Real Magic with Dean Radin

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This is synchronous, this is synchronous, this is synchronous. This is synchronous, this is synchronous, this is synchronous. This is synchronous, this is synchronous. This is synchronous, this is synchronous. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)

Welcome to Synchronicity. My guest this week is the magical Dean Raiden. Dean wrote a book called Real Magic. It's awesome. I listened to it on Audible last week. I'm not showing you my Audible whatever portal link thing. Everyone else does that. Just, you know, and if you're on it, go get it. It's a really good book. I really, really enjoyed it and found it kind of a nice antidote to all the political and cultural and societal upheaval that is seemingly going on all of the time. I guess is going on all of the time. So it just, you know, it's not a escapist. It's just, it got me thinking about the practical implications of some of the things he mentions in the book.

So what's the book about and what is Dean doing? Dean has been a PSY researcher, which is a psychic paranormal phenomenon, but not in a kind of, what are the shows on like TLC, like ghost hunters, those silly things. He's a clinical researcher. So he puts together studies and adheres to scientific code and basically has demonstrated quite a few things that are evident to people who've experienced them, but maybe to the skeptical or more scientism, as he calls it, which is essentially kind of like the religion of science may just kind of poo poo and go, oh, no, no, no. Yeah, you're talking crazy, my man.

So I always find that stuff interesting and what I was really cool on listening to the book is, as you know, if you've listened to the show and why it's called synchronicity, when I kind of had my journey into synchronicity land for several months, I was actually during and after very active on a site called gottsi.org, d-o-t-p-s-i.org, which was the place that you could do a bunch of like pre-cognitive guessing games with like cards, a location test, a remote viewing stuff, because I had noticed when this was happening to me originally that by psychic abilities for lack of better work really just went through the fucking roof.

It was like freaking me out, it was freaking people I knew out and it was just like one of those things that, you know, I wanted to verify or at least see if I was making it up. And so I used to go on there all the time to see if I could get to the top of the leaderboard, which I did several times because, you know, had to be egotistical about it, of course. But truthfully, just a really cool site, it's still active and he kind of gives an explanation in his book why it exists, how it exists and kind of the back end and the theory behind running a site like that. And some of the results that have come out of it have been very, very interesting.

And all of the kind of the metric in which Psi phenomenon are measured, at least how Dean does it is against chance. So 101, a billion, a one, two to one, better, you know, worse than chance. So that to me is a really important thing because, you know, one of my favorite people, Carl Jung was famously interested in things like synchronicity and astrology and kind of predictive or these elements of reality that were numinous and seemingly went against the common sense idea of time and space. And that one of his kind of contentions was that it was particularly difficult to pin down this type of phenomena.

It was just not, every time you kind of brought it into the laboratory, it seemed to like wriggle away from the people who were trying to study it. So that to me is evident if you've ever tried to like prove something to someone and maybe it's not happening the same way, but nevertheless, that doesn't mean we shouldn't study this stuff. And more importantly, this stuff clearly happens, right? You don't have to be wackadoo to acknowledge that this stuff happens. And some of what we go over in this conversation, you know, is precisely why some of these studies and opinions and ideas are suppressed.

I know a lot obviously has to do with fear. I mean, I'd say a lot has to do with some money in academia too. So basically the connection here in sci phenomena is Dean has come to the conclusion what he's been studying sci phenomena for decades, three or four decades is really magic. It's what we'd look back in texts or rituals or alchemical texts and see that there are certain criteria that overlap in terms of psychic phenomena and magic. And I'm not gonna give away kind of his main points from the book, because I think it's really worth reading enjoyable, entertaining, and informative, but you'll hear in this conversation too, kind of the connection between magic and sci and what that may mean.

So I think you're really gonna like the episode is what I'm saying. And for me, I'll say this. I've experimented, here's a weird thing. I haven't shared this with a lot of people. Jason Louvre, who's gonna be coming back on soon, one of my favorite magical guys out there, he had a very simple thing on his site, Ultra Culture, about making sigils. And at the time I had interviewed him, I was going through a very rough economic period, financial period in my life, and was kind of just freaked out and willing to try anything. I'd never delved into making sigils or doing anything with Western occultism or magic.

It just never really struck my fancy. So I made a sigil. You're not supposed to tell people about these things, but it already worked is my point, which is why I'll share it. I made a sigil that was, the intention was like, bring money to me that isn't kind of corrupted, that I don't have to work with like people where I don't believe in what they're doing, keep me away from interpersonal strife and that stuff. So I made a sigil, did what you charged it, forgot about it, put it away. And I think like a week later, I thought about it again. I was like, oh yeah, that didn't work, that didn't happen.

Didn't get any clients, nothing was going on. And then I think two months later is when the crypto boom started to happen. So you're welcome for the crypto boom of 2017. No, but what I'm really saying is that there's no causation necessarily between that, but there's something that happened and in my personal perspective, the sigil worked, right? I'm not saying that I was the cause, this is thing, I could've tapped into the future flowing back to the past, but it was a powerful enough example for me that this stuff holds some weight. And more than that, I usually like to go back and look at kind of the history, the lineage of these practices, ideas or rituals and see like, is this just totally made up stuff?

Like it's just not even like founded in anything or these are just people who are making things up and talking about it. And I think if you put your head to the grindstone or is it the nose to the grindstone, whatever it is, you can find kind of what's legit, not. And yes, it takes practice to be able to be good at discerning what's total bullshit and what's not, but it's doable and achievable for anyone. And that gets kind of the core message of what Real Magic is about, which is everyone has access to the things that Dean has demonstrated exist, right? Telepathy, remote viewing, pre-cognitive, clairvoyance, all of these things, everyone has abilities and sometimes people slip in and out of them.

