04/07/12

Time-Reversed Human Experience: Experimental Evidence and Implications (from Subtle Energies and

Subtle Energies and Uncharted Realms of the Mind

An Esalen Invitational Conference
July 2 - 7, 2000

Time-Reversed Human Experience: Experimental Evidence and

Implications
Dean Radin
As an established researcher with his own psi lab, The Boundary Institute, Dean Radin is
now spending his time looking at some of the more difficult implications that psi effects
have on our common understanding of reality. First and foremost, Radin is asking if psi
effects can best be explained by re-working our understanding of time itself. Modern,
Western civilization, and the scientific establishment in particular, is rooted in the
Newtonian belief that time is like a linear moving arrow in which a cause in the past leads
to an effect in the future. Radin, however, believes that the evidence compiled by psi
researchers is beginning to challenge this inveterate belief. Instead of the past influencing
the present and future, Radin believes a strong case can be made for the future influencing
the present and past in a world where linear time is superceded by the power of
"information" (for lack of a better word) that pulls events to it from all directions: past,
present, and future.
To introduce his audience to this potentially confusing concept, Radin described a
humorous yet powerful story of a synchronicity that happened in his life recently. At the
beginning of the year 2000 Radin was looking for a new office for the Boundary Institute.
By March he had found a nice office in Los Altos in the heart of Silicon Valley. Looking
around at his neighboring offices, Radin noticed several doctors and psychologists. One
new neighbor, however, perked his curiosity as he walked by the front door one day. On
the door the sign read, "Psi Quest Research Labs, Inc." Radin thought to himself at the
time that the "Psi" in the title must mean "Personnel Services Incorporated." However,
after several weeks had passed, and Radin was walking by the office door, he decided to go
inside and say hello. He saw a man at his desk who looked up in shock. He said
immediately, "Dean Radin?" Stunned a bit himself, Dean said, "Y es, thats me. I just
wanted to introduce myself and ask what it is that you do here." As it turned out the man
was doing exactly the same thing that Radin was: psi research. Although their meeting
each other this way in and of itself was an extraordinary coincidence, it turns out that the
man, named Jon, had been practicing a Tibetan Dream Y oga exercise, in which one
maintains a lucid state of mind through waking and dreaming states of consciousness.
When Radin walked in the door, Jon was just at the end of a 24 hour sequence, in which
his intention was to find out if he was on the correct track in his business pursuits. As it
turned out, Radin was one of the few people that Jon was looking for to be a part of his
board of directors to raise money for his new business, but Jon didnt know how to get in
touch with him.
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Time-Reversed Human Experience: Experimental Evidence and Implications (from Subtle Energies and

This striking synchronicity raises a major question for Radin: what is freewill? Radin
thought he was just walking into the office to say hello, when it seems that he had walked
straight into a synchronicity that fit perfectly with Jons Dream Y oga practice. Still further,
Jon next introduced Radin to his psi lab, which is a state-of-the-art facility that is just on
the other side of the wall of Radins own office. Radin shared that he had been imagining
the past few weeks just what his own ideal laboratory would look like, when it just
happened to be on the other side of his office wall. Best of all, this coincidence looks like it
will lead to a lasting and harmonious relationship between these two psi researchers who
are now in close proximity.
What is the easiest way to explain this synchronicity? Instead of thinking in terms of linear
time, Radin suggests we think of the synchronicity itself as happening first. Radin and Jon
had a high level of common interests and are "meant" to interact. The information-power
of their connection then moves out across past, present, and future to pull them together.
To draw an analogy, Radin suggests that powerful synchronicities are like large bodies of
mass that attract smaller bodies of mass to them. The thermodynamic arrow of time is
better understood as going from a small body of information-meaning to a large body of
information-meaning. A strong synchronicity is a huge mass that influences and warps
the very nature of space-time. A powerful meeting point is comparable to a singularity in
space-time. It is like a "meaning black-hole," a dimple in space-time. One might imagine
that Radin and Jon have two separate life-lines, or world lines, that are moving through
space-time, but the power of their synchronistic meeting pulls on their separate lines until
they collide. A dimple in space-time pulls the two lines together. Importantly, the meeting
is not a pre-determined event, but rather it can be thought of geometrically. The geometry
of space-time contains dimples and powerful information nexuses that pull linear life-lines
to them. In this manner, a goal in the future can be set intentionally and we can allow
ourselves to be drawn towards it.
Radin pointed out that when we consider synchronicities between just two people, it
throws a monkey wrench into our standard conception of time and physics. Furthermore,
so much of Western science attempts to shield its experiments from human bias and
unwanted contamination of evidence. Y et, no matter how hard we try, there is no way to
control trans-temporal effects entering into an experiment from the past or future. In
short, if we take what Radin is saying seriously, the very nature of the scientific method is
called into question. Gold-standard beliefs, such as replicability and double-blind
experiments are not so impervious after all.
Radins Model
To begin to theorize how some of these trans-temporal occurrences might be understood,
Radin offers a multi-dimensional model of reality.
Normal/Local Dimension:
Most science occurs here: force, energy, and linear causality
Our common-sense stable world of Newtonian science
Some local subtle energy healing takes place here (acupuncture)
Normal/Nonlocal Dimension:
Ecology of inter-relationships, web of life, part relates to the whole
Non-linear dynamic systems (chaos theory)
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Time-Reversed Human Experience: Experimental Evidence and Implications (from Subtle Energies and

