Era Three Medicine

Dr. Larry Dossey is former co-chair of the National Institutes of Health, Alternative Medicine Division. He is author of “Space, Time and Medicine” and “Healing Words” where he discusses the scientific evidence supporting the power of healing intention.

DiCarlo: In your work you describe three eras of medicine: Era 1, Era 2, and Era 3. Using that as a framework, could you explain the emerging paradigm of medicine as you see it?

Dossey: I formulated this three era approach to medicine basically to make sense of all the therapies that are out there and to characterize the way that we define ourselves as human beings. If you start at the time when medicine first became scientific, which began in the decade of the 1860s and move forward from there, at least 3 different eras “shake-out” in terms of the nature of health-care and how we think about the nature of who we are.

Era 1, which began in the 1860s, is plain old mechanical medicine. It looks at the body and the mind as purely physical, as purely pursuing the blind laws of nature. The therapies that shake out of that approach are medications, surgery, radiation and so on. The body is not functioning properly, so the “doctor-mechanic” uses whatever tools of treatment are available to fix the problem.

In the 1940s, a different way of thinking about who we are emerged as people started talking about psycho-somatic diseases. This was the second era, Era-2, or what is today called “Mind-Body Medicine”. Originally, it suggested that negative thoughts can do bad things to the body, thus the term psycho-somatic disease. Now, this has been sort of turned on its head and we recognize that thoughts, emotions, attitudes and feelings can really be used to make people healthy. You can even make dreadful diseases go away by activating these positive emotions. An example of this is the scientific work of Dr. Dean Ornish in reversing coronary artery disease. So basically Era 2 is the impact of thought, feeling and belief within an individual.

DiCarlo: Would you say then, that television programs, with titles like “Healing and the Mind” and “The Heart of Healing” are basically rooted in Era 2 medicine?

Dossey: Almost totally Era 2. One of my frustrations with these types of TV programs is that they neglected a tremendous body of evidence which supports putting a third era on the table, Era 3, which I want to call “Transpersonal Medicine” or “Non-Local” medicine. This emerging era of medicine–although it has probably been around as long as human beings have been here–is contingent upon the ability of the mind to function non-locally. That is to say, the ability of the mind to function beyond the person, beyond the individual.

In Era 2, you are concerned about what your thoughts, feelings and attitudes can do to your body. Period. That’s what most of these television programs have centered upon, and that’s great. But there is compelling evidence, such as the evidence for the effectiveness of distant intercessory prayer–that the mind has some quality which allows it to reach out across space and time to affect the physical course of a distant living organism–whether that’s a human being or something else. So many people in the alternative health care movement think that Mind-Body medicine is just about as far out and exotic as the new model is going to get. But I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We need to begin to focus upon and acknowledge this emerging Era 3-type data which shows the ability of the mind to function at a distance–irrespective of the spatial separation from the object of its concern. We need to begin to ask questions about what this may mean.

Prayer is not the only body of available evidence which supports the ability of the mind to function at a distance. In the book, “Healing Words” I look at several categories, among which is transpersonal imagery. Most people think this is just the use of positive images to you do something nice for your body. That’s one definition and one use. But Dr. William Braud has shown that people who hold positive images of a distant person in a way that is caring, compassionate and prayer-like can actually bring about physical changes in that distant person.

So you see, we can differentiate three different categories or eras to define consciousness, and its relationship to the body which exists in space and time. Although my personal interest in the 1970s and 80s centered on Era 2, “Mind-Body” medicine, today, my interest has been captured by the emerging Era 3 medicine. There is a lot of neglected data that I want to make public. And secondly, I think there is more philosophical, spiritual, and practical “bang-for-your-buck” in this Era 3 medicine. Era 2 can still be explained based upon the chemistry and the anatomy of the brain and body. And you can still say, “So what? That’s great while you are alive, but take away the brain, and you’ve got nothing.” So there’s nothing more following death when the mind is confined to the brain. But in Era 3, the stakes are completely different. You can’t hold on to the idea that it’s all brain and body. If you honor this Era 3-type data, it is patently obvious that consciousness is capable of things that brains are incapable of. In other words, you cannot completely account for the workings of consciousness by studying the brain. This means there must be something about the psyche over and above the brain and the body. Working out the implications of all this has been my task.

DiCarlo: I’m wondering what might have sparked your interest in research the effects of prayer?

Dossey: As a child I was naturally curious. I grew up in a Protestant religious community in Central Texas where a lot of praying went on all the time. I was involved in that. At sometime or another I think that most people who pray wonder if their efforts are working, and ask themselves “Is it doing anything?” I was curious about that.