So it's not exclusive to a certain type of person. And that's a really important thing because I think that's kind of the message of all these perennial philosophies is that don't go out there thinking that there's some special person who's gonna teach you something. Of course, there are wonderful teachers who can help you on a path of self discovery, but ultimately it's you who, that's the journey you're taking into yourself to discover things that you already have. And that's important. So, yeah, that's it. All right, that's this episode. I have a couple of other things to talk about. Reminder, my debut EP, Kikeon, you can call it an album if you want, is out now it's on Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, Google Play, all the places you could ever wanna buy, stream, download, listen to, it's available there.

I'm really pretty proud of it. Happy for the feedback I've been getting. And I'm just looking forward to putting out more music over the next few months and years. That's gonna be a fun time. So go check that out if you haven't because I can get to hear music and I may. And they're full songs, which is pretty cool. Big thanks to Meister. Meister is a new sponsor, a real one. That's why you're not hearing the silly music behind it. I've mentioned Stashtray, my friend Dave has pointed out, Stashtray is so popular, it's basically selling out. So, what I recommend looking at, there's a really cool USB lighter.

I'm like a USB lighter, what is that? Basically, if you've ever tried to light a joint or a bowl and it's windy, it's not such a good feeling. But this thing, you plug it in, you charge it in your USB, carry it around with you, you can, it's like a little stick that comes out of the thing and you push their joint or bowl or whatever and it lights it. So that's fucking cool and practical. And that's why I really like Davis and I'm proud to have him as a sponsor. So again, if you go to getmeister.com, that's Meister with a Y M Y S T E R and use the code sink, S Y N C at checkout 15% off your entire order forever, as I understand it.

So you could be listening to this in the far future, that code will still be active. And that is all of the business for this one. And I heard an interesting story. This is gonna dovetail into weed, right? 'Cause they were talking about weed accessories. I read something, I think it was leafly on their Twitter account, put it up that to people for people who get paranoid when they smoke weed, you know, they said we were dubious of this, but it worked. They say if you are the type of person who typically gets paranoid, if you smoke a high THC or just any weed, something you can do is chew on two or three peppercorns.

And apparently that kills the paranoia, which is interesting to me. I don't know why that would be the case. I didn't, but they said, listen, we have people who don't smoke because of this and it worked for them. Now, I'll tell you why I'm dubious on that, but although I would love if people did that, you could report back to me and be like, yeah, that really stopped my paranoia. I think I've spoken about this before on the show, but I think there's a function for the people who smoke or ingest or whatever they're doing with cannabis weed, marijuana who get paranoid. There's a function of the paranoia.

And I think if you pay attention, you'll see that this is probably subconscious or unconscious, personal and/or collective material that is percolating up to the top of your mind for a reason. And I think the reason is, is that you're supposed to deal with that shit, don't run away from it, don't indulge it, but pay attention to it and resolve it if you can. And if you can't, that's okay. So it's almost like a form of meditation. I don't know if people, and I'm sure this is blasphemy in hardcore meditators, but for people who meditate, especially when you're beginning, all the same shit percolates up to the top of your mind.

You're trying to think about nothing, you're trying to be relaxed, you're focusing on your breath and all of this shit starts coming to the top. And of course, the natural reactions be like, fuck this, I don't wanna meditate anymore. When you smoke weed, where you're interacting with the wonderful, divine energy that is weed, you don't really have that option to stop, which is why I think a lot of people find it an uncomfortable process when the paranoia comes in, where the fear, whatever you wanna call it. So I don't know what the peppercorns is like, I wish there was like a quick, maybe they do work, but I think it's like a good thing if you're getting paranoid, not to the point where it's like affecting you negatively, but I think we shouldn't be so afraid of paranoia.

And also if like weed just isn't your thing, that's cool, there's no problem with that. So that is it for the intro, Dean. Go check him out, go get his book, Real Magic. He has a bunch of other cool books. Listen to it, read it, whatever you wanna do. Big thanks to him for coming on. Oh, and I should probably mention his organization, IONS, which is the Institute of Noetic Sciences, or is it science? Well, some one of those, but go check that out too. There's some really cool work and keep things magical, recognize that we have a little more influence on the world and our lives than we probably would like to acknowledge, 'cause like if you start being open to the possibility that you can influence your life with magical rituals or intention or willpower or spirit beings or whatever it is, that can be kind of scary, right?

I mean, if that's the case, who else is doing it, right? Are people doing this right now? Are they doing it to you? Are you doing it unconsciously? Yes, yes, and yes. But I think if you're not really into magic, you're probably not listening to this podcast, but it's a very, very cool topic, and I'm excited to explore it. Really some like very cool guests. I think, I don't think, I know, I already recorded it. Next week we have Shane Moss coming up. I usually don't say who we have coming up, but I'm excited 'cause I have like a rack of very cool people rolling up in the coming few weeks and months.

So that's it, done rambling. Without further ado, here is Dean Radon. (upbeat music)

Hi, Dean. - Yes.

How are you? - Good.

Thanks for taking the time to do this.

Sure.

So I, we can just get started, if you're ready.

Sure. - Okay, cool. So thank you for coming on. Again, I plowed through your book last week. I read the whole thing, real magic. Really, I'd just like to extend my sincere thanks for putting that together and all the work you've done and all the work you've done. It came to my attention. I've been, I've been to God's side since the early days. I didn't even realize that you were affiliated with it until I read the book and the Noetic Sciences Institute. Really, just thank you. Very, very much grateful for the work that you're doing and what you're getting out there to the general public.

I appreciate that. So today we cover a bunch of stuff, but I would love to obviously tackle the topics of what is magic, what is Si, and also kind of the ramifications or potential ramifications of some of the things that you've been studying, but also what it just means for the world at large, because this stuff is in, I think generally understood to be real or actually happening, but as you know, and a lot of other people know, this has been going on probably since the beginning of time. So where we could start is, could you just give me your quick definition, if it's possible, a quick definition of what magic means to you?

