the healing. If that were the case you could do it with a battery.

DiCarlo: So would you say your work has focused upon understanding the mechanisms involved in healing?

Green: Yes, that’s right. But it’s taking for granted that something is happening. We are not trying to find out if healings are taking place. We’re just trying to find out what’s going on.

DiCarlo: Well, if something is happening, I am wondering if the mechanism involved might prove to be subtle energy…..But first, what is subtle energy?

Green: Subtle energy is something that hasn’t been detected in any scientific way except by its effects. If you look at all the careful, clean studies on intercessory prayer on heart patients in a cardiac unit in which the people they were praying for were a block away for example, you find that sure enough, the prayer produced a healing effect. So, we assumed that something was happening, but not in the normal, scientific sense of electromagnetic energies. It was something else. Since it can’t be defined or directly detected except by its effects, it got the name of subtle. Chi is a good example of subtle energy. Subtle energy is that which must exist in order to produce the effects it is producing. I can’t imagine healing taking place without any energies at all being involved. That’s the first point.

The second point is, if you talk to healers, or you talk to Qi Gong people, or you talk to people who are talented in their ability to affect physical objects using their minds, they always talk as if they are handling some kind of energy. If you ask them questions about it, they will say, “Well, it’s sort of like electricity.” So I am assuming-and this is part of the metaphysical tradition too-that energy exists at four different levels, the crudest of which is the one we call electrons. I am assuming that instrumentation will be developed for directly detecting and photographing this stuff. It’s very similar to the development of electricity. In the early days, researchers noticed frog legs twitching on a wire rack when lightening struck nearby. But they didn’t know anything about electricity or electrical induction or magnetic induction. They simply assumed there was a connection of some kind.

So in those days, you could say that electricity was subtle energy since it could not be measured.

DiCarlo: That’s amazing. So you feel that we will be some day be able to measure this energy directly?

Green: I think it’s pretty inevitable that finally we will be able to develop instrumentation that will measure it in the same way that we now measure electricity.

DiCarlo: So, what would be the implications of your work to the average individual, if these subtle energies associated with the body, are scientifically validated?

Green: The importance of this is that-and I believe this will happen in the next century-medical teams will have healers as part of the team. On occasion, medical people can’t keep a patient alive long enough during surgery to complete their work. Healers would be very useful in helping maintain health.

And not only that, I am assuming that in the future, medical teams will include what we would call an intuitive or a psychic diagnostician. Somebody like Caroline Myss who works with Norman Shealy. And not only will we have psychic diagnosticians, but we will have healers who will supply energy not only to heal, but to keep the body going. I would imagine that medical people, as is the case nowadays, would still be in charge.

DiCarlo: But there would be a partnership?

Green: There would be a partnership, yes. Now a lot of people who are sick don’t go to a medical doctor, they go to a healer who is an alternative practitioner. And there are thousands of people out there who call themselves healing practitioners. But they are not accepted scientifically. But I feel that eventually they will come to a place where they will be recognized and their services made use of.

DiCarlo: Are you personally able to sense subtle energy?

Green: To tell you the truth, I have never attempted to document that. But my feeling is that everybody on the whole planet who has a physical body, has a body of subtle energy also. I accept the yogic theory that the physical body is the representation of an energy structure. If we knew all about it, we would call it a subtle energy structure.

DiCarlo: Do you think this energy field represents the ultimate link between mind and body?

Green: Sure. I believe that is actually how biofeedback works. I think that’s how any action of the physical body works. Say you want to move your hand. First you think of it. But the question is, “How does your intention move your hand?” After you have thought of it, how does that thought make your hand move?” Since the nerves that operate the hand are up somewhere in the cortex of the brain. There is some sort of intentionality that causes those nerves to fire. The way the yogis would explain it, is that the mind and the body aren’t the same thing; that the interface between the mind and the body is the subtle energy domain.” Anytime you think of anything, the subtle energies are activated and of course that activates the neurology.

It’s like this: Say you have somebody working at a computer. They have an idea and they want to write something, so they tap on some keys and words appear on the monitor. But the mechanism in between involves what they intend to do. There are quite a few intermediary steps before the words can be seen. In an analogous way, our intentionality activates the subtle energies of our body, which some of the Russian experimenters by the way, are calling the bio-plasma body. The subtle energy body then influences the neurology which fire and allow your fingers to hit the appropriate letters on the key board.

Actually, becoming an Olympic athlete consists of training the neurology, and it is always trained through intention. All the athletes I have talked train themselves through intention. Now the yogis would understand that perfectly. They would say that it’s the training of the energies that manipulate the physical body.

DiCarlo: One of the great characteristics of the emerging world view is that the domain of the spirit and soul is now being acknowledged and embraced. In many fields, people are discussing the “reality” of this aspect of our being. According to yogic tradition, what is the nature of the soul?

Green: From the yogic perspective, it’s another level of energy. Aurobindo, the great Indian philosopher who died around 1950, put in very clearly when he said, “The highest spiritual levels that we know of our energy states also.” The physical body is manipulated, generally speaking, by the emotions. Emotions have an effect on the physical body. But he said, emotions themselves are an energy state in a subtle energy domain, and they are focused on the body. Ideas and mind are also an energy state. And above that, there are various spiritual levels. In the Tibetan system, it’s called the void and according to the Tibetan Teacher W. Y. Evans West, there are 28 different levels in the void. And each one of those levels according to Aurobindo, is an energy state-wheels within wheels within wheels.

DiCarlo: Through your work, you are exploring the frontiers of human potential. Have you discovered any boundaries to that potential?

Green: We haven’t found any boundaries. It’s sort of like coming to the edge of a continent and just finding the edge-we don’t know where the boundaries are. We’re just beginning to start exploring the continent.

I don’t think that scientists as a whole have done more than landed and planted their flag. Not much has been discovered yet.

The ultimate human potential has been nicely described by the Tibetans, and that is this: to become conscious of all the different levels of who you are and to be able to work on all these different levels at the same time instead, unlike the present situation in which we have a conscious self and an unconscious self. If you talk to psychologists and the psychiatrists they will agree that there is an unconscious self. And that’s what the Tibetans and the Hindus and the Chinese and the mystics have always said. But in the unconscious self are all the spiritual levels as well as the normal subconscious which Freud talked about. Our ultimate human potential is to become aware of all these things, and when we do, we are able to answer the question, “Who are we?” and “What is our own nature as a human being?” We find our relationship to the larger whole, in other words to Divine Being. That’s the idea of the ultimate of human potential, it is to find your relationship.
The Christians say, “To find your relationship to God.” Some of the modern scientists might talk about it as finding your relationship to nature.

DiCarlo: So would you say that we are in a watershed period now where collectively and on a wholesale level we are actually re-defining our understanding of that relationship?

Green: Well, yes, I think so. Don’t you?

DiCarlo: In his book, “The Future of the Body,” Michael Murphy draws upon decades of research into extraordinary human capabilities. Do you believe mankind is evolving into what some have called a “multi-sensory species?

Green: Well yes, but what the yogis have said all along is that as you develop in this way, you finally become aware of your connection with Gaia and with other human beings. All of the parapsychological abilities are only indicators of what will I think, be common, human faculties to be aware of each other. At the present moment, they are called non-sensory, but that’s wrong. It’s not non-sensory. All it is, is non-physical sensory.

As people reach these higher stages of human development, they gradually becoming more and more aware. Most every person at some time in there life has had some sort of psychic experience. For example, they knew what some distant relative was thinking without getting a letter from them. As people become more and more aware, these types of phenomenon happen more often. It isn’t all of a sudden like, “one day everything is red, and the next day it is green.” It’s sort of like a gradual development of faculties, the same thing as when you grow up from being a baby. You just gradually become more and more aware of your world and what you can do in it. It’s like that.

It’s the same as the baby. The baby starts out just being conscious only of itself. In terms of what the baby is aware of, it’s almost like as though it’s the center of the universe. But gradually it develops and finds its relationship to its family members and to the clan and to the group and to society in general and to the world. It’s a gradual development. I think that’s what happens to humans in the larger sense. As they expand into becoming conscious of the normal collective unconscious, parapsychological things happen more often.

DiCarlo: In your copper wall experiment you have identified a way to demonstrate the power of intention to cause a change to take place in the physical world, in this case a change in the voltage of the walls of a room. In my own life, I have been intrigued by the ability to use intention to actually dissipate clouds, to make them disappear.

Green: Ralph Alexander actually discussed that in his book, “Creative Realism”, which I thought was really quite interesting. It had to do with how you develop these abilities to focus your attention in such a way that you can become part of the collective conscious, which includes Gaia, the planet. So you can change an idea in the mind of Gaia. When you do that, the cloud upon which you are focusing your attention will disappear. The reason that can be done is because we are all part of the world. Every individual is part of the planet, every individual is part of Gaia. All the clouds, all the rivers and lakes, and all the animals are part of Gaia. When you generalize yourself, you generalize your consciousness so that you start developing awareness of Gaia, and then you can start thinking in the mind of Gaia and when you do, things like clouds come under your control. Alexander by the way is the one one who invented the phrase, “The Field of Mind.” He said, “You can think of it as a field of mind, and everything you see on the planet is in this mind.” Well, if he had been a minister, he would have said, “Everything is in God’s mind.” And if you can raise yourself where you can think in God’s mind, since you are part of the Divine Being itself, and you can change an idea, then things can happen in the environment. That’s the explanation of psychokinesis, of healing, and that’s Ralph Alexander’s explanation of cloud dissipation.

DiCarlo: If you think of the earth as being your extended body, it’s almost like learning how to control certain processes within the body…

Green: Well, sure. What is the body of the planet? The body of the planet is Gaia’s body. You are part of Gaia. The way you learn the ABC’s is that you practice inside your own skin. The rest of the alphabet is outside your skin. But after you learn how to think in your own mind, and you can control your own self, gradually that ability is extended. You become aware of your relationship to the greater whole, and you can start thinking in terms of the greater whole. This causes something to happen in the greater whole.