After I became a physician, I began to notice that some people got well even though no medical treatment had been rendered, except prayer. Sometimes these people had fairly dreadful diseases. So one wonders again, “Is the prayer operative? Did it do anything or is this one of those funny coincidences?”

I think many physicians have this sense of curiosity. I was propelled forward again when I discovered a 1988 controlled study out of San Francisco General Hospital which involved nearly 400 patients in the coronary care unit. The group that was prayed for appeared to do much, much better than the group which received no prayer. I went to the medical literature to see if there had been any previous studies involving prayer to support this. I was astonished to discover over 130 studies in this general area showing that prayer really does something remarkable–not just in human beings but in a great many other living things, from bacteria and germinating seeds, to rats and mice and so on.

So it was a curiosity which propelled me to the discovery of scientific data in the area of the prayer and its observable effects.

DiCarlo: What would you say has been the essential finding of your research?

Dossey: The essential message is that belief in prayer is no longer just a matter of faith. We’ve always said, “You can believe in this stuff if you want to, but you are on thin ice and shaky ground. It’s no longer just a matter of faith. There is overwhelming evidence that if you take prayer into the laboratory and subject it to testing, you can show that it works. So, that’s the big news. This information has been marginalized and it is practically unknown, even to physicians. It is not taught in medical schools. But it’s out there. Through my work I hope to bring this information forward, so that it can be placed out on the table for discussion and dialogue.

My primary interest is not the practical applications of prayer to make diseases go away. It’s really the larger message about who we are, and what our origins and destiny may be. How consciousness manifests in the world. Those are the real issues that go far beyond whether you can use prayer to bail yourself out of a difficult situation or illness.

DiCarlo: How do you define prayer?

Dossey: The prevailing notion that prayer is asking for something–basically talking out loud to a cosmic male parent figure who basically prefers English–either for yourself or somebody else is woefully incomplete. I want to get away from that common way of looking at prayer. Prayer for me is any psychological act which brings us closer to the transcendent. It’s not the territory of any specific religion. Belief in a personal God is not even necessary. For example, Buddhists pray all the time, but Buddhism is not a theistic religion.They don’t even believe in a personal God.

Prayer may involve words. We don’t want to disenfranchise people who like to talk when they pray. That’s fine. It’s just that it goes deeper than that. It can involve silence, non-activity. It can even be done in the subconscious or when we sleep at night. So I prefer to use the term “prayerfulness” to capture those activities we have traditionally called prayer. One of the common features of prayerfulness that really makes a difference in the world is empathy, caring, compassion, love and so on. This has been demonstrated in the laboratory. It is clear that the experiments don’t work very well if a person does not have empathy, love, compassion and caring for the object or subject they are trying to influence. The experiments work so much better if there is an empathic connection, a unity, a caring bond.

DiCarlo: So in the case of these experiments that you have uncovered, love was found to be more than a nice sentiment or feeling–a real force critical to the healing process itself?

Dossey: Let’s say this. Love is a felt quality that can change the state of the physical world. We are beyond metaphor and poetry here. We are talking about something that literally can make a difference in outcomes in the world.

DiCarlo: I have to say that I was struck by the comprehensive number of studies you have reported on.

Dossey: That’s one of the things I have taken pains to do. Every book I have ever written has at least 20 pages at the end which list references–mostly from scientific journals–to exemplify the fact that we’re not just talking anecdotes here. This stuff flows out of science. If you want ammunition, there it is.

DiCarlo: How would you respond to the materialists who explain away the concept of realms of existence that go beyond the physical? That the mind is the brain and nothing more?

Dossey: I think the best response is to play science. You see, the theories and hypotheses of the materialists work fine as long as you restrict yourself to a certain class of data and ignore other data. The materialists cannot account for non-local events. There is currently nothing within the field of biological science that can explain distant, non-local, consciousness-related events. Period. To discover an explanation, you have to revise the materialist manifesto, which states that there is nothing beyond matter, there is nothing beyond what is perceivable through the five senses.

The problem is, the skeptics and the materialists won’t look at non-local data at the level of biology and psychology. They will grant you that non-local phenomena occur at the quantum level–the level of the very small, such as atoms and subatomic particles. That has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. But the notion that these things can happen at the level of the psyche and at the level of biology is just not being entertained. They have some classical ways of dismissing the kind of data that I have been focusing on. They paint it with the term, “parapsychology.” They will say, “Oh, that’s just parapsychology.” But it doesn’t matter what it’s called. The real question is, “Is the data good?” And if the data is good, then the materialists are in a world of trouble, and the materialist way of looking at things by saying that “It’s just all matter and energy” falls flat on its face.