Well, it is, first, it's not Harry Potter. And second, it's not Harry Houdini. And third, it's not Magic Baby Shampoo, which is magic used as a superlative. It's something else. It's the thing which underlies the reason why the first three kinds of magic are so popular, namely that there's some sense that there's a reason why people are attracted to stage magic and to stories like Harry Potter, and why products are sold with the idea that there's something awe-inspiring about it. It's not just normally good shampoo, but magic shampoo.

So the magic that I'm talking about, of course, is the idea that comes out of the esoteric traditions would suggest that there are ways in which your intention can shape reality and ways that your perception can transcend space and time.

And you've given several examples in the book of figures who have kind of transcended our myth that magic isn't real, and I found that particularly poignant. What do you think, I'm gonna obviously recommend that everyone get this. I already recommended it on my last episode that everyone start reading your book just so they could be well-versed in what we're gonna be speaking about, but let's just say that I'm not a skeptic and that I am someone who's experienced enough anecdotal and firsthand experiential evidence that some of the things you're speaking about in regards to the magic, you're talking about our sci-phenomenom are real.

And for someone who has experienced them, I know in your book, you mentioned that incredible story of finding yourself next door to someone who is doing practical magic to try to meet you, and that is an incredible synchronicity. What do you think from a practical standpoint in our culture, in a world that seems increasingly more chaotic, more volatile, more kind of just uncertain, what do you think some of the practical applications of some of the things you touched on in your book might be?

Well, this whole line of inquiry basically fits within the affirmations literature, somewhat in positive psychology as well. And in that domain, the purpose of it is that you want to improve your life. That's basically what it's all about. It's as pragmatic as it can get. You want better health, you want a better job, you want better relationships, you want, you want, you want. These techniques, whether it's affirmations or more explicit magical techniques, they're all designed where they all have been used precisely for those reasons. You have a desire and this is a way to help make that desire come about.

So that's on a personal level on a larger scale. It's conceivable that society has wants and needs as well and maybe the entire planet can benefit from certain wants and needs. So there are magical procedures and ceremonies that are used to help but that scale as well.

Kind of like the collective consciousness, mass consciousness influence on our global psyche, so to speak.

Yeah, and it's the idea that underlies the effort of a million meditators.

Yes, yes.

Or a billion meditators trying to do something, yeah.

So when we're looking, obviously we know there's a tremendous amount of resistance from what is called the skeptical community which is such a weird term to apply to the people who just bash any side phenomena or magic because skeptics, the actual etymology of the word is one who would try to look at everything so they could be certain about something rather than excluding something that didn't fit their narrative. What, I know you mentioned it in the book but I know there's just such a tremendous amount of resistance still in the scientific community, kind of the religion of science we should say towards this type of stuff.

What's your prognosis in the coming years or just in the future? Will there, do you think it's possible to have kind of a holistic integration of kind of what's viewed now as pejoratively pseudo-science or things that aren't replicable in the lab all of the time empirically every time? Do you think we're gonna see more of a reconciliation of these two ideas or is it gonna be dogma versus what we kind of intuitively know?

Skeptics with a capital S should be called deniers.

Yes.

Because that's what they do. They're specialists and deniers or they have become scientific without realizing it, they will die eventually and new people will come along. And so this is not said in a mean way. It's a historical fact that if you go back to 1900 and ask the most prominent scientists of the day to describe the nature of reality, they would have done so. They would have had great confidence that they were correct and almost everything that they were talking about has been supplanted today by more refined models, which among other things showed that the most confidence scientists of the 1900s are mostly wrong.

The same to go back another 100 years but they knew is mostly wrong. And what we know today is also going to be mostly wrong in 100 years hence. The one commonality that we can see over the centuries is what people report as their experience. So their experience includes what we call psychic phenomena 'cause we don't know what else to call it and what we call magic because we don't know what to call it. But nevertheless, this is something that is uniformly reported throughout history whereas our ideas about reality are always changing.

Yes, yes. - And so skeptics today who have very high confidence that telepathy or any psychic phenomena is impossible with some of them say, with great confidence. History says they're dead wrong. Now if a person holds that opinion, there's no way you can convince them otherwise. So I don't even try. I don't engage in debates anymore with skeptics because it's a little bit like saying, well, here's what the data says. And then the other person says, well, I don't believe them.

Right. - That's the end of the conversation. - Right, where are you gonna go? - So it can be said. (laughs)

It's really, it's a great plane. It's just, you know, I think back to, I'm a big Carl Jung fan was one of the few people when a teenager actually plowed through a lot of his material as dense as it is. And one thing that always stuck with me that he mentioned, obviously his idea of the collective unconscious and how the unconscious is just incredible power that links us all and we all have our own, but the idea that when you're trying to empirically study sci phenomenon, I think he was using it in the case of synchronicity relative to astrological science and his book synchronicity, it's an inevitably tricky thing to do because you can't necessarily pin these things down, especially since we don't always know what the causality of these things are or even what they are.

So as a researcher, as a scientist, how do you go about kind of developing methods and methodologies to try to make sure that you're doing the best job that, hey, maybe we're not gonna empirically prove that this psychic 100% of the time can hit accuracy and remote viewing, but to make sure that you're showing or at least hinting at subtle realities of things that are happening. What's kind of your process and methodology for that?

Well, you raised the point about causation and that really is the sticking point because it's true that we don't know how to understand the phenomena that transcends space and time. And you see the exactly the same puzzles in quantum mechanics because those phenomena also don't appear to be taking place in space or time. And the moment that you start considering phenomena, especially ones that transcend time, then there are whole notions of causation or throwing out.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

And since science is predicated on explanations that require a kind of Newtonian level causation, this is why our brains hurt. When we start trying to figure out, well, what sequence of events caused this? Well, maybe the future caused it. And so that makes your brain hurt, except that at least as we know from quantum mechanics, that is possible.