Quantum mechanics of non-local, instantaneous interactions

Distant healing through mind and intention
Non-Causal Dimension (beyond linear time and space)
Information dominates and attracts events from the past, present, future
Powerful synchronicities attract separate world-lines
Radin also conceptualized and contrasted the local and non-local worlds:
Local World
Time-based
Particulate
Stable
Fixed

Non-Local World
Timeless
Holistic
Dynamic
Probable

Radin emphasized that conceptualizing and starting to think in terms of a new form of
space-time is extremely difficult for us, because our very language structure is rooted in a
linear and causal framing of reality.
Coming from this new perspective, however, Radin has come to believe that PK (the
seeming influence of mind over matter) and pre-cognition (the ability to foresee the
future) are highly related and are probably the same thing. Rather than thinking that PK is
the ability to manipulate matter, PK might be explained better as the ability to influence
the world-line (the procession of something through space and time) of something before
its present state. Radin added that maybe PK and pre-cognition are the wrong words
altogether and that it is time think about them in an entirely new light. Our thinking is still
so heavily influenced by cause-and-effect ways of conceptualizing that we need to open
our minds to entirely different ways of understanding. Perhaps, most healing is not
happening in present time at all. For example, if one takes the healing of a tumor, one
might think a healer actually reduces the tumor by the power of the mind to alter matter.
But maybe what is really happening is that a healer is going into the past and altering the
development of the persons health before the tumor ever arose. When we study the events
of our lives backwards, all of the events seem to fall into place and make sense. The healing
of the tumor was a normal occurrence from the standpoint of the future looking
backwards.
With respect to some of the data that has lead Radin to speculate about retro-causal
influences on the present, Radin distinguished between true retro-causal influences and the
more commonly accepted conditioned reflex of anticipation (our nervous system at work).
In experiments, when subjects were presented with a random sequence of shocking and
non-shocking pictures, their autonomic nervous system showed clear signs of anticipating
the shocking pictures with heightened activityeven before the shocking picture was
presented, whereas no similar anticipation was observed before the calm pictures were
presented. Currently, Radin is doing a literature survey to collect further examples of
experiments that supports the theory that the future impinges upon the present moment in
a way that can be measured physically (nervous system, cortical system, etc.).
Response
In response to Radins presentation Elizabeth Targ pointed to the theory that maybe no
one ever does any "real healing" in the present moment. Instead, it is all a matter of
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Time-Reversed Human Experience: Experimental Evidence and Implications (from Subtle Energies and

influencing choices made in the past or future. We meet and influence each other on our
various world lines in time, and thereby effect a healing response that manifests in the
present.
Russell Targ furthered this line of inquiry by mentioning experiments whose outcomes
could be explained by what Abraham Maslow called "good choosers." For example,
imagine that you have 100 mice that are surgically injured. Some will get better faster
than others, and there will be a distribution of healing rates. A psychic healer attempting to
heal the mice might be influencing the way the mice are selected for the experiment in the
past, as opposed to healing in the present. The mice that will get better faster end up falling
into the "healed" group, while the others will go into the control group that do not receive
healing.
Pointing out a possible exception to Radins theory of retro-causal healing, Beverly Rubik
asked how we are to account for direct bodily healing? Are energy healers somehow
influencing the past of their clients when they are working with their chakras, chi, or
biofields?
In response, Radin honestly stated that the fact is that we know that subtle energy healing
happens, as does homeopathy, acupuncture, psi, and PK, but we just dont understand
their mechanisms fully yet. They are all still a mystery, but we know for sure that we can
no longer discount the meticulously gathered data that does not fit into explanations
offered by the normal/local world of Newtonian physics. What Radin also emphasized was
that when healers do their work, particularly distant healers, it is important for them to
situate their healing intentions correctly within time. They must be aware of not only
where but when.
Henry Dreyer brought up a central question that retro-causal PK elicits: in a world where
past, present, and future are mutually influencing each other, how do we account for free
will to create our lives? Radin responded by offering that he believes that things happen
probabilistically. Sometimes the probabilities are very strong and at other times, they are
weak. Overall, the arrow of time is pretty strong.
In conclusion, Radin offered a natural metaphor to visualize a new understanding of time.
If time is a river, then for the most part it flows in one direction, but streams often have
eddies, boulders, rocks, and sand bars that shape, trap, and redirect the flow of the river in
many unique and remarkable ways. A small eddy can pull events akin to gravity in a
slightly different direction than the onrushing flow of linear time.
Conferences Menu | Summary Home
Conference Overview | Electromagnetic and Other Subtle Energies in Psi Research | The
Embodied Science of the Ancients | Dead Molecules and the Live Organism: Learning About
the Life Force | Possible Physics of the Human Energy Field as Indicated From High Sense
Perception Observations | New Research in Distant Healing | The Scientific and Spiritual
Implications of Psychic Abilities | Distant Intentionality, Qi Gong Masters, and DNA | The
Interface of Consciousness and the Physical World | Biology and Spirituality: The VAS
Technique | The Global Consciousness Project (GCP) | The Mysterious Side of Psychokinesis
(PK) | Time-Reversed Human Experience: Experimental Evidence and Implications | A TwoWorlds Model for Consciousness: Step-Time and Slope-Time | Concluding Brainstorm
Session |

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Time-Reversed Human Experience: Experimental Evidence and Implications (from Subtle Energies and

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