The Human Experience

Transcript for Episode 45 – Dean Radin PhD

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what’s up folks wow it feels like it has

been a thousand years since we’ve done

one of these episodes I take full

responsibility for that I have been

completely slammed had a family member

in the hospital and that has taken up

all of my time so my dearest apologies

for all of you out there that have been

looking for episodes from us it

admittedly feels great to be back behind

a microphone so we will do our best to

make sure that we get more episodes out

for you guys this year I got a bunch of

emails and messages thank you for those

this was a great episode we had such an

amazing time with dr. Raiden his words

have a very specific potency a huge

thanks to dr. Raiden for lending us his

time and doing this interview also big

thanks to my good friend Misha for

helping me co-host this episode dr.

Wheaton is a big hero of his so I hope

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email I welcome those thank you guys so

much for listening

the human experience is traversing the

realms of parapsychology as we welcome

my guest dr. Dean Radin my good friend

Misha from the near-death experience

Research Foundation whose background is

in microbiology is going to be helping

co-host for the show

dr. Raiden my good sir welcome to hxp

thank you very much glad to be here so

dr. Raiden I mean your your online

biographies says that you were first

interested in psychic abilities at the

age of 12 you’ve written three books

over 200 articles and you’ve done

countless lectures and how how did this

work start for you well I think like a

lot of children who start reading fairy

tales and science fiction as soon as

they discover books that I immediately

was wondering as a child what of this is

pure fantasy and what of this might be

true and of course children don’t have a

very good way to discriminate from one

to the other when one topic to the next

and of course then you go to high school

you go to college and Beyond and you

learn very rapidly that there are

certain topics that are taken seriously

and others are dismissed so throughout

my whole college career in graduate

school and beyond I never heard anything

mentioned about psychic or mystical

experience within a scholarly tradition

now that’s partially because I was going

through engineering and going through

psychology curricula and so that these

topics wouldn’t necessarily come up but

on the other hand our entertainment

industry was saturated with it and I was

thought that it was a little odd that

experiences that people report

throughout history and in all cultures

and even today many scientists report

psychic experiences why isn’t this

discussed so I started looking into it

in a more serious way in terms of the

science when I was in graduate school

and I was surprised to read that there

always been for about a hundred and

thirty years a small group of scientists

and in all countries who have been in

applying the best methods of the day to

test whether in principle some of the

experiences that people report or that

are reported in legends could they have

any credence to them at all and I was

surprised I was surprised to find that

there is such a literature and I started

to do experiments as I had read and to

my surprise I was able to repeat some of

the things that I had read about and

that that basically hooked me because

it’s almost like there’s a secret in

plain sight there’s something of very

high interest that should be of high

interest to scientists but that the the

way science has developed you’re simply

not allowed to talk about it I thought

that was just odd

yeah I mean um you you have had quite

the career here I mean your your

experiments are quite far ranging how

many experiments do you think you’ve

done through your research oh that’s a

good question

actually I don’t have any idea come to

think of it a couple of dozen maybe some

more I don’t I don’t really know is

there anyone that is more remarkable for

you than the others well no I can’t say

that I’m blase about it at this point

because I’m continued to be interested

in the nature of these experiences and

what they might mean but I think every

time I plan an experiment run it and get

a significant outcome almost as

astonished as I was when it began and

it’s it’s partially because we science

in terms of theory has yet to catch up

with simply the empirical data there are

hints about how Theory might go but we

don’t have very good explanations yet so

one of the things that I’ve discovered

here is that people like myself who go

into this as empiricists have to have a

high tolerance for ambiguity and I have

a very high tolerance or not

and it doesn’t bother me but for a lot

of colleagues it does bother them a lot

that they don’t have a good explanation

and they don’t like it at all dr. Reid

and this is Misha here I think I’ve read

in some of your works that like you said

you’re not blase but you’ve sort of

moved on from wondering if the

paranormal is real or sigh effects are

real you’ve maybe moved on from that to

really wondering what the mechanism is

and I can completely identify with that

as a scientist but maybe for the

listeners I was wondering you know what

is the most amazing thing you’ve seen is

there some moment where you go where you

were in your career looking at some data

or something like that and you said oh

my gosh I just I just can’t believe this

but it really is real that that moment

when it clicked for you you know because

you’ve mentioned some interest in your

childhood but as you you know get a

university degree and so forth you you

learn other tools to look at problems

more precisely and well I’m rambling but

I’m wondering what is one of those

moments for you well it’s actually a

very good question because you could

just by reading the literature come to

accept that these phenomena are real you

would probably reach the conclusion that

they’re in the general population we’re

talking about fairly weak effects and

the best analogy I can think of is if

you described to somebody how to play