Yes.

That is one of the prevailing ways of thinking about why quantum mechanics look strange. So the best that we can do at this point, when we're kind of stuck in an epistemology from the last century because that's all that we have, we do the best that we can by tracing the way that people report the experiences. So in the case of remote viewing, for example, somebody might say, well, I get this impression that my friend is at a certain location. Okay, we'll then create an experiment which tests whether that impression is correct or not. And it is set within time because that's where we're stuck in terms of our epistemology.

But the method that is used is as best as we can tell to at least exclude the possibility that what's going on is chance. So that's how most of the experiments are designed.

Against chance.

Is the result that we're seeing compatible with a control condition or with a chance or is it not? And if it's not, is it in the direction that matches what people describe when they're talking about their experiences? So that's more or less where we are.

You know, and it's so interesting to be able, exactly what you're saying, quantum mechanics, just it shows that we know that it doesn't, the things in a very, very small 1/1000th of an inch or smaller just work radically differently than our Newtonian physics of our big world where we walk around. It's curious to me that science has moved pretty far into the quantum world and seeing things like the observer effect and all these other things that are just wacky if we were to see them up in our big world, but that when you start, it starts playing with our notions of time and space, why would mainstream science or reductionist science have such a problem with the idea that time can flow both ways or that the future can influence the past?

Is it just because it kind of undermines so much of what we think we know about the world?

Well, it challenges common sense. That's in the common sense for most scientists is the arbiter of truth, but on the other hand, if science has taught us anything, it's a common sense is the worst possible arbiter of truth. We see that in virtually every scientific domain. We don't see that the earth is made out of plates that are swimming around, and yet that's what apparently the way it is. We don't see that there are germs everywhere. We don't see the nature of galaxies. We don't see hardly anything. It's our instruments that allow us to do this and other scientific methods. So, and even something like I'll see it when I believe it, we know that's not true either.

Even experiments and perception, for example. So, what science has been really good at is revealing that common sense is a very, very poor way of thinking about what is the nature of reality, and yet, since we're kind of stuck in common sense when we're not using instruments and going about our daily lives, that becomes an overriding way of that most people, including most scientists, will think about these kinds of phenomena. So, somebody has an experience of telepathy with a loved one who's a thousand miles away and they check it and it turns out that it was correct. We don't have any models other than maybe radio that can say how that is possible.

And so, there've been many tests over the years looking at radio, specifically electromagnetics, as a way of potentially carrying this information and that doesn't work. And so, the closest that we have today is something like entanglement, but entanglement doesn't work very well either because at least within the orthodox quantum mechanics you can't send signals. So, as I described in an earlier book called "Intangled Minds", one way to think about it then is if we're dealing with an entanglement-like phenomenon, not to say that it's elementary entanglement, but something like that, and maybe everything has an open mic connection to everything else all the time.

So, you are correlated with everything in the universe. The reason you're not paying attention to everything is because most of it is meaningless noise, but if a part of your attention is focused on things of meaning for you, like a loved one, well, just as we find in the cocktail party phenomenon that if you're in a noisy room and you hear somebody in that room say your name, you will hear it because part of your unconscious is paying attention to things of meaning. So, maybe something like that is going on, that your unconscious is paying attention to the universe for most of it, you could care less, but you will pay attention to somebody who is meaningful to you.

And that makes it from your unconscious up into your conscious awareness.

And doesn't that line up in many ways with what the mystics have been telling us for millennia that everything is interconnected, that this would be kind of like a method for us to communicate telepathically or via some other way or when synchronicities pop up that are kind of oozing meaning for us. I mean, this isn't something that's so radically new in terms of an idea, but in terms of it being presented in our culture and our society and kind of the dominant scientific paradigm, it of course is a brand new radical kind of frightening idea, but this certainly seems to line up with a lot of different things throughout the beginning of time, no?

Oh, of course it does. It's true that this is exactly what mystics have been saying forever, but after books like the Daoa physics and the dancing wooly masters and so on, which pointed out that modern, so-called modern science seems to be compatible in many ways with this ancient mystical ideas, it created a kind of backlash among some scientists who really, really don't like the idea of connecting or at least correlating ancient ideas with modern ones. Yeah, and I think the reason that that happens is because they see it as a regression. Science has been a long hard struggle against religious dogma and anything which looks like a regression back towards these ancient ideas, some people will interpret that as this is superstitious nonsense and it's dangerous.

So they fight tooth and nail to prevent it from what they see as infecting the body of knowledge that that science has tried so hard to create.

Yes, which is ironic because by doing that, they also calcify and kind of crystallize their own beliefs into dogma, which is the greatest irony of the entire thing, it's weird. But I mean, I think it also just, there's two elements I think that lead people to that kind of determination or belief system. One is just hubris, just the belief that you could possibly know something so certainly just because of whatever methodology you're using. And the other is just kind of an ignorance to the fact that these things have happened, that these things aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. We can say that time flows back and forth and we can witness this on a quantum level and we could say maybe that even influences our Newtonian world, but that doesn't mean we're gonna start going back in time and we're gonna age backwards now.

So I think it's kind of something that, I mean, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts having done this for so many decades. I mean, doesn't this require kind of an ability to have an open mind and cultivate as many perspectives as possible if you really wanna start approaching some of these questions about the nature of reality and the nature of mind?

Well, yes, and this is the key point. You need to be humble in the face of the unknown. You need to be very comfortable with ambiguity. And we're talking then about a personality type. There are some personalities that simply are not humble. They cannot be and they are very uncomfortable with ambiguity and those are the ones who collapsed into dogma in previous centuries. They would have been religious fundamentalists today, they're a scientific fundamentalist. That's a personality type. So I think for many scientists are actually not that, the ones who make the biggest noise about this are ones who feel threatened.

And they have a personality type that requires, they desperately need some kind of certainty and they will fight against anything else. But the majority of scientists are, I think, more like myself who are driven by curiosity. I would like to get certainty on difficult topics but I'm also realistic and I recognize that in many cases, at the leading edge, we simply don't know and you have to be comfortable with that.

Yes, it's something Ajahn Shah used to say is something you should cultivate. It's the don't know mind. It's okay to not know. It actually can be the first step to beginning to know is you have to say, I don't know, I don't know what this is but let's, we're curious about it, let's study it. I love that. I mean, it's just, it's one of these things that I see over the years where I've experienced sci phenomena or had mystical experiences of which I've had enough, it really, I've seen the world change. I've seen people become more receptive to these ideas. I've seen the response, not only in my own social and peer group but at large to books that you've written.

Real magic being the most recent. That really does show me we are experiencing a kind of cultural shift. I think people are recognizing the course we've taken the past hundred years industrial, probably longer, hasn't necessarily solved all of our problems and in some ways it has accentuated them. So looking towards kind of these hidden, I don't know, it's hidden but hidden layers of reality can also offer us some insight into what we would need to do to make like, just to bring it back to what you originally said about intention and will. Whether your intention is to be a better person or to make the world a better place, that's hopefully ideally what we're looking for with these types of modalities and things we're discovering here.

So have you noticed this shift over the years?

I think there is a shift but it's a cyclic process. It's more like a spiral rather than a linear push. So you go back into the late '60s and most of the decade of the '70s, there was a lot of interest in this. It was a time before psychedelics were illegal and there was a lot of experimentation with not only psychedelics but meditation, with thoughts from the East. And I would say at that point that the majority of the mainstream, both mainstream science and mainstream culture were far more open to these kinds of ideas. Then there was a retraction and we're coming out of the retraction now. So psychedelics were a long time, nobody could study anything about them.

Now that is changing. The United States is no longer the world headquarters for study of sci phenomena. It has shifted to Europe. And I noticed that when I'm invited to give talks that I get many more invitations to speak at much higher levels of society, everywhere except the United States.

Why do you think that is?

Well, the United States is historically a very religious country. We don't think of it so much. At least those of us who are not very religious, we don't see it that way, but it is. Our country was predicated in many ways on religious freedom. And so we have lots and lots of people with very strong religious beliefs. And some of those people are very interested in sci phenomena because they see it as verifying some of their beliefs. But I would say that the majority reject the phenomena as demonic because that's what they've been taught. And a lot of that can be pointed directly back to the Catholic church, to other churches as well who for purposes of social control has simply defined that certain things are heretical so that only authoritative people and practices were acceptable and that would keep people within that church.

So this is not to say that other countries also aren't (laughs) this way some of them certainly are, but as you find like many, many places now in Europe, all the churches are closing in Scandinavia as well. They're kind of kept as museum pieces, but the number of people involved in traditional religions is very rapidly dropping in certain areas of the world. And so, and they're much more open than to the idea that we're simply dealing with some aspect of human experience with no religious overlay at all. It happens to match some of the ideas that are talked about in religious texts, but that doesn't mean it's religious or simply an experience.

So I think that's one of the reasons why in the United States, it's partially the religious pressure that is certainly a big piece of it. The other part is academia in the United States. It has very strict taboos about what you're allowed to talk about. And the impression that that gives is that no taboo, no academic would risk their career by talking about sci phenomena as though it was real. It's okay to talk about belief and why people believe in certain things. It's okay to talk about it in terms of the history of these beliefs and so on, but it's not acceptable to talk about the phenomena as real.

So if you did a survey of, I don't know how many, perhaps a million academics in the United States and ask how many would be open about their actual interest and belief that maybe these things are real. I would guess that it's way less than 1%. But the question then is, is that because they're not willing to talk about it?

Right.

Or because they actually don't believe it. So we did a survey to find out. The survey which was done after the book was published, I didn't include it in real magic. The survey asked the general population and asked a subset based on the demographics that were scientists and engineers. And we were not interested in what they believed. We were interested in what they experienced. So we came up with a list of 25 different kinds of experiences that people report. All of them being on a spectrum of psychic phenomena but ranging from very vanilla elementary intuitions all the way down to clear cases of telepathy and remote viewing and clairvoyance and so on.

So we asked everybody these questions and then we hired a company that gave us anonymous emails of people who agreed to fill out that they would do questionnaires. And so that's how we got the demographics and knew what their profession was. So among the general population, not counting the scientists and engineers, we said, "Well, how many of these different kinds, 25 different kinds of psychic things have you personally experienced?" So 94% said that they had experienced at least one of the 25 on an average about seven, seven of the 25. So it's extremely common that people have had some experience at least once.

Right.

So now the question of course is, well, what about the scientists and engineers? Because if you go through those curricula, you're either never talk about these phenomena at all or they're talked about in dismissive terms.

Right.

So we expected, I don't know, 30%, maybe. The answer for that group is 93%. And actually on average, eight out of the 25, more than the general population in terms of the kinds of phenomena that people report. So this highlights in a very clear way that the reason why from a mainstream scientific or academic perspective that these kinds of phenomena are generally either dismissed or at least not publicly talked about is because of a taboo and not because of what people are actually experiencing.

Right, I mean, and that's obviously very unfortunate because when we're talking about some of these phenomena, yes, we can look at them kind of through the lens of stage magicians or parlor tricks. But I always think of just the cities, right in the Eastern religions and philosophies that a lot of people, when they first hear about some of these things, whether it's levitating, walking through walls, anything you may have read in the autobiography of Yogi, people are like, how do I do that? And then when you actually started delving into it a little bit more, delve into this stuff, you recognize that those things are often just looked at as hindrances, right?

