New Dimensions; Brain/Mind; Part 3

<v Speaker>[Song: One Step Into the Light by The Moody Blues] <v Michael Toms>You're listening to New Dimensions and this is KQED F.M.

<v Michael Toms>in San Francisco. <v Michael Toms>My name is Michael Toms. I'm talking with Marilyn Ferguson, the creator <v Michael Toms>of Brain/Mind Bulletin and the author of a book entitled Brain Revolution <v Michael Toms>and a book that will be coming out later, The Aquarian <v Michael Toms>Conspiracy. <v Michael Toms>What's the subtitle, Marilyn? <v Marilyn Ferguson> The Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s. <v Michael Toms>That brings me to my next question. <v Michael Toms>The 80s are coming on, and we've been through the 70s, and we all experienced <v Michael Toms>the 60s. And there, um, it's like the 70s are we <v Michael Toms>being called the silent 70s by some media <v Michael Toms>and the 60s being in the turbulent 60s and silent 70s. <v Michael Toms>How do you see- do you agree with the term silent 70s? <v Marilyn Ferguson>Well, the major media don't listen. <v Marilyn Ferguson>That's why they think it's silent, right? [laughter] If they're not staging <v Marilyn Ferguson>demonstrations, that people aren't staging demonstrations, they don't know what's <v Marilyn Ferguson>happening. I think the revolution went inside.

<v Marilyn Ferguson>Many of the social activists and from the 1960s- <v Marilyn Ferguson>first of all, the 60s had their effect on the main culture for sure in <v Marilyn Ferguson>terms of changing, changing beliefs. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And many of the beliefs of the 1960s that were radical then are mainstream now. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Some of the social activists figured out what was wrong with that approach <v Marilyn Ferguson>to changing society, which was a confrontive approach. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And some are still wondering where the revolution went. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Many, as you know, many of the leaders of those movements- it <v Marilyn Ferguson>figures because if they were a vanguard, then there would be a vanguard now- became <v Marilyn Ferguson>involved in interior searches and came from <v Marilyn Ferguson>their own centers when they- when they have re emerged. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And many of them are now in influential positions of government and- and really, really <v Marilyn Ferguson>having an impact and are in the establishment or closely allied with the establishment, <v Marilyn Ferguson>having figured out that that's where you make changes.

<v Marilyn Ferguson>And having, I think, come to a point of, again, this is paradigm change instead of <v Marilyn Ferguson>pendulum change of understanding that, uh, <v Marilyn Ferguson>they are us, we're they that you can't affect a change, but we've got to make <v Marilyn Ferguson>them- we got to make them change. There's Jerry Rubin said 'I couldn't change anybody <v Marilyn Ferguson>until I changed myself.' There is a <v Marilyn Ferguson>Canadian government consultant named Rubin Nelson who wrote a book, a little <v Marilyn Ferguson>booklet that The Canadian government published called Illusions of Urban Man, wonderful <v Marilyn Ferguson>little book. And he was saying in there something to the effect that the main <v Marilyn Ferguson>divisions run within us, not between us. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Once we come to terms with, you know, those- those all those aspects of ourselves and <v Marilyn Ferguson>begin to make ourselves whole, then we can understand what are the fears and concerns of <v Marilyn Ferguson>the establishment that people trying to protect the status quo. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And I think that's what's been happening. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Many people who would have been or who were radicals in the 1960s are now <v Marilyn Ferguson>in helping to make policy in Washington and in various state

<v Marilyn Ferguson>governments, or they are an otherwise influential positions. <v Marilyn Ferguson>I spoke recently at an AHP Conference Association for Humanistic Psychology <v Marilyn Ferguson>conference at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And in this seminar, an older man <v Marilyn Ferguson>described by somebody later as one of the old guard had said, 'Oh, but what about the <v Marilyn Ferguson>people? But the people have the power. What about the people who have the power? <v Marilyn Ferguson>They won't change.' And there were two responses to that from other participants <v Marilyn Ferguson>in the seminar. One, an educator <v Marilyn Ferguson>said, 'wait a minute, we have the power.' And she went on to explain profound <v Marilyn Ferguson>changes that she was helping to effect within the school system and had allies <v Marilyn Ferguson>helping her with that. <v Marilyn Ferguson>It was there was there would be all you had to do was begin to do your part <v Marilyn Ferguson>of it and it would happen. And then another person who was there said, <v Marilyn Ferguson>look, 'what we have to remember is we were them.