DiCarlo: Is it because you shift your “identity” to the greater whole that you have the ability to influence the greater whole?

Green: Sure. If you could change a single idea in the mind of God, then something will change, right? From the metaphysical point of view and from the yogic point of view, every chair, every door knob, every plate, everything on the planet exists in the mind of God. If you change that idea in the mind of God-and the dense level of this physical world that we know so well is called the Maya-if you can change that idea in the Maya, then that thing will move or disappear. People in India have interpreted Maya as being something that isn’t true, as illusion-but that’s incorrect. Maya is not permanent-it’s always moving, it’s always changing. So therefore it’s not eternal. It’s more like the clouds. The clouds are appearing and disappearing. The things on the planet, like chairs and tables, appear and disappear much more slowly, so we think of them as fixed. Nevertheless, they are not fixed. They are just part of the energy structure, they are part of the Maya.

Sai Baba says, “You don’t perform any miracles. All you do is manipulate the Maya.” Well, how do you manipulate the Maya? You find your connection to the Divine Being. So all those pieces fit together.

DiCarlo: How significant is the work of frontier scientists, such as Bill Tiller, who has developed a model for understanding these subtle energies?

Green: Bill Tiller is a scientist who is aware of the fact that these internal domains or other energies exist and he’s trying to help build a science of it. Scientists are the priests of acceptance, and it’s important for the graduation of humanity-to use Buckminster Fuller’s expression-that scientists learn enough so that they can break through, expand the frontiers and lead the way. People depend upon scientists. So Bill Tiller and others who are working in that area are interested in developing knowledge of how all of this stuff happens.

As Ralph Alexander said, “Everything happens according to natural law.” Sai Baba said, “There is no such thing as a miracle. It’s only the application of natural law.” And scientists like Bill Tiller are trying to make it objective so people can understand it better, and that will help them go through the transformation.

A lot of meditators are doing self-exploration-they want to explore. Quite a few scientists are trying to explain. These explanations are important because they help people shape their world view. If the world view includes these subtle energies, then when the energies become important in your life, you won’t be so shook up so to speak. It makes it possible to move through the transformation process with less pain.

DiCarlo: Some people might argue that science doesn’t have any business sticking its nose into the domain of religion, spirituality and the non-physical?

Green: Well if that’s true then science doesn’t have any business of any kind. The business of science is everything. There isn’t anything that science isn’t connected with. What does science mean anyway? It means to become conscious. To understand. Science doesn’t have a single domain to work in. That’s an unfortunate idea that a lot of scientists have. But that’s like wearing the blinders that you have manufactured for yourself.

DiCarlo: Well certainly pioneers like yourself and Bill Tiller are exceptional in that you have open-mindedly pursued a particular area of interest that most other scientists would recoil from….

Green: A scientist that I worked with-when he understood what was going on-said, “I won’t accept any of this, or any of these energies. I won’t accept any of it.” I said, “Well, why won’t you?” And he said, “If this turns out to be true, then everything that I am would go down the drain. And everything I have learned in graduate school and ever since would now be worthless.”

And I said, “No, it’s not that way at all. Everything that you are and everything that you learned is still there. It is still factual. All of this is just an addition to what you know. It’s not “Instead of.” That’s the problem with most people’s world view. As their world view changes, they think that it means that everything is now done away with. But it isn’t done away with, it’s merely expanded. It’s like the babies view. As the baby grows up, the world view keeps changing. But it isn’t that they viewed things as a baby was wrong.

DiCarlo: You have paraphrased the physicist Neils Bohr by stating that “science progresses one death at a time.” What is the real reason behind all the resistance to new ideas and to the new models of the way the world is?

Green: That’s simply fear. If you have an idea of how the world functions, and somebody comes along and they can show you it isn’t exactly that way, then you start trembling inside. Everything that you have come to believe has been called into question. It’s like the platform of your world has been shaken. Unfortunately, people make the mistake of having their identity linked to their world view. Isn’t that amazing? People’s identities are linked to their views of the world, so they feel like their identity is threatened.

Scientists are no better than anyone else in that way. They are not any better than religious fundamentalists. They are just as nervous about having their world view shaken as anyone else.

DiCarlo: But I thought scientists were supposed to follow the truth wherever it may lead? Isn’t that what distinguishes the true scientist from the technician?

Green: It does, but who is going to say what a true scientist is? After an Einstein does his thing and his work turns out to be important, then he’s called a true scientist. Before that, he’s called a nut. That’s true of a lot of scientists. They are all nuts until they are dead. Then it turns out that maybe they had some good ideas. Gradually, they become more and more famous until after about two or three hundred years they are well known. That’s pretty funny.

In 1956, an interesting article was published in the prestigious journal “Science” of all places, having to do with why scientists hate progress. The most fascinating part of this was, the writer found that scientists were a lot like priests. They are like leaders of a religion. And they hate progress in the same way that priests as a whole, fight tooth and nail against any change in religious belief.

DiCarlo: How would you respond to the scientists who explain away the concept of realms of existence that go beyond the physical?

Green: That’s no different than any other kind of religious belief is it? That’s just lack of experience. If somebody is color blind and you start talking about red and green, they don’t know what you are talking about. It’s lack of experience.

It’s interesting that if anyone would go through the processes of mindfulness meditation, they will develop some experiences that will convince them reality isn’t the way they thought it was. But most people, when they start to find out about that, get slightly frightened because they start to realize their world view may have to change. But it’s interesting isn’t it, that the people who really want to meditate are dis-satisfied with their world view? They think there is something more and they want to find out what it is.

DiCarlo: As a scientist, what do you suspect happens during meditation….?

Green: According to the Oriental traditions-and it’s beginning to be talked about even in the west-as you turn your attention inwards, you become aware of the energy structure of your own nature. Normally, you know, our sensory systems are turned outward. We are only aware of what is going on from our skin out. When you turn your attention inwards, you become aware of this “energy structure” of what the yogis would call “etheric” body. Another way of thinking of that is, there is a body of energy, which is called the subtle body. In other words, the physical body is the representation to our physical senses of the energy structure which we really are, which is a subtle energy structure.

So as you meditate you become aware of this inner structure that you really are-your basic energy nature. But according to the yogic theory, what you are really becoming aware of, are these different levels of energy of your own nature. These different levels are called chakras. Chakras theoretically are energy centers located in your etheric energy body. They are not to be found in your physical body. But each one of these places is associated with a different level of consciousness. For example they would talk about the heart chakra. As you become aware of this energy center in your nature, you become aware of the interconnectedness of yourself with other people. If you were becoming aware of other people through the solar plexus chakra which lies below the heart chakra in the area of above your navel, then you become aware of people’s emotions. What happens when people meditate, is that they become aware of the fact that they have all kinds of inner domains that they didn’t even know they had. Normally people are stuck looking at the outside world. They don’t look at the inside world. They don’t even know that domain is there. When they meditate, there is the tendency to become aware of the fact that there is a lot of internal terrain. When you become aware of this inner domain, you become aware of your connections with other people also.

That’s the way I think of it.

DiCarlo: So would you say that most of the people in the world are operating out of this third chakra that deals with our emotional nature?

Green: That’s it exactly. In fact, the yogis would say that this is a third chakra planet.

DiCarlo: So if development goes from one level to the next higher, I would assume that, the next stage in our collective development have to do with learning to become more focused in the heart?

Green: Yes. And that’s called the transformation. Energies are transformed from the emotional domain, which are always self-centered-they always involve selfishness-to the next domain, which is called the heart chakra, which has to do with ecology. It’s like, “Instead of just taking care of myself, I am going to take care of Gaia,” and that’s the movement from the third chakra to the fourth chakra. That’s the movement from disposing of your rubbish by throwing it out the window, to being a recycler. That’s the movement from being destructive in the environment to being recreative in the environment. That’s why the environmentalists are important. They may not think of it that way, but they are part of the paradigm shift because they are essentially helping the planet move from third to fourth chakra in the yogic terminology.

And that’s the movement from the emotional planet to the heart planet.

DiCarlo: Fascinating…In my conversations with people on the cutting-edge, I have found that most have strongly relied upon their intuition. Has intuition played a significant role in your work as a scientist?

Green: I would guess that it has. I wouldn’t have thought of it as intuition, because it was more planned. Back when I was a student of a meditation teacher in Minneapolis I learned one meditation approach called Vispassana, or mindfulness. It means to be totally aware and conscious of everything that you are doing and to become the observer of yourself-to be objective and to see everything that is going on. Everything that you think, everything that you feel, everything that you do. You become the witness of yourself at all levels. That’s the goal of Vispassana or mindfulness meditation.

For example, as you become aware of yourself as a physical entity, you become aware of yourself as an emotional being. And you begin to realize that your emotions are objective, and you start thinking of them as objective things. So if you think of anger, “Oh, there’s that thing again.” Most people think of anger as, “I am angry”, instead of “there is anger.” If you have a thought about something, people don’t normally say, “Oh, there is that thought again.” They normally say, “I am thinking…” They are not objective in regards to all these subjective internal processes. What happens in mindfulness meditation is, you become objective about your own subjectivity. And that’s a great step forward, because that’s how you escape from subjectivity. Well, that was one of the things I was taught to do.

As it turns out, when you get into that state of mindfulness, you can ask your unconscious questions, and it will start giving you answers. But the answers that the unconscious will provide you, are answers connected with what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious, and all of the knowledge contained in the collective unconscious is available to you. Normally, people call that intuition. Intuition is actually becoming aware of the collective unconscious and all of the knowledge and wisdom therein. That’s my way of thinking about it. So after I was taught how to do this, when I needed to solve problems I went into this state of mindfulness, turned attention towards those problems, and answers would come up that I had never would have thought of. Now people would say that’s creativity, or they would say that’s intuition. But I would say that’s simply tapping into the knowledge that exists.

