Dean Radin - Supernormal: science, yoga, and the evidence for extraordinary psychic abilities

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

Entangled Minds

The Conscious Universe

Copyright 2013 by Dean Radin
Foreword copyright 2013 by Deepak Chopra

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Deepak Chopra Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

DEEPAK CHOPRA BOOKS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available upon request.

eISBN: 978-0-307-98691-7

Cover design by Nupoor Gordon
Cover illustration: NLD/Shutterstock

v3.1

To S USIE AND TO MY PARENTS ,
H ILDA AND J ERRY R ADIN

The strange thing about the paranormalor the supernatural, the miraculous, and all other synonymsis that no matter how often you prove it, it remains unproven. There have been hundreds of studies on clairvoyance and viewing at a distance, arising from age-old experience. Invariably, as Dean Radin patiently explains in this book, the experiments indicate that the experience of reading someone elses thoughts, seeing a faraway event, or anticipating the future is real. Ever since science demolished faith as a way of knowing reality, facts are supposedly supreme, and when the same fact is repeatedly shown to be true, that is enough to change accepted reality. So why, in this case, have facts proved helpless?

The answer is complex, subtle, and yet as common as any ingrained prejudice. Facts dont change minds as often as they confirm what the mind insists on believing. Therefore, the path from faith to facts is much more fragile than we like to think, and along the way are crouching adversarieshidebound beliefs, stubborn biases, ad hominem attackers, skeptics who know in advance that X cannot be true, and the most elusive of adversaries, collective consciousness. Mass opinion can stop an unwelcome fact in its tracks, which has happened for centuries when miracles, wonders, magic, and the paranormal have been too uncomfortable to confront. Behind the clich that you create your own reality there is a shadow: If you dont create your own reality, it will be created for you.

For this reason, Radins discussion of supernormal abilities, which were first explained in a systematic way in an ancient Indian text known as the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, walks a double line. He presents the amassed evidence for all kinds of superpowers while nudging us persuasively to look at why something can be proven and unproven at the same time. This double track is the only sensible way to get people to change their minds, adhering to the familiar adage A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. Any number of controlled studies have demonstrated that when people are presented with facts that contradict their firmly held beliefs, they tend to ignore the facts; even more perversely, a sizable percentage of people will become more confirmed in their beliefs the more contravening facts you present.

The grassroots spiritual movement tagged generically as the New Age firmly divided society into believers and nonbelievers in all kinds of matters that Radin covers, and he is mature in approaching hot-button topics as a peacemaker, not another divisive voice. Thats a fortunate stance. When science already has ample evidence about phenomena that are firmly excluded from the official picture of reality, winning acceptance requires a grasp of human psychology. The art of persuasion is subtle, but it is also based on everyday experience:

Why prove to a man he is wrong? You cant win an argument, because if you lose, you lose it; and if you win, you lose it. You will feel fine. But what about him? You have made him feel inferior, you hurt his pride, insult his intelligence, his judgment, and his self-respect.

This piece of practical psychology, written decades ago by Dale Carnegie, becomes relevant to the paranormal once you substitute the word scientist for man in the first sentence. The reason that facts are secondary in proving the validity of superpowers is that science, like any human enterprise, is overseen by individuals who have a stake in what they do, and that stake includes pride, intelligence, judgment, and self-respect, as Carnegie grasped.

In Supernormal, Radin calms our nerves and our prejudices at the same time, which levels the field. He is willing to call the path of yoga, which is held to develop supernatural abilities, legendary, but he also fixes his stern gaze on sciences self-contradiction when it refuses to accept findings that were arrived at through impeccable use of the scientific method. As he wryly notes, if science is to change in the direction of a new reality, teeth grinding has to lessen over time.

But why a new reality and what does it have to do with levitation, clairvoyance, invisibility, and many other claims that Patanjali made? The simple answer is that the old reality has worn itself out. In a chapter devoted to the Eightfold Path of Science (a play on the Eightfold Path of Buddhism), Radin looks at the principles that modern science is based upon and shows, quite accurately, that many were exploded by the quantum revolution a hundred years ago, and others have been steadily weakened. Once time and space were no longer absolutes, once physical objects were reduced to whirling clouds of energy and cause and effect turned into a game of probabilities instead of certainties, there was a radical shift in how reality is perceived.

This shift is amazingly consonant with the ancient seers of India, and for forty years quantum concepts have been woven into spiritual concepts, with voices ranging from a physicist like Fritjof Capra to a spiritual luminary like the Dalai Lama confirming the parallels. Radin adds his voice to a veritable chorus but with restraint. His talent lies in returning to basics and finding common ground. Well aware that few people outside the specialized field of ancient Indian studies will know of the Yoga Sutras, and who will blink to see Sanskrit terms like siddhi and samyama, he travels adeptly between common experience (especially psi experiences of clairvoyance and subtle intuition) and the arcane of mysticism. The goal is to persuade the reader, not against his (or her) will but with willing cooperation. Remember when X happened to you? Well, the same thing was known to the seers of yoga and has been shown to be valid in the laboratory.

Radins aim isnt to make his own version of reality the right one. Instead, he wants to show that there are more choices than people generally realize, and some of those choices add greater power to the mind, increase the potential for uncovering greater insight, and eventually turn the clich of You can create your own reality into a living experience. Radin doesnt proselytize about which version of reality anyone should choose, but in his evenhanded way he is also insistent that some realities that seem outlandish to science, such as the reality where a person can levitate, are not ridiculous, superstitious, or ignorant. Hundreds of observers have recorded in private diaries, public statements, and sworn oaths that they saw Joseph of Cupertino levitate (among the many levitating Catholic saints, this seventeenth-century figure was alive almost fifty years after the death of Shakespeare), and Radin makes note of it without apology or second-guessing.