<v Marilyn Ferguson>You know, these people we think are so different from us.' She said, this the mistake <v Marilyn Ferguson>that we've made that the that the people in humanistic psychology have made for too long. <v Marilyn Ferguson>As you know, we are loving, open, etc. <v Marilyn Ferguson>people and and those Philistines out there, what do they know? <v Marilyn Ferguson>[laughter] And she said 'we were them last week.' [laughter] <v Marilyn Ferguson>and so I think this is part of what's happening is this is a time of reconciliation <v Marilyn Ferguson>and inclusion and a seeking new forms. <v Marilyn Ferguson>The 1970s has been important- has been an important period for making <v Marilyn Ferguson>new forms. We can't go into a new age with old forms that was tried. <v Marilyn Ferguson>I mean, it was like, we're going to get rid of this hierarchy over here. <v Marilyn Ferguson>We're going to replace it with another hierarchy. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Only our hierarchy is better than your hierarchy. <v Marilyn Ferguson>We're understanding that in many ways it was the forms and the structures that <v Marilyn Ferguson>we had that were themselves wrong. <v Marilyn Ferguson>I've been involved for years in- in a public alternative school in Los Angeles <v Marilyn Ferguson>that a community group helped to convince the school board to start

<v Marilyn Ferguson>seven or eight years ago and too many people <v Marilyn Ferguson>came into that school with the- and it was only a minority, but it was enough to <v Marilyn Ferguson>disrupt a lot of what happened over the years- with a romantic <v Marilyn Ferguson>vision of what alternative education should be like. <v Marilyn Ferguson>But with somehow deeply embedded old conditioning immediately found themselves <v Marilyn Ferguson>in power struggles that should never have happened because they were still oriented to <v Marilyn Ferguson>old structures. You know, we can sometimes accept on an intellectual level <v Marilyn Ferguson>or a 'isn't that nice? Wouldn't it be nice if'- ideas that we can't live in at a gut <v Marilyn Ferguson>level that we haven't really integrated. And so I think <v Marilyn Ferguson>that a lot of what- a lot of what I think is happening is reflected in in terms <v Marilyn Ferguson>of the difference between the 60s and the 70s is <v Marilyn Ferguson>a kind of a contrast between humanistic psychology <v Marilyn Ferguson>and transpersonal psychology or humanistic education and- and some of the newer things

<v Marilyn Ferguson>happening in education, which is that the humanistic part of it was <v Marilyn Ferguson>very important. We had to first come to a place where we said people should be, quote, be <v Marilyn Ferguson>in touch with their feelings, unquote, to we should have a <v Marilyn Ferguson>?inaudible? environment. I mean, let's face it, education is going to happen best in a <v Marilyn Ferguson>humanistic environment. But that isn't enough because a lot of people who were <v Marilyn Ferguson>appreciative of the humane failed to recognize <v Marilyn Ferguson>also the potential that was there. <v Marilyn Ferguson>It's like the expectations were very modest. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Well, don't- you know he's in touch with his feard that don't make him do that or I'm in <v Marilyn Ferguson>touch with my anger and boy, am I enjoying- without understanding that <v Marilyn Ferguson>those things could be transformed. <v Marilyn Ferguson>In a recent issue of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, there is an article by <v Marilyn Ferguson>Barbara Forisha. I don't remember the title, but it has to do with, uh, <v Marilyn Ferguson>Carl- using Carlos Castaneda as an example of how the transpersonal approach <v Marilyn Ferguson>can be in- In her view, it was in conflict with the humanistic.

<v Marilyn Ferguson>I don't think it's in conflict, but it is- it is larger than- it's a larger <v Marilyn Ferguson>paradigm because it includes challenge, and it includes <v Marilyn Ferguson>going through your fear. <v Marilyn Ferguson>You're shaking in your boots, but you're going to do it anyway. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And it's as if we talk about feelings. <v Marilyn Ferguson>But there is a level- a level of feelings below the <v Marilyn Ferguson>surface, like anger and fear or kind of secondary feelings. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And we can reach a level where there is more love and transcendence. <v Marilyn Ferguson>I think this is the direction that things are moving. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Expanding on the humanistic into something that has a larger vision. <v Michael Toms>We talk about making changes, particularly making changes in the establishment. <v Michael Toms>It brings up the whole issue of how change really happens. <v Michael Toms>And I think of institutions, particularly large institutions, <v Michael Toms>that you see people who are creative, <v Michael Toms>inventive, imaginative, go into the large institution and <v Michael Toms>wind up becoming a part of the institution and never really being able to manifest any