Let me tell you why. These non-local manifestations of consciousness–among which prayer is one type–display characteristics that are not displayed by any known form of energy. For example, prayer, transpersonal imagery effects, an so on, are not a function of the amount of distance a person is from their target. These activities are just as effective when done on the other side of the earth as when they are done close up. All known forms of energy display something called “The Law of the Inverse Squared” which means that the farther away from the source of the energy you get, the weaker the energy becomes. Prayer doesn’t do that. Transpersonal imagery effects don’t demonstrate that principle of physics either. Robert Jahn’s data at Princeton doesn’t display dissipation with distance. Furthermore, you can put the object of the prayer in a shielded Faraday cage lined with lead, which for all practical purposes shields out electromagnetic energy of all types, and the prayer still gets through. The transpersonal imagery still works.

What I am saying is that the psyche has ways of manifesting far beyond anything known to materialistic science. You need to get a feel for what’s at stake here. The reason that many of the dedicated materialistic scientists are so infuriated over the mere discussion of prayer and distant healing, is that it really begins to call into question their world view. It calls into question the adequacy of materialistic science, upon which these people have staked their careers, self-identity and self-esteem. And when you begin to question somebody’s world view, that’s more inflammatory than making derogatory comments about their mother. It generates tremendous animosity and really draws a line in the sand. If the data is right, then the materialist’s model of the universe is inadequate. It’s down to that. That’s why you see people libeling and slandering other people over these issues in the scientific journals. These are really fighting words, and that’s why people get angry about them.

DiCarlo: In a lot of respects, I would guess that a lot of researchers in this area have been forced into a catch-22 situation. Prestigious scientific journals will not even publish the research, and if an individual is not able to publish, they are essentially put out of business. No money for further research will be available.

Dossey: It’s slowly changing…if it were all as intractable as it seems at times, things would never change. But historically, science and medicine have been dynamic and world views do change. Thomas Kuhn’s work at Harvard regarding paradigms demonstrates this. Up to a point, everything seems secure and people are locked-in to a particular world view, but gradually the exceptions that just don’t fit the prevailing world view tip the scale. And when the scale gets tipped, the paradigm switches rather rapidly. I personally get the feeling that the data is mounting up inexorably on the other side of the scale. The tip is visible in the not-too-distant future. I just think you can never put this genie back into the bottle. According to Kuhn’s model of scientific revolution, it’s predictable that the critics and the skeptics are never more vocal and hostile than right before the switch in world views.

Right after I began to attract the attention of cynics, materialists and skeptics in medicine, I pulled a book off my shelf called “Garrison’s History of Medicine” which was written back in 1929. It’s one of my favorite books. I went back and I looked at the way the great medical authorities of the day treated Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was among the first to suggest handwashing. He was vilified for proposing the silly idea that washing your hands could cut down on the incidence of infections and death following childbirth, in spite of the fact that there was supportive scientific data which had been collected from the hospital. It showed that the practice of physician hand-washing tremendously lowered the death rate following childbirth. The data was in, yet in spite of that, this man was unbelievably hounded by other leading orthodox obstetricians.

This kind of response never changes. It has been played out time and again in the history of medicine. You are seeing it again here, and I will tell you, it will probably make the objections to hand-washing look very tame in comparison. You have world class researchers and a great many other philosophers saying all this stuff is silly. And they will claim that they have carefully looked at the data and it’s all baloney. What we have is a basic disagreement. Although this may not be perfect science, I believe that a great many of these experiments are so clean and tight, with such great controls that you can take them to the bank. Look at it this way, if just one of these 130 experiments that I mention in the book is right, the materialists viewpoint is bankrupt.

DiCarlo: Marcel Truzzi , a self-acknowledged skeptic, suggests that the focus needs to be on the preponderance of the evidence, not simply isolated studies. Would you say that the preponderance of the evidence in the studies that you have researched indicate that prayer works and that the prevailing materialistic paradigm is inadequate?