But it can be done intentionally. You don’t have to wait for intuition to strike like a bolt of lightening. You can learn how to turn it on the same as you turn on any other skill.

DiCarlo: You’ve mentioned the idea of the collective unconscious. In his work, Jung describes phenomenon related to the unconscious which he refers to as “archetypes.” What is an archetype, and how might they influence us in our lives?

Green: An archetype is one of the characteristics, entities or objects which reside in the collective unconscious. In other words, the things that humans think about in general start taking on a form of some kind. The way the Tibetans call it a thought form. Let’s say that collectively, people develop some religious idea about the nature of God, such as “God is the great judge.” Those ideas of God becomes a thought form in the collective unconscious. That thought form then exists. It’s like a piece of furniture in the collective unconscious, only it’s alive. But it has been created to a certain extent by humans. I am not saying that God was created by humans, but the religious idea of God was created by humans.

You know God has many characteristics, and some gods in some religions are vengeful, sometimes they are playful. All those characteristics of God are archetypal ideas that have been constructed by humans and are embedded in the collective unconscious. And when Carl Jung discovered the collective unconscious and started studying it, he found out there were a lot of things in it that were like permanent fixtures-they are there all of the time-which had been reported by many people in many different cultures. Those things that were there all of the time he called the archetypes.

In his wonderful book Dreams, Memories and Reflections, Carl Jung explains how he found out about all this stuff and where he got his ideas. That’s one of the most important books that I know of. He knew a lot about the things that we are now discussing. Jung was not only a scholar, but he was aware of these archetypes from personal experience. In his presence, all kinds of psychic phenomenon happened. Sometimes the walls would start knocking. He didn’t talk a lot about that, but that’s what caused the split between he and Freud, who was his Jung’s mentor. Freud was frightened to death that all this stuff was going on. Jung just took it as a manifestation of the way nature is. Freud couldn’t tolerate it, and that caused the split.

DiCarlo: Didn’t Freud talked about psychic energy..

Green: Well that was the part that really bugged him. As a matter of fact, Freud said, “We have to prevent the black mud of occultism from sweeping over us.” Whereas Jung’s attitude was entirely the opposite-“We have to find out what’s going on in the cosmos.”

DiCarlo: Jung was influenced by the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which you make mention of it in your work. According to this text, what happens after we die?

Green: Well, we go through various energy levels until we rise to a certain place-and this sounds funny-according to the density of our non-physical nature, which is still an energy structure. There are all these energy fields, within fields. And when a person dies, then they move completely into the next field of energy. And we just continue on with experience. The place where you exist after separating from your physical body is called the Bardo, which is a realm so different it’s like going to another planet. I am not saying you go to another planet. But it’s like going away from the earth. But that doesn’t mean you have vanished.

DiCarlo: In your view, if you had to boil things down, what would be the essence of the emerging paradigm?

Green: From my point of view, the essence of the emerging paradigm is the development of human potential, and finding the relation of humans to the planetary collective unconscious that we call Gaia. We are connected. Humans like to think of themselves as individual entities, but I think it was John Dunn who said, “No man is an island.” I think that’s what human potential is moving towards. We are finding our group relationships.

Naturally we know from long experience and folklore that healing actually works. If people pray, the effects are felt. What that really means is that there is no such thing as a person being an island. That’s all nonsense. There are no people separate from humanity. They are part of humanity by merely being a member of the species and by being part of the energy flux in which everything exists. They may not be conscious of it, because most of it can only be experienced in a kind of superconscious state. But the Tibetan Buddhists, the advanced Hindu Yogis, the advanced Christian mystics, the American Indian medicine man, and the shamans all over the planet, agree that we’re all connected together. But scientists have never paid any attention to that. They think that’s just baloney. Turns out not to be baloney. And we think the copper wall project and its continuation into the effects at a distance are just part of human potential.

I would say that most people are just like children. They are aware of themselves, and gradually they become aware of the fact that they have bodies. Humans are the same way, even when they are grown up. They are not aware of their connections. That’s what I think people are moving towards-awareness of their connections.

That’s why the quality movement in business is so important, because literally, that’s what it is about-it’s about finding the right relations of all the parts of an organization so that they can function properly. If you have a human body and you don’t feed it properly, then the organs don’t function as they should. And if the organs don’t function, then the whole body doesn’t function. We’re beginning to understand that a company is an organism, and it has lots of different parts and the parts have to be cared for properly so that they can perform properly. Then the whole benefits. The individual human who always likes to think of himself as an individualistic, non-connected being, is finding out that he may be an individual, but he is a connected. And there’s nothing an individual does that doesn’t affect the collective.

DiCarlo: Would you say that the medium of that connection between the individual and the collective would be subtle energy?

Green: Absolutely. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what the yogis say. That’s what the Tibetans say. That’s what the Qi Gong Masters in China say. We are all submerged in this energy field the same way we are all in the earth, and in the same way we all are breathing this air. At the same time we are breathing these energies. But these energies are not just local. They are planetary-wide. As we handle these energies, we effect everyone else on the planet.

In this way, we as individuals become important in a planetary sense. And that’s one of the main goals of human potential and of developing self-regulation, the ability to consciously direct your energy. To the extent that we self-regulate is the same extent to which we help others.

I think that is an interesting religious idea also. In the bible Jesus said, “If I be lifted up, everybody else will be lifted up too.” What was he talking about? Well, he was just putting out this idea of human potential-that we are all connected. Whatever we do to expand our human potential has an effect on everyone else, whether we have thought of it or not.

Excerpted from the book Towards A New World View: Conversations At The Leading Edge with Russell E. DiCarlo. The 377-page book features new and inspiring interviews with 27 paradigm pioneers in the fields of medicine, psychology, economics, business, religion, science, education and human potential. Featuring: Willis Harman, Matthew Fox, Joan Boysenko, George Leonard, Gary Zukav, Robert Monroe, Hazel Henderson, Fred Alan Wolf, Peter Senge, Jacquelyn Small, Elmer Green, Larry Dossey, Carolyn Myss, Stan Grof, Rich Tarnas, Marilyn Ferguson, Marsha Sinetar, Dr. Raymond Moody, Stephen Covey and Peter Russell.

Russell E. DiCarlo is a medical writer, author, lecturer and workshop leader who’s focus is on personal transformation, consciousness research and the fields of energy and anti-aging medicine. His forthcoming book is entitled “The Definitive Guide To Anti-Aging Medicine” (1998, Future Medicine Publishing). DiCarlo resides in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Copyright 1996. Epic Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

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DiCarlo: Could you explain to me the origins and purpose of the Center For Frontier Sciences?

Rubik: The Center was set up by the Temple University administration in 1987. The administrative team included the president of this state university, the provost and a few members of the board. Some of these individuals had prior experience with alternative medicines, and they wondered why no one in science was taking a look at these things. They wanted to explore not just alternative medicine but some other issues in science that they felt the scientific system had been closed to so they set up the Center for the Study of Frontier Issues in Science. That was the original name. The purpose of the center was simply to ask questions, not to advocate a certain position. In 1988 I was brought in to serve as Director. At the outset, I became the scapegoat for a lot of antagonism from the faculty, who were not involved with it from its inception. This created problems, but of course, all of that is behind us now.

DiCarlo: Are there any other university affiliated programs similar to yours?

Rubik: Just recently, two other centers for frontier sciences have started. At the University of Guadalajara in Mexico, they have a Center For Frontier Sciences which was inspired by our program and they have received a massive amount of funding from very conventional sources. It’s a much bigger program that what we have here. Also, there’s the new Center of Frontier Sciences at the University of Milano, Italy. They are going to follow three frontier areas -(1) alternative medicine or holistic medicine and biology , and (2) the physics and chemistry of new energy technologies, such as co-fusion, capillary fusion and energy from the vacuum, and (3) the history and philosophy of science.

DiCarlo: How many people or organizations are involved with the Center?

Rubik: It ranges above 3,000 affiliated scientists and scholars worldwide. Some of our affiliates are ordinary people who have an interest in alternative medicine, but I would say that most of them are scientists and scholars that I have met personally at meetings or that have heard me speak. So they are mainly colleagues in science, psychology and medicine that feel a kinship with these ideas and who are interested in exploring questions that go beyond the mainstream.

DiCarlo: You hold a monthly lecture series..what kinds of subjects are discussed?

Rubik: We bring in some very distinguished frontier scientists, some Nobel laureates, some lesser known but nonetheless doing interesting work. We have hosted a number of round-table international meetings on some key topics such as mind and matter; fields and living systems; homeopathy; and geobiology -the subtle interrelationship of life and the earth.

DiCarlo: In starting any kind of enterprise that challenges the status quo, you’d expect that there would resistance. The Center for Frontier Sciences is part of a major American University and I know you have had your share….Are you finding that there is more acceptance towards what you are doing than say 5 years ago?

Rubik: I would say that there is the usual benign neglect-that’s typical among academics. You know, scientists are trained specialists in some very narrow aspect of realty and they really do not know much beyond that. What’s more, they don’t care. The system doesn’t encourage them to think in broader terms. In fact, through promotions and tenure, the system rewards focussed thinking and only mainstream perspectives.

In the past I brought very distinguished scientists in to speak. To get people interested and involved, I held faculty lunches. As it turns out, we did get faculty members to attend, but it appeared that their main interest was to simply pick the brain of my visitors with questions that related to their own narrow area of research. I thought that was a reprehensible misuse of our visitors’ time, so I stopped having the luncheon meetings.

Keep in mind, this is your average state university. Faculty at other universities would have likely responded in the same way.

DiCarlo: What are the main areas of interest of the Center?