<v Michael Toms>creativity or ingenuity or inventiveness, because the institution kind of just <v Michael Toms>presses that automatically of in and of itself. <v Michael Toms>It's the structure. Yeah, the structure. What about the process of do you think the <v Michael Toms>institutions have to disintegrate before change can happen? <v Michael Toms>Or do you think change is really possible to happen to this huge, incredible institutions <v Michael Toms>like the federal government or like large corporations? <v Marilyn Ferguson>I think what's happening there is there's somebody did it recently, <v Marilyn Ferguson>did an article which struck me as being very insightful relating <v Marilyn Ferguson>to adaptation and innovation. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And they said that bureaucracies basically thrive on and promote <v Marilyn Ferguson>adaptation by their very nature. <v Marilyn Ferguson>The dismantling of bureaucracies and hierarchy seems to be a necessary part of moving <v Marilyn Ferguson>into a new society, dismantling. <v Marilyn Ferguson>I mean, obviously, you're not going to take apart the federal government, but you can <v Marilyn Ferguson>somehow perhaps restructure the way things are done so that you have <v Marilyn Ferguson>autonomous sections so that you have entrepreneurial parts of it.

<v Marilyn Ferguson>And somehow it might- it might be that can be transformed. <v Marilyn Ferguson>The point that I thought was interesting that this person was making about adaptation <v Marilyn Ferguson>and innovation was innovation basically is transformation. <v Marilyn Ferguson>It's a paradigm shift. It's moving into a whole other thing. <v Marilyn Ferguson>They made the point you can be creative in your adaptation. <v Marilyn Ferguson>People can be creatively psychosomatically ill, you know, there are all kinds of things <v Marilyn Ferguson>we can do that are creative, that are not necessarily advancing us. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And you can keep elaborating within something that doesn't work and being creative within <v Marilyn Ferguson>that. Innovation requires- is breaking out. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And it makes it very difficult if you have a large structure, and there <v Marilyn Ferguson>are too many places that the energy can get dissipated. <v Marilyn Ferguson>But people are working at it, even though there- there is, um, someone <v Marilyn Ferguson>at the cabinet level who is really involved in consciousness <v Marilyn Ferguson>activities and, um, who said to me the only way we're going to change <v Marilyn Ferguson>bureaucracy is to change the bureaucrats.

<v Marilyn Ferguson>And so this person is bringing in seminar type trainers to deal with <v Marilyn Ferguson>the bureaucrats in this cabinet office. <v Michael Toms>Well, that's hopeful. <v Michael Toms>It is incredible how creative we are with our problems. <v Michael Toms>[Laughter]. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Our sabotage! [laughter]. <v Michael Toms>We just make wonderful problems for- its- just go on and on. <v Michael Toms>And at the same time, I guess we create them because we need to have them so that we can <v Michael Toms>grow. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Yes, um, sometimes we could maybe <v Marilyn Ferguson>rechannel our creativity into something that will help us grow a little faster. <v Marilyn Ferguson>So we'd have to be stuck in the same place for a while. <v Marilyn Ferguson>But you can't you can be very creative. <v Marilyn Ferguson>You can be very creative in staying in the same place. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And there is something called the fear of success syndrome. <v Michael Toms>It's called being stuck. <v Marilyn Ferguson>[laughter] Yes, an interesting thing about this fear of success- They've found it- <v Marilyn Ferguson>definitely- there is definitely a syndrome which some people manifest really strongly, <v Marilyn Ferguson>but probably we all have a little of which is that if you get too <v Marilyn Ferguson>close to real success, you draw back, you sabotage yourself.

<v Marilyn Ferguson>You don't want to fail. So if you get too close to failure, you start working real hard. <v Marilyn Ferguson>But there's a kind of a safe zone there. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And they found that the family situations that seem to promote this are <v Marilyn Ferguson>the parent indicates to the child that they it's important <v Marilyn Ferguson>to master certain things, but they're helping them a little too much or showing a lot of <v Marilyn Ferguson>concern that the child doesn't think that he's really going to be able to master it. <v Marilyn Ferguson>So there's both the need to succeed and the conviction that you can't <v Marilyn Ferguson>a real double, double bind and that <v Marilyn Ferguson>this fear of success syndrome is the thing that keeps us kind of <v Marilyn Ferguson>playing safe. We won't take that challenge because we might fail. <v Marilyn Ferguson>So we do want to get too close to it and we keep drawing back. <v Marilyn Ferguson>There is a passage from the playwright Apollinaire, 'Come to the edge, <v Marilyn Ferguson>he said. They said, we are afraid. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Come to the edge! He said. <v Marilyn Ferguson>They said, we are afraid again.

