The Copper Wall Experiment

Dr. Elmer Green is the former Director of the Voluntary Controls project at the Menninger Institute in Topeka, Kansas. He and his wife Alyce are pioneers in the field of biofeedback training, authoring the classic book “Beyond Biofeedback.” His most recent project, “The Copper Wall,” explores possible electromagnetic coorelates of the human energy field.

DiCarlo: Was there any particular event in your life that served as a trigger, and caused you to look beyond the party line of the traditional scientific paradigm?

Green: No, there was nothing in my life that was like that, and the reason is, I was aware of the essence of this emerging paradigm from the time I was young. There never was a time I wasn’t aware that there was a collective unconscious. I knew about this from the time I was about three years old. Since I knew about it, I took it for granted.

When I first started reading Carl Jung, I thought, “Wow, this guy really knows something. He’s writing about things that I know about, so I know he’s right.” I thought that was pretty funny when I found out later who he was, I mean, the creator of the idea of the collective unconscious. When I first read him as a kid, I just thought, “Well, yes he’s right. He knows something.” I already knew about it from an experiential point of view. But I had never known that anybody had written about it.

So there was no event that I know of in my case, but you are right, for a lot of people, it’s sort of like, something happens. Sometimes it might be the death of a friend, or a family member that all of a sudden triggers them into the awareness of a larger reality.

DiCarlo: Over the past several years you have spent your time on a project you have named “The Copper Wall Experiment.” I have to admit, that sounds very intriguing. Please explain.

Green: When I was a student in the department of physics at the University of Minnesota, I had read about the use of a copper wall that meditators would sit in front of to induce deeper meditative states in the book called “The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnet. ” It occurred to me, if people were meditating in a really potent way, they may very well be generating electrical voltages in their body. Over many years, the idea stuck in my mind, until about ten years ago, when we finally had the chance to test it. So we set up a copper wall which people sit in front of, with their body facing true north. They are isolated from ground by glass blocks. They have a bar magnet over their heads. After doing all this set-up work, we began to measure the voltages that developed on the walls as a way of finding out whether or not their body changed voltage. I didn’t want to put wires directly on the body for a number of technical reasons. If you change the voltage of an electrical object in a room, it has an effect on others things too. So I just wired up the wall to see what was happening to the human body.

DiCarlo: How do you know that these voltages being measured were not attributable to normal electrical fluctuations of the body that have been commonly observed?

Green: In the first place, the person is sitting alone in the room, isolated from ground. The normal body voltages that are generated in a situation like that are usually in the milli-volt range, which is very small. Also, you would expect a person’s body voltage to drift by as much as two volts from a buildup of static electricity. So you expect some fluctuation.

But the voltages that we were getting connected with a healing were shooting up and then returning to baseline by as much as 200 volts on occasion. The healer voltages are not normal body voltages. They are at least 1,000 times bigger. So that’s the problem. We asked ourselves, “In the first place, where did all the voltage come from? In the second place, where did it go to when it disappeared?” Generally, the pulses of electricity in the body of the healers lasted only 4 or 5 seconds. So a huge voltage would appear then disappear. I thought that was quite fascinating.

DiCarlo: Were these surges in electrostatic charges accompanied by an intention to heal?

Green: Generally speaking, yes, the healers were trying to heal, although over a period of years, they had generated so much of this kind of phenomenon with their bodies, that even when they weren’t trying to heal people-if for example they were just meditating in the room- we got electrical pulses from their bodies.

In 6 meditations sessions, one of the healers produced only one pulse of voltage. But in the first of the healing sessions, there were 15 to 20 pulses generated, and that was connected with the intention to heal. And that was generally true, although one of the healers was bursting with energy to such a degree that this pulsing phenomenon occurred even in the meditation sessions.

DiCarlo: Fascinating! Well, what sort of conclusion have you drawn from these experiments, recognizing that the research is not yet complete?

Green: Well, in the first place, I have accepted that healing at a distance is a fact. I think that the religions of all times which have talked about this are not wrong. Of course, these anecdotal types of accounts do not constitute scientific evidence. But I think that there has been enough research now regarding the effects of prayer at a distance to indicate that it really is happening. So I accept that. That’s the first point.

Second point is, that whatever the energy is that does the healing, one of its correlates is electrical phenomena. I am not saying that electricity is the cause of the healing. If that were the case you could do it with a battery.