golf and they had never actually done it

before you give them a club and you give

them a ball and you explain what to do

I’m probably not going to do very well

because they either don’t have the

talent and they haven’t practiced so the

same is true for the vast majority of

science we’re giving people who don’t

claim any special abilities that may or

may not have any experience with it an

artificial task that they have to do in

a certain way right now right in front

of us and even under those conditions

you get people who can do things so that

data alone for a lot of scientists who

haven’t worked with exceptional subjects

I can see how they would

would be interested but not really

convinced and that’s where I was up

until 1985 because I was getting results

but not spectacular but enough to keep

my interest so what convinced me was

when I was recruited for what is now

known as the Stargate program the US

government’s secret at the time a

research program and I got the

top-secret briefing this is what they

would tell to people who are read on to

the project and just from the the slides

I remember I was blown away because I

was seeing what at the time were highly

classified examples of remote viewing

many of those are now public domain so

that was part of it and I was thinking

Holy Smoke this this is the kind of

thing that is being briefed at the top

echelon of government and the military

with some details that are not yet

public like these are real missions

these are practical applications but

really cemented it for me was meeting

the people the remote viewers who had

done those tasks and watching them do it

in person the briefing is one thing but

watching it happen as it happens as

another thing that’s what convinced me

that not only is it real but it is

extremely odd in the sense that at the

time is that 1985 when when I was on

that program at the time the the

prevailing opinion within the scientific

community is that this stuff simply is

impossible it does not exist and yet so

from outside the building we’re working

in a realm where nobody believes it

inside the building it’s taken for

granted and we’re trying to push hard

and trying to understand what’s going on

and so in retrospect it actually made a

lot of sense and a point of view of

working on a secret program you don’t

want people to know that this is

possible because it it reduces the

effectiveness of the method as a tool

now that it is public domain of course

remote viewing is sometimes vastly

embellished beyond what it actually can

do but at least a lot of people have a

sense because they’ve

taking training courses here and there

that this is a real phenomenon in some

cases for talented people it could be

used for practical things but to make a

long story short the thing that really

convinced me was seeing very high level

of performance in a in a condition where

there was high credibility that this

would real yeah in terms of remote

viewing I know that major ed Dame’s has

made predictions that Obama will be the

last US president and elections will be

canceled and so forth I think he’s even

said that a group of remote viewers came

to sort of a consensus about that so if

there’s going to be another election I

want to hold his feet to the fire on

that but since you brought up remote

viewing you know many of the world’s

teachers talk about love being the

fabric of the universe and if love is

the foundation of let’s say some kind of

information field or something that

might be involved with SIA bilities then

is there any sort of morality to sigh

for example if someone used remote

viewing to help a loved one would that

work when maybe trying to use remote

viewing to kill someone would fail is

there any sort of you know difference in

that regard I don’t think so

I think we’re talking about a natural

phenomena which is simply wrapped into

the fabric of reality the way that we

use it is up to each individual and you

see this and you look in in almost every

spiritual tradition there are warnings

and cautions about how much your ego is

involved in this

so in story form the only difference

between a Jedi Knight and Darth Vader is

whether the ego gets inflamed it’s the

falling to the dark side but the same

skills are there and I think that is

probably the case dr. rignot

you know I I find this the this very

intriguing and I’d like to talk more

about what you saw during this this

top-secret experiment more of it later

but do you feel like this is part R of

our

evolutionary biology is this where the

next level of human is is headed by sort

of understanding this using it I think

it’s actually been around from the very

beginning in other words we’re not

creating magic along the way we’re not

making some something new if anything

weird evolving away from what used to be

a natural phenomenon or more readily

available phenomenon a case can be made

for example that the frontal lobes get

in the way of most psychic experience

and the evidence for that includes

things like looking at the neuroscience

of meditation where you find that very

advanced meditators show and hibbett

inhibition of the frontal lobes and they

also show a higher degree of spontaneous

psychic experience and mystical

experience the other thing is that a lot

of the training involved in various

forms of psychic effects is getting the

analytical side of the brain out of the

way and of course if you can do that

with the frontal lobes you find a way of

inhibiting it through stimulation

through meditation or whatever order

certain psychedelics you people

invariably get better so from that

perspective then I see an evolutionary

push is to maintain the ability of an

organism to survive and if you have the

capacity to pay attention to what’s

happening on Pluto you may miss the

tiger in front of you so think about a

couple million years of evolution that

will constrain human beings to get

closer and closer to attention on here

and now as opposed to there and then and

the more you do that the less and less

capable we are of paying attention to

things far away which is the essence of

