Closer to Truth


Here is a new set of video interviews that I did for this PBS show.

Comments

Sharon Day said…
Absolutely brilliant. I saw several of the videos and they were so clear and concise. I feel as if you have a real understanding of how to wrangle in the large array of psychic phenomenon and find a binding component. The comment about the self not just being in the head nearly brought tears to my eyes. I've always thought I was the only one who felt that way. Information I get when accessing the physic realm has always been outside of myself and in a synesthetic way, stored in 3-dimensional models outside my body in tiers. It's a hard thing to describe, but I can position my eyes to the tier and access the info there. It's a tumbling mess and I've never shared that with anyone what it's actually like. I've always been so ashamed of the ability in the first place and the fact that when I do a reading, a person's memories then become mine as if it had happened to me, so I quit doing readings just so I don't have someone's junk stored in my "system." Thanks for really giving PSI legitimacy and taking it from the "belief" realm that's nearly religious in its zealotry and putting it into the logical scientific model and saying "how can we weigh and measure this and explain it?" It's so nice to have someone so composed and calm and logic-minded dealing with this realm of the human condition. I can't wait to see the other videos.
David Bailey said…
Your video "All reality consists of what things" was particularly thought provoking.

The idea that (your example) the positron became a possibility when Dirac conceived of his equation - and more generally that reality morphs to represent what people en-mass expect, is scary but believable!

Perhaps 'primitive' societies really did have magic, demons, etc., not just as myths, but as reality. Then people combined myths with maths - which created a "parameterised myth" - an infinite number of myths rolled into one.

From that perspective, the taboo against psi starts to make sense - if we all stop believing in standard science, will it still keep working?
David Bailey said…
Dean, It would be really nice if it were possible to download those "Closer than truth" videos, because the internet is so busy nowadays that they don't run smoothly!

Even just an audio version would be good!
Dean Radin said…
> if it were possible to download ...

I suppose the producers want to maintain control of the content, which is not unreasonable.

I did some of these interviews in October 2007, others a few years before. I did not know in advance what was going to be discussed, so all of my remarks are spontaneous. My strong suit is not theory, and I would have been more comfortable talking about data. But that wasn't on the table for this interview.
Eliakim said…
Dean, I look forward to the day when you really are able to see and communicate with different energies that do appear before us. Some research was done by a Spiritualist at Stansted Hall in the UK and he found that only 10% of mediums actually see the divine. It also found that only 10% of mediums are actually trained directly by the divine.

From experience the more that people heal themselves the more that get to experience the divine.

Have you attended a Reiki healing training course? From your own admission in the video about angels and demons you have only ever been blessed to see a light that you then go on to explain in your terms of comprehension backed up with scientific thought.

I appreciate and value your work beyond measure and honour you for being so brave and courageous in exploring the options.

Angels and other beings certainly do exist. In the same way that we still exist when we leave planet earth. Many worlds and states of existence do exist as do many different dimensional realities, it is wonderful that the cutting edge scientists are unveiling the spiritual laws in a way that the people can understand.

Keep up the great work.
Tor said…
Great interviews Dean!

I specially liked the one that David referred to. Based on some personal experiences and some hard thinking, I suspect that we just may be living in such a universe that shapes itself to some extent to our current way of thinking. Mind boggling though.. and fun!
David Bailey said…
Dean said, "My strong suit is not theory, and I would have been more comfortable talking about data. But that wasn't on the table for this interview."

I think the theory of all this is important too - and I think you underestimate yourself!

I think a lot of science-oriented people balk at the concept of psi because they can't begin to think how it works - they need a possible mental model in their head before they can start to accept the data.

A lot of people talk about psi in ways that do not connect with science at all - sometimes even using words, such as magnetism, in totally different ways.
MickyD said…
Dean,

Excellent interviews. Your views on the fundamentality of consciousness seem to be similar to Hameroff's Orch OR model. Would this be right? I find this theory and your views strangely compelling. There is a deep intellectual resonance that transends problematic dualistic thinking.
For your more recent interview for Danish TV, do you have a link or website I can go to?
Thanks,
M.
Unknown said…
Dean, you are a gentleman and a scholar and the video David and Tor refer to as well as the Angels and Demons one are simply astonishing.