DiCarlo: So would you say your work has focused upon understanding the mechanisms involved in healing?

Green: Yes, that’s right. But it’s taking for granted that something is happening. We are not trying to find out if healings are taking place. We’re just trying to find out what’s going on.

DiCarlo: Well, if something is happening, I am wondering if the mechanism involved might prove to be subtle energy…..But first, what is subtle energy?

Green: Subtle energy is something that hasn’t been detected in any scientific way except by its effects. If you look at all the careful, clean studies on intercessory prayer on heart patients in a cardiac unit in which the people they were praying for were a block away for example, you find that sure enough, the prayer produced a healing effect. So, we assumed that something was happening, but not in the normal, scientific sense of electromagnetic energies. It was something else. Since it can’t be defined or directly detected except by its effects, it got the name of subtle. Chi is a good example of subtle energy. Subtle energy is that which must exist in order to produce the effects it is producing. I can’t imagine healing taking place without any energies at all being involved. That’s the first point.

The second point is, if you talk to healers, or you talk to Qi Gong people, or you talk to people who are talented in their ability to affect physical objects using their minds, they always talk as if they are handling some kind of energy. If you ask them questions about it, they will say, “Well, it’s sort of like electricity.” So I am assuming-and this is part of the metaphysical tradition too-that energy exists at four different levels, the crudest of which is the one we call electrons. I am assuming that instrumentation will be developed for directly detecting and photographing this stuff. It’s very similar to the development of electricity. In the early days, researchers noticed frog legs twitching on a wire rack when lightening struck nearby. But they didn’t know anything about electricity or electrical induction or magnetic induction. They simply assumed there was a connection of some kind.

So in those days, you could say that electricity was subtle energy since it could not be measured.

DiCarlo: That’s amazing. So you feel that we will be some day be able to measure this energy directly?

Green: I think it’s pretty inevitable that finally we will be able to develop instrumentation that will measure it in the same way that we now measure electricity.

DiCarlo: So, what would be the implications of your work to the average individual, if these subtle energies associated with the body, are scientifically validated?

Green: The importance of this is that-and I believe this will happen in the next century-medical teams will have healers as part of the team. On occasion, medical people can’t keep a patient alive long enough during surgery to complete their work. Healers would be very useful in helping maintain health.

And not only that, I am assuming that in the future, medical teams will include what we would call an intuitive or a psychic diagnostician. Somebody like Caroline Myss who works with Norman Shealy. And not only will we have psychic diagnosticians, but we will have healers who will supply energy not only to heal, but to keep the body going. I would imagine that medical people, as is the case nowadays, would still be in charge.

DiCarlo: But there would be a partnership?

Green: There would be a partnership, yes. Now a lot of people who are sick don’t go to a medical doctor, they go to a healer who is an alternative practitioner. And there are thousands of people out there who call themselves healing practitioners. But they are not accepted scientifically. But I feel that eventually they will come to a place where they will be recognized and their services made use of.

DiCarlo: Are you personally able to sense subtle energy?

Green: To tell you the truth, I have never attempted to document that. But my feeling is that everybody on the whole planet who has a physical body, has a body of subtle energy also. I accept the yogic theory that the physical body is the representation of an energy structure. If we knew all about it, we would call it a subtle energy structure.

DiCarlo: Do you think this energy field represents the ultimate link between mind and body?

Green: Sure. I believe that is actually how biofeedback works. I think that’s how any action of the physical body works. Say you want to move your hand. First you think of it. But the question is, “How does your intention move your hand?” After you have thought of it, how does that thought make your hand move?” Since the nerves that operate the hand are up somewhere in the cortex of the brain. There is some sort of intentionality that causes those nerves to fire. The way the yogis would explain it, is that the mind and the body aren’t the same thing; that the interface between the mind and the body is the subtle energy domain.” Anytime you think of anything, the subtle energies are activated and of course that activates the neurology.

It’s like this: Say you have somebody working at a computer. They have an idea and they want to write something, so they tap on some keys and words appear on the monitor. But the mechanism in between involves what they intend to do. There are quite a few intermediary steps before the words can be seen. In an analogous way, our intentionality activates the subtle energies of our body, which some of the Russian experimenters by the way, are calling the bio-plasma body. The subtle energy body then influences the neurology which fire and allow your fingers to hit the appropriate letters on the key board.