psychic phenomena you know the reason

the reason I appreciate your answer and

the reason that I ask is because I

wonder for the people listening how does

this a

affect a person in their everyday

existence I mean how does being able to

affect the consequence of a random

number generator you know how does that

affect me how I mean how can i how can I

use this for my benefit in my everyday

life most of us don’t need these

abilities for everyday life at least

most of us who live and work in a

Western world where many of the things

that used to kill us pretty readily

don’t do that anymore

because it’s relatively safe if you live

in a war zone or you live in a place

with enormous amounts of uncertainty

then it can be useful because you get a

you can get a glimpse of what’s about to

happen so in thinking about the

experiments like random number

generators and the ganzfeld telepathy

experiment and all those sorts of things

all of those are artificial constructs

they’re designed very specifically to

look for is this phenomena possible in

principle and as an artificial construct

as all experiments are it’s not really

designed to say well what can we use

this for we’re welcome what more can we

learn about the nature of ourselves

based on this kind of experiment there

are tools specific kinds of tools to

allow us to probe the nature of these

phenomena when it comes to what do we do

that that then we can talk insightly

different terms well we wouldn’t talk

about psychic phenomena but rather did

you ever have a gut feeling about

something that turned out to be true or

about a person or did you ever pick up

the phone and he knew who was calling

before he looked at caller ID and that

sort of thing so these are not typically

life-and-death instances but they’re the

reminders that the phenomena are always

there just to slightly below the level

of awareness for most people and the

folks that we call psychics or ones

where it’s not quite as deep in the

unconscious it’s more readily available

dr. Raiden Misha again you know you

about intuition and intuition is a

loaded word because it’s generally

understood to mean something that’s you

know helping you make good decisions or

have something supporting your growth if

you agree with that basic definition of

intuition have you ever had any amazing

things like you know don’t fly on 9/11

or something like that

well the conventional explanation for

intuition is forgotten knowledge like

you you learn something at some point

and then you don’t remember that you

know that and the classic case is a

fireman who just suddenly runs outside

of a burning building and doesn’t know

why but at that moment it crashes and so

the explanation for that is that the

firefighter after a wire while learns

and when you hear certain sounds and you

see the flames in a certain way that is

just that happens just before a building

collapses so their intuition and

training saved them more interesting a

case of course is when things happen

where you don’t have any expertise and

there’s no way to anticipate what’s

happening in which case maybe then it’s

precognition

so do I have personal examples of this

yes nothing quite as dramatic as that

but to give an example for me most of

these kinds of experiences occur in the

in dreams so one time I had a dream

where I was in a car accident and the

airbags inflated and there was a lot of

dust inside the car and broken glass and

things of that sort so I woke up in the

morning and was kind of disturbed by

this dream because it didn’t seem to

match anything I had seen during the day

or anything really and as a result I

decided I was gonna drive to work a way

that I knew was a little bit safer

because it had traffic lights and was

more controlled traffic pattern so I go

to I get up to one of the traffic lights

and I’m just sitting there waiting for

the light to turn and then bang I get

rear-ended by the car behind me well he

was texting and thought he saw the light

change and accelerated and rammed into

the back of my car

well this was an accident I’ve never had

an accident before this was not

something that I caused because I was

just sitting there and it wasn’t

anywhere near as bad as the dream was

the airbags didn’t inflate for example

but I found well that’s interesting

here’s something that never happened to

me before

the previous night had a dream which is

kind of like this involving a car in an

accident

it’s never happened before that never

happened since so it’s difficult to

assign chance probability for such an

event but this is from a skeptical

perspective you’d say well there’s seven

or eight billion people and there’s a

lot of Dreams every night and some of

them are going to come true all of which

is true that’s why we go to the

laboratory where we know exactly what a

chance outcome is and because of those

tests we know that in principle

occasionally you can have actual

information from a future event that

impinges on your present right yeah as

far as the firefighters you mentioned

the the the subtle clues like the

different sounds and everything else and

I guess I was more talking about an area

where the person would have no expertise

at all

but to change gears a little bit in the

historical literature mm-hmm gut feeling

or intuition has had well has been

associated with various body centers

heart stomach the gut etc regardless of

the location there always seems to have

been this respect for the mind and the

body do you have any thoughts about when

the body is trying to give information

and I know some of this relates to your

experiments with the skin conductivity

and so forth do you have any thoughts on

the body being psychic more so than the

the thinking and the brain being psychic

I think that the the body is probably

identical or almost identical to what we

normally think of as the unconscious

mind it’s all connected and maybe one of

the reasons why when there are

transplants that sometimes people take

on the characteristics of the

organ that was transplanted into them

it’s kind of a cellular memory so it’s

not clear to me then that just because

you have strange gut feelings that it’s

literally the belly brain that’s trying

to get your attention you have maybe

more that the belly brain and your

unconscious are one in the same thing

slightly different ways of expressing

itself we’re talking about it perhaps

but that that I don’t make a strong

distinction then between mind and body

in fact one of the ways you can see this

is and the the yogic tradition for

example that after a while you get

extremely good control over your

autonomic nervous system in which case

well how does that happen the whole

point of calling it autonomic is that

it’s supposedly automatic it doesn’t

need conscious control but we know with

biofeedback or meditation training you

can get incredible control all the way

down to the single cells in your body so

this is maybe a clue as to why advanced

practices like meditation that people

become or apparently become more

psychically attuned simply because they

can reach down deeper into the

unconscious because I think that’s where

the vast majority of this information is

lurking all the time hmm dr. Aden I mean

that’s an interesting threaded and I you

know I really want to bring up

technology’s effect on research and and

what you think about how the global

connectivity that we all have through

the internet and I mean how does that

affect these these abilities that we

have and this global consciousness and

being able to communicate almost

instantly with a person across the world

well in many ways technology is allowing

us to do what could only be done through

psychic means in the past so this is

even further reason why we don’t need to

express these abilities anymore you

don’t need clairvoyance if you have TV

and you don’t need to Leppa the– if you

have telephones and so on so from that

perspective you can you

imagine that and in the future all of

these phenomena will have some

technological underpinning to them but

of course be very different at that

point and what we’re talking about which

is purely mind based phenomena so you

may have seen in the news that Mark

Zuckerberg was talking about the future

of Facebook as being telepathy of course

what he means is brain based telepathy

brain computer interface work and that’s

probably feasible at some point that’ll

probably be it’ll be happening and

people then assume that the kind of work

that I’m doing is the same as that and

of course it isn’t it’s totally

different because if psy phenomena are

real it’s a strong argument that mind

and brain are not identical and of

course when neuroscience perspective

that’s that’s anathema and from a

neuroscience perspective the brain is

the mind I think that’s probably not the

case

there certainly are strong correlates

with mind like effects but I don’t think

they’re the same thing

in your experience do you feel that some

some people more than others have a

proclivity or genetic sort of advantage

in and have expressed stronger abilities

than then others have you have you ever

seen this oh absolutely

no there’s no doubt that the

distribution of talent in this domain is

probably normal in the same way that it

is for sports or musical talent some

people are simply more attuned to these

kinds of phenomena we know that it

correlates with schizotypy which is the

scale at one end you’re full-blown

schizophrenic and the other blunt other

end you’re completely not and also with

a personality trait of openness how open

are you to new experience and a number

of other traits as well so you if you

simply do surveys about people’s

professions people’s beliefs you very

quickly segregate

people in two types of people who have

these experiences and people who have

the experiences tend to do a lot better

in actual control tests than people who

don’t have the experiences so this is

not surprising to me at all given that

virtually anything you can think of that

humans do will eventually fall into a

normal curve so they’re they’re going to

be people at the far right of that curve

dr. Raiden I’m assuming that some of

these psy abilities can be trained which

one of them you know like I don’t know

seeing the future or reading other

people’s thoughts that’s I don’t know

all the terminology but which one do you

think would be the easiest to train for

somebody that depends on the person’s

talent if you start with zero talent

you’re never going to learn anything

start with some talent and it happens to

be along the lines of empathy for

example well maybe you’ll end up being a

little bit better at telepathy than you

might be a precognition if you find

somebody who’s really really lucky in

the casino well maybe they’re better at

precognition than telepathy and so on

it’s not clear to me that somebody’s

going to be the equivalent of a polymath

in this domain although I imagine there

there could be a small percentage of

highly talented people that might fit

that classification the other thing

about training though is that if you

imagine that we’re talking about a

normal curve then by analogy everyone

can learn to play golf a little bit but

not everyone’s going to become a pro and

not everybody’s going to win the

competitions either so you need both

high talent very high talent and a huge

amount of practice they actually get any

better I understand what you’re saying

but you know you mentioned being briefed

on a secret program and everything and

so that sort of implies that we all may

have abilities greater than we are aware

of and you know I know that you’re

familiar with Edgar Cayce and his ideas

about the Akashic record containing all

information and that people just need to

learn better how to tune into that non

information do you think he was ahead of

his time do you think that an

information field or maybe a universal

consciousness is behind these amazing

amazing people that sometimes show these

abilities in the lab and in in everyday

life well first of all on the secret

program there were a very limited number

of highly talented people so there was

no implication that this is a widespread

ability in terms of Edgar Cayce that was

easy for him to say that everyone has

