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‘The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of his life. Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interest upon futilities, and upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance. Thus we demand that the world grant us recognition for qualities which we regard as personal possessions: our talent or our beauty. The more a man lays stress on false possessions, and the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life. He feels limited because he has limited aims, and the result is envy and jealousy. If we understand and feel that here in this life we already have a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change. In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential we embody, and if we do not embody that, life is wasted.
In our relationships to other men, too, the crucial question is whether an element of boundlessness is expressed in the relationship. The feeling for the infinite, however, can be attained only if we are bounded to the utmost. The greatest limitation for man is the "self"; it is manifested in the experience: “I am only that!” Only consciousness of our narrow confinement in the self forms the link to the limitlessness of the unconscious. In such awareness we experience ourselves concurrently as limited and eternal, as both the one and the other. In knowing ourselves to be unique in our personal combination – that is, ultimately limited – we possess also the capacity for becoming conscious of the infinite. But only then!’
God is in the details. By looking at meta-studies (that is, studies of studies), Dean Radin argues that there is a statistically significant and cumulative case for the existence of psychic phenomena.
Dean Radin earned his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, graduating magna cum laude, with honours in Physics, from the University of Massachusetts. After completing his Master’s degree, he further earned a PhD in Educational Psychology from the University of Illinois. Post-studies, Radin worked on advanced telecommunications at AT&T Bell Laboratories developing rapid prototyping systems for complex human–computer interfaces.
For over three decades, Radin has been engaged in research on the topic of consciousness. He has become one of the most eminent and accredited researchers in parapsychology, gaining appointments at Princeton, Edinburgh and SRI International. He has published hundreds of articles and four bestselling books attempting to provide scientific evidence for psychic phenomena (psi) such as telepathy, telekinesis and clairvoyance. His bestselling title, The Conscious Universe (1997), was the first of his books, pointing to a possible future when psychic phenomena might finally be accepted by the sciences.
According to Radin, theories are often initially dismissed as impossible. They then enter the realm of possible but unproven. Eventually they are verified and embraced, with history all too often rewritten to convince the world that the theory in question had been obvious all along. Due to their naturalistic assumptions – and their fear of being associated with pseudoscience – most scientists have placed psi in the first category, dismissing it as theoretically impossible without bothering to engage with any evidence. Even those who do peruse the evidence focus on individual failures rather than broader meta-studies, dismissing positive cases as being either inherently flawed or tampered with. Radin laments that scientists are often so stuck in their old ways that ‘science progresses mainly by funerals, not by reason and logic alone.’
While individual studies may be flawed or influenced by wishful thinking, Radin insists that meta-analysis, which involves merging the results of numerous independent experiments, can provide cumulative evidence for psi. Even though experimental results often only exceed chance by small percentages, when found to be consistent across thousands of test cases, even minor results become statistically significant. For example, in a game of five cards where one of the cards is secretly chosen, the odds of guessing the correct card should only be 20 per cent. If, over the course of one night of play, you managed to guess 25 or 30 per cent correctly, this could be chalked up to good luck. Yet if these inflated results continued over thousands and thousands of nights, then even 5 per cent above chance would be staggering. Radin contends that such meta-results have been found for psi, pointing to meta studies of dream telepathy (which were 13 per cent above chance), Ganzfeld telepathy (12 per cent above chance) or precognition (37 per cent of studies suggested non-random results) among others. Thus, by bringing together multiple experiments via meta-studies, Radin attempts to show that something more than chance is at play.
In the final chapters, Radin explores the potential implications of psi for fields as diverse as physics, medicine, warfare, technology and business. Indeed, if psi were real – and could be studied or even harnessed – then the potential implications would be as enthralling to an entrepreneur as to a wide-eyed child. As Major General Edmund R Thompson said about the government’s forays into psi: ‘We didn’t know how to explain it, but we weren’t so much interested in explaining it as determining whether there was any practical use to it.’
Still beyond any tangible application, there remains the perhaps more provocative possibility that psi could rewrite the laws of nature altogether, breaking down the divide between subjective mind and objective matter. And if this proved the case it would mean the entire universe is conscious.
Copyright © 1997 by Dean Radin.