Rubik: There are three. First is the area of consciousness studies, that is, the interactions of the mind-through intention, will and beliefs-and the body and beyond to the larger sphere of the material world. That’s one area. The second area is complementary medicine or alternative medicine- particularly “energy” medicine. The third area is bioelectromagnetics, the interrelationship between living systems and electric and magnetic fields. Those three areas were selected because they are all testable. It’s not like the study of UFO’s where the evidence takes the form of people’s subjective experiences. We wanted to study areas in which we could collect hard physical evidence. There has been a certain amount of scholarly inquiry into these areas, and the anomalies, or events that cannot be explained by our conventional, scientific understanding of the world, keep piling up. Ultimately, these will lead us to a new world vision.

The mechanical vision of the universe has been useful, but I think it’s increasingly been one of the sources of our abuse of nature. We don’t really assist nature, we try to compete with nature or manipulate it and in so doing we often create imbalances. Consciousness, field interactions and energy medicine are the softer aspects or the feminine side of nature that have not really been addressed by science.

DiCarlo: Why have these areas been neglected?

Rubik: I think the system selects people who are very much like their prospective mentors-they have similar training backgrounds and look at things in much the same way. My way of looking at things was often in contrast to some of my former teachers.

DiCarlo: You are to be congratulated on all the prominent leading-edge scientists whom you have brought in to speak. Of all the people that have presented over the past few years, who most sticks out in your mind as having impressed you the most?

Rubik: That’s hard to say. There’s certainly been a number of very good talks. I think the talk by the great physicist David Bohm was very profound. He gave an overview of his idea of information as the bridge between mind and matter. Bohm’s idea of information is so very different from the materialistic view of information used in the computer sciences. In Bohm’s view, information is something that’s really not physical. That’s a view I share. Information is something which has meaning and is communicated. My voice is the carrier of the words, and the actual words contain the meaning which is intangible. To state that information is the bridge between the mind and the material realm is a very rich way of thinking because all entities in the universe have information. They have something to tell us. But in order to get that information, we have to ask new questions. When we do, the answers that follow will reveal new insights. So I really thought that Bohm’s talk about the notion of “active information”-that’s the term he uses-was quite an eye opener. It’s a very different way of thinking about information.

DiCarlo: Have there been any other visitors whose work has impressed you?

Rubik: I think the experimental work Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunn at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory is certainly important. They have shown that people can skew the numbers on a random number generator towards higher or lower values by simply wishing them to be high or low, respectively. It’s one of those exceptions to the traditional scientific world view about the way things are that we simply can’t explain using the old framework. Their data is a real challenge to the prevailing paradigm. They have shown that mental intention can interact with random physical systems whether they are mechanical, electronic, or radioactive. It’s fascinating work, and all of the data pooled together shows high statistical significance. Although their 15 years worth of work is extremely solid-it is so solid that no one can contest it anymore-it has certainly not changed the view of the mainstream. Unfortunately, it has not gained them any respect at Princeton University either.

DiCarlo: I am surprised they’ve been able to get funding for such a long time…

Rubik: I believe they have had funding from the aerospace industry. Robert Jahn is such a distinguished aerospace engineer that he’s been an on-going consultant to NASA. But for most researchers, obtaining adequate funding for frontier type research is an extraordinary problem.

DiCarlo: Why is there such resistance to accepting these kinds of studies? Aren’t they bringing us new discoveries and expanding our understanding of reality?

Rubik: Originally I thought the lack of acceptance was due to the fact that the data was scanty or people didn’t know about it . Most of these studies are not published in the mainstream journals, so it’s hardly accessible to the traditional scientific community. But I sense that something much deeper is at play here because I have been bringing this data to the attention of the mainstream in meetings at Temple and elsewhere in the world for six years now. So it’s not simply a matter of being uninformed.

I really think it’s about the scientific world view-the conventional, materialistic reductionistic world view-which is being challenged. Keep in mind it is the scientists themselves who form the world view. Any challenge to the world view is actually a direct assault on them-on who they are- so it becomes a highly emotional, irrational thing. I have seen it happen a lot. It’s not simply about some lofty ideas. This challenges the essence of who people are in this culture. So the real work involves planting a seed in their minds that there is something more to themselves and reality than they had previously thought. And that takes time.

I remember planting such a seed 10 or 15 years ago when I was in California . I was talking to a scientist about my interests and my work and I could see he was very uncomfortable with the topics. He dismissed what I was saying. Twelve years later I spotted him at a meeting. He came up to me and asked me whether I remembered him. “Yes, I of course I remember you,” I said. I’m surprised to see you here.” He said, “I came here because I saw your name in the program.” “Well,” I responded, “twelve years ago you weren’t interested in these things.” And he said, “I am now, thanks to you.” So, things happen. You plant a seed in people and it settles down into some deep substratum of the mind. Over time, it starts to grow and suddenly it becomes conscious and they’re interested in these things many years later as they themselves have changed in response to these new ideas.

The thing about a paradigm shift-and Thomas Kuhn talked about it at length-is that it’s not something that’s just an intellectual change of mind. It’s a deep conversion experience. It’s more like a religious shift inside a person. So this work of mediating between paradigms and bringing data to the attention of others and hoping that they will change their minds is very slow work . It doesn’t happen overnight and it’s more like being a missionary worker.

The younger generation of scientists, who are more open minded, who do not have a vested interest in the dogma, and who are able to appreciate the importance of the new world view will of course more easily embrace these ideas. Ultimately, these younger scientists will replace those who are older and that’s how world views will shift. Niels Bohr wrote, “Science advances funeral by funeral.”

DiCarlo: You’ve mentioned the difficulty a scientist on the leading-edge may have obtaining research funds. What are some of the other penalties facing scientists who choose to do paradigm busting work?

Rubik: There are quite a lot of extraordinary things. In essence, nothing is new. Scientists who do this kind of research go the route of Galileo and Copernicus- they are excommunicated from the flock. In his day, Galileo was considered a heretic by the Church. Isn’t it strange that only two years ago the Pope, sitting in Rome today proclaimed that Galileo was finally, “OK”-absolved, 300 years later. It was on the news. Galileo was regarded as a heretic and excommunicated. Copernicus was excommunicated. These people defied the Church’s view of the earth being at the center of the universe. They saw new evidence: Galileo saw moons moving around Jupiter, but his contemporaries refused to look through his telescope.

Even though we don’t have the Catholic Church over our heads anymore, we have the “Church of Science,” which is almost like the Catholic Church, you know. Those who dare to challenge the dogmas of the Church of Science find themselves essentially excommunicated. They are cut-off from their peers. Isolated. Their funding is removed. In fact, those very words “excommunication” were used to described Jacques Beuveniste, a French scientist who six years ago published a paper in the distinguished journal Nature showing that very dilute solutions-so dilute that there should be no molecules of any effective substance-could produce real biochemical effects on blood cells. Beuveniste has been subtlely silenced by the scientific community. Scientists who are treated this way find that they can no longer get grants and this means they will lose their graduate assistants, who are their arms who carry out the laboratory research They are not allowed to publish in the peer-reviewed, mainstream journals that most scientists make the time to read.

There is another example involving a very distinguished American scientist, Linus Pauling. Pauling is a double Nobel laureate -he has a Nobel prize in chemistry as well as in peace. He thinks that Vitamin C in high doses might help prevent the common cold and might also extend the lives of cancer patients, giving them quality time. Because of this, he has been unable to publish in the proceedings of the National Academy of Science, despite the fact that he is a member of the Academy. Those in power made specific rules to keep him from expressing his views, which are considered dangerous to young minds.

People with points of view that conflict with the paradigm find their research papers have been rejected based upon unreasonable logic such as, “lack of readership interest”. But, it’s really an unfair way of censoring the work without giving it peer review. There is no real peer review when you’re challenging the paradigm. There are a lot of underhanded ways of dealing with people who have threatening points of view.

DiCarlo: Well, to read Thomas Kuhn’s account of paradigm change is one thing, but to see it actually playing itself out in front of you is something altogether different.

Rubik: The sad thing is that most American scientists have not studied the history or philosophy of science. It’s not part of the curriculum. You get a Doctorate in the Philosophy of Science and you’ve never had a single philosophy of science course! That’s very peculiar, isn’t it, but that’s how most universities are. They simply produce trained technicians, able to conduct experiments that they then analyze using statistics. When I enrolled in a philosophy of science graduate course at the University of California at Berkeley over 20 years ago, I was laughed at by my superiors. They said, “Why are you wasting your time taking these classes?” I was dismissed as a kook.

DiCarlo: Given everything you said, do you think that a lot of the changes that will take place in the scientific community then will come from the outside rather than the inside?

Rubik: Well, Robert Becker is an example of change coming from the outside-in. Twenty years go Becker was doing research on electromagnetic fields and the regeneration of amputated limbs on animals. As a result of his work, which showed profound biological effects from weak electromagnetic fields, he became concerned about the possible health risks associated with people who live next to high voltage power lines. He found it very difficult to get money from the government to study this and the military had silenced a lot of his reports. So he wrote several popular books on the subject that activated and aroused the general public. People began openly expressing their concerns about the increased risk of cancer to their congressmen, and research monies became available soon thereafter. When consumer groups start clamoring and making noise, then change happens. I think that’s a good strategy for making a paradigm shift today, whether it’s in medicine or in new energy technology. The scientific community is much more conservative and hard to shake. I didn’t use to believe this, by the way, but I do now.

DiCarlo: You have acknowledged that some of the ideas of alternative medicine challenge the very foundations of science. What are some of those ideas?

Rubik: For example, issues of the spirit. A human being may or may not be a spiritual believer or have some spiritual life and that could very much play a part in his or her healing response. Even one’s belief about death is not taken into account by conventional medicine. Moreover, the realms of spirit are not addressed by science, that’s again the 300 year old debate which can be traced back to Galileo. There is still a rift between science and spirit.