Dossey: Yes. I would emphasize the word inadequate. I don’t want to say invalid. We haven’t thrown away Newtonian physics just because quantum physics came on to the scene, but it certainly did show Newton’s view was incomplete. I love Truzzi’s phrase, “preponderance of evidence”. There is variation in all areas of scientific work. I don’t care what area it is. All the studies in any given field never show exactly the same results and this is true in the 130 experiments I have identified. Over half of them showed statistical significance that something phenomenal was going on. But the skeptic will say, “Ok, well look. Half of them show significance, but half don’t. Trash the whole thing.” That’s not fair. That’s not the way science is played. One must look at the preponderance of evidence.

In any given field, one looks at the most precise and accurate experimental protocols. You don’t look at the experiments that are not as well designed. You look at what the best-designed studies show. And I would be willing to say that the best studies in this field offer the best evidence. They show the most powerful effects. Actually, there are about three or four areas of parapsychological research which have been subjected to “meta-analysis” a powerful form of statistical analysis by people with world-class reputations like Robert Rosenthal at Harvard. Rosenthal has made a career in figuring out how to do this kind of analysis in tough subject areas. He was invited to analyze parapsychological studies by the National Research Council (NRC), which is a materialistically-oriented organization,which was putting together a report on human performance. After looking at several areas in the parapsychological literature, Rosenthal concluded that the level of quality of the research in those areas was extraordinarily high. This so angered the NRC that they asked him to withdraw his statement in their report. He refused and they eliminated it anyway. This is an example of the ends to which people will go to keep the prevailing paradigm propped up. Physicist Max Planck, commenting about the controversy surrounding quantum physics around the turn of the century said that, science changes funeral by funeral. That’s a clever way of stating that some people are never going to change their mind.

DiCarlo: What evidence exists to support the assertion that a new paradigm is emerging within the field of medicine?

Dossey: You can get a feeling for the profound changes taking place within medicine by looking at Dr. David Eisenburg’s 1992 Harvard survey which found that over 60 million Americans went to alternative therapists that year–one-third of the adult population. That sounds like a huge shift to me.

DiCarlo: It’s interesting that a lot of the change that is taking place in medicine is occurring through forces outside of the medical profession.

Dossey: One of the great examples of that is the way the Office of Alternative Medicine became established within the NIH. It came about as a result of outside political pressure. Senator Tom Harkin from Iowa was the prime advocate. And I think it’s still true that most doctors within the National Institute of Health wish that this office didn’t exist and would go away. But it has been established by order of law. It really is a landmark development and it does illustrate your point.

DiCarlo: What is the purpose of the Office of Alternative Medicine?

Dossey: First of all, it is not an advocacy group. It’s not advocating anything. It’s purpose is to dispassionately evaluate alternative forms of medicine in this country to see if further exploration is warranted. It’s intended to apply science to areas of therapy other than drugs and surgery, which typically get evaluated within the rest of the NIH. It really is a window of opportunity to take a look at therapies that otherwise would not be evaluated.

We want to see what will shake out. There are basically three questions that we must ask of any alternative therapy:

Does it work?
What’s the downside or side-effects?
Is it cost-effective?

And that’s the role of this office. It’s not to advocate anything.

DiCarlo: Are there certain assumptions that we have about ourselves as human beings that your research would tend to reject?

Dossey: Yes, I think we have been laboring under some fairly dismal and erroneous assumptions about ourselves. The most erroneous assumption is that we are separate individuals. By definition, if something about minds is non-local and there aren’t any boundaries around them, at some level there cannot be some five and one-half billion individual minds walking around on the earth all safely separated from one another. At some point, they are one. This was the point that was put forth by Erwin Shroedinger back in the 30s–a Noble Prize-winning physicist.

Now, I would propose to you that if people could really “get it”–that at some point we really are not separated but instead we share identity at a certain psychological dimension– this would constitute a radically different ethical and moral imperative. It could have the effect of reducing a lot of international anger and war. Why would you want to go and make war on another individual if at some level you and they were the same? I think this raises brotherhood and sisterhood to a new level. It takes it out of the dimension of just being nice towards another person. It really does take it out of the level of metaphor to the level of fact. It makes it very, very real.

I think that this could have a transformative effect on business. For instance, as a natural urge, why wouldn’t you want to make the very best possible product for another human being, if at some level you and they were the same? You are not doing this for somebody who is totally different and isolated from you. You are doing it for yourself, to yourself. This makes literal for instance, the Golden Rule imperative, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Why? Because at some level they are you. And so I think you can see how non-local implications of mind reverberate through virtually every human activity we can think of.

DiCarlo: Are there any other limiting assumptions many of us tend to have?