Actually, becoming an Olympic athlete consists of training the neurology, and it is always trained through intention. All the athletes I have talked train themselves through intention. Now the yogis would understand that perfectly. They would say that it’s the training of the energies that manipulate the physical body.

DiCarlo: One of the great characteristics of the emerging world view is that the domain of the spirit and soul is now being acknowledged and embraced. In many fields, people are discussing the “reality” of this aspect of our being. According to yogic tradition, what is the nature of the soul?

Green: From the yogic perspective, it’s another level of energy. Aurobindo, the great Indian philosopher who died around 1950, put in very clearly when he said, “The highest spiritual levels that we know of our energy states also.” The physical body is manipulated, generally speaking, by the emotions. Emotions have an effect on the physical body. But he said, emotions themselves are an energy state in a subtle energy domain, and they are focused on the body. Ideas and mind are also an energy state. And above that, there are various spiritual levels. In the Tibetan system, it’s called the void and according to the Tibetan Teacher W. Y. Evans West, there are 28 different levels in the void. And each one of those levels according to Aurobindo, is an energy state-wheels within wheels within wheels.

DiCarlo: Through your work, you are exploring the frontiers of human potential. Have you discovered any boundaries to that potential?

Green: We haven’t found any boundaries. It’s sort of like coming to the edge of a continent and just finding the edge-we don’t know where the boundaries are. We’re just beginning to start exploring the continent.

I don’t think that scientists as a whole have done more than landed and planted their flag. Not much has been discovered yet.

The ultimate human potential has been nicely described by the Tibetans, and that is this: to become conscious of all the different levels of who you are and to be able to work on all these different levels at the same time instead, unlike the present situation in which we have a conscious self and an unconscious self. If you talk to psychologists and the psychiatrists they will agree that there is an unconscious self. And that’s what the Tibetans and the Hindus and the Chinese and the mystics have always said. But in the unconscious self are all the spiritual levels as well as the normal subconscious which Freud talked about. Our ultimate human potential is to become aware of all these things, and when we do, we are able to answer the question, “Who are we?” and “What is our own nature as a human being?” We find our relationship to the larger whole, in other words to Divine Being. That’s the idea of the ultimate of human potential, it is to find your relationship.
The Christians say, “To find your relationship to God.” Some of the modern scientists might talk about it as finding your relationship to nature.

DiCarlo: So would you say that we are in a watershed period now where collectively and on a wholesale level we are actually re-defining our understanding of that relationship?

Green: Well, yes, I think so. Don’t you?

DiCarlo: In his book, “The Future of the Body,” Michael Murphy draws upon decades of research into extraordinary human capabilities. Do you believe mankind is evolving into what some have called a “multi-sensory species?

Green: Well yes, but what the yogis have said all along is that as you develop in this way, you finally become aware of your connection with Gaia and with other human beings. All of the parapsychological abilities are only indicators of what will I think, be common, human faculties to be aware of each other. At the present moment, they are called non-sensory, but that’s wrong. It’s not non-sensory. All it is, is non-physical sensory.

As people reach these higher stages of human development, they gradually becoming more and more aware. Most every person at some time in there life has had some sort of psychic experience. For example, they knew what some distant relative was thinking without getting a letter from them. As people become more and more aware, these types of phenomenon happen more often. It isn’t all of a sudden like, “one day everything is red, and the next day it is green.” It’s sort of like a gradual development of faculties, the same thing as when you grow up from being a baby. You just gradually become more and more aware of your world and what you can do in it. It’s like that.

It’s the same as the baby. The baby starts out just being conscious only of itself. In terms of what the baby is aware of, it’s almost like as though it’s the center of the universe. But gradually it develops and finds its relationship to its family members and to the clan and to the group and to society in general and to the world. It’s a gradual development. I think that’s what happens to humans in the larger sense. As they expand into becoming conscious of the normal collective unconscious, parapsychological things happen more often.

DiCarlo: In your copper wall experiment you have identified a way to demonstrate the power of intention to cause a change to take place in the physical world, in this case a change in the voltage of the walls of a room. In my own life, I have been intrigued by the ability to use intention to actually dissipate clouds, to make them disappear.