Another example is consciousness. The role of the health care provider has been that of the technician administering the techniques for the patient to get well. It would be much more powerful if the consciousness of the practitioner and the patient were aligned in a kind of partnership. In alternative medicines, there is often a much closer relationship between the patient and the practitioner. This may help facilitate the healing response. Conventional science does not pay attention to issues of consciousness because it doesn’t believe consciousness can have any active consequences in physical reality, which of course would include physical health and healing.

If we are going to take issues of spirit and consciousness into account in order to study the full efficacy of alternative medicine, then how do we do it using a science in which they have no importance? Furthermore, there is no scientific foundation at all on which to study the nonmaterial realm.

Before we do all of these experiments we need to bring this up front and discuss it. Ethnomedicines that are non-Western have very different assumptions underlying them which do not fit in with Western scientific assumptions. For example, in Chinese medicine, the mind and body is one. There are serious philosophical discrepencies between Western science and these different ethnomedical systems.

Western science is not a universal system of truth testing. It really is bound by its own cultural context, its own system of values and its own hidden assumptions. We need to extend science so that we can accommodate other ethnomedicine systems in their fullness in order to study them. We need to recognize that these are really complete systems on their own, with different assumptions. If we try to test them, we need to give full respect to their depth and their differences.

DiCarlo: I see what you mean. It has always struck me that when Western science studies acupuncture, let’s say, we try to explain its effects in terms of neurotransmitters and bodily produced chemicals, which fall within the realm of traditional science-chemistry and biology. In Eastern culture there’s a whole different explanation as to why acupuncture might work.

Rubik: That’s exactly right . I was asked once to give a lecture to American Academy of Medical Acupuncture on that very topic. In the talk I stated, “Who are we to think that a 300 year old system of thinking is vastly superior to a 4,000 year old way of practicing medicine and thinking about the body? Who are we to have such arrogance?” I don’t see one-to-one correspondences between Western science and Chinese philosophy. We find, for example, that when acupuncture needles are inserted to diminish pain, natural pain-killing endorphins which have been produced by the body can be found at the site of the needles, in the spinal cord and even in the brain. But that doesn’t mean that all of the effects of acupuncture are explainable in terms of ordinary Western science concepts. Maybe in the long run they will be, but certainly not now. We have no way of explaining why stimulating the crown of the head is helpful in treating hemorrhoids. We have no way of explaining that kind of nonlocal interconnectedness of the body. Western science has no explanation at all, and we shouldn’t fool ourselves into believing that we do.

DiCarlo: These Eastern traditions oftentimes speak in terms of fields of energy. Do you think that’s a metaphor or do you think there is an element of truth to that?

Rubik: I think there’s an element of reality to that. You can experience that if you do some Qi Gong or T’ai Chi exercises. You can easily experience the sensation of energy between your hands. If you move your hands slowly together then apart for about 5 minutes, you will feel a ball of energy between them. It’s like bringing two North poles of a magnet together and feeling the resistance. Everybody experiences that, yet the Westerner will say , “Am I imagining this, or is is it really in my body?” And that’s a question only a Westerner would ask because in the East they don’t distinguish between your mind and your body. Right away, we slip into our Cartesian duality and try to explain it, “Well, it’s just a mental thing. It’s not real.”

But actually, I think there are some parallels between, let’s say, the physical fields that we know in physics and acupuncture. One of the things about acupuncture points is that they conduct electricity more than the surrounding tissues. That’s how people who are not good at acupuncture find the points. They have what is called a point finder, an electrical device that they move around until they find a place of low resistance or high electrical conductivity, and that’s where they insert the needle. There’s no way of looking at the body and knowing. Of course, the real master of acupuncture in China can feel the energy and its blocks and knows where to put the needle. They don’t have to use a point finder. So it seems that there is some relation between electromagnetic fields and acupuncture but the exact nature of that relationship is not well understood yet.

DiCarlo: Has there been any good scientific work done to demonstrate the existence of the human energy field?

Rubik: I’m intrigued by some work done in Germany. In fact I’ve gone over there to work with Dr. Fritz-Albert Popp. This involves extremely low level light that the body and all organisms emit which might be called an aura. However, I don’t know if it’s the same aura that people who are psychic claim to see, because this is a real physically measurable energy. Though it’s visible light, it’s not something that you can see easily with the naked eye. Popp uses very sensitive detectors that can count the photons, the particles of light coming out of the body. I think that this may be one of the manifestations of the energy dynamics of life. For example, in the Popp laboratory they have demonstrated that the light to a large extent is coherent like a laser. That means that the light probably has a capacity for carrying information, unlike incoherent light. If that’s the case, it’s probably not some junk radiation, which is the mainstream opinion. I think that the light, if it’s coherent, may be involved in both an internal communication system as well as an external one that conveys signals between living things.

It’s interesting that in studying the cancer tissues of patients, they have found losses of coherence in the light. Perhaps the light has lost informational value and cannot communicate with the other cells and that’s why the tissues grow abnormally.

I did some experiments to explore communication between two cultures of single-celled algae that glow. When I disturbed one of them with a chemical stressor, it emitted a burst of light. Almost simultaneously, the second culture that was in a separate container emitted light too. You could see it with your eyes. It was almost as if it was communicating with the first culture. After doing experiments like that for a month, I am intrigued that there is something here.

I think the idea of this biophoton field is just an indicator of some some deeper field in the organism. When an organism dies, it gives up a burst of light. There have also been a lot of interesting findings by German and Japanese researchers that would seem to echo some of the old Hindu ideas about the chakras. Researchers have discovered, for example, that the areas near the forehead, throat and heart have increased photon emission compared to non-chakra regions of the body.

So there’s been a number of research laboratories documenting that there are energy dynamics associated with the body which seem to support the wisdom of ancient cultures. To me, this convergence of the new information from frontier science and old perennial wisdom is fascinating.

DiCarlo: You have mentioned that there are certain scientists who are arrogant and perhaps closed minded. What do you feel are the essential qualities and characteristics that make for a good scientist?

Rubik: I think it is very important to neither be believer nor a disbeliever. It’s a very narrow line to stand on, but I think the best position to be with respect to old data and new data-the mainstream thinking and the frontier thinking-is to stand on the fine line between them. This is the position of the non-believer. But at the same time try to stay open. I want to ask as many questions as possible which challenges all sides-mainstream, frontier and even fringe ideas. Unfortunately, that’s not a popular place to be. When I put myself in that place and go the mainstream, they often accuse me of being too frontier. When I go to the frontier science meetings and challenge them with questions, they accuse me of being too mainstream. But it’s really the best place to be because you don’t stop asking questions. Science is driven by questions and we must never stop asking questions. I feel where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier. We can never say, “We now we have it . This is the truth.” This is the problem even with the frontier scientists-many have become true believers in a particular system. I’ve actually encountered violence while I attended the meetings of some groups. One individual threw a journal in my face in response to my question. He got so upset because he was a true believer. I began to understand he wasn’t interested in bridging his work to the mainstream of everyday science. He, and others like him, want to be seen as mavericks bucking the system.

That’s definitely one type of frontier scientist. Others would like to see their work merged into the mainstream, but they don’t know how to do it. They often take an intense fighting posture in their writing and language and instead of building bridges they actually cut themselves off. I see various different ways in which people destroy their chances of trying to bring their work into the mainstream, but usually it’s because of an, “I’m right and you’re wrong” attitude. Anytime we have that, I think we lose the art of being a scientist, which is never to believe in what you have have found. Science is about being humble rather than being arrogant, because you know that what you have found is only part of an even bigger picture and that there are many, many more questions that will lead to an even greater unfolding of our knowledge. I believe that our science will never be complete, because I think as God’s creation, it is deep and unfathomable, like divinity.

Over a 100 years ago, one of the Deans of Harvard University said our science is nearly complete and he tried to discourage students from going into science as he felt there was nothing more to do. That was before quantum and relativity theory! This notion has come up over and over again in history and the present is no different. We think it’s almost finished now-we just need a unified field theory and that’s it folks-we have everything. I think this is nonsense. We should be encouraging all of our students not to memorize and regurgitate scientific dogma, but to ask new questions. We should ask them to go inside themselves and rely on their own intuition and come up with their own personal questions to ask of nature. I think that nature is so complex and creatively evolving that if all of us were asking questions, we would never unfold all the available knowledge. But of course, that’s more of a religious belief on my part. I see that nature is filled with divinity and being filled with divinity, it is infinitely complex. So we will never know it all, but we have to keep asking new questions.

DiCarlo: I’m wondering what role does the inner state of the scientist play in experimentation in scientific inquiry?

Rubik: I think that our inner state and our own beliefs and ideas, the things that make us unique, contribute to the specific questions we pose in science and determine the kinds of things we are going to see in the world. We are all looking for self-reflections of who we are, perhaps that is all we can really “see.” I’ll give you an example. I know an Italian physicist who is a Marxist that also believes that collective human behavior makes for good societies. When he looks at atoms and molecules he “sees” that they behave cooperatively. As a result, he asks questions relative to the cooperative behaviors of atoms and molecules.

DiCarlo: Well is it conceivable that our beliefs could actually affect the outcomes of our scientific experiments?

Rubik: Yes. There are some very famous examples of that historically. I’ll mention one for you. It’s really one of the most outrageous. One of the most famous microphysicists in the history of science was the 17th Century Dutchman named Van Leeuwenhoek. He and his contemporaries were among the first few people to look through a microscope. When they looked at human sperm, they saw, inside the heads of the sperm, little babies. Now that’s a wild idea. Today we no longer see little babies, but everybody saw little babies inside the sperm heads at this time because the world view for 2,000 years up to that time was that men planted little babies inside the bodies of women where they incubated until birth. Of course, they were going to see little babies in the sperm and everybody agreed it was so. They were even comparing the little babies, one from another under the microscope. I mean it’s amazing that they all saw this simply because everybody believed it. It just shows you the power of collective expectation and belief, of intersubjective consensus, and how it can influence what a whole society perceives.