Dossey: I think that a lot of people in this culture have been deeply brutalized by the false assumption that there are only two ways you can live a life and you have to choose one or the other. You can choose to be intellectual, rational and scientific on the one hand, or on the other, you can live your life intuitively, spiritually. It’s being either the scientist or the artist or mystic and there is no way to get those two abilities together in your life. This schizophrenic assumption has caused immense suffering for people in this culture and I think that’s a false divide. If you look at the implications of these prayer studies for example, where you can show under laboratory controlled conditions that things like empathy, compassion, love, and caring can make a difference, and that there is some aspect of the psyche that is eternal, non-local, immortal–spiritual if you will-the fact that we can show that scientifically suggests that this great divide between science, religion and spirituality is false.

I would hope that this dialogue over Era 3, non-local aspects of consciousness, can help heal this gap between science and spirituality. But to do this, you have to have the courage and integrity to honor this data and go through it, instead of around it as we traditionally have done.

DiCarlo: Some people make a distinction between being a healer and being a doctor. Is there a difference in your view?

Dossey: There certainly seems to be in this culture. Healing is a word that is practically forbidden in medical schools and hospitals. You don’t talk about healing. You talk about the mechanics of medicine. It’s really that simple. If you were to actually use the word healing the way you just used the word, people in these places would look at you with very strange facial expressions.

The very possibility that some doctors might have healing capacities unshared by others is a foreign idea. My wife, who is a cardiovascular nurse and an author who is widely known in her profession, got a fax today from a nursing chairman at a major US hospital. It said, “Dear Barbara Dossey, although we do not plan currently to invite you to our next annual nursing conference at our hospital, I can assure you that we will do so in the future when we get into healing.” My wife came and showed me that and said, “What do you suppose they are into now?” So, figure it out for yourself. It’s all mechanical. The idea that there are these other qualities that could be called healing potentials, healing powers, healing skills–it’s an idea that has not yet come for hospitals. It’s changing though.

DiCarlo: Weston Agor has been doing a lot of ground-breaking work in the area of intuition in business. Has intuition played a significant role in your work?

Dossey: Well, I think intuition has played a major role. One of the ways that surgeons have of describing internists, of which I am one, is to call them crystal ball gazers. This is not intended as a compliment. This is one of the labels that is always levied by surgeons to the internists because “They think too damn much.”

But I think there may be an element of truth to it. I believe that doctors frequently make intuitive diagnoses that have nothing to do with the known facts, physical examinations, and assessment of lab data. I had a long section on this subject in my previous book, “Meaning and Medicine.” There was a phenomenon called “snap diagnosis” that was the rage on this continent back in the late 1700s up to the mid-1800s. The great teachers in the medical schools would vie with each other in making accurate diagnoses with a minimal amount of information. Napoleons’ physician was one of the best at this. These individuals would have diagnostic information just come to them from within. They would walk past a room and say,”The patient in that bed has this disease.” Or they would look at a portrait and say, “This is what the diagnosis is.”

Well, few people will talk about snap diagnosis because that’s been laid to rest. You have to dig that out of history books. But here’s a connection you can consider. If there’s some aspect of consciousness that is non-local, that cannot be confined to space and to time, if the mind can reach into the future–which a non-local mind by definition can do–and if there is no separation between minds at some level, then this intuition takes on a whole new luster.

For example, if a diagnosis will one day be known, why can you not intuit it right now if there are no temporal barriers? If someone in the world knows the diagnosis, why couldn’t you know it too if consciousness is omnipresent and there aren’t any divisions at some level? So intuition takes on a whole new flavor through the lens of non-locality. Where this becomes practical is illustrated in a series of experiments by Dr. Norman Shealy with Carolyn Myss who is an intuitive. Carolyn is 93% correct at a distance in her diagnosis of 100 patients. I know of no internists, relying upon the data and physical exams, who are that accurate in the early stages of diagnosis. So if you can make intuitive diagnosis with that degree of accuracy, this is no longer a laboratory fluke. It is no longer an irrelevant plaything or a stage trick. This has stunning medical implications.

DiCarlo: “Who are we?” and “what is the nature of the Universe in which we live are questions that cut right to the heart of the shift in perspective of the emerging paradigm. In light of your research,what is your response?

Dossey: For at least the last 200 years, our culture has embraced an idea, born of science, that the universe is a pretty dismal place. When we die, that’s it. There’s nothing that survives. Life is all a matter of chemistry, anatomy, and the physiology of the brain. When the brain and body die and rot–that’s it. That’s a very dismal outlook, and that doesn’t sound like a very friendly universe to me.

