DiCarlo: Through your work, you are exploring the frontiers of human potential. Have you discovered any boundaries to that potential?
Green: We haven't found any boundaries. It's sort of like coming to the edge of a continent and just finding the edge-we don't know where the boundaries are. We're just beginning to start exploring the continent.
I don't think that scientists as a whole have done more than landed and planted their flag. Not much has been discovered yet.
The ultimate human potential has been nicely described by the Tibetans, and that is this: to become conscious of all the different levels of who you are and to be able to work on all these different levels at the same time instead, unlike the present situation in which we have a conscious self and an unconscious self. If you talk to psychologists and the psychiatrists they will agree that there is an unconscious self. And that's what the Tibetans and the Hindus and the Chinese and the mystics have always said. But in the unconscious self are all the spiritual levels as well as the normal subconscious which Freud talked about. Our ultimate human potential is to become aware of all these things, and when we do, we are able to answer the question, "Who are we?" and "What is our own nature as a human being?" We find our relationship to the larger whole, in other words to Divine Being. That's the idea of the ultimate of human potential, it is to find your relationship.
The Christians say, "To find your relationship to God." Some of the modern scientists might talk about it as finding your relationship to nature.
DiCarlo: So would you say that we are in a watershed period now where collectively and on a wholesale level we are actually re-defining our understanding of that relationship?
Green: Well, yes, I think so. Don't you?
DiCarlo: In his book, "The Future of the Body," Michael Murphy draws upon decades of research into extraordinary human capabilities. Do you believe mankind is evolving into what some have called a "multi-sensory species?
Green: Well yes, but what the yogis have said all along is that as you develop in this way, you finally become aware of your connection with Gaia and with other human beings. All of the parapsychological abilities are only indicators of what will I think, be common, human faculties to be aware of each other. At the present moment, they are called non-sensory, but that's wrong. It's not non-sensory. All it is, is non-physical sensory.
As people reach these higher stages of human development, they gradually becoming more and more aware. Most every person at some time in there life has had some sort of psychic experience. For example, they knew what some distant relative was thinking without getting a letter from them. As people become more and more aware, these types of phenomenon happen more often. It isn't all of a sudden like, "one day everything is red, and the next day it is green." It's sort of like a gradual development of faculties, the same thing as when you grow up from being a baby. You just gradually become more and more aware of your world and what you can do in it. It's like that.
It's the same as the baby. The baby starts out just being conscious only of itself. In terms of what the baby is aware of, it's almost like as though it's the center of the universe. But gradually it develops and finds its relationship to its family members and to the clan and to the group and to society in general and to the world. It's a gradual development. I think that's what happens to humans in the larger sense. As they expand into becoming conscious of the normal collective unconscious, parapsychological things happen more often.
DiCarlo: In your copper wall experiment you have identified a way to demonstrate the power of intention to cause a change to take place in the physical world, in this case a change in the voltage of the walls of a room. In my own life, I have been intrigued by the ability to use intention to actually dissipate clouds, to make them disappear.
Green: Ralph Alexander actually discussed that in his book, "Creative Realism", which I thought was really quite interesting. It had to do with how you develop these abilities to focus your attention in such a way that you can become part of the collective conscious, which includes Gaia, the planet. So you can change an idea in the mind of Gaia. When you do that, the cloud upon which you are focusing your attention will disappear. The reason that can be done is because we are all part of the world. Every individual is part of the planet, every individual is part of Gaia. All the clouds, all the rivers and lakes, and all the animals are part of Gaia. When you generalize yourself, you generalize your consciousness so that you start developing awareness of Gaia, and then you can start thinking in the mind of Gaia and when you do, things like clouds come under your control. Alexander by the way is the one one who invented the phrase, "The Field of Mind." He said, "You can think of it as a field of mind, and everything you see on the planet is in this mind." Well, if he had been a minister, he would have said, "Everything is in God's mind." And if you can raise yourself where you can think in God's mind, since you are part of the Divine Being itself, and you can change an idea, then things can happen in the environment. That's the explanation of psychokinesis, of healing, and that's Ralph Alexander's explanation of cloud dissipation.
DiCarlo: If you think of the earth as being your extended body, it's almost like learning how to control certain processes within the body...
Green: Well, sure. What is the body of the planet? The body of the planet is Gaia's body. You are part of Gaia. The way you learn the ABC's is that you practice inside your own skin. The rest of the alphabet is outside your skin. But after you learn how to think in your own mind, and you can control your own self, gradually that ability is extended. You become aware of your relationship to the greater whole, and you can start thinking in terms of the greater whole. This causes something to happen in the greater whole.