I wonder today what collective beliefs we share that force us to see data in a certain configuration because we cannot divorce ourselves from certain beliefs. What questions do we dare not pose about nature because they would so threaten our own beliefs? We should look deeply inside ourselves regarding these things, but it’s very had to do. It’s very hard to step outside of our own culture, with all its underlying assumptions, beliefs and expectations, to do this. That’s why I think it’s important for scientists to meditate and to enter the void of their own minds to be able to transcend some of their own shortcomings as individuals within their communities.

In the deepest sense, true scientists are really mystics and I don’t mean that in the trivial sense, such as in gazing into a crystal ball to foretell the future. I mean that they are on the road to inner, self-awareness and development of their full human potential. Because of this, their questions about nature will change as they themselves change. The real act of being, let’s say, a yogi of knowledge-which the scientist is-is to know thyself. I think that’s one of the first premises. I think it’s human nature that we project what’s inside ourselves out into the cosmos. We project it externally and then we think it’s objective, but really it’s only a means of letting us see more of who we are inside, and working out our interior problems in the external world.

DiCarlo: What are the three frontier areas of science telling us?

Rubik: They tell us that there is a new paradigm emerging. It’s not yet finished, and everybody has a slightly different version of what it looks like, but the paradigm is about the new views of life in the whole universe. The whole universe itself, the whole cosmos, is a living, dynamical being. The universe is not just a clockwork mechanism. It has creativity built into it . It’s changing, it’s dynamic, it’s evolving more complexity and more richness and beauty all of the time.

We’re coming to realize that life wasn’t just something that happened once on this tiny planet. We shouldn’t think that we are that special in the universe. The universe was destined to produce conscious life from its very inception. There’s a lot of factors that entered into the evolution of the universe from the Big Bang, onwards and the factors were coordinated just precisely so that we have an interesting living universe. It could have expanded into a dust cloud, or collapsed back into a speck of dust, but the dynamics were so balanced that it initially produced heavy elements, eventually planets and then life forms. Eventually conscious life forms developed.

In my view, the universe actually had some rudimentary consciousness from its inception. This whole question of, “Is mind separate from matter”, or “when did consciousness begin?” to me is a moot question. I really think that consciousness was always there and the evolution toward greater consciousness was purposefully built into the cosmic design. Now that becomes almost a religious issue, but that’s my own position on it and in my view, the emerging paradigm is really telling us that life has a lot of subtle characteristics that involve numerous relationships. An organism is dynamic. It has energy properties that have not yet been considered very much. Life is linked in its many rhythms to the earth, biosphere,the sun, and even the cosmos at large. So the emerging paradigm considers life to be a deep principal of the universe. It’s the primary principal. We exist in a nurturing, caring universe that wanted to develop life from its inception and that can sustain us. Nature is not something we should be fighting against and feeling alienated from but it’s very much a part of who we are. If we embrace that point of view-that we exist in a very nurturing place-I think it can lead us to a new renaissance.

Excerpted from the book Towards A New World View: Conversations At The Leading Edge with Russell E. DiCarlo. The 377-page book features new and inspiring interviews with 27 paradigm pioneers in the fields of medicine, psychology, economics, business, religion, science, education and human potential. Featuring: Willis Harman, Matthew Fox, Joan Boysenko, George Leonard, Gary Zukav, Robert Monroe, Hazel Henderson, Fred Alan Wolf, Peter Senge, Jacquelyn Small, Elmer Green, Larry Dossey, Carolyn Myss, Stan Grof, Rich Tarnas, Marilyn Ferguson, Marsha Sinetar, Dr. Raymond Moody, Stephen Covey and Peter Russell.

Russell E. DiCarlo is a medical writer, author, lecturer and workshop leader who’s focus is on personal transformation, consciousness research and the fields of energy and anti-aging medicine. His forthcoming book is entitled “The Definitive Guide To Anti-Aging Medicine” (1998, Future Medicine Publishing). DiCarlo resides in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Copyright 1996. Epic Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

Russell DiCarlo interviews Gary Zukav about his view of disintegration of our social structures as a profoundly positive phenomenon; an evolutionary transition from a five sensory species to a species that is evolving through the alignment of the personality with the soul and not limited to the five senses.

DiCarlo: It seems that there are more than a few people today who, after observing the many breakdowns that are happening-in government, in education, in health care, in the family, in business-feel that a collapse of Western civilization is imminent. Surprisingly, you have a rather different assessment….

Zukav: Yes. In the larger, evolutionary context in which these changes are taking place, the disintegration of our social structures is a profoundly positive phenomenon. Without understanding the larger context, it is easy to mistake these breakdowns as pathologies.

The evolutionary transition that humanity is in now has no precedent. There is nothing in our past from which we can extrapolate our future. It is not only unprecedented-it is as significant as the genesis of the human species. This evolutionary transition is one from a five sensory species that is evolving through the exploration of physical reality with the five senses to a species that is evolving through the alignment of the personality with the soul and that is not limited to the five senses.

The before and after circumstances are very clear. In our before picture, humanity, for the most part, was limited to the five senses. I say “for the most part” because there have always been multi-sensory humans among us. They are those after whom our religions are named, but for the most part, humankind was limited in its perceptions to the five senses. As it evolved through the exploration of physical reality, the human species developed the ability to manipulate and control those things that the five senses can detect, those things which appear to be external.

In other words, our former evolutionary modality was the pursuit of external power-the ability to manipulate and control what appear to be external. Our present is much different. Humankind-all five and one-half billion of us-are beginning to move beyond the limitations of the five senses. Becoming multi-sensory means being able to obtain data that the five senses cannot provide.

DiCarlo: Sounds like your referring to intuition?

Zukav: Exactly. Five sensory humans are not much interested in intuition, but multi-sensory humans are very interested in it because intuition is central to the multi-sensory human. Intuition is the voice of the non-physical world. As we become multi-sensory, we become able to distinguish between personality and soul.

DiCarlo: What do you mean by personality?

Zukav: Personality is that part of an individual that was born into time, matures in time and dies in time.

DiCarlo: And the soul?

Zukav: The soul is that part of the individual that is immortal, that evolves in eternity.

DiCarlo: Recently, there has been much more emphasis on the reality and substance of the soul, and I am thinking of the work that is being done in transpersonal psychology and medicine. Why the sudden interest?

Zukav: Because we are becoming multi-sensory.

DiCarlo: Wouldn’t you say that in the past the soul has been taken for granted, “Well, yes we all have a soul,” or so our religions have told us, but it’s never been described in great detail, nor has the relationship between the soul and the physical self that we normally identify ourselves to be, been adequately explained. It has not been a real factor in one’s daily life.

Zukav: Yes, there are people in religious orders who take the soul quite seriously, but for the most part, we do not, and by “we” I mean most humans. We talk about the soul in Sunday school but we don’t give it much thought afterwards. We believe, no matter how much we talk about the soul in church, that consciousness and responsibility end with biological death. If we really believed that we were responsible after we leave the Earth for everything that we create while we are on the Earth, we would create very differently.

DiCarlo: Do you think there is a lot of conflict between what we want as personalities and what we want as souls?

Zukav: Yes. The degree of that conflict is the degree of pain that exists in your life. The match, or mismatch, between the wants of your personality and the needs of your soul also determines the degree of meaning, or lack of it, that you experience.

DiCarlo: Is it possible to align the interests of the personality and soul?

Zukav: Yes. That is now our evolutionary path. When a personality is authentically empowered, it’s interests are aligned with the interests of its soul. The personality usually wants an attractive mate, money, a comfortable place to live, a healthy body-but the Universe gives us what the soul needs, in every case, in every instance, at every moment. Understanding this will help you to find the meaning in your experience no matter how difficult it is.

There is a difference between pain and suffering. Pain is merely pain, but suffering is pain with meaning. There is a reason for your suffering that is worthy of your suffering. Because it has meaning, your suffering is acceptable and it is endurable.

DiCarlo: How might this alignment be accomplished?

Zukav: Aligning personality with soul is is done through responsible choice with the assistance and guidance of non-physical guides and Teachers. To a five sensory personality, talk about non-physical reality and non-physical guides and Teachers is, literally, non-sensical. Five sensory personalities are still living their lives solely based upon the data that they receive from the five senses.

More and more people are now leaving behind the limitations of the five senses. Eventually, within the span of several human generations, all of humankind will be multi-sensory. That is how significant our evolutionary transition is. It is the transition from a five-sensory humanity that is evolving through the pursuit of external power-exploration of physical reality through the five senses-to a multi-sensory humanity that is evolving through the pursuit of authentic power-the alignment of the personality with the soul through responsible choice with the assistance and guidance of non-physical guides and Teachers. This is transforming everything.

DiCarlo: What exactly do you mean by responsible choice?

Zukav: Responsible choice means making choices that create consequences for which you are willing to assume responsibility. Whenever you make a decision, and act upon that decision, you create consequences. The consequences that you create reflect the intention that you hold when you perform the action.

Responsible choice requires that you become aware of your intentions. That requires that you become aware of all of the different parts of yourself. Many of these parts operate outside your field of awareness. In turn, that means that you must become conscious of everything that you are feeling. This is difficult because there is so much pain and fear in our world, but all of this is necessary in order to become authentically empowered.

You create consequences no matter what you choose. If you do not choose consciously, you do not create consciously. It’s as simple as that. You create, but you create unconsciously. What you create unconsciously is what you have created in the past. If you do not choose to create consciously, you will continue to create the same painful experiences that you have created previously. You will continue to do that until, in this lifetime or another, you understand the origin of the pain that you are experiencing. Then you will change. The change will be thorough, complete, and permanent.

That could take a long time. It could take a lifetime. It could take more lifetimes than one. As we become multi-sensory, we enable accelerated spiritual growth. That is what consciousness provides-accelerated spiritual growth. You can look ahead at what you are going to produce if you create again in anger; if you create again in fear; if you create again in jealousy. You can decide that you want to create differently, and then set the intention to do that.