this capability I don’t buy it

nobody has exceptional capability in all

domains no one so the underlying

question though is well where did these

exceptional people get the information

from and there you’ll probably get as

many different answers from the

individuals as you ask them they all

have different concepts as a general

overarching story it’s something like

the perennial philosophy that there

simply is that that we have the the

sense that we are separate objects that

space and time are not really the same

thing and it’s that matter and energy

are different and so on like a classical

physical perspective of the world

that’s what common sense tells us that’s

what the vast majority people accept

unquestioning you go into modern physics

and suddenly you start to see that all

of those assumptions are actually wrong

that we’re talking about relationships

between what looks like fundamental

effects we’re talking about the core

assumptions like reality locality and

causality none of which are true in

quantum mechanics and so a philosopher

would say that common sense leads to a

notion of naive reality you know we walk

around as of what we’re seeing is

literally all there is physics and

science have repeatedly told us that

that’s not all there is we’re seeing a

very thin slice of reality and the

deeper we go into the fundamentals the

stranger and stranger begins to look if

you go deep enough it begins to look

like it’s a holistic fully

interconnected something or other that

transcends space

time and so if human experience can can

kind of grasp that directly and maybe

there’s an Akashic record and maybe

there isn’t but at minimum it means that

some aspect of your experience can

access literally anything in space and

time well that’s what people talk about

when they mentioned psychic or mystical

experience the difference between the

two is that psychic experience is almost

as though you can tap into what is

actually already there you’re not going

anywhere to get it you are already

embedded and a completely holistic or if

you wish a holographic medium that

contains all information throughout

space and time and you pull that

information back and you experience it

as a sense whereas a mystical experience

is you don’t pull it apart you just feel

like you are the hologram you are the

matrix or though a holistic environment

and you get everything all at the same

time but then you can’t talk about it

because language fails at that level

that’s why mystical experience is

usually just called ineffable something

happened it transformed me but I can’t

talk about it so that that’s why I may

have gone beyond your original question

but that’s that’s the riff I usually

have on that topic I’m I’m really

thoroughly enjoying this conversation

and what we’re discussing doctor right

now I’d been sort of biting might I

really want to know more about this

secret project that you were working on

and you know how how did you sort of get

inducted into this group well first of

all there’s two parts to it people like

ed Dame’s and a number of other people

who are now known for a remote viewing

we’re part of the operational mission in

the in the US Army so they weren’t

concerned about research they were

getting tasks every day find out what’s

happening here and what’s going on there

and they didn’t have interest in or time

really to do research I was part of the

research program where we didn’t have

any operational day-to-day stuff to do

we were tasked with two things one was

whether this represents a threat to

national security like if this is the

real phenomena do we need to worry about

the Chinese or the Russians or somebody

else who might be using this is it a

threat the second part is if you think

that the phenomena is real how can you

enhance it what can we learn from it how

do we shield it how do we block it and

so on those kinds of things so as as far

as threat analysis we were pretty sure

during that time in 1980s that the

Russians at least at the time the Soviet

Union probably had a similar program

that we did maybe the Chinese too but we

didn’t know we did know through

defecting scientists and through

articles that have been retrieved that

the nature of the research was slightly

different than what we were up to but

that they didn’t know any more than we

did

so that was comforting we were convinced

by the data that there was a real

phenomena going on wasn’t as robust or

repeatable as we would have liked but

nevertheless it was real and it was

useful so we had very good reasons to

believe that the Russians and maybe some

other country has had a similar program

so 20 years later when there was a date

aunt not only between our two countries

but also between the two programs and it

turned out that indeed there was a

program in the Soviet Union which was

much much bigger than the one in the

United States so there’s a very good

recent book on this topic by EDA and a

few other authors it was the director of

the Stargate program for about ten years

and so he describes the US side and the

Russian side both sides of the Iron

Curtain at the time and what both sides

were doing and so what used to be

top-secret in the US and top-secret in

Russia are now both in the pages of this

book so what we don’t know still today

is what is happening in China

which is in probably India incident

number of other countries I do know that

other countries track research in this

area not so much because they’re

actively doing something but they’re

tracking it for the same reasons we did

back in the 1980s we want to see how it

looking at this as a kind of a

technology is there something to worry

about is somebody going to get way ahead

of what we understand and that kind of

thing so I know that that that kind of

survey is still going on dr. Raiden

since you mentioned different countries

one of the things I’ve noticed is that

people in different parts of the world

can recognize named differently for

example if you ask someone in the US

about Edgar Cayce they’ll know who that

is but if you asked them about vaanga

from Bulgaria or wolf messing from