There are things that anyone who is actually trying to achieve any of those things would look at it's kind of lesser than powers, whereas the real goal would be try to merge with the unity consciousness, try to understand what the meaning of all of this is or what you can do to make the world or the universe or whatever your cosmological view is a better place. And it's just so interesting to me that when you're bringing up that survey of scientists, it shows that it doesn't modulate their belief, their actual experience, their experiences, they're gonna report accurately. And if that's an example, even if it's just of a very vanilla kind of mild sci-phenomenon or magic, that it's happening all of the time.

And it happens every day to a ton of people. It is, do you think that the cultural pressure of the current kind of scientific materialism paradigm is just so omnipresent that this reduces people's ability to not witness but believe that this is happening? Is that something that I'm trying to understand is the cultural pressure that is exerted against acknowledging that these things happen strong enough to really just cast everyone to the state of delusion. Like, nah, this stuff doesn't happen.

Well, no, what the survey indicates is that people do know that it's happening. But they've learned one way or the other that you don't talk about it. So fortunately, this is not true in every context. There's some families who talk about it all the time.

Yes, yes, yes. But I think in general, if there's someone in a family who is particularly good at this kind of phenomena, especially precognition, and they start telling others, they learn very quickly that people don't want to know this information.

Tell me about it, yeah.

They perceive it as weird or as spooky or dangerous. And a lot of that is understandable because we like to believe that we have sovereigns over our own self, right? This is why privacy is considered such an important thing, that we are a world unto ourselves. Nobody can get into our heads. Nobody can figure out our secret wants and wishes. But what these phenomena suggest is that that's an illusion that we can know, not only what's going on in somebody's secret spot of their head, but what is happening in their life? What is happening in their future?

It feels very destabilizing from the point of view of walking around as a separate entity in the world and our whole life, our whole civilization is predicated on the idea that you are a separate entity.

Well, I have an interesting anecdote to talk about. So one of the reasons I knew about God's side is back in the early 2000s, I've done psychedelics plenty of time. I've done LSD plenty of time, but one particular time I took LSD, a normal amount, maybe 250 mics, nothing insane. I didn't come down for three months. Obviously the LSD had left my system. There wasn't any actual drug causing the effects, but I was tripping for three months through the waking and dreaming state. It was a non-stop process of what I would call synchronicity. That's why I called this podcast synchronicity. Everything from every second to every other second was a synchronicity.

I don't mean like, oh, this weird thing happened here and then a few minutes later, it just was unceasing. And I went on your website, God's side. I found it because I noticed I was developing a lot of pre-cognitive intuitions that were panning out. I was thinking of people and I would see them even if they were states away and I didn't know that they were actually in my town in Boston at the time. And I remember constantly trying to get on the daily leaderboards for God's side and I was doing it. And I wonder, do you encounter people who, for periods of a time, kind of maybe have access to a lot of these abilities?

And not that they lose them, but that they kind of taper down or get filtered out. Have you come across people where that's happening or is this kind of like, oh, well, this person has it, they have really talented in this area and these people are kind of less talented?

That is the case, yes. There are certainly people with talent and others with less talent. There's also a class that's more similar to what you were describing, that somebody will get into a peculiar state for a couple of months, where they're just flagrantly psychic.

Yeah.

And then it'll go away. And just the other day I was talking with a colleague, actually a very prominent scientist who, like many who I know don't want anyone to know. (laughs)

Yeah, yeah.

But he was saying that in his lifetime there were occasionally, so you would feel something coming on, then it would persist for a couple of months and he would go to horse races and win continuously and just be like, psychic all the time.

Yeah.

He didn't like it.

Yeah.

It became intrusive after a while. It was difficult to go about your daily work.

Yes.

But with that kind of state. So he discovered that if he started smoking, it would go away.

Cigarettes?

Yep. Cigarettes would block it. So we started thinking about, well, what does nicotine actually do to the body? Well, it's conceivable that we're dealing with some kind of a change in the nervous system or the brain that nicotine stimulates that suppresses whatever this state is. And he said he had done, because this happened periodically, he was able to test it many times.

Yes.

And cigarette smoking would block it very quickly and would stay away as long as he smoked.

That fascinates me because what really ever made me remember my anecdote is, I was telling everyone. I was a young college kid who was telling everyone about this and demonstrating that I could guess numbers and accurately list the sum of someone's credit card number, like reliably over and over without seeing it. And it was freaking people out. And it did become a problem in my life because it didn't fit into the world we know, right? This isn't supposed to be happening. I'm getting too much information. I have access to too many things. It's hard to relate to other people once that's happening.

And you can very much alienate people if you just start talking about all of these things that were happening. And it wasn't just sci phenomenon. I was getting a lot of, I don't know, not to get too woo-woo, but downloads. I was getting a lot of information. I woke up one day with all of the Sanskrit names for the chakras. Just, I knew them. And I never read about them before. And all of a sudden, I'm what are, I'm naming all of these things. And it was a very interesting, obviously, period of my life and I've always, my family is a lot of kind of psychic stuff in it. And a lot of people have that type of, you know, persona or whatever it is.

And I still maintain quite a bit of it, especially relative to a lot of people that I meet. But yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I'm a heavy cannabis user and that does not, that does not damper and dampen the psychic state at all. But it's interesting that cigarettes went up. I remember someone once told me that this was happening to them and they would eat a lot of meat. And that would do this similar type of thing. It kind of grounded them for some reason. But because of this experience, I also, and I have a platform like this podcast, I get emails every couple of weeks from people saying that what you just described with your scientist friend and what I was describing, it's happening more and, I don't know if it's more and more, but people are, it's happening to them.

And when they hear someone else speak about it, they go, "Oh, that happened to me too." So I'm curious, you know, I know you mentioned this a little bit in your book, what's your primary intention with kind of getting this information out to the general public?

Well, part of it is simply to let people know that the experiences are very common because since there is a taboo, one of the most common emails that I get is opens with the line. I've never told anyone.

Yeah, same, yeah.