Green: Ralph Alexander actually discussed that in his book, “Creative Realism”, which I thought was really quite interesting. It had to do with how you develop these abilities to focus your attention in such a way that you can become part of the collective conscious, which includes Gaia, the planet. So you can change an idea in the mind of Gaia. When you do that, the cloud upon which you are focusing your attention will disappear. The reason that can be done is because we are all part of the world. Every individual is part of the planet, every individual is part of Gaia. All the clouds, all the rivers and lakes, and all the animals are part of Gaia. When you generalize yourself, you generalize your consciousness so that you start developing awareness of Gaia, and then you can start thinking in the mind of Gaia and when you do, things like clouds come under your control. Alexander by the way is the one one who invented the phrase, “The Field of Mind.” He said, “You can think of it as a field of mind, and everything you see on the planet is in this mind.” Well, if he had been a minister, he would have said, “Everything is in God’s mind.” And if you can raise yourself where you can think in God’s mind, since you are part of the Divine Being itself, and you can change an idea, then things can happen in the environment. That’s the explanation of psychokinesis, of healing, and that’s Ralph Alexander’s explanation of cloud dissipation.

DiCarlo: If you think of the earth as being your extended body, it’s almost like learning how to control certain processes within the body…

Green: Well, sure. What is the body of the planet? The body of the planet is Gaia’s body. You are part of Gaia. The way you learn the ABC’s is that you practice inside your own skin. The rest of the alphabet is outside your skin. But after you learn how to think in your own mind, and you can control your own self, gradually that ability is extended. You become aware of your relationship to the greater whole, and you can start thinking in terms of the greater whole. This causes something to happen in the greater whole.

DiCarlo: Is it because you shift your “identity” to the greater whole that you have the ability to influence the greater whole?

Green: Sure. If you could change a single idea in the mind of God, then something will change, right? From the metaphysical point of view and from the yogic point of view, every chair, every door knob, every plate, everything on the planet exists in the mind of God. If you change that idea in the mind of God-and the dense level of this physical world that we know so well is called the Maya-if you can change that idea in the Maya, then that thing will move or disappear. People in India have interpreted Maya as being something that isn’t true, as illusion-but that’s incorrect. Maya is not permanent-it’s always moving, it’s always changing. So therefore it’s not eternal. It’s more like the clouds. The clouds are appearing and disappearing. The things on the planet, like chairs and tables, appear and disappear much more slowly, so we think of them as fixed. Nevertheless, they are not fixed. They are just part of the energy structure, they are part of the Maya.

Sai Baba says, “You don’t perform any miracles. All you do is manipulate the Maya.” Well, how do you manipulate the Maya? You find your connection to the Divine Being. So all those pieces fit together.

DiCarlo: How significant is the work of frontier scientists, such as Bill Tiller, who has developed a model for understanding these subtle energies?

Green: Bill Tiller is a scientist who is aware of the fact that these internal domains or other energies exist and he’s trying to help build a science of it. Scientists are the priests of acceptance, and it’s important for the graduation of humanity-to use Buckminster Fuller’s expression-that scientists learn enough so that they can break through, expand the frontiers and lead the way. People depend upon scientists. So Bill Tiller and others who are working in that area are interested in developing knowledge of how all of this stuff happens.

As Ralph Alexander said, “Everything happens according to natural law.” Sai Baba said, “There is no such thing as a miracle. It’s only the application of natural law.” And scientists like Bill Tiller are trying to make it objective so people can understand it better, and that will help them go through the transformation.

A lot of meditators are doing self-exploration-they want to explore. Quite a few scientists are trying to explain. These explanations are important because they help people shape their world view. If the world view includes these subtle energies, then when the energies become important in your life, you won’t be so shook up so to speak. It makes it possible to move through the transformation process with less pain.

DiCarlo: Some people might argue that science doesn’t have any business sticking its nose into the domain of religion, spirituality and the non-physical?

Green: Well if that’s true then science doesn’t have any business of any kind. The business of science is everything. There isn’t anything that science isn’t connected with. What does science mean anyway? It means to become conscious. To understand. Science doesn’t have a single domain to work in. That’s an unfortunate idea that a lot of scientists have. But that’s like wearing the blinders that you have manufactured for yourself.

DiCarlo: Well certainly pioneers like yourself and Bill Tiller are exceptional in that you have open-mindedly pursued a particular area of interest that most other scientists would recoil from….

