This month we re speaking with a man who is a legend in the field of Quantum Physics, and in the area of public policy. Doctor is a world-renowned quantum physicist, educator, author and science and public policy expert. He has conducted research at CERN, European Center for Particle Physics; and SLAC, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. As director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy, a progressive policy think tank, Dr. Hagelin has successfully headed a nationwide effort to identify, scientifically verify and promote cost-effective solutions to critical social problems in the fields of crime, health care, education, economy, energy and the environment. In addition, Dr. Hagelin has spent much of the past quarter century leading a scientific investigation into the foundations of human consciousness. In his book, Manual for a Perfect Government, Dr. Hagelin shows how, through educational programs that develop human consciousness, and through policies and programs that effectively harness the laws of nature, it is possible to solve acute social problems and enhance governmental effectiveness. In recognition of his outstanding achievements, Dr. Hagelin was named winner of the prestigious Kilby Award, which recognizes scientists who have made major contributions to society through their applied research in the fields of science and technology. The award recognized Dr. Hagelin as a scientist in the tradition of Einstein, Genes, Boer and Edington. As the 2000 presidential candidate of the Natural Law Party, America s fastest-growing grass roots party, Dr. Hagelin, along with hundreds of NLP candidates in all 50 states, drew millions of votes for his scientifically proven, forward-looking, sustainable solution to America s pressing social, economic and environmental problems. He has recently founded the U. S. Peace Government, a complementary government, dedicated to prevention-oriented administration.
Dr. Hagelin has appeared many times on ABC s Nightline and Politically Incorrect, NBC s Meet the Press, CNN s Larry King Live and Inside Politics, CNBC s Hardball with Chris Matthews, C-SPAN s Washington Journal, and others. He has also been regularly featured in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and now, Healthy Wealthy nwise. So now, hang on to your chairs and get ready for just an amazingly profound interview with Dr.. John as a Legend in the field of quantum physics as well as politics, we asked you if you would write down at least ten things that, if you had them completely fulfilled, would make your life ideal. Would you share those with us? Dr. Hagelin: Yes, the most important key to success and happiness in my life is experiencing unbounded awareness, a field of pure spirituality within, and identifying my awareness with the unified field, which is the universal intelligence that governs the universe. This brings immediate expansion, joy, pure creativity, and total support of nature for health and success and happiness in life. If I had to give number two, I would say more of the above. I m really blessed with a program that brings immediate expansion, immediate bliss, immediate contact with the infinite. I m fortunate to be a teacher of transcendental meditation as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, which is the world s most widely practiced, widely researched and broadly prescribed technology for the full development of human potential. Three, I need purposeful activity that brings evolution to humankind, activity that alleviates global problems and suffering and that promotes peace in the world, and I need to see tangible results, tangible success in this and all my projects. I m passionate about peace, about ending this terrible legacy of human cruelty and warfare, as well as the deep ignorance that permits such lifeafflicting behavior. I m passionate about education, especially education for
enlightenment, a new paradigm of education that involves full human potential, that develops the total brain. Modern education is really a travesty, in that it develops a mere sliver of one s brain potential, and as a result, it deprives a human being of his or her natural capability of living enlightenment. I am a born teacher and I need to teach. Karmically, the teacher always gains more than he gives. The way to understand anything most profoundly is to explain it to someone else, and that s the experience of every teacher. I teach graduate courses in unified quantum field theories. The way to really own the material is to impart that understanding to someone else, and somehow, magically almost, the material organizes itself more clearly and profoundly for the teacher. I love being with people who are evolving, who share this natural joy of life, and especially those who are enlightened, established in higher states of consciousness. The activities of such people are naturally evolutionary, life-giving, bliss-bestowing. I think the next point would be in the same line, for these reasons I cherish my contact with Maharishi, who regularly challenges and stretches my boundaries of comprehension. That helps keep me from getting stuck in a rut. I m continuously and rapidly expand the horizon of my understanding and activity. I love speaking to large audiences, and the medium of live television, probably because it leverages one s impact and ability to reach large numbers of people and thus make a difference. I love art and music and being surrounded by inspiration and beauty. I love living in a dwelling built in accord with natural law, a dwelling designed for maximum, life-supporting, life-nourishing influence. Maharishi s Sthapatya Vedic architecture, which is more ancient and more complete than Feng Shui, is a tremendous blessing and a formula for success in itself. These are the things that came to mind in a short period. John, what roles have the things that you re passionate about played in your life? If you would, please speak to the early years in
your history, your pursuit of physics, as well as your pursuit of the presidential nomination in the U.S. and your other activities. Dr. Hagelin: Well, I think for me to address the question, we have to spend a little bit of time understanding what passion is. For me, to understand what passion is, gets to the core nature of life, the purpose of life, which is to progress and to evolve and grow toward fulfillment. If we re progressing and evolving, then we experience joy, energy, vitality, health; and it s that type of activity, through which we grow and expand in knowledge, expand in power, expand in fulfillment - it s that type of activity that brings us joy born of expansion, born of progress, born of evolution. If I m passionate about something or you re passionate about something, it s because that something brings joy for us, nourishment to us, because that activity is a path of evolution and expansion for us - expansion of knowledge, influence, power and happiness. If you re not passionate about an activity, it means that that activity isn t providing us with growth, satisfaction, joy and expansion. Passion and success are inseparable to me. Passion is born of success and the progress that comes with success. Do you think that people have innate passions, that even before they re successful at something, they have things that they re just drawn irresistibly to? Dr. Hagelin: They re drawn to them because when they tasted them, when they sampled that activity, they immediately experienced growth and progress in that area. It s where their talent lies. It s a natural channel of creativity for them. What role has that played in your life? Dr. Hagelin: I would say one s passions are the core of everyone s life. You are motivated to do things because that activity brings you expansion and joy and evolution. It s been absolutely key to me and I would probably predict, the key to everybody.