You have the ability, for example, to set the intention to create harmony-or at least not create further discord. You can choose to cooperate instead of to compete. You can choose to share instead of hoard. You can choose to revere Life instead of exploit Life. You can choose to be interested in and support the growth of others instead of exploiting others. All of these choices produce different consequences than the choices that you’ve been making in the past.

DiCarlo: So what do you mean when you use the word intention?

Zukav: Intention is the quality of consciousness that you bring to an action.

DiCarlo: You have commented that if you have a healthy personality, then you really don’t know where the personality ends and the soul begins….Would you view this process of becoming multi-sensory as representing an expansion of our being so that as we live our life as our soul, this becomes our primary identity?

Zukav: Yes! Yes!

DiCarlo: But the experience would not be one in which the person would feel as though he or she is submitting or surrendering to a higher outside authority?

Zukav: It’s becoming all that you are. There is no higher authority when it comes to your decisions. Only you can make them. As you become aligned with your soul, you become who you are. You fulfill yourself and those around you. You do not harm-it’s not a part of your consciousness. You are a torch that has been ignited. You are a beacon that shines. You have no fear. You care for Life. You care for those around you. You care for the Earth. You revere Life. You value it simply because it is.

DiCarlo: I find it remarkable that what you would characterize as an authentically empowered human being, others have referred to as “a soul infused human being.”

Zukav: How beautiful. ….But is it really remarkable? These truths belong to the Universe. As we become multi-sensory, we will understand them more fully. We are in the process of creating a world that is based upon these understandings. These other people didn’t make them up and I didn’t make them up, either. They come from the Universe.

DiCarlo: How might this transition from external power to authentic power affect, let’s say, our economic system?

Zukav: The transformation in the human species is changing all of its social structures, including economics. The economics in which current commercial activities are embedded is based on the assumption of scarcity and the orientation of exploitation. Economic theory assumes that it is natural for a significant portion of the human family to be in need, to be lacking the basic necessities of life, in addition to many things that are necessary for physical comfort.

This perception is contrary to the reality of the Universe in which we are living and growing. As we become multi-sensory, this becomes more and more evident. The Universe is compassionate and abundant. It is alive, wise and eternal. It provides what each soul needs at each moment.

To a five-sensory human all of that is nonsense. It doesn’t relate to the five senses. To a multi-sensory human, it is appearant. Whatever economics we develop in our future, it will reflect the perceptions of the soul. The soul understands that this is an abundant Universe-the grass grows again every spring. We are always given opportunities to grow and to learn. If we don’t make use of them, we are given others. Ask yourself, for example, how many times you have been given the opportunity to love and to be loved, and how many times you have squandered those opportunities. They will come again. That is the nature of the compassionate Universe of which we are a part.

There is no scarcity in this new perception, so whatever economics we will develop, it will be based upon the assumption of abundance.

Our current economics is oriented to exploit, to obtain the maximum and give the minimum. This is how investments are made. An investor is someone who invests as little as possible and hopes to obtain as much as possible.

The soul strives to give. It has special gifts, and in giving them an individual finds meaning. If you have no meaning in your life, if you do not know why you are alive, you are not on the path that your soul wants to walk. As you begin to move in the direction that your soul wants you to move, you begin to get a sense of meaning. When your life is alive with meaning, when you are excited every day about what you are doing, when you want to get up, when you want to be with people, when you have no fear, when you have forgotten to worry, when you are fully engaged with your life, you are moving in alignment with your soul. That is authentic power.

Souls have agreements with the Universe. We incarnate with sacred contracts. As we develop authentic power, we develop the ability to fulfill them-to give our gifts. Each of these ways of speaking is a different way of saying the same thing: we are now evolving through the pursuit of authentic power, the alignment of the personality with the soul- which means living meaningful, engaged, responsible, joyful lives. I am not speaking of work-a-holism. Beneath work-a-holism is fear, deep insecurity. Every attempt to build an empire is a reaching outward to fill a sense of powerlessness inside. That is our former evolutionary modality. Our new evolutionary modality is to become inwardly whole and healthy and secure.

The old economics which is based upon the assumption of scarcity and the orientation of exploitation will be replaced with a new economics that is based upon abundance and oriented toward contribution. This new economics is so different from our current economics that it is evident that we are in for a big change. That change is underway.

DiCarlo: As we shift from a five sensory species to a multi-sensory species, and as we recognize ourselves to be immortal souls first and physical beings secondly, and also as power shifts from being external to being authentic and inwardly derived, what effect will that have in business?

Zukav: The soul is that part of an individual which strives for harmony, cooperation, sharing and reverence for Life. As individuals begin the process of aligning their personalities with their souls they move towards these values. So every aspect of business…

DiCarlo: Well, let’s take the example of leadership. How might leadership change as a result of the changing perceptions and values you’ve mentioned?

Zukav: Leadership today is based upon the perception of power as external. A leader has more external power-more ability to manipulate and control-than others. A business leader can say, “Do this” and you must do it. If you don’t, you’ll lose your job, or your life will become miserable-or at least unpleasant. Maybe you’ll lose a promotion, or a stock option.

Leaders assume responsibility, and for this they are given the authority to direct the activities of others. When I went through infantry officer candidate school, I wore a patch on my shoulder that had a sword over the words, “Follow Me.” That concept of leadership is not what individuals who are growing in authentic power gravitate toward or desire.

Leadership is a state of mind. If you have a need to build an empire or to dominate a market, you are driven by fear. But if you have an inspiration that excites you and fulfills you, one in which there is no fear, then you will move into your activities with joy, and you will attract other people who are similarly oriented.

As you step forward, others of like interest will constellate around you. You will be the pole star that magnetizes their interests. They will align the parts of themselves that are interested in the same thing with you. Then, as a leader, you will support, coordinate, and nurture them. The people with whom you are working will be more important to you than the activity that has brought you together. Your activity is the means by which you have attracted one another.

This means that, as a leader, you will spend a lot of your time interacting, heart to heart, with fellow souls. In business now, all of this is excluded by intention. If too much concern is given to an individual, someone within the organization who is impatient for results-usually a leader-will say, “Let’s get to the bottom line.” “This doesn’t really have to do with why we’re together.” As you become authentically empowered, you become interested in Life. That means other people. So business will no longer be the arena in which primarily you strive to accumulate profit at any emotional cost. And, as we can see by looking at our global ecology, at great physical cost, too. It will become an arena in which you interact consciously with fellow souls for the purpose of mutual spiritual growth.

DiCarlo: How might decision-making change in business?

Zukav: Decision making today is primarily an intellectual function. We use logics and understandings that originate in the mind. These logics and understandings are linear and exclusionary. That is, you cannot think of one thing without excluding others. You cannot understand something one way and understand it in other ways simultaneously. We are now developing a higher order of logic and understanding that originates in the heart. The heart is inclusive. It accepts. The intellect judges. The higher order of logic and understanding that originates in the heart comprehends non-linear realities and simultaneous realms of truth.

All of this effects decision-making in all aspects of life, including business. It means that intuitive processes will replace intellectual processes as the main decision-making faculty in business, as in all other human activities.

DiCarlo: What will happen to the intellect?

Zukav: The intellect will not be discarded. A business executive may have a hunch about which area of activity to move into. Once she decides that, she can use her intellect. For example, she may have a hunch to produce a certain product, and then use market analyses to confirm that there is a receptivity for the product, and then use statistical quality control to produce it well. But the mind will no longer be the boss, the “leader” in the old sense. Decision-making will be intuitive. The logic and understanding utilized will be the higher order of logic and understanding of the heart.

Collective decisions will be made by consensus. This is inconceivable to the business community now. We cannot imagine an efficient organization that’s run by consensus. That is because there is so much dissension and pain-which are the same things-in business today. So the ability to make decisions by consensus will require that an organization’s environment be transformed into one of safety for all involved.

DiCarlo: Would all decisions be made collectively, or would there be some decisions that would be deferred to particular individuals within the organization, who have been given proper authority.

Zukav: Whether that happens or not would be a consensual decision. Every time someone writes a letter it does not have to be approved by other people. If you trust your colleagues, and you know in your heart that their intentions are to contribute to your good and to the good of the whole, then it will be easy for you to say, “Do what you know needs to be done.” Later, if it doesn’t work out, the appropriate part of the community can come together to understand what went wrong, or why it didn’t feel good to everyone involved. This is quite different from a manager executing external power because he has seniority, or political skills that have elevated him or her in the hierarchy of external power. In that case, there is no trust in either direction. There is simply the necessity to do what must be done in order to survive physically-to keep your job.

Imagine a work environment in which you like the people that you are working with. You are interested in who they are. You are interested in their children. You are interested in their spiritual partnerships. You like being with them. You like growing with them. It’s not always easy but you know that the friction between you is what allows you to grow, and to recognize patterns of behavior within yourself that need to be released in order for you to grow spiritually, to become more whole.

In that context, imagine what a delight it is to work with and to accomplish projects with your colleagues. That is our future.

DiCarlo: Are there any other implications we need to discuss-we’ve touched upon economics and business-that would be relevant to our discussion, regarding the consequences of moving from being a five sensory human to a multi-sensory human? For example, the judicial system, government, medicine, environment and personal relationships.

Zukav: All of them are changing dramatically. The changes that are now underway in the business world, and the changes that are underway in health, education, the military, science, art, law and every other human endeavor are parts of the same change. The changes that are underway inside millions of individuals now are also the same change. There is one change occurring, and all of these are different expression of that change.

Changes in the way that you relate to your brothers and sisters, your spiritual partner, yourself as a male and to other males, or yourself as a female and to other females, are all parts of the same change.