Green: A scientist that I worked with-when he understood what was going on-said, “I won’t accept any of this, or any of these energies. I won’t accept any of it.” I said, “Well, why won’t you?” And he said, “If this turns out to be true, then everything that I am would go down the drain. And everything I have learned in graduate school and ever since would now be worthless.”

And I said, “No, it’s not that way at all. Everything that you are and everything that you learned is still there. It is still factual. All of this is just an addition to what you know. It’s not “Instead of.” That’s the problem with most people’s world view. As their world view changes, they think that it means that everything is now done away with. But it isn’t done away with, it’s merely expanded. It’s like the babies view. As the baby grows up, the world view keeps changing. But it isn’t that they viewed things as a baby was wrong.

DiCarlo: You have paraphrased the physicist Neils Bohr by stating that “science progresses one death at a time.” What is the real reason behind all the resistance to new ideas and to the new models of the way the world is?

Green: That’s simply fear. If you have an idea of how the world functions, and somebody comes along and they can show you it isn’t exactly that way, then you start trembling inside. Everything that you have come to believe has been called into question. It’s like the platform of your world has been shaken. Unfortunately, people make the mistake of having their identity linked to their world view. Isn’t that amazing? People’s identities are linked to their views of the world, so they feel like their identity is threatened.

Scientists are no better than anyone else in that way. They are not any better than religious fundamentalists. They are just as nervous about having their world view shaken as anyone else.

DiCarlo: But I thought scientists were supposed to follow the truth wherever it may lead? Isn’t that what distinguishes the true scientist from the technician?

Green: It does, but who is going to say what a true scientist is? After an Einstein does his thing and his work turns out to be important, then he’s called a true scientist. Before that, he’s called a nut. That’s true of a lot of scientists. They are all nuts until they are dead. Then it turns out that maybe they had some good ideas. Gradually, they become more and more famous until after about two or three hundred years they are well known. That’s pretty funny.

In 1956, an interesting article was published in the prestigious journal “Science” of all places, having to do with why scientists hate progress. The most fascinating part of this was, the writer found that scientists were a lot like priests. They are like leaders of a religion. And they hate progress in the same way that priests as a whole, fight tooth and nail against any change in religious belief.

DiCarlo: How would you respond to the scientists who explain away the concept of realms of existence that go beyond the physical?

Green: That’s no different than any other kind of religious belief is it? That’s just lack of experience. If somebody is color blind and you start talking about red and green, they don’t know what you are talking about. It’s lack of experience.

It’s interesting that if anyone would go through the processes of mindfulness meditation, they will develop some experiences that will convince them reality isn’t the way they thought it was. But most people, when they start to find out about that, get slightly frightened because they start to realize their world view may have to change. But it’s interesting isn’t it, that the people who really want to meditate are dis-satisfied with their world view? They think there is something more and they want to find out what it is.

DiCarlo: As a scientist, what do you suspect happens during meditation….?

Green: According to the Oriental traditions-and it’s beginning to be talked about even in the west-as you turn your attention inwards, you become aware of the energy structure of your own nature. Normally, you know, our sensory systems are turned outward. We are only aware of what is going on from our skin out. When you turn your attention inwards, you become aware of this “energy structure” of what the yogis would call “etheric” body. Another way of thinking of that is, there is a body of energy, which is called the subtle body. In other words, the physical body is the representation to our physical senses of the energy structure which we really are, which is a subtle energy structure.

So as you meditate you become aware of this inner structure that you really are-your basic energy nature. But according to the yogic theory, what you are really becoming aware of, are these different levels of energy of your own nature. These different levels are called chakras. Chakras theoretically are energy centers located in your etheric energy body. They are not to be found in your physical body. But each one of these places is associated with a different level of consciousness. For example they would talk about the heart chakra. As you become aware of this energy center in your nature, you become aware of the interconnectedness of yourself with other people. If you were becoming aware of other people through the solar plexus chakra which lies below the heart chakra in the area of above your navel, then you become aware of people’s emotions. What happens when people meditate, is that they become aware of the fact that they have all kinds of inner domains that they didn’t even know they had. Normally people are stuck looking at the outside world. They don’t look at the inside world. They don’t even know that domain is there. When they meditate, there is the tendency to become aware of the fact that there is a lot of internal terrain. When you become aware of this inner domain, you become aware of your connections with other people also.