Since we're on all topics radical, let's try and push things forward. Tor says: "I suspect that we just may be living in such a universe that shapes itself to some extent to our current way of thinking". Now I know Tor is far from anthropocentric, but this consciousness ought to be shared by other physical beings, including on other planets. Well, one place to look that I think would be fascinating is the work of Prof. Simon Conway Morris of Cambridge University, a leading paleontologist who has done work on evolutionary convergence. Much to my loathing, I must quote from wiki, Conway Morris and the phenomenon of evolutionary convergence maintain that:

"Evolution shows an eerie predictability, leading to the direct contradiction of the widely-held view that insists on evolution being governed by the contingencies of circumstance.

Eyes are not the only example of repeated evolutionary convergence on the same solution. There is evidence for fundamental equivalences of sensory perception and the implication that deeper in the nervous system there is only one mentality. Minds may be not only universal, but also the same."

Check out his work and his Gifford lectures here, there's one on consciousness where he mentions parapsychology and discusses Near Death Experiences and has previously endorsed a belief in the 'filter model' of mind-brain interactions as outlined by James, Myers, Bergson etc:

http://www.iscast.org/conway_morris_bio

This could straddle sorts of Platonism, certain religious beliefs and phenomena, psi and current science together (including evolutionary biology).

So, now perhaps, if Tor will excuse my amendment, "we just may be living in such a universe that shapes itself to some extent to on all conscious beings' current way of thinking"! (Apologies, Tor!)
David Bailey said…
Dean, Just to plug my previous point a little more, just look at the amount of interest and further discussion you have created with your theoretical talks.

The implications of psi are a very, very interesting part of this subject - so please don't hold back!
Tor said…
Bharat said:

(Apologies, Tor!)

No apologies needed. We are thinking the same here :)

Another interesting question to ask would be:

Can we get in touch with this fundamental mind, common to all?

There are other traditions that have been and still are exploring this. One of them is Tibetan Buddhism. What do they say? As you go deeper, beyond our "ordinary" chattering mind, you go to something beyond our human mind/consciousness that is not species specific anymore. And then you can go further, beyond to something they consider the very basic fabric of reality.

According to Alan Wallace, at the root there is a kind of energy/consciousness that is both at the same time. Science have been around for 400 years. Other traditions have been around for thousands of years. I am not going to laugh them off as old and superstitious. I think we should be more open to other ways of knowing.

It takes about 20 years of western training to reach the top of our educational system; the PhD. That is 20 years of training for a would be scientist to shape his/her mind, learning to see things that others can not. Without proper training like this, you can not really see what some high-tech instruments show you, and certainly not understand it.

Along the same line of thinking, 20 years of training inside a tradition that is more inward focused could lead to you seeing things that others without this kind of training can not. And maybe even applying your new insight in the world in some way that would seem impossible according to someone trained in science.

I used Tibetan Buddhism as an example since I recently became surprised by the rigor and skeptical attitude this tradition applies. To me it looks a lot like science, but starting at the inside, not the outside.

Alan Wallace books was a bit of an eye opener to me, both when it came to the philosophy of science and other traditions.
Dean Radin said…
Quite true about the effects of training, expectation, and perception. It seems to me that it would be foolish to dismiss thousands of years of disciplined observation within the Eastern traditions just because in the last few decades Western science has discovered some neural correlates of cognition.

I understand how 20+ years of education, inculcated by social approval, can give one a strong sense of confidence in how some things work. But that same confidence can also become a blinder against other views.

The trick when dealing with uncertainty is to avoid premature collapse just because it's more comfortable than ambiguity. Easier said than done.
MickyD said…
ahem! you missed my questions on Orch OR and interview! :-)
Dean Radin said…
> Hameroff's Orch OR model...

Yes, there's some overlap. I also find concepts from Advaita Vedanta and panpsychism appealing.

> Danish TV, do you have a link or website I can go to?

Not yet. Video interviews often take a year or more before they hit the big (or small) screen.
Tor said…
The trick when dealing with uncertainty is to avoid premature collapse just because it's more comfortable than ambiguity. Easier said than done.

I am struggling quite much with this at times. Especially when I am practising qigong and experience phenomena that my scientific mind does not know how to conceptualize. I am supposed to be calm and silent inside when practising, but this part of my mind some times enters a state of frenzy because it does not understand and wants 100% certainty. Obviously some mental fixing needs to be done.

The interesting thing is that when I manage to still everything and have confidence in my own experience without conceptualizing them, the effects of my training gets amplified a 1000 times.