<v Marilyn Ferguson>He said, Come to the edge. They came. <v Marilyn Ferguson>He pushed them and they flew.' I think that <v Marilyn Ferguson>the transformative process is us stressing, even stressing <v Marilyn Ferguson>each other in- in a- kind of- I think we're all a lot of us are involved in a kind of a <v Marilyn Ferguson>mutual teaching learning relationships in our friendships and all our relationships <v Marilyn Ferguson>and with things that happen in our lives. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And that one of the exciting things happen- that happens in terms of the <v Marilyn Ferguson>support networks, the friends that you have, the friends that I have, the people who are <v Marilyn Ferguson>nurturant to us is they also- they- they help us through. <v Marilyn Ferguson>They say things to us at just the right time. <v Marilyn Ferguson>They ask us the questions we're afraid to ask ourselves and- <v Marilyn Ferguson>and they help us. We're helping each other to fly by going through that fear by coming <v Marilyn Ferguson>to the edge again and again. [Song: North Stary by Argon] <v Michael Toms>That piece of music for those of you who might be interested, is called North Star

<v Michael Toms>by a group that we play often, a group called Argon. <v Michael Toms>We're talking with Marilyn Ferguson, the editor and publisher of Brain/Mind Bulletin, <v Michael Toms>the author of a book called, The Brain Revolution, about some of the amazing things <v Michael Toms>that are happening in research into the human brain. <v Michael Toms>Marilyn, one of the criticisms of what some of the movements that you've been talking <v Michael Toms>about, we've been exploring here the movement towards transformation, the <v Michael Toms>search for the spiritual side of life, looking for the deeper <v Michael Toms>meanings of being alive is that the- <v Michael Toms>these movements tend to be exclusive, that they're not crossing <v Michael Toms>many lines. <v Michael Toms>In some cases they're almost elitist in a sense. <v Michael Toms>For instance, we don't see a whole lot of ethnic minorities involved in much of this. <v Michael Toms>How do you- how do you see that? <v Marilyn Ferguson>I think there's a very practical reason for this that doesn't <v Marilyn Ferguson>have to do with exclusiveness, because I think basically these groups are inclusive

<v Marilyn Ferguson>in that- that anyone is welcome to be involved, <v Marilyn Ferguson>but that we don't tend to take <v Marilyn Ferguson>up this interest until we have exhausted those things that our culture promised <v Marilyn Ferguson>us would bring us happiness, that basically people have to have <v Marilyn Ferguson>discovered that affluence, success and the other aspects <v Marilyn Ferguson>of- oh, you know what? <v Marilyn Ferguson>Basically what the culture holds out is its rewards- don't fill that need. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And that for most people in our society, there is still the possibility <v Marilyn Ferguson>that if they get whatever it is that they want, either in terms <v Marilyn Ferguson>of material or achievement type things, that that will <v Marilyn Ferguson>that that will satisfy that hunger so that- <v Marilyn Ferguson>Jean- Francois Revel who wrote, Without Marx or Jesus, in which he predicted <v Marilyn Ferguson>10 years ago, that the second great world revolution would take place in the <v Marilyn Ferguson>United States if it took place anywhere.

<v Marilyn Ferguson>He made the point that- that there is always this charge. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Well, it's the, uh, the upper classes or the upper middle classes or the highly educated <v Marilyn Ferguson>people who are involved and so on, he said <v Marilyn Ferguson>this has historically been the way of revolution, that that is <v Marilyn Ferguson>usually where revolution starts because it has to start among <v Marilyn Ferguson>those people disenchanted with the best that the culture has to offer. <v Marilyn Ferguson>He said there had to be aristocrats in France who had sampled <v Marilyn Ferguson>the joys of the court and found them wanting to participate in the revolution. <v Marilyn Ferguson>There was- in fact, Tocqueville made the point <v Marilyn Ferguson>in Democracy in America when he was writing about revolution and and <v Marilyn Ferguson>suggesting the direction he thought that- that it should happen <v Marilyn Ferguson>in France or that the change should take place was that it was essential <v Marilyn Ferguson>that the educated classes participate in helping to form the