And I get that constantly. And even from spouses who said, "Well, you know, don't tell me some kind of a psychic story "and then I'll write back and say, "Well, have you told your husband about this?" No, a person has never told anyone about it. They say, "Well, you may want to check "because it's not that uncommon." So people have two responses to that. If they're told that their experience is not all that uncommon, some of them are very relieved because they're thinking, "Oh, okay, "so I'm not going crazy after all." This is simply part of the nature of reality. We don't understand very well.

But there's a smaller percentage who really don't like that because because they have these experiences that get delusions of grandeur.

Yes.

And now they're thinking, "Well, wait a minute, "I'm the world's best psychic and I deserve "to be studied by the FBI," or something like that. And so they really resist the idea that they're not special.

Yeah.

So I think that's a minority of people but a sizable minority. They like the sense that they have a special secret gift. So I have to break it to them that, yeah, there are some people with really super gifts which are extremely rare.

Yes.

And the kinds of stories that are telling me to my mind sound very mundane.

Right, right.

I'll get somebody who tells me deja vu and they think they're the next Messiah. (laughs)

Oh boy, if deja vu is the next Messiah, then we need some new words for Messiahs 'cause oh boy.

Yeah, let's see because they don't hear about this. They don't know that there's a whole bunch of very strange experiences that people can have which actually are not so strange. They're just not ordinary. And so for what I generally then recommend the people is, well, maybe you wanna read these articles or books and learn what the range of experiences actually are and then you'll have a better way of testing or at least judging how your experience fits in with the rest of the known type of experiences. Then that they appreciate.

Yeah, I'm sure 'cause they're like, oh, okay. Now I can contextualize where I am in the spectrum. What have you noticed? I mean, my personally for me obviously psychedelics played a very big role in me coming into contact with non-ordinary states of not only consciousness but just phenomena. Have you noticed anything in your studies pertaining specifically to psychedelic substances and magic and sigh?

Well, of course, all of the mystery schools is historically used psychedelics to get people into these states. Many of the ceremonial magicians I know use various kinds of psychedelics. And most of the people who use it either recreationally or for therapy, they all talk about some kind of phenomenon, whether it's precognition or telepathy or something like that.

Right, that's right.

There've been very, very few studies.

Yeah.

There's like a handful of actual experiments to see whether the experiences of people are reporting are actually true. And of course, when somebody's in one of these states, it's virtually impossible to know whether it's actually real, seems real.

Yeah.

That doesn't mean that objectively it is. So we've been talking with psychiatrists who are using ketamine as part of their therapeutic practice partially because it's legal, also because it's fast-acting and it produces pretty good psychedelic trips.

Yeah.

So, primarily the legal part of this, we might be able to get permission using psilocybin or something like that. But the ketamine being legal makes it a lot easier to do experiments where we would take people who are used to going into those states and add on a psychic test. So in those states, generally people are not that interested in following instructions.

Yeah.

As you probably know.

I do.

So we have to come up with experimental methods that will not freak out the person and that will not require them to do anything. So the best candidates that we have at this point are psychophysiological tests where all you're asked to do is look at pictures for example. And so the presentiment experiment simply requires somebody to get wired up to measure some aspect of their physiology and then look at a series of pictures. And the design of the experiment is such that we can detect if somebody is reacting to the emotion of a picture before the picture is actually selected to pre-cognition experiment.

So we asked the psychiatrist who are using the ketamine, did they think that their patients would be okay with that? And they said, yeah, probably as long as the pictures aren't too horrific, the emotional pictures, but we can do the same experiment using pictures that are beautiful.

Right, right.

Like very like a picture of a table or something as a comp picture and then a picture of a beautiful sunset as an emotional hit. And that would be fine.

So we're in discussions now about doing such experiments.

I love it because to me it seems very clear that there's an obvious relationship there, but given how difficult it is just to study either or of those things that it would probably be harder to do both together. I mean, I'm tremendously excited to see where we can go and where people like you and your institute are going because it feels like this rich vein of untapped just mystery that is really for at least in modern times, you know, we're actually getting a peek behind the door. And that to me is fascinating and experiments where you can measure or at least study the idea of precognition or any other magical phenomena that we might see in either regular quote unquote people or adepts.

I mean, the potential for these things, for people like you and me who kind of recognize this stuff is happening. We're not talking about big esceptics with, you know, we're just never gonna accept this no matter what. I just find it to be such an exhilarating time. And you know, again, I just, I'm so happy that there are people like you out there doing this. And I talk about this a lot with spirituality and other things that are kind of more esoteric that we need these bridge people. We need these people who are normalizing things that don't seem normal or don't seem commonsensical to be able to make this palatable for people who intuitively, 93%, 94%, have these experiences but are being told or just, you know, have been indoctrinated and to believe that these things don't happen and that you're maybe going crazy if they do happen.

So it's just refreshing to see as time moves on in my lifetime that it does seem we're in kind of a cycle of emergence of these types of things and at least the conversations happening about them. It's very cool, it's very, very cool.

I mean, and as I said, the direction seems to be kind of a spiral.

Yes.

But there are times when it's down, times when it's up, but the general trend over historical time is in a direction where people have probably have always had the same percentage of the population having experiences like this. Very small percentage have super experiences or super talents, but in general, it's simply part of reality, part of our experience. So I'm a chronic optimist as well. I would go do this kind of research if I wasn't.

Yeah.

And I take the long view here. So for at least this kind of application of science to these experiences systematically, it's about 130 or 140 years old now. But it's been going on since the very beginning of science itself and long before. So we go back to someone like Francis Bacon, who is one of the founders of empiricism in the 15 and 1600s. One of his most famous books was a book about empiricism which kind of started the whole thing about science. He's one of maybe five or six people who are credited with making science the way it is. And he was talking even at that stage about testing the force of wealth by throwing dice and using statistics.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we're still kind of in that domain. We're using different targets and better statistics and so on. But the general idea about being able to test these phenomena to learn something about them is still going full force, but unfortunately with a very, very small percentage of scientists. And this is not because of a lack of interest. It's because of a lack of societal support. And that translates into funding.