When in this state, it strangely does feel like one directly perceives the world more as it really is. It is a state filled with compassion and a feeling of connectedness for all things.
Lawrence said…
I think many of the dualist models of consciousness don't go far enough really, and get caught in trying to explain the mind from a non-reductionist angle by getting caught in reductionist explanations/models without even realising it! This appears the case with the Hamerhoff OR model and even Pribram's hologram model of the mind. I'm not the only one saying this btw, I didn't suck that out of my thumb.

See for example philosopher Stephen Braude's writings in this regard. To be fair we are simply in the dark about consciousness (if we admit materialism/monism is scientifically bankrupt which it is) and how the brain mediates the mind, but I do see what Braude is getting at. See his essay for the conceptual problems underlying the notions of 'memory traces' for example, and how these underlying problems are simply not properly recognised. The hard problem of consciousness, the problem of qualia remains elusive and completely mysterious. We have just begun here..

One sees a similar problem with QM (which nobody really understands) and psi, when psi supporters and psi friendly physicists are quick to cite QM (esp the Copenhagen Interpretation) as support for the notion of consciousness affecting reality in paranormal ways for example (ie PK effects for example), whilst I think we are on the right track, this approach is problematic for there are legitimate non-materialist objections here.

On a similar tack and related to my first point about the unintended
and largely unrecognised reductionism of non-reductionist models of mind, Evan Walker's model of quantum tunneling shares in a similar problem (and others re the nature of consciousness/the qualia problem) and psi-friendly physicists like Walker and Henry Stapp and others have maybe overreached here. I can't explain what I mean on such a staggeringly
complex subject in a few lines, although there is a significant academic literature here, that is growing every year.

I'll just say that models like Hamerhoff's, Pribram's and others are not radical enough, they suffer from the same shortcomings of their materialist opponents, that is they are limited by reductionist explanations in an attempt to get around reductionism! I am indebted to S Braude here, who in my mind is one of the greatest living philosophers. A real philosopher, he goes where the evidence leads but is always very cautious and exemplifies the expression,
'thinking things through'. Does he ever.
Eliakim said…
Its important to understand that the cosmos is not a one way street. Creation evolves and evolution creates. Perception is also an illusion that has no basis in reality So to humanity we have to help them to heal their perceptional consciousness so that they can move beyond it We know as healers that humanity have the ability to eradicate 85% of all disease. However, that takes a willingness from the people to engage in the healing process. If they can then they can come to the point of discovering the Kingdom of God.

God bless you Dean and your work.
Lawrence said…
Eliakim are you sure it's 85% of all diseases, and not 82.2%, or a mere 75%? Is that 85% of cancers, and 85% of neurodegenerative diseases, and 85% of tropical haemorrhagic fevers? 85% of skin diseases and 85% of endocrinal disorders? And where do you get these numbers from?

What does this mean btw?

"Perception is also an illusion that has no basis in reality So to humanity we have to help them to heal their perceptional consciousness so that they can move beyond it"

Maybe Dean can tell us what it means, if he wants to try figure it out. Maybe I'm just not spiritually evolved enough to grasp the language of the more uh spiritual among us, those who tell us perception has no basis in reality.
Eliakim said…
Lawrence the medical profession basically accept now that 85% of all disease is stress related. Cellular Biologist Dr Bruce Lipton talks about 90% can be healed.

Biology of Belief
http://www.brucelipton.com/

However, I stick with 85%, the other 15% is karmic chosen pre-destination. There is an interesting prophecy in the bible that states that those that live in New Jerusalem will live to over a 100 and children will not not die young e.g. no disease. Why is that? Those that live here would have broken their karmic cycles as such they are not passing them on to their children.

Cancer is created by fear and in my own case unforgiveness in a past life. The condition that I died with in the last life with its root causes I brought back with me into this life to heal.
Unknown said…
Hi Dean,

I just wanted to let your blog readers know that Dean Radin, Senior Scientist of the Institute of Noetic Science will be interviewing Diane Powell on a teleseminar Wednesday June 2nd at 5:00 pm Pacific time... you can sign up to participate in the call FREE here: http://bit.ly/b0oh8i

Diane Powell is the author of The ESP Enigma: http://amzn.to/dmdaFZ

Lindsey King
Institute of Noetic Sciences

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