<v Marilyn Ferguson>new. Because if they didn't, the the people who had started the revolution in that <v Marilyn Ferguson>case or the popular level of revolution didn't know where to go with it. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And indeed, the French Revolution had, as you know, terrible repercussions <v Marilyn Ferguson>on that account, but that there is there is <v Marilyn Ferguson>a need for people on the inside to turn against and reject <v Marilyn Ferguson>the status quo that the people who who have it and <v Marilyn Ferguson>that it makes sense, you know, from a really from really logical point of view. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And I've you know, I've heard this this is as you know, this has been commented <v Marilyn Ferguson>on for a long time at a typical conference on consciousness. <v Marilyn Ferguson>There are not very many ethnic minorities there, and uh, there are not <v Marilyn Ferguson>very many people there who have- Well, for one thing, of course, the cost of a lot of the <v Marilyn Ferguson>conferences may keep people who would like to be there from from attending in <v Marilyn Ferguson>terms of a wide socioeconomic representation.

<v Marilyn Ferguson>But I think gradually that's that's changing. <v Marilyn Ferguson>It is changing as more people achieve what they wanted to achieve and say, oh, wait a <v Marilyn Ferguson>minute, that's not enough. And that's- it's a phase. <v Marilyn Ferguson>You know, it's a stage that all of this is going through. <v Michael Toms>I'd like to go back for a moment to the scientific paradigm in your newsletter, <v Michael Toms>of course, is something that covers a lot of the advances that are taking place in <v Michael Toms>science. But you're covering it from another from a new perspective. <v Michael Toms>and so you're Pathfinder, as it were. <v Michael Toms>And I see a lot of the things happening in science. <v Michael Toms>I think most recently, as the most recent example, is a movement to oust parapsychology <v Michael Toms>and the study of psychicphenomena from the American Association for the Advancement <v Michael Toms>of Science. And this backlash. <v Michael Toms>And we're talking earlier before the program about the irony of- <v Michael Toms>of all of that in the sense if you look at the history of science and every breakthrough <v Michael Toms>was total odds with the existing scientific paradigm of the moment. <v Michael Toms>You know, we have contemporary scientists, scientists who are well known, who are famous

<v Michael Toms>as indeed famous and respected in their field, saying this <v Michael Toms>doesn't have anything to do with science without. <v Michael Toms>[sounds of agreement] How do you see that? <v Marilyn Ferguson>I think. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Well, parapsychology has had many, also many famous allies and famous <v Marilyn Ferguson>scientists like Einstein who were open to it. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And and Margaret Mead, who is a matter of fact, spoke on behalf <v Marilyn Ferguson>of the parapsychologist to get them into the Triple A S in the first place. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And as you may know, as- John Wheeler, I believe it was, the physicist <v Marilyn Ferguson>had- had suggested that parapsychology be removed from the academy. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And my understanding is that Kenneth Boulding, the president of the organization, <v Marilyn Ferguson>vigorously defended the freedom of research, <v Marilyn Ferguson>the right to study anything, no matter whether John Wheeler liked it or not. <v Marilyn Ferguson>It was still science as long as it was being designed scientifically. <v Marilyn Ferguson>I think that there is- there- the backlash, <v Marilyn Ferguson>I think, is too little and too late.

<v Marilyn Ferguson>The real is, as someone has said, the paradigm <v Marilyn Ferguson>shift about paradigm shifts has happened. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And that was the transformation that even though not- <v Marilyn Ferguson>not everyone is in sync with that at this time. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Enough people have begun to recognize the fact that that there is that <v Marilyn Ferguson>phenomenon in science, that there isn't any turning back. <v Marilyn Ferguson>The problem seems to be, and I've been discussing this with people- in fact we were <v Marilyn Ferguson>talking about maybe putting together a symposium in conjunction with one of <v Marilyn Ferguson>the university extensions or something on creativity in science to <v Marilyn Ferguson>expose more people to the understanding of what you just said, that all <v Marilyn Ferguson>the breakthroughs in science appeared to be crazy in the first place and why we keep <v Marilyn Ferguson>repeating this. This business of is treating <v Marilyn Ferguson>every major new idea as a heresy of of <v Marilyn Ferguson>punishing the people who advance the idea before, you know,