Poland they have no idea who you’re

talking about I’m assuming you’ve heard

of those latter two names in your field

do you have any comments about the way

that people understand this phenomenon

between the countries and sort of the

superstars that seem to pop up from time

to time yeah well it makes sense that

there’s going to be cultural differences

and also in language differences as well

the the Russian side was always a lot

closer to what we would call shamanism

than in the u.s. the US has probably

more traditional religious notions about

these kinds of effects but there and of

course the the Far East as their own

versions of Qi Gong and prana and the

concepts like that so those put overlays

on the nature of the phenomena but when

you actually analyze what do you mean

what what what are you talking about in

terms of the experiences that people

talk about or feel they all fall into

basically the same kind of taxonomy and

you find that even if you go back into

the ancient yoga literature which is I’m

referring to my book supernormal

where I did this you find that people

were talking about these same phenomena

2,000 years ago and probably well before

that so

the basic phenomena are probably the

same they get described differently and

some distortions based on language and

the history of each individual culture

but I think they’re all the same hmm I’m

very intriguing I you know dr. Reid

night I find your answers very to the

point and you have very eloquent way of

explaining them you you say that

meditation is important to you and is

there a spiritual benefit in your

opinion to meditation or practicing

these abilities well let me back up to

the beginning of your question which is

why what should we do with this and so

imagine that you were to ask Benjamin

Franklin why are you falling out with

these with these little sparks and the

kite flying and all that what what are

you doing well the answer is he was

curious

hey here’s here’s something that looks

like a spark and maybe it’s related to

these bolts of lightning and this is the

essence of scientific exploration and

you don’t need a reason other than

curiosity Benjamin Franklin might have

been able to imagine that someday we’d

have multi gigawatt power grids around

the world but I doubt it you don’t need

to even look that that long ago two

people are developing the first

computers who are thinking that why

would anybody need more than a mainframe

for anything so we have very limited

foresight even in a realm where we’re

studying precognition it’s very

difficult to know eventually what this

is going to turn into the best we have

are stories that we hear about from from

science fiction and fairy tales but even

those are pretty well constrained you do

occasionally find a science fiction

story that correctly anticipates

something about future but most of the

time it’s future technology and so here

we’re talking about something which is

way more fundamental than simply a

technological advancement so for example

we go back to 1900

when Lord Kelvin otherwise known as Sir

William Thompson gave a talk to the

Royal Society about the state of physics

and he said more or less that the

physics is pretty well wrapped up except

for two clouds and by the two clouds

that he was talking about we’re saying

that thermodynamics looks like it

explains everything in the natural world

so if you’re thinking about going into

physics don’t even bother except for

these two things the ultraviolet

catastrophe and a luminous ether

those were the two unsolved mysteries

well one turned into relativity and the

other turned into quantum mechanics so

from 1900 to the beginning of the 21st

century that span of a hundred years if

you had talked to physicists at the

beginning of the 20th century they would

have no idea at all about what was about

to happen I mean they were in the midst

of the Industrial Age where everything

was thought to be totally modern and

up-to-date and basically finished and

the world completely changed because of

these two little problems that had not

been solved well today we have two

little problems that haven’t been solved

one is called qualia and the other ones

called quanta so qualia refers to inner

experience the sense of awareness and

quanta refers to the quantum measurement

problem namely that somehow the physical

world seems to respond to measurement

some weird way so a lot of physicists

was saying well those are two minor

things that will eventually wrap up I

don’t think so I think when we begin to

understand these two little clouds it

will have as big an impact as the two

clouds that William Thompson was talking

about in 1900 it will totally

revolutionize civilization I really want

to be able to imagine a future in which

we are actively using telepathy to

communicate I mean is this is this

something in the realm of of your

imagination as as well I mean you you

are a scientist and and you’ve kind of

lived this and and this is your career

so well if we are lucky enough to

survive as a species

given the accumulating apocalyptic

scenarios the phases now then eventually

science will catch up to a better

understanding of psychic and mystical

experience as I said just before that

that will cause a very radical change

and our understanding about who we are

our relationship to the universe how it

all works and that sort of thing

if you imagine at this point that we

suddenly have the magic pill and can

make everybody telepathic that would

probably destroy the world pretty

quickly and you can see this in fiction

through stories or movies like Forbidden

Planet that we simply don’t have the

capacity yet to have good control over

our woman’s and desires and our society

and our laws and virtually every piece

of the way that we interact with each

other

assumes privacy and and also assumes

responsibility for your actions

well if you now are living in a hive

mind you know how this is portrayed in

fiction it’s the Borg it’s the invasion

of the Body Snatchers it’s every alien

invasion where you get absorbed into the

into the grand mind this is always

presented as horrific and I think the

reason is that it’s partially an

American thing that we like to imagine

where the the rugged independent cowboy

but the reality is that were already

extremely dependent on each other and

the level of dependency would go up to

such a higher degree that most of the

engine of society would have to change

it would change quickly you can’t have

you can’t have for example a huge

difference or the huge disparity and

people who have an enormous amount

versus people who don’t have an enormous

amount because part of the issue about

becoming telepathic is that you feel

other people’s pain so if you’re a

billionaire and you’re walking past

people who are starving on the streets

that can’t happen

and so of it if that’s going to go away

how does it go away there has to be a

gigantic redistribution of wealth

there’s you can just spin out pretty

pretty quickly

that the way that society is now will

collapse very fast

and that’s dangerous you don’t want

things to collapse

you want them to collapse collapse and

in a graceful way and if slowly in a way

so that it’s under control because

otherwise who knows how it’s gonna build

itself back up and this of course is

another storyline and lots of

science-fiction on the way that

post-apocalyptic societies will rebuild

themselves there are many different ways

of doing that so dart sorry so my hope

is that when when we get closer to

technologies and pharmaceuticals and

other kinds of methods that can enhance

psychic experience because I think we’re

headed in that direction that a lot of

attention is paid to the unintended

consequences of it and so one

possibility is that it will create

secret cabal’s of super psychics who it

which is himself is extremely dangerous

because they could take over the world

pretty quickly and that yet another

science fiction scenario it might if

we’re very lucky and leaders pay

attention to this it could be a way of

slowly introducing these kinds of

concepts and a case can be made without

too much conspiratorial thinking that

one of the reasons that there are movies

about these scenarios is to find a

remind the population that what if we

were able to do this by movies like Lucy

for example or limitless or kind of

pushing in that direction and the reason

why I like both of those pictures is

that although there is a lot of action

in it and so on

they were very different than a lot of

the previous films all of which devolved

very quickly into horror well Lucy

didn’t evolve into horror and nor did

limitless they have much more positive

spin to the story so I’m encouraged to

see that and I know that there are a

number of people in Hollywood who are

interested in the same trend to say no

this is actually part of human potential

and human evolution and there are

positive aspects to it as well dr. Reid

and in

in some of the documentaries like DMT

the spirit molecule I think it was

Dennis McKenna was talking about how

during some of the shamanic experiences

they feel that they talked to various

intelligences or get get pieces of

information and you know you just

mentioned the idea of plant or chemical

substances enhancing psychic ability and

mmm one of the things that’s always I

always wanted to ask dr. McKenna or his

brother is you know if if a person were

to get a piece of information in an

altered state is there any way that that

could be verified I guess that’s kind of

a complicated question but maybe you

could just speak to that or even to the

whole issue of do you feel that any

plant substances can enhance psychic

ability in any real substantive way that

could be measured in the laboratory and

that sort of thing

I’ve spoken to researchers who had

medical schools who are studying

substances like psilocybin and DMT and

they’re very interested in the same

question because they’re subjects

involved in the experiments talk about

it all the time

minimum they talk about telepathy is

just overwhelmingly strong so we’ve

talked about how do you do an experiment

with somebody in these in these states

where we you have the same level of

control as you would if in a laboratory

where you know what chance is and you

get people to do these somewhat

artificial tasks and at this point we

don’t know how to do it because one of

the things that happens in an extreme

altered states of awareness is that

people don’t want to play anymore so I

know from my own experience that if

you’re intoxicated enough depending on

the substance when somebody presents you

with a task now I want you to do this

and this and that and that internally

you’re thinking that’s the stupidest

thing I’ve ever heard of why in the

world would I want to do that I don’t

want to do that now I want to enjoy the

experience so the the closest we’ve come

to thinking about how to do

is to work with participants who have

extensive experience for example with

psilocybin so they know what the

experience is like they are comfortable

with it and they can still do tasks and

so there’s the possibility and still in

the future of doing experiments like a

presentment experiment where they don’t

have to cognitively do anything we’re

just monitoring their body and watching

what happens there’s the possibility

opening for experiments that can be

verified the the difficulty with it is

that because those the drug experiments

are still considered controversial that

just like I don’t want to mix UFOs and

ESP people doing psychedelic research

don’t want to mix it with SCI even

though there’s probably an overlap it’s

simply too too sensitive to do that so

we keep things separate for the sake of

keeping the science clean well we are

certainly covering some very intriguing

material tonight and we are approaching

the end here dr. Aden but I would like

to ask you if you know if there if there

was anything and you’ve been doing this

for a while and you have you’ve learned

a lot and you know is there anything

that you would tell your younger self to

be aware of or anything that you would

go back and kind of tell yourself yeah I

would tell myself in graduate school to

take courses in the sociology of science

and probably the philosophy of science

