125. "Paranormal" is Perfectly Normal – Dean Radin

Professor Dean Radin is one of the world’s leading authorities on psychic phenomena. He is the chief scientist at IONS, the Institute of Noetic Sciences. “I don’t like the word ‘paranormal’ when referring to these experiences”, Dean says. “Paranormal phenomena cover such a huge range of things that are strange, that it tends to collapse psychic experiences into things like search for Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster. But psychic phenomena, like synchronicities, are extremely common.” Are psychic phenomena akin to spiritual experiences? “I would say there is an overlap.” The overlap, he explains, is when people say they have felt a strange, very intimate sense of connection with other people or with things elsewhere. “The line between science and spirituality is arbitrary. There is a spectrum.” A synchronicity can be described as ‘smart luck’, as opposed to ‘dumb luck’. “In many ways the kind of research that I do attempts to evoke synchronicities in the laboratory. What some would call a coincidence we would call a synchronicity when we study for instance telepathy”, Dean says. As we record this episode, Dean Radin is conducting an experiment aimed to test the quantum observer effect. “To test it properly it takes an act of subjective awareness of what is going on. It is correlated to brain activity, but it is not physical. Maybe that’s what will break the chain and cause the measurement to actually occur.” “If the results are replicated in lots of different laboratories, it directly informs an outstanding and long standing problem in the interpretation of quantum mechanics.” The ‘Sigil’ experiment, as it is called, is due to be finished by the end of April. The placebo effect is basically the same phenomenon – mind affecting matter. “Can we see differences in the behavior of cells, be it plants or the human body, depending on what people are beaming mentally at them? The answer is yes.” “For everything from photons, to chemical processes, to cells, to small animals, to human physiology and maybe all the way up to the global level, we do see that consciousness seems to be involved at every single stage.” And yet there are so many skeptics, and so many psi researchers are being mocked. “In mainstream science, these things are taboo. I know many academics have these experiences themselves, but you can’t talk about it, at the risk of your career”, Dean says. “Materialism is an extremely powerful worldview. So powerful that it has given rise to the technologies we have today. But it leaves out something.” However, in the last 30 years, the philosophy of idealism has begun to penetrate within the sciences, according to Dean Radin. Idealism posits that consciousness is fundamental and that matter arises from it. “You see it in physics, in psychology, in neuroscience and in mathematics.” There is a materialist ‘police’ that is active on Wikipedia and in public debate. But it is a vociferous minority, Dean thinks. “They are only maintaining the taboo. But taboos don’t last forever. When you talk to academics privately after a couple of beers, everyone eventually reports they have experiences of this kind, and most are actually interested.” So, if idealism is penetrating science and things seem to be changing, what will be the final nail in the coffin for the taboo? Judging from the brief opening in consciousness studies that was seen in the 60s and 70s, Dean thinks the renewed research on psychedelics might be that nail. Another candidate is quantum biology. Scientists now suggest that the brain operates in quantum ways. “That was a very fringy idea 30 years ago.”

Dean’s personal website IONS website