Do you find, in your own life, that your life is more in balance or out of balance when you re pursuing those things, or when you re doing those things that you re passionate about? Dr. Hagelin: Very much more balanced when I m pursuing the activities that I m passionate about, which are the activities that bring me joy. That s because life is sustained in progress. Life derives its breath from progress, and the very purpose of life is fulfilled while one is evolving, growing, progressing. As long as we re evolving, we are going to be vital, healthy and balanced. Pursuing one s passion means pursuing what brings one joy and satisfaction, and it is those actions that bring one evolution. It s lack of progress, lack of success and stagnation that bring about frustration and stress, and ultimately, ill health. In your own life, how has pursuing those things that you re passionate about affected your health, wealth and spirituality? As you know, this magazine is called Healthy, Wealthy nwise, so those are the areas that we re particularly interested in. Dr. Hagelin: The pursuit of my passions nourishes and sustains my life. By very nature, it brings joy and success and health and happiness. I don t, and most people don t, continue to do things that don t bring success and achievement and progress and happiness. Perhaps I m a little more alert to this principle and choose, therefore, those activities that are bearing fruit - fruit in terms of progress towards achievement which brings happiness and sustains life. Pursuit of passion seems to be so basic to life, so intimate to life, that if you re not pursuing your passions, you re not going to be happy for long. You re not going to be able to sustain that direction for very long. One does have control, to some extent, over what constitutes one s passion. As you said, what you put your attention on tends to grow stronger in your life, and you can develop an interest for something. You can develop a talent in an area which allows you to succeed in that area and enjoy progress and success and evolution. That area will become more and more of a passion for you when your activity in
that area rewards you with joy, progress and evolution. People do have, it s probably the greatest human freedom, freedom over what they give their attention to, for that area will become more central, more important in their life, and thus, I would recommend everyone exercise that freedom, to put their attention on projects that are worthy of them and that bring happiness and evolution to their own life and the life of society as a whole. The more global and far-reaching a project, the more happiness and evolution that project could potentially bring. We have control over what constitutes, or what could become, a passion for us, and that s an important freedom that we exercise, but there are some constraints on what could ever become our passion, based upon our own genetic make up. Probably, although I enjoy art, painting will never become a passion for me, because I am so utterly lacking in talent in that area that an effort in that direction would presumably be met with more frustration than joy. If I had some talent, if I were moderately talented, I could nurture that interest and enjoy the small spurts of progress I would make, and that could become more of a passion to me. We have some control, but there are constraints based upon our own, individual natures. Not everyone is going to be a great teacher. Not everyone is going to be a great politician. In my life, I have actually made choices to develop new areas, new passions, that weren t, frankly, that natural to me - talents that I wasn t born with. I was not born a quantum physicist, I was born an engineer. And yet, some have called you one of the greatest quantum physicists of our age. Dr. Hagelin: Yes, some have, and that did not come easily. I was born an engineer. When it came to classical physics, the laws of mechanics, I didn t have to study them. I knew them, they were in my bones, they were part of my genetic make up, but when it came to quantum mechanics, I had entered a --- realm that was absolutely non-intuitive to me.
I should say, in fairness, counter-intuitive to most people, and you had to rely on your mathematical abilities to reliably proceed into these abstract realms for which our intuition provides no guidance. I wasn t a born mathematician and I had to really develop those skills over a period of years before I gained a natural fluency with the quantum world, and began to tackle problems in that world with increasing ease, that I actually had some spark of fulfillment. Yes, some positive feedback, yes, now I m getting somewhere. It took time to develop that new channel of creative intelligence, for the flow of creative intelligence and progress in life, and I made it a passion. What was the inspiration that took you out of that with which you comfortable and you could do so easily, into a field that was much more challenging? What made you take that leap? Dr. Hagelin: That s a very interesting story. On the one hand, I was being recruited by DEC, Digital Equipment Corporation, and by the Office of Naval Research, to make money in fields that were natural to me, again, classical science, computational science and engineering. On the other hand, I knew that some day, my authority in the world and ability to influence the world of policy would be my stature as a physicist, not as a computer programmer; but as someone wellschooled, deeply grounded in the deepest principles and the most advanced scientific understanding of the deepest realities of life. I chose to develop myself in a way that I thought would put me in a position to better serve humankind. That s my ultimate, biggest passion. That s what I was just going to say, that your passion to make a substantial difference in the direction of life on earth sounds like what drew you into this field that might have seemed uncomfortable initially. Is that right? Dr. Hagelin: Yes, uncomfortable in the sense that progress was very sluggish, and therefore the reward of activity was very limited. This might be fine point that we don t need to dwell on, but I don t know if I would call my desire to serve humankind a passion at that stage. I would
call it a quiet, deep calling - a quiet sense of responsibility. What s interesting, John, in your life, is that you have gone from what some people would consider one extreme to the other. From the rarified areas of theoretical quantum physics as one of the very top physicists in the world, to running for the position of President of the United States. Dr. Hagelin: That s the second example of developing myself, of creating a new passion, building a new passion, developing myself in an area in which I wasn t particularly endowed with God-given talent, for the sake of the higher calling of service to humanity. Public policy didn t light my fire prior to the response of this calling to improve principles and policies with which we govern our country and govern the world. I dove into the area of public policy, health care reform, et cetera, and relatively quickly, in comparison to quantum physics, found myself in a position of being able to make important, original contributions to these fields. It s not rocket science, you could say, nor is it quantum physics, and it didn t take that long to expose to myself and ultimately others, to the fallacies of our current policies in such areas as defense, based upon offense, of health care based upon disease care, and so forth, and to construct better policies that are more in harmony with natural law and are more efficient in compassionate use of our precious resources. Another example of how my deepest sense of responsibility caused me to actually nurture and build a whole new passion, which became the driving force of my life for quite a few years. This inner calling, as you described it, would you describe that as an inner sense of purpose in your life, or mission? Sometimes people talk about one s mission in life. Dr. Hagelin: Yes, that deepest sense s purpose, deepest mission in life, which was clear to me, certainly by age 14, 15, 16 or 17, was, I would say, in the language at that time, God s realization, realization of the infinite and aligning myself with universal intelligence.
That ultimately took the form of physics, knowing God s will, aligning myself with the deepest principles governing the universe through, what s known empirically and scientifically about that intelligence, and also drew me to Maharishi s teachings and practices. Maharishi was the only teacher I came into contact with, and I came into contact with many, who really impressed me instantly with the depth of his understanding of life and the deepest principles of evolution. Much of your profession life has dealt with the relationship between human consciousness and the deepest understandings and expressions of physics as well as their application, as you said in your political campaigns, to --- practical policies in life. Could you, for our readers benefit, just talk a little bit about your understanding of consciousness, it s relationship to the physical, material world, and why it has been such a key and important element in your life and your work? Dr. Hagelin: As a young seeker of knowledge, I always strove to understand the core reality of life, the truths of existence, and what I came to learn after 15 years of higher education, is that the material universe is upheld by the non-material quantum mechanical world of intelligence that underlies it, and that the exploration of deeper levels of natural law, at the atomic and nuclear and sub nuclear levels of nature s functioning was probing deeper levels of intelligence in nature that were far beyond the realm of material existence. Ultimately, the discovery of the unified field, or heterotic super string, was a discovery of a field of pure intelligence whose nature was not material, but pure, self-interacting consciousness. So physics, in effect, had discovered consciousness at the basis of material existence. I wanted to know the nature of that consciousness, and it was really through Maharishi s program, through his techniques for the development of consciousness, that I experienced the reality of what that field of consciousness is. I discovered for myself, that human intelligence, at its core foundation, is universal intelligence, and at that level, you and I and everyone and everything in the universe is one.