Yeah, it's going to say. I mean, if funding is not going to be just readily available for this stuff, if it's taboo, it's pretty simple.

Yeah, but you know, we live in a society where truth and money are equated. So if somebody came along with a $100 million set of grants to study these kinds of phenomena, I can absolutely guarantee that you will have lots of scientists who very happily work to get those grants.

Yes, well, that's the intersection of our capitalist society and truth-seeking. They always play nice together. But I mean, I see enough things going on in the world with money and the energy of money that give me tremendous sense of optimism that there will be funding increasingly more for this type of stuff. Because how many people can get super rich, have more money than they know what to do with and still be miserable before they start looking towards other things that maybe give them some more perspective on what this crazy game of life is about. And before I forget, I just wanted to bring up when you keep mentioning the spiral.

It's one of my favorite Hermann Hesse quotes, which is he says in Siddhartha, "We're not going in circles, we're going upwards. "The path is a spiral. "We have already climbed many steps." Really, it does feel like when we're talking about this stuff, I'm glad you bring up that the spiral is going on. Because to subvert the idea of just a linear progression, I think is very important because it can give us, provide a sense of optimism, that when things kind of cycle or contract and then expand, that it's not an end of or the beginning of, but a part of a process. And I think that's really important.

Yeah.

Dean, I'm gonna wrap this up. I end with three quick questions and then one kind of other one. But I really, again, just thank you for taking the time to do this. I just think it's incredibly cool that there are people like you out there dedicating their time and their lives to this stuff, man. It's really cool. So now I will ask you some seemingly silly questions, but are very important. What's your favorite color?

I used to say blue and I guess I'll continue with blue.

Cool, it's mine too. What's your favorite number?

Well, the usual response here is seven, but that's only because that's the number that comes to mind. So instead, I think I will say the Phi constant about that.

I love it.

Because it's a transcendental number.

Explain, please.

Well, it's part of the golden mean.

Yes.

It finds itself in nature practically everywhere. And it's a number like Pi that doesn't end. A number like Pi that has no ending to, it's not a fixed number. It's called transcendental because it has no end to it. So I like that.

I love it. That's maybe my favorite answer anyone's given. What's your favorite animal?

Probably a dog, a little dog. I have two little dogs.

What kind of dogs?

They are terrier mixes of unknown heritage.

Cute. What are your dog's names?

One is Mr. Scrappy and the other one is Mr. Peppy. I kind of think your dogs have the best names in the world. That's amazing. Last question, not as short as the other ones. For people listening, could you share a practical tip that has helped you in your life can be anything?

Well, what I probably should say is that meditation is a good thing, physical and mental health. It's a good thing to do. I've practiced meditation on and off for about 40 years. I will occasionally go through diligent periods where I'm actually meditating at least an hour a day for months and months and months.

Nice.

And then I stop for a while and then I stop for a while and then I'll go back to it and pick it up again. That's been the historical way of doing it. And the reason why I stop after a while is because I've become so blissed out that I find that it becomes more difficult to do the work that I need to do, but that I want to do.

I get that.

When I go on airplane trips, for example, I'll get nervous like many people do. When I'm meditating, it's not only that there's no nervousness, but there's some part of me that erases the experience altogether. Like I'll go on the plane, we're going somewhere, we get off the plane and it's like nothing has happened, which means that my anxiety is so low at that point that it's like meaningless. Whereas if I'm not in a period of not meditating, I might have to take a Valium.

Yeah, it takes Xanax.

Yeah, especially the way now in economy classes, you're squished in with other sardines, and it's just not very healthy.

No.

If I'm in a meditative period, then I could care less. So, as I said though, unfortunately sometimes it gets in the way because if you're too blissed out, you don't feel like you want to get pushed and do your work.

I love that you're giving both sides of that coin there. What type of meditation do you practice?

I've tried many different ways, but I usually come back to Vipassana.

Yeah, yeah.

That seems to be the one that I resonate with the best.

I think partially I just asked this question, so when like 80% of people say meditation, I take it as a call to start meditating again. But yeah, Dean, thank you again, just so much for doing this. I have already encouraged people to pick up real magic, but I am an avid supporter of yours and I found it to be a fitting synchronicity when you mentioned "Gotsai" in the book that was like, oh, I was doing that every day when I was going through that experience every day. The location test in particular, that's a very eerie result. So, just thank you again for coming on and doing what you're doing.

Thank you, that's very kind.

All right, I'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye.

Okay, bye. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)

Thank you for listening to that episode. Go check out Dean's book, "Real Magic," listen to it, buy it, read it, whatever. Just, it's very good, I think you're gonna like it. Big thanks to Meister for supporting this reminder. Go to getmeister.com. I think the USB lighter is a cool thing. Go check out some of the other stuff they have. There's some excellent stuff. I think Davis is sending me a package of some things, so I'll have some firsthand experience with some of the other products that I will get to in the next coming months. Yeah, man, like, just thank you for listening. I'm super excited about the EP release.

I feel like this podcast has really kind of given me the push I needed to get my music out there and that's in no small part to people like you. If there wasn't the feedback that was going on, if I didn't see that other people actually cared, I wish I could say I had an unending, confident belief in myself and I do in some ways, but in terms of releasing music, it's always nice to get positive feedback or any type of feedback. So, you know, doing pretty well, I feel like when you can get a creative project out of you on any capacity, just achieve it, get it out. It's good for the soul. So, I recommend you do that too.

Lots of cool things coming up in the coming months. So, stay tuned and I'll see you. Oh, almost forgot Patrick Nam check, you're the fucking coolest. I will see you next week.

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