DiCarlo: In talking with a number of individuals whom I’ve interviewed, there has been quite a variance in opinion as to when this shift from a five sensory species to a multi-sensory species might take place. Ken Wilber for example says he doesn’t feel these changes will effect most people for another couple hundred years. Peter Russell on the other hand suggests that these changes are immanent.

Zukav: They are immanent from an evolutionary point of view. A hundred years is less than an eye-blink in terms of our evolution, but I think that they will happen faster than that. Look inside yourself, and you will see how fast change is occurring. Now try to understand what humans three generations from now will be like if this change continues or accelerates. Also, the change that is now occurring is non-linear. As you open to your heart, you open to multiple realities in which nonlinear change is occurring.

DiCarlo: If someone were to come to you and say, “Why should I choose to develop into a multi-sensory human being?” what would you tell them?

Zukav: You are in the process of becoming multi-sensory, as are all humans. Humanity is becoming multi-sensory.

This transition is not yet complete, but within several generations, the human species will be very different than it is today. One of those differences will be that every human will be multi-sensory.

Being multi-sensory and being authentically empowered are not the same. To become authentically empowered requires that you align your personality with your soul. This is where the rubber meets the road. This is where intention and courage are often required. To align your personality with your soul means that you consciously strive for harmony, cooperation, sharing and reverence for Life. This can be difficult.

So to someone who says, “Why should I become a multi-sensory and authentically empowered human being?” I would say, “Humanity is becoming multi-sensory. It is not a matter of choice.” To the question of why you should become authentically empowered, I would say, “To heal the pain in your life.” This is not something that you have to do. You have free will. But you are a creative being and if you don’t, you will continue to create unconsciously, and to experience the pain that you are experiencing now.

DiCarlo: How would you characterize the experience of authentic power?

Zukav: Joyful. Complete. Engaged. Fulfilling. The first time I experienced this was writing The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics. I had never been interested in physics before, and I was not interested in it when I got invited to a weekly meeting at the Lawrence-Berkley Laboratory in Berkley, California, by a physicist friend of mine. I went because I wanted to see what scientists looked like.

I got so excited by what I heard there that I could scarcely contain myself, but I didn’t understand what I heard so I returned the next week and the next. I started to read about physics, then I decided to share these things that were exciting me so much in the form of a book.

I asked some physicists if they would help me. They agreed, and I began to write. I was delighted in this activity. I was stimulated and fulfilled by it. At that time, I didn’t have an income, so when I wasn’t writing I was worrying about the rent. When I was writing, I entered a new domain of experience that I had not encountered before. I was gratified, fulfilled, and excited about what I was doing. It was fun.

DiCarlo: Did you find that your study of quantum mechanics has helped you to further understand a multi-dimensional Universe. Ken Wilber, in speaking about a quantum reality, says that quantum physics cannot tell us anything about the higher dimensions-you cannot extrapolate from the lower to the higher at all. Is there anything of value in quantum physics that helps when it comes to trying to intellectually grasp these higher realities?

Zukav: Yes, but they can’t be grasped intellectually. That is why science has gone as far as it can go as it is currently structured. It is an empirical endeavor, which means that all that can be accepted as valid by science is that which can be consensually verified with the five senses. This has been the strength of science since its origin, but that is what now blocks its growth. Quantum physics is the pinnacle development of science. It leads us to the intellectual realization that consciousness is an aspect of physical reality, that the two can’t be separated.

There are five major interpretations-and others that are not so prominent-of the quantum formalism. Some, such as the statistical interpretation, deny that consciousness is involved in subatomic phenomena. Some, like Wigner’s interpretation, are based on the opposite point of view. Others fall between these two, or maybe they just fall elsewhere. But the point is, no one can discuss the quantum formalism without addressing the relationship of consciousness, or the lack of it, to the fundamental structures of quantum physics, namely, complimentary and the uncertainty principle.

The answer to your question is, “My study of quantum physics didn’t directly lead to anything in The Seat of The Soul, but it was stimulating and it was fun. It was an exciting adventure to the limits of the intellect. Those limits, in my view, are represented by the quantum theory.

DiCarlo: Did something happen to you between The Dancing Wu Li Masters and The Seat of the Soul which allowed you to write so profoundly about higher realities of which we are a part?

Zukav: Yes, I discovered non-physical reality.

DiCarlo: Was that the result of any intentional endeavor on your part?

Zukav: I didn’t know at the time that there was such a thing as non-physical reality. But intentions of the soul operate at very deep places within us. You do your part by setting intentions consciously, to the best of your ability. That brings you into alignment with your soul, with your deepest sense of meaning, but not necessarily into alignment with what your rabbi, priest or President tells you.

DiCarlo: You have stated, “I am not a speculator. I know that we are immortal, and that we are wearing what our Native American brothers and sisters call an ‘Earth suit.’ ” What has allowed you to possess such a strong conviction that we are more than our physical bodies?

Zukav: There’s a difference between conviction and experience. Conviction is something that you need to have if you don’t have experience. Having conviction can create an experience which will then let you know if your conviction is correct or not. I do not have a conviction that non-physical reality exists and that we are part of non-physical reality. I do not have a conviction that we are immortal souls and that we are part of a living Universe of physical and non-physical beings. I do not have to be convinced of these things anymore than you have to be convinced that oak leaves are green in the summer. Do you see? If you were blind, if you had no physical eyesight, and enough people told you that in the summer oak leaves are green, you would develop the conviction that this is so. But if you see it for yourself, you do not have to be convinced.

DiCarlo: So you are speaking about your own personal experiences?

Zukav: Yes.

DiCarlo: Well could you elaborate upon what that experience has been like for you?

Zukav: I have these experiences because humanity is becoming multi-sensory and I am part of humanity. But the deeper answer is that these experiences and everything else come by grace. Life is a miracle at each moment. It is miraculous and I have no explanation for that.

DiCarlo: Frequently, you hear people remark that if we lived in a just world, then we wouldn’t have illness, we wouldn’t have atrocities against our fellow human beings. We wouldn’t have war. How do you view these things from a multi-sensory perspective?

Zukav: The underlying question is, “Why is there pain in the world?” There is pain in the world because we create it. We have not yet learned to create otherwise; that is what we are learning. There is pain in the world in our relationships with each other, and these, by the way, are the vehicles through which we grow. There is no other way to grow except through your relationships to others. You cannot grow only through a relationship to a business or a career. Your growth depends upon your ability to interact with your fellow souls. You will not grow until you have the courage to enter into relationships with them.

This question is important because there is so much pain in the world. This has been our history until now. Human history has been the sequential recording of one brutality after another. You will know in yourself that you are striving for authentic empowerment when a part of you decides that it will not participate any longer in this brutality, that your life will contribute something else to the human experience, and you find a way to do that in your day-to-day interactions. These will cumulatively form the course of your life.

DiCarlo: Do you feel that we as souls have made the decision to come to this Earth plane intentionally?

Zukav: Yes.

DiCarlo: Well, why might we choose to experience a physical reality limited by our five senses?

Zukav: There are two reasons. First, we choose as souls to experience what we have created in the past but have not yet experienced. Whenever you act in the Earth school you create consequences that effect others. You will also experience these consequences, in this lifetime or another.

In the East this is called karma. In the West this is called the Golden Rule. This is a compassionate dynamic through which each soul learns, in the intimacy of its own experience and therefore learns how to create wisely. If you create something in the life of another person, and do not experience that yourself by the time you return home-leave the Earth school and return to the fullness of your soul-your soul will create another personality with another body and another intuitional structure and it will voluntarily enter the Earth school again in order to experience what it has created but has not yet experienced. This is not a punishment-there is no such thing. It happens because the soul, in its full wisdom, strives for ever-increasing wholeness and perfection.

An incarnation is planned with the loving assistance of non-physical Teachers. Arrangements are made with other souls to create interactions within the Earth school. The outcome of those interactions is not known in advance because the soul does not know how its personality will respond to the opportunities that it has arranged for it.

That is where your free will comes into play. When you encounter difficult circumstances in this Earth school, you have the option to take things personally, to become angry and blame others. You also have the option to understand that every one of your interactions in the Earth school is meaningful, offers you potential for spiritual growth, and there is a karmic factor at work in all that you encounter.

Therefore, when someone offends you, or does something that you do not agree with, you do not have to react with anger, judgement and vengeance. You can take a step back and understand that there is a lesson in this for you. This does not mean that you become a doormat to the world. It means that you choose your responses consciously and responsibly create what you desire to experience in your future.

The second reason that souls incarnate is to give gifts. When you are doing what your soul wants you to do, when you are giving your soul’s gifts-your life fills with meaning, excitement and satisfaction.

So the two reasons that souls incarnate is to experience what they desire to experience within the Earth school and to give their gifts- to fulfill their sacred contracts with the Universe.

As we become multi-sensory we begin to understand this. We begin to appreciate how extraordinary the Earth school is and what a privilege it is to be in it. When you see this, you will walk the Earth with awe and gratitude.

Excerpted from the book Towards A New World View: Conversations At The Leading Edge with Russell E. DiCarlo. The 377-page book features new and inspiring interviews with 27 paradigm pioneers in the fields of medicine, psychology, economics, business, religion, science, education and human potential. Featuring: Willis Harman, Matthew Fox, Joan Boysenko, George Leonard, Gary Zukav, Robert Monroe, Hazel Henderson, Fred Alan Wolf, Peter Senge, Jacquelyn Small, Elmer Green, Larry Dossey, Carolyn Myss, Stan Grof, Rich Tarnas, Marilyn Ferguson, Marsha Sinetar, Dr. Raymond Moody, Stephen Covey and Peter Russell.

Russell E. DiCarlo is a medical writer, author, lecturer and workshop leader who’s focus is on personal transformation, consciousness research and the fields of energy and anti-aging medicine. His forthcoming book is entitled “The Definitive Guide To Anti-Aging Medicine” (1998, Future Medicine Publishing). DiCarlo resides in Erie, Pennsylvania.

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