DiCarlo: Is it because you shift your "identity" to the greater whole that you have the ability to influence the greater whole?
Green: Sure. If you could change a single idea in the mind of God, then something will change, right? From the metaphysical point of view and from the yogic point of view, every chair, every door knob, every plate, everything on the planet exists in the mind of God. If you change that idea in the mind of God-and the dense level of this physical world that we know so well is called the Maya-if you can change that idea in the Maya, then that thing will move or disappear. People in India have interpreted Maya as being something that isn't true, as illusion-but that's incorrect. Maya is not permanent-it's always moving, it's always changing. So therefore it's not eternal. It's more like the clouds. The clouds are appearing and disappearing. The things on the planet, like chairs and tables, appear and disappear much more slowly, so we think of them as fixed. Nevertheless, they are not fixed. They are just part of the energy structure, they are part of the Maya.
Sai Baba says, "You don't perform any miracles. All you do is manipulate the Maya." Well, how do you manipulate the Maya? You find your connection to the Divine Being. So all those pieces fit together.
DiCarlo: How significant is the work of frontier scientists, such as Bill Tiller, who has developed a model for understanding these subtle energies?
Green: Bill Tiller is a scientist who is aware of the fact that these internal domains or other energies exist and he's trying to help build a science of it. Scientists are the priests of acceptance, and it's important for the graduation of humanity-to use Buckminster Fuller's expression-that scientists learn enough so that they can break through, expand the frontiers and lead the way. People depend upon scientists. So Bill Tiller and others who are working in that area are interested in developing knowledge of how all of this stuff happens.
As Ralph Alexander said, "Everything happens according to natural law." Sai Baba said, "There is no such thing as a miracle. It's only the application of natural law." And scientists like Bill Tiller are trying to make it objective so people can understand it better, and that will help them go through the transformation.
A lot of meditators are doing self-exploration-they want to explore. Quite a few scientists are trying to explain. These explanations are important because they help people shape their world view. If the world view includes these subtle energies, then when the energies become important in your life, you won't be so shook up so to speak. It makes it possible to move through the transformation process with less pain.
DiCarlo: Some people might argue that science doesn't have any business sticking its nose into the domain of religion, spirituality and the non-physical?
Green: Well if that's true then science doesn't have any business of any kind. The business of science is everything. There isn't anything that science isn't connected with. What does science mean anyway? It means to become conscious. To understand. Science doesn't have a single domain to work in. That's an unfortunate idea that a lot of scientists have. But that's like wearing the blinders that you have manufactured for yourself.
DiCarlo: Well certainly pioneers like yourself and Bill Tiller are exceptional in that you have open-mindedly pursued a particular area of interest that most other scientists would recoil from....
Green: A scientist that I worked with-when he understood what was going on-said, "I won't accept any of this, or any of these energies. I won't accept any of it." I said, "Well, why won't you?" And he said, "If this turns out to be true, then everything that I am would go down the drain. And everything I have learned in graduate school and ever since would now be worthless."
And I said, "No, it's not that way at all. Everything that you are and everything that you learned is still there. It is still factual. All of this is just an addition to what you know. It's not "Instead of." That's the problem with most people's world view. As their world view changes, they think that it means that everything is now done away with. But it isn't done away with, it's merely expanded. It's like the babies view. As the baby grows up, the world view keeps changing. But it isn't that they viewed things as a baby was wrong.
DiCarlo: You have paraphrased the physicist Neils Bohr by stating that "science progresses one death at a time." What is the real reason behind all the resistance to new ideas and to the new models of the way the world is?
Green: That's simply fear. If you have an idea of how the world functions, and somebody comes along and they can show you it isn't exactly that way, then you start trembling inside. Everything that you have come to believe has been called into question. It's like the platform of your world has been shaken. Unfortunately, people make the mistake of having their identity linked to their world view. Isn't that amazing? People's identities are linked to their views of the world, so they feel like their identity is threatened.
Scientists are no better than anyone else in that way. They are not any better than religious fundamentalists. They are just as nervous about having their world view shaken as anyone else.
DiCarlo: But I thought scientists were supposed to follow the truth wherever it may lead? Isn't that what distinguishes the true scientist from the technician?
Green: It does, but who is going to say what a true scientist is? After an Einstein does his thing and his work turns out to be important, then he's called a true scientist. Before that, he's called a nut. That's true of a lot of scientists. They are all nuts until they are dead. Then it turns out that maybe they had some good ideas. Gradually, they become more and more famous until after about two or three hundred years they are well known. That's pretty funny.