We re united at our core, and that truth, that ultimate truth of the unity of life is the most precious and crucially important understanding to dawn, to emerge in this scientific age, the same reality that has been expressed and celebrated since time immemorial, in all the great spiritual traditions of the world, but now open to objective verification through the empirical approach of modern physics, and open to personal verification through the experiential approach of consciousness, and specifically for me, through the very universal and powerful technologies of Maharishi s Vedic science, including transcendental meditation. One question that we always ask in the Healthy, Wealthy nwise interviews is that the magazine believes strongly in the power of intention to manifest outcomes. What would you say is your current most important project, and what intention would you like us at Healthy, Wealthy nwise, as well as our readers, to hold for the fulfillment of that? Dr. Hagelin: Firstly, I should say I strongly support your belief in the power of intention based upon both science and direct experience. My most ardent desire today is to see an end to the senseless violence and continual legacy of war that has confronted humankind for so many, countless generations, and to bring lasting peace to the world on the basis of an emerging global understanding of the essential unity of life. If all of us could own that vision, if all of us could deeply understand and experience the unity of life, the scientific reality of the unity of life, that unity will be far more easily understood and assimilated by the billions of citizens of our global family. It s almost at the point where these words, where the ultimate reality of the unity of life are resonating with people, are beginning to make sense to people. We re not quite there, and it s important that we nucleate the transition, that we precipitate the transformation by bringing this core understanding and experience to as many people as possible, and from that understanding and experience of unity, real, lasting peace will inevitable emerge in the world today.
Your responses have been very profound and have taken us to some of the deepest considerations of human life. I m going to ask you to come up to a much more superficial level, just for a moment. You will be on the cover of the magazine in October, right before the Presidential election, and since you have been so actively involved in Presidential politics in the past, would you take a moment and comment on your perspective on the Presidential election and your advice to readers and voters as they go to the polls in the beginning of November? Dr. Hagelin: I m going to speak to this question as a citizen of the United States of America, not as the Director of a non-profit educational institution. I hope at the publication, you are allowed to do the same. I suppose you are? Yes. Dr. Hagelin: I think it s vitally important for the security of our country and the welfare of the world that we have a marked, immediate change in the administration and direction of the country, away from war as a means to peace, to a more inclusive and holistic approach that can unite the world in peace. I hope that every potential voter throws off any possible inertia that could prevent them from taking the personal initiative to go to the polls and vote their conscience. I would urge them to overcome whatever influence they have to bring the greatest possible turnout to create a change in the destructive direction our country has taken in the last two years. Unfortunately, or fortunately, in a democracy, we tend to get the government that we deserve, and to some extent, Bush s actions do reflect the will and the impulses of a great many citizens of this nation, but I think and hope we ve outgrown George W. Bush, who, in my opinion, is lagging behind the evolving consciousness of our country, and that is therefore time for a new leader who is more representative of the future of the great potential of our nation than the current administration. I left the field of electoral politics to dedicate my time to raising the collective consciousness of the people through education and by
organizing large and sustained collective meditation. My hope is that by doing so, and in joining forces with so many others who are similarly engaged in raising the consciousness of our nation, that the reward will be a more awakened electorate that won t allow a repeat of the electoral outcome of four years ago. What advice can you give our readers to help them find their passions and create balance in their lives today? Dr. Hagelin: I would challenge anyone to conceive of the greatest possible good that they can do for the welfare and progress of the entire society or to examine the grandest possible vision of what they believe society can and should be, and in that context, examine how they can play the most pivotal role in bringing this new civilization to being. In other words, I d encourage everyone to go for the highest burst and remind them that it is often easier to accomplish great things than it is to struggle to achieve small things. The reason for that is great things need to be accomplished at this critical point in human history, and nature needs the vehicle, those creative open souls, to accomplish those great things, and nature will certainly succeed in accomplishing what needs to be accomplished. To the extent we are willing to see ourselves in those pivotal roles and are willing to strive to play those pivotal roles, we may find remarkable support of nature, allowing us to effortlessly achieve those grandest of ambitions. What is the single most important idea that you d like to leave our readers with that we haven t yet discussed? Dr. Hagelin: We ve touched on it, but I think it s important to say. There s really no limit to human potential and there s no limit to what we can effortlessly achieve. The secret is to align human intelligence with the vast, organizing intelligence of nature that governs the universe and that upholds millions of species here on earth and trillions throughout the universe. By aligning our desires with the natural evolutionary flow of universal intelligence, virtually any impulse of thought can meet with tremendous success, and aligning individual intelligence with
nature s intelligence is what is called enlightenment. Developing the total brain and rising in higher states of consciousness is absolutely key to achieving ultimate individual fulfillment and to contributing maximum to the evolution of society towards an enlightened society - a unified field-based civilization of peace, prosperity and harmony in the family of nations. Wonderful. Thank you so much for taking this time. Dr. Hagelin: Wonderful! Good luck. Thank you.