Dean Radin: Real Magic, The Secret Power of The Universe
So, in this one stroke basically, you take the esoteric traditions and say, well, what if that were true, how do we fit it into the rest of science. And it turns out that it solves a lot of problems very quickly.
We still don’t know and don’t understand at this point how do you get from consciousness into the physical world, but as I was saying, that’s kind of the leading edge today in science. A lot of scientists are working in quantum information science and at the edges of mathematics and the edges of physics. Well, that’s starting to sound more and more like consciousness really is fundamental.
Sandie Sedgbeer: As a child, you said that you read everything you could find on mythology and fairy tales and folklore and Eastern philosophy and psychology, which eventually turned into an interest in psi phenomena. Was that progression for you, or was there a specific incident that sparked your interest in parapsychology?
Dean Radin: No, it was no specific incident. It was a matter of curiosity, I think, that was sparked by reading all those stories and no different than children who read Harry Potter. Some of them are going to think, I wonder if that’s true, could it possibly be true. And the ones who retain their curiosity as they become adults might be more inclined to start looking at the esoteric literature or getting interested in parapsychology like I did.
Sandie Sedgbeer: Your original career track was as a concert violinist, and then you shifted into science after you got an electrical engineering degree, and then you were into physics and studied psychology. How did you end up studying consciousness?
Dean Radin: I think I’ve always been interested in consciousness. Some of that was probably sparked by playing the violin in that, on my music stand for 20 years, the top of the music stand, I had a phrase that said learn to listen. So, for a violinist, learning to listen is all about intonation. But, after a couple of years, you don’t need to think about that consciously much anymore. You either have it, or you don’t, and I was pretty good at it.
To learn to listen was a subliminal message pointing at me for 20 years, and it ends up being kind of a meditative state. Listen to everything including your own mind. Something like that may have sparked my interest in things about the mind and consciousness.
Sandie Sedgbeer: You have synesthesia, and I’ve met a few people with It. Many of them work in the spiritual arena now. Did you find that your synesthesia has helped or hindered your work? Did that increase your intuition in some way? Did it enhance it in some way?
Dean Radin: I didn’t know that there was such a thing as synesthesia for many years until somebody gave it a name. I imagine that people would tune their instruments by color because that’s how I experienced the sound and the tones. I found it generally not to be a problem except if somebody was playing or singing off key. Then it was not pleasant at all because the colors weren’t right. It became muddy and off-color. And of course, the sound wasn’t right, either. So, it makes it difficult sometimes to listen to people who think they can sing or play. It probably offered a different way of perceiving the world.
Sandie Sedgbeer: Would you just, you know, give us a brief rundown of that instance of synchronicity which you relate in your book that had those four elements to it?
Dean Radin: So, it’s four-part synchronicity, any one of which would probably be considered interesting. But, it’s the combination of them that starts to look very strange.
So, the first synchronicity is–this was early in the year 2000, and I was living in Silicon Valley, and this was when the dot-com craze was happening. So, everybody was getting offices, and there weren’t very many around, and the ones that around were very expensive. So, we were looking all over the place because we were establishing a non-profit institute, and we needed offices. So, we eventually found a place in Los Altos, which is a suburb of Silicon Valley, and it was in a strip mall kind of place where most of the other people were in real estate or dentists and that sort of professional level.
So, we found an office. We decided to get it, so we got it. A couple of weeks after we got it, I decided to walk to work to this new office in a different way, and I passed a sign that gave a list of the people who were in the place. I looked at the list, and I saw that one of the companies there was called Psi Quest, Inc., P-S-I Quest, Inc. And of course, we were doing psi research. P-S-I is a short-term for psychic. And we weren’t calling ourselves that. We were called The Boundary Institute. But, there was somebody else doing Psi Quest.
We didn’t know what that meant. We figured maybe it was Personnel Services Incorporated or something like that. But, we thought, okay, there’s funny synchronicity that we’re doing psi research, and there’s somebody else here who’s doing psi quest.
The second synchronicity is I decided to walk a different way to the office again, and I passed the office next to ours, which I hadn’t really looked at before.
But, I noticed a little sign on the door that said Psi Quest Research Labs. And now this became much more interesting because what would personnel services be doing in a research lab. And it’s right next to us.
I got curious, of course, and I tried to see through the mini blinds that were closed to introduce myself and find out what are they doing.
Well, there was nobody there. So, every day for about a month, as I walked to work, I’d pass that, and I looked in to see if there was someone there. Finally, I did see movement through the mini blinds. I knocked on the door, and I said–the door opened. A man was opening the door. I said, hello, my name is–and before I could say my name, he looked at me with a look of shock and said, Dean Radin?
I didn’t know how he knew my name. I was a little concerned because he looked very startled, to the point of almost like a shock. And so, I didn’t quite know what to do.
Well, so that synchronicity is that he was engaged in practice to try to manifest me. He was trying to make me appear or to contact him in some way.
He would be completely shocked because he was trying to make me show up, and there I was. I opened the door. So, as it turns out, this guy was a former Apple employee who had done quite well and cashed out and did what he always wanted to do, which was psi research, exactly like what we were doing. Well, this is now major synchronicity because not only is he right next door to us but that my colleagues and I pretty much know everybody in the world who’s doing this kind of research.
It’s a small community. And yet, here’s somebody we had never heard of doing the same research with a laboratory right next door to where we ended up. So, this is very strange.
Sandie Sedgbeer: Well, there’s another piece to that, isn’t there, where your intention also came into play?
Dean Radin: So, the third synchronicity is that the person who opened the door, his name was John. He was doing a magical practice, sort of a Tibetan yoga practice where you manifest things that you want. Well, as I said, he was manifesting me, which made me feel disoriented because I think I have free will, but apparently, not as free as I thought I did.
The last synchronicity is that he finally, when he settled down, I asked him, well, what do you do here. So, he brought me back to his laboratory in the back room, and he had had a special kind of shielded room and a certain chair in it and various kinds of equipment. And I was stunned to see this because then I said: you have to come over to my office.
We went over to my office, which is on the other side of the wall from where we had just been. On the whiteboard, I was drawing the shielded room and the special chair and the various kinds of equipment because I had been spending the previous month in my office drawing on a whiteboard what I wanted to manifest. Unbeknownst to me, it was on the other side of the wall. So, he manifested me, and I manifested the equipment that I wanted. And this was so startling to both of us that we then, of course, I told my colleagues about this, and we were all kind of stunned.
Continue to Page 3 of the Interview with Dean Radin