<v Marilyn Ferguson>bruised and battered. They're finally accepted. <v Marilyn Ferguson>If they're lucky, they're still alive. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Somehow this is the whole scientific process of breakthroughs, <v Marilyn Ferguson>which we badly need now, particularly with the energy crisis and so on, could be speeded <v Marilyn Ferguson>up if there were more acceptance. The really brilliant, creative, breakthrough <v Marilyn Ferguson>type scientist, innovative scientists are all complaining about the politics of research, <v Marilyn Ferguson>the politics of doing science. <v Marilyn Ferguson>They are expected always to account for what it is they're going to find. <v Marilyn Ferguson>You know, you're not going to get any money to do any research unless you can tell them <v Marilyn Ferguson>what you're gonna find. Well, if you're moving into an an unknown area, how do you know? <v Marilyn Ferguson>And supposing in the course of the experiment, something really strange comes up and you <v Marilyn Ferguson>want to pursue that, that's not in your grant. You didn't say you were going to do <v Marilyn Ferguson>that.[laughter, Host: Right] So I think there's an there is a need to <v Marilyn Ferguson>speed up the process of understanding the paradigm shift. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Niels Bohr, the great physicist, once said of an idea of his colleague Heisenberg <v Marilyn Ferguson>and as a matter of fact, it was an idea that didn't pan out.

<v Marilyn Ferguson>But he was asked what he thought of this idea of Heisenberg. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And he said, it isn't crazy enough to be true. <v Marilyn Ferguson>This is if the new idea <v Marilyn Ferguson>were sensible, you would have thought of it a long time ago. <v Marilyn Ferguson>It would have just naturally followed. But it's when you come to this point of tension, <v Marilyn Ferguson>and this is true in our personal lives, too, in our personal experiences. <v Marilyn Ferguson>You've got a dilemma that you can't seem to resolve. <v Marilyn Ferguson>It doesn't fit- it doesn't fit your old belief system. <v Marilyn Ferguson>There seems to be these anomalies, these paradoxes, these things in your life that aren't <v Marilyn Ferguson>working. And what the only thing that will finally get you through <v Marilyn Ferguson>it is a paradigm shift. It's some totally new perspective that resolves that <v Marilyn Ferguson>paradox. And we have to be willing to look at it. <v Marilyn Ferguson>We have to be. And mostly we do what scientists do with the para-psychological <v Marilyn Ferguson>phenomena. We sweep it under the rug. It's too uncomfortable. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Don't tell me that stuff, because that whole scaffolding on which I'm standing <v Marilyn Ferguson>might fall if I had to look at it.

<v Michael Toms>It's really the antithesis of creativity to create those parameters <v Michael Toms>of those boundaries, those limits, so we can only do this within this nature. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Nature isn't allowed to do [laughter] that thing it's doing. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And as Saint Augustine said, there are no miracles in contradiction <v Marilyn Ferguson>to nature, only in contradiction to what we understand of nature. <v Michael Toms>Yeah, I think it's something that Jacques Vallee talked about - what- when he talks <v Michael Toms>about, how he first got interested in the study of UFOs and <v Michael Toms>became- and got interested in space science was when he was an astronomer in France. <v Michael Toms>And- and in the process of studying the stars, they were coming up and they were taking <v Michael Toms>photographs and they were coming up with photographs of- of objects that didn't exist <v Michael Toms>within the realm of what the paradigm was. <v Michael Toms>And so they were just erased. <v Michael Toms>And so what are we erasing these for? <v Michael Toms>You know this- well, it doesn't fit. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Oh, that's perfect. Get really literal erasing of it. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Well, you thought. Did you see the movie? Oh, God, yes.

<v Marilyn Ferguson>John Denver. George Burns. I loved that part where it was so perfect <v Marilyn Ferguson>after George Burns, alias God appears in the courtroom. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And they had the hearing in the chambers afterward. <v Marilyn Ferguson>And they find that the tapes and the transcripts don't reflect what happened. <v Marilyn Ferguson>Two of the four or five people sitting there immediately decide they don't have to <v Marilyn Ferguson>believe it anymore. As long as no permanent record exists, the experience <v Marilyn Ferguson>of their eyes and ears, they can forget. <v Speaker>[Song: The Wings that Flys Us Home by John Denver] <v Speaker>[Song: The Wings that Flys Us Home by John Denver]

<v Speaker>[Song: The Wings that Flys Us Home by John Denver]