That’s the way I think of it.

DiCarlo: So would you say that most of the people in the world are operating out of this third chakra that deals with our emotional nature?

Green: That’s it exactly. In fact, the yogis would say that this is a third chakra planet.

DiCarlo: So if development goes from one level to the next higher, I would assume that, the next stage in our collective development have to do with learning to become more focused in the heart?

Green: Yes. And that’s called the transformation. Energies are transformed from the emotional domain, which are always self-centered-they always involve selfishness-to the next domain, which is called the heart chakra, which has to do with ecology. It’s like, “Instead of just taking care of myself, I am going to take care of Gaia,” and that’s the movement from the third chakra to the fourth chakra. That’s the movement from disposing of your rubbish by throwing it out the window, to being a recycler. That’s the movement from being destructive in the environment to being recreative in the environment. That’s why the environmentalists are important. They may not think of it that way, but they are part of the paradigm shift because they are essentially helping the planet move from third to fourth chakra in the yogic terminology.

And that’s the movement from the emotional planet to the heart planet.

DiCarlo: Fascinating…In my conversations with people on the cutting-edge, I have found that most have strongly relied upon their intuition. Has intuition played a significant role in your work as a scientist?

Green: I would guess that it has. I wouldn’t have thought of it as intuition, because it was more planned. Back when I was a student of a meditation teacher in Minneapolis I learned one meditation approach called Vispassana, or mindfulness. It means to be totally aware and conscious of everything that you are doing and to become the observer of yourself-to be objective and to see everything that is going on. Everything that you think, everything that you feel, everything that you do. You become the witness of yourself at all levels. That’s the goal of Vispassana or mindfulness meditation.

For example, as you become aware of yourself as a physical entity, you become aware of yourself as an emotional being. And you begin to realize that your emotions are objective, and you start thinking of them as objective things. So if you think of anger, “Oh, there’s that thing again.” Most people think of anger as, “I am angry”, instead of “there is anger.” If you have a thought about something, people don’t normally say, “Oh, there is that thought again.” They normally say, “I am thinking…” They are not objective in regards to all these subjective internal processes. What happens in mindfulness meditation is, you become objective about your own subjectivity. And that’s a great step forward, because that’s how you escape from subjectivity. Well, that was one of the things I was taught to do.

As it turns out, when you get into that state of mindfulness, you can ask your unconscious questions, and it will start giving you answers. But the answers that the unconscious will provide you, are answers connected with what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious, and all of the knowledge contained in the collective unconscious is available to you. Normally, people call that intuition. Intuition is actually becoming aware of the collective unconscious and all of the knowledge and wisdom therein. That’s my way of thinking about it. So after I was taught how to do this, when I needed to solve problems I went into this state of mindfulness, turned attention towards those problems, and answers would come up that I had never would have thought of. Now people would say that’s creativity, or they would say that’s intuition. But I would say that’s simply tapping into the knowledge that exists.

But it can be done intentionally. You don’t have to wait for intuition to strike like a bolt of lightening. You can learn how to turn it on the same as you turn on any other skill.

DiCarlo: You’ve mentioned the idea of the collective unconscious. In his work, Jung describes phenomenon related to the unconscious which he refers to as “archetypes.” What is an archetype, and how might they influence us in our lives?

Green: An archetype is one of the characteristics, entities or objects which reside in the collective unconscious. In other words, the things that humans think about in general start taking on a form of some kind. The way the Tibetans call it a thought form. Let’s say that collectively, people develop some religious idea about the nature of God, such as “God is the great judge.” Those ideas of God becomes a thought form in the collective unconscious. That thought form then exists. It’s like a piece of furniture in the collective unconscious, only it’s alive. But it has been created to a certain extent by humans. I am not saying that God was created by humans, but the religious idea of God was created by humans.

You know God has many characteristics, and some gods in some religions are vengeful, sometimes they are playful. All those characteristics of God are archetypal ideas that have been constructed by humans and are embedded in the collective unconscious. And when Carl Jung discovered the collective unconscious and started studying it, he found out there were a lot of things in it that were like permanent fixtures-they are there all of the time-which had been reported by many people in many different cultures. Those things that were there all of the time he called the archetypes.