as well because it was a rude awakening

for me after had gotten into this field

and was working at it for a while to see

that the aspiration of science as a

rational Enterprise is simply not true

academic freedom isn’t true the idea

that scientists will evaluate data

rationally is not true all of those

stories that we hear about the way that

science is different from religion is

different from politics and all that

it’s simply not true science is another

human activity and it has the same

frailties as every every other kind of

active

the only thing that science has going

for it is that there’s very strong

emphasis on rigorous methods and

consensus opinion so those are good

unfortunately consensus opinion is also

an enormous ly efficient block for

things that don’t happen to fit to

prevailing viewpoints so for many

respects it’s amazing that science has

done as well as it has and unfortunately

as science becomes more and more of a

career rather than a matter of

expressing your curiosity people find it

more and more constraints about what

they talk about and what I mean by this

is I’m kind of a lightning rod for

scientists who are interested in this

topic so I get a lot of phone calls and

emails from professor’s all over the

place who are just anxious to tell me

about their interests and psychic

phenomena and sometimes their

experiences and then the end of every

conversation is the same don’t tell

anybody

did I spoke to you don’t tell anybody

that I did this experiment and I haven’t

published it and I’m not going to and

publish it even though it turned out

good because there is a taboo the taboo

is you don’t

it’s like Fight Club first rule is you

don’t talk about it second rule in the

third rule they’re all the same rule

don’t talk about this because it’s

damaging or you’re standing in your

career so I would warn myself as a

fledgling scientist to simply be aware

that it carries a certain amount of risk

whenever you you start pushing against

the prevailing viewpoint and I don’t

think I would have done anything

different because I guess I’m enough of

an iconoclast that I don’t care very

much about what other people think but I

have just been astonished really to see

firsthand cases of people who in any

other condition you’d consider to be

very smart very accommodating very

tolerant and completely insane when it

comes to topics like this you know dr.

Reid and I can totally understand your

frustration as a scientist I got a

little bit bored doing molecular biology

experiments and I’m off on a different

direction right now I think that

curiosity you mentioned is so key

I mean you mentioned moving on from

wondering if sigh effects are real and

now wondering how their work how they

actually work and I think that is so so

true I mean I can’t think of any other

question more fascinating at this time

in history then how are these effects

working you know it’s they cannot be

blocked by a Faraday cage they I think

there was an experiment where they’re

not blocked at the bottom of the ocean

you know and it’s just totally amazing

so I think your work is really it’s

really cool and so what encourages me

about all this is that if you were to

segregate scientists by their age the

younger the scientist is the more open

they are about their interest and the

more willing they are to come out of the

closet so to speak

that’s a very encouraging sign and this

essentially is how science has

progressed that the you know science

progresses by funerals as Max Planck

said and in this case the evidence

continues to compound the empirical

evidence keeps compounding and gets

better and better with time eventually

with when people find better and better

ways of presenting the evidence even

with explanations that are not

completely correct but sound plausible

that we don’t longer have to deal with

the baggage of older scientists because

they’re going to go away eventually and

younger scientists of course that are

immediately going to be attracted to

these topics so the older I get the more

important it is for what I can offer at

this point is to write papers and books

mainly targeting younger scientists and

when we can tell for example when we

publish a paper and a site like

frontiers we get tens of thousands of

downloads well we don’t know what ages

are doing the downloading but just

statistically a lot of more young people

are living on the Internet and older

people so it’s a it’s a good bet that a

lot of the interest is from younger

folks and that’s that’s very encouraging

well doctor reading you are one of the

men who stared photons apparently and I

really do appreciate your time sir me

should you do you have anything

on closing here with our guest yeah I

have one small question doctor reading

you’ve done these experiments where

people effect random number generators

just real quick if is there an effect

where if 10 people are folks focusing

their attention or 100 people are

focusing their attention it’ll be

different than one person trying to show

something in a laboratory well

unfortunately we’re not dealing with the

linear effect the the the best metaphor

I can think of is something like a soap

bubble that if you you have a one person

who is trying to balance a soap bubble

they can do a certain degree and if you

have two people helping that doesn’t

necessarily help because they may not be

handling it in the same way and you can

burst it if you have 10 people all

trying to do it at the same time it

could burst real fast so the important

ingredient that seems to help is

coherence among people and that does

occur occasionally

when it occurs people know it instantly

there’s some kind of they’re in the zone

they feel something gel in the crowd but

it’s relatively rare it’s very difficult

to actually produce on demand but when

that happens experiments like field

consciousness experiments do show that

randomness begins to respond very

quickly it goes it basically starts to

become patterned so that so it’s not a

it’s a nonlinear effect and the moment

you get into non-linearity it’s a much

Keep the conversation going.