On the other hand, if you take seriously the implications of these prayer studies, and other categories of experiments that have been done in addition to prayer, the research seems to suggest that consciousness can violate time and space. It seems to be non-local. It seems to be infinite in space and time in the way that it behaves. If you take those experiments and data seriously, then you can arrive at a completely different conclusion regarding the nature of the universe. You are able to say, for instance, that there is some aspect of the psyche, of consciousness, that is not confined to time and space or to brains and bodies. It is apparently infinite in space and time. And if it is, then by definition it must be omni-present, eternal, immortal. This turns the tables on the dismal, traditional view of science. It says that something about us survives. It has no beginning. It has no ending. It is eternal and immortal. Now I will grant you that we don’t have any “soul meters” to give you a direct read-out on whether or not anything like the soul exists, but we’ve got the next best thing. We have reasonable empirical evidence that is indirect, that something about us is non-local in space and time. That to me sounds like an extraordinarily friendly universe.

DiCarlo: So you are suggesting that science has provided evidence for the existence of an immortal soul? That’s astounding.

Dossey: I would add the word indirect to it–because the evidence is indirect. But I think it is absolutely sensational. I have thought about these implications for a great many years and I believe that the reasoning here is as straight as an arrow. I do not know how to take this data seriously and come to any other conclusion. This information is so positive and so potentially transformative that it should be shouted from rooftops. It is that promising. I happen to believe that the fear of death and extermination has caused more fear, pain, agony and suffering in human beings than anything else in the history of the human race. This information has a way of neutralizing that fear. It gives positive answers to those fears. I think this information is what I would call the “Big Cure” for the “Big Disease”–the fear of death. This is no exaggeration. I believe that this kind of reasoning is that potentially sensational. There’s a tremendous pay-off here, spiritually and practically for people.

DiCarlo: Do you feel that it’s important at this juncture in our collective history that we recognize this aspect of our being?

Dossey: Well, the choice is to continue muddling along with this clinical depression that seems to be affecting our society, our culture and our species. That, “we’re bogged down, the planet’s going to hell in a handbasket and we’re going right along with it.” I think that a recognition of these inherently divine qualities can have a rejuvenating effect on our definition of who we are, our collective self-esteem, our sense of empowerment, and what we might be able to do in whatever time we have left on this planet. And I choose these words carefully. I think there is some sense of urgency involved to get this information out, to re-define who we are as individuals and as a species.

DiCarlo: What are the beliefs about “the way things are” that you hold that you feel are especially empowering in the turbulent times we live in?

Dossey: The most important is a felt sense that no matter what happens, at some level it’s OK. I basically give a “yes” answer to what Einstein once said is the most important question in the world,” Is the universe friendly?” I think there is a pattern. I think there is a process and design in the universe. I think there is place in the universe for enduring human consciousness. I think that the most essential aspect of who we are is immortal. In view of that, the overarching and most important fact is, I think that what happens on this scale is relatively less important. That doesn’t mean I am not going to work my fanny off while I am in this form of existence, but I basically think that Gary Snyder, the Pulitzer Prize winning American poet had it right when he said, “The only people who are fit to work truly for the survival of this planet, are those who have the wisdom to see it go to hell in a handbasket.” I don’t plan to do that by the way. I intend to be as active as I can before I sign-off.

The important thing is the nature of human consciousness and whether or not it has a home in the universe. I think it does. This belief has contributed immeasurably to my mental peace and my serenity. For me, the notion that whatever happens is OK, drives me to even greater activity, not less.

Excerpted from the book Towards A New World View: Conversations At The Leading Edge with Russell E. DiCarlo. The 377-page book features new and inspiring interviews with 27 paradigm pioneers in the fields of medicine, psychology, economics, business, religion, science, education and human potential. Featuring: Willis Harman, Matthew Fox, Joan Boysenko, George Leonard, Gary Zukav, Robert Monroe, Hazel Henderson, Fred Alan Wolf, Peter Senge, Jacquelyn Small, Elmer Green, Larry Dossey, Carolyn Myss, Stan Grof, Rich Tarnas, Marilyn Ferguson, Marsha Sinetar, Dr. Raymond Moody, Stephen Covey and Peter Russell.

Russell E. DiCarlo is a medical writer, author, lecturer and workshop leader who’s focus is on personal transformation, consciousness research and the fields of energy and anti-aging medicine. His forthcoming book is entitled “The Definitive Guide To Anti-Aging Medicine” (1998, Future Medicine Publishing). DiCarlo resides in Erie, Pennsylvania.