In his wonderful book Dreams, Memories and Reflections, Carl Jung explains how he found out about all this stuff and where he got his ideas. That’s one of the most important books that I know of. He knew a lot about the things that we are now discussing. Jung was not only a scholar, but he was aware of these archetypes from personal experience. In his presence, all kinds of psychic phenomenon happened. Sometimes the walls would start knocking. He didn’t talk a lot about that, but that’s what caused the split between he and Freud, who was his Jung’s mentor. Freud was frightened to death that all this stuff was going on. Jung just took it as a manifestation of the way nature is. Freud couldn’t tolerate it, and that caused the split.

DiCarlo: Didn’t Freud talked about psychic energy..

Green: Well that was the part that really bugged him. As a matter of fact, Freud said, “We have to prevent the black mud of occultism from sweeping over us.” Whereas Jung’s attitude was entirely the opposite-“We have to find out what’s going on in the cosmos.”

DiCarlo: Jung was influenced by the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which you make mention of it in your work. According to this text, what happens after we die?

Green: Well, we go through various energy levels until we rise to a certain place-and this sounds funny-according to the density of our non-physical nature, which is still an energy structure. There are all these energy fields, within fields. And when a person dies, then they move completely into the next field of energy. And we just continue on with experience. The place where you exist after separating from your physical body is called the Bardo, which is a realm so different it’s like going to another planet. I am not saying you go to another planet. But it’s like going away from the earth. But that doesn’t mean you have vanished.

DiCarlo: In your view, if you had to boil things down, what would be the essence of the emerging paradigm?

Green: From my point of view, the essence of the emerging paradigm is the development of human potential, and finding the relation of humans to the planetary collective unconscious that we call Gaia. We are connected. Humans like to think of themselves as individual entities, but I think it was John Dunn who said, “No man is an island.” I think that’s what human potential is moving towards. We are finding our group relationships.

Naturally we know from long experience and folklore that healing actually works. If people pray, the effects are felt. What that really means is that there is no such thing as a person being an island. That’s all nonsense. There are no people separate from humanity. They are part of humanity by merely being a member of the species and by being part of the energy flux in which everything exists. They may not be conscious of it, because most of it can only be experienced in a kind of superconscious state. But the Tibetan Buddhists, the advanced Hindu Yogis, the advanced Christian mystics, the American Indian medicine man, and the shamans all over the planet, agree that we’re all connected together. But scientists have never paid any attention to that. They think that’s just baloney. Turns out not to be baloney. And we think the copper wall project and its continuation into the effects at a distance are just part of human potential.

I would say that most people are just like children. They are aware of themselves, and gradually they become aware of the fact that they have bodies. Humans are the same way, even when they are grown up. They are not aware of their connections. That’s what I think people are moving towards-awareness of their connections.

That’s why the quality movement in business is so important, because literally, that’s what it is about-it’s about finding the right relations of all the parts of an organization so that they can function properly. If you have a human body and you don’t feed it properly, then the organs don’t function as they should. And if the organs don’t function, then the whole body doesn’t function. We’re beginning to understand that a company is an organism, and it has lots of different parts and the parts have to be cared for properly so that they can perform properly. Then the whole benefits. The individual human who always likes to think of himself as an individualistic, non-connected being, is finding out that he may be an individual, but he is a connected. And there’s nothing an individual does that doesn’t affect the collective.

DiCarlo: Would you say that the medium of that connection between the individual and the collective would be subtle energy?

Green: Absolutely. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what the yogis say. That’s what the Tibetans say. That’s what the Qi Gong Masters in China say. We are all submerged in this energy field the same way we are all in the earth, and in the same way we all are breathing this air. At the same time we are breathing these energies. But these energies are not just local. They are planetary-wide. As we handle these energies, we effect everyone else on the planet.

In this way, we as individuals become important in a planetary sense. And that’s one of the main goals of human potential and of developing self-regulation, the ability to consciously direct your energy. To the extent that we self-regulate is the same extent to which we help others.

I think that is an interesting religious idea also. In the bible Jesus said, “If I be lifted up, everybody else will be lifted up too.” What was he talking about? Well, he was just putting out this idea of human potential-that we are all connected. Whatever we do to expand our human potential has an effect on everyone else, whether we have thought of it or not.

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.

Copyright 1996. Epic Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

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