Simeon Hein, Ph.D.
Simeon Hein received his Ph. D. in
sociology from Washington State University in 1993
and is the author of
Opening Minds: A Journey of Extraordinary Encounters, Crop
Circles, and Resonance (Mount Baldy Press, Inc., 2002). His
dissertation focused on the role of technology in social and
economic change, specifically how technology can destroy information
and interfere with natural evolutionary processes. A former
sociology teacher, he now runs the non-profit
Institute for Resonance
in Boulder, CO: an organization he founded in 1997 that specializes
in instructing people in the art of Resonant Viewing, the scientific
study of crop circles, and other subtle-energy phenomena.
He first learned remote viewing at the Farsight Institute in Atlanta
in 1996 and has also studied with government-trained viewers. His
website, which is devoted to the study of subtle-energy sciences, is
www.OpeningMinds.info.
Since the publication of Opening Minds, Dr. Hein has
participated in more than 275 radio and TV interviews. His most
recent work is
Planetary Intelligence: 101 Easy Steps to Energy, Well-Being,
and Natural Insight (Mount Baldy Press, Inc.).
PageOneLit.com: Where did you grow up and was reading and writing
a part of your life? Who were your earliest influences and why?
Simeon Hein,
Ph.D.: I grew up in New York City right on central park west. I
spent a lot of time playing in the park as an infant. So right from the
beginning I became interested in the contrast between wilder places and
man-made environments, conditioned and natural spaces. Some of my
earliest influences include Carlos Castaneda who wrote about alternative
ways of constructing reality and Lewis Mumford who wrote extensively on
how cities are built and the effects of technology on our world. The
German sociologist Max Weber had some great contributions to make. As a
young teenager and child, I also enjoyed the works of C.S. Lewis and
J.R.R. Tolkien.
PageOneLit.com: Why do you write?
Simeon Hein,
Ph.D.: I believe that I provide my readers with an alternative
worldview that is both practical and mind-expanding. At another level,
you find a voice within you that wants to be heard and your writing
becomes a channel for that voice. So when you integrate your inner
voices with the conscious idea of constructing alternative worldviews,
you end up writing books. It's like a big construction project made out
of paper.
PageOneLit.com: Who and/or what have been your biggest influences
with regard to your writing and why?
Simeon Hein, Ph.D.: I worked for a while with Don Miguel Ruiz,
author of The Four Agreements and other works, and his approach
affected how I put Planetary Intelligence together. I decided to
be less cerebral and more evocative and imaginary . On the other hand,
Opening Minds is a more academically-oriented book so
it's a brainier read.
A lot of my writing
has an academic feel to it, having spent many years in academia: but
there is also a deeper voice from the collective unknown in my writing.
I like to blend the two together to create a richer literary landscape.
PageOneLit.com: Your new book is "PLANETARY INTELLIGENCE" -- What
is the 'seventh sense' -- Define "PLANETARY INTELLIGENCE".
Simeon Hein,
Ph.D.: We all grow up with a story about who we are and we are doing
here. I think people should realize that they can change their story,
anytime they want. But first it takes awareness. You can get that
awareness in many ways. In my case, I started studying remote viewing in
1996, something developed and practiced by the military so as to create
psychic spies in the 1970's. It allows a person to access “non-local”
information from distant places, people, and events. This wasn't
something I thought the average person could do, but I was wrong. I
learned that anyone can learn to do this with a few days of practice,
basically by learning to access their subconscious mind. I became aware
that there are many different types of intelligence that we have able to
us, logical and rational intelligence being only one type. Our seventh
sense is the ability to spontaneously acquire accurate knowledge and
information without rational and logical thought. Basically, it's our
intuition. Planetary intelligence is about becoming aware that we have
that intuition and that the way we live on the planet can be more
intelligent in every sense of the word. Planetary Intelligence is a
rubric for many different types of non-verbal, intuitive, spontaneous
information. But the main idea is to deliberately slow down from time to
time so as to become more aware of your environment and yourself.
PageOneLit.com: In "PLANETARY INTELLIGENCE" you discuss that
nature 'contains lots of information which comes through our bodies,
not our intellect' - Please explain.
Simeon Hein,
Ph.D.: For the most part, we are taught by our education systems to
process information through our brains in a logical or formal way. But
what about when the unexpected occurs? Take the Indian Ocean earthquake
and tsunami of December, 2004. Some of the indigenous peoples, like
Moken of Thailand—the “Sea Gypsies,” they had the highest survival
rates. Why? Because they had folk songs that were written about the
“wave that eats people.” The songs told them what to in that situation:
to get to higher ground or farther out to see. 60 Minutes, with Bob
Simon reporting, recently did a story about them and how they survived
the tsunami. So Planetary Intelligence is a combination of awareness,
which comes through our bodies, basic instinct, and some kind of
knowledge or accumulated culture. However, purely rational logic
wouldn't have been enough in the tsunami because you had to paying
attention with your body in the first place.
Our brains are
filters and we often filter out important information that our body is
experiencing because it doesn't fit with what we think its going on.
Studies done at Harvard University show that our perceptions become
hard-wired into our brains after a few years of age. But the information
is still in your mind, you just don't consciously know it. So often we
are repressing our gut feelings and intuition to fit some acceptable
logical pattern of behavior. Hence the need for psychiatrists and
psychotherapists.
Recent research has
shown that people often make the best decisions when they think about
them less.
In fact, Guy Claxton
wrote a whole book about it: Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How
Intelligence Increases When You Think Less. Claxton shows that if
people slow down and rely on their feelings, emotional and physical,
they often do better on a variety of physiological and neurological
tests.
Another related book
is Tor Norretranders' The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down
the Size where he shows that our rational, conscious mind is much
more limited than we think it is. Our subconscious contains more than
99.9 percent of all of the information that comes through our physical
senses, but we are only aware of this information through gut feelings
and subtle perceptions because it isn't in our conscious mind.
PageOneLit.com: POWER versus COHERENCY - Please explain.
Simeon Hein, Ph.D.: Power comes from the ability to push or move
things around physically or politically. We have a lot of powerful
technology in our modern world. But sheer technological power can be an
impediment to creativity. Modern science shows that there is another
basis for organization: coherency which derives from an internal
impetus. Self-organization and chaos theories how how living systems can
spontaneously organize themselves with little help from the outside.
While our mechanistic mode of thinking, one we inherited from the
industrial era, stresses shear power to accomplish a task, quantum
mechanics tells that systems and particles can be inherently correlated
to create coherent energy fields, like a laser. So we have two
contrasting motifs: the gear-driven machine and the laser. We need to
mimic the latter more often because then we are using nature's inherent
organizing power to accomplish our work, and enhance our intelligence,
rather than routinized, predictable machines (and bureaucracies) that
destroy information and intelligence. Power actually destroys
information. Computers, powerful though they may be in terms of
numerical processing, cannot actually understand what they are doing.
That's why systems like air traffic control are still run by people
using little pieces of paper. Michael Crichton's novel and movie
Jurassic Park made this point very well. And of course, our
nation's experiences
in Vietnam and now
in Iraq make the same point.
PageOneLit.com: In "PLANETARY INTELLIGENCE" you speak of
'Giving something back' -- Should this be a daily practice? Explain. Can
you give us an example of something recently where you 'gave something
back.'
Simeon Hein, Ph.D.: The best thing you can give back is a sense
of appreciate and gratitude of all the good things in your life. By
expressing this feeling, you complete the energy cycle of life and
increase the flow of intelligence. It can also come in the form of
simple acts, unobserved, where you give something of yourself, to help
out or improve your immediate environment or living space. I believe
this type of activity creates a channel of communication with living
things outside of yourself. It doesn't necessarily have to be daily, but
don't forget about it.
By constantly
focusing only on what you can get out of situation narrows your
perception and frequency range of the of information you perceive.
Planetary intelligence, on the other hand, is about non-specific
awareness even bordering on “spacing out” from time to time. Yet the
research shows us that this precisely what is needed to have fuller
access to your subconscious. That's why companies like Google and others
devote so much of their resources to extracurricular activities for
their employees, even during working hours. Non-structured playtime
increases creativity.
I have a dog that I
enjoy taking to the dog park as much as possible. He enjoys it and I
always learn a lot about dog behavior and getting along with others.
Dogs are really masters of sociability. Even though they fight, they
usually get over it quickly and move on. And then they act like buddies
after words. So by giving him unconditional attention, I get access to a
whole different level of information than I have while sitting at a
desk.
So the idea is to
give something of yourself in order to connect with new levels of
reality and life energy: and in
the process
learn something about yourself. For a lot of people this can take the
form of gardening, outdoor activities, and taking care of pets. I'd like
to believe that by writing and teaching remote viewing class I am giving
something back.
PageOneLit.com: What do you hope readers walk away with after
reading "PLANETARY INTELLIGENCE"?
Simeon Hein,
Ph.D.: The main point is to expand your awareness of yourself so as
to experience every moment as being unique and magnificent. Rather than
only focusing on the goal, we can choose to become masters of the
processes that allow us to achieve those goals. And when you achieve
that mastery, every moment seems special and vibrant, even magical.
PageOneLit.com: How has your life changed since becoming a
published writer? Discuss a little some of your other published works -
Simeon Hein,
Ph.D.: In my first work, Opening Minds: A Journey of
Extraordinary Encounters, Crop Circles, and Resonance (2002) I
discussed how new scientific paradigms are challenging the
Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm that is the foundation for much of our
thinking in the Western world. And I talked about some of my personal
experiences with regard to remote viewing, crop circles, and other
related phenomena. Since then I have done over 275 radio and TV
interviews here and abroad. As a result, I meet people who have heard me
talk or seen me on the Discovery Channel, for example. In two cases,
airport security personnel recognized me and knew about Opening
Minds. So I have had to get used the fact that I've become a public
media figure and there is no going back to a totally private life. As an
author you are sharing aspects of your life with total strangers. And
since you are not meeting these readers personally, they can have any
ideas about you they want. What you write on paper becomes a
semi-permanent fixture beyond your control. Your ideas go out into
society and the universe and you no longer have any direct control over
it. It's exciting and also somewhat daunting. It raises your level of
personal responsibility since anything you do or say can come back to
you later on in a radio interview or other venue. So you have to pay
more attention to every aspect of your life because what you do has a
broader impact than it used to.
PageOneLit.com: What's next?
Simeon Hein,
Ph.D.: I am working on a music CD with vocalist
Elisa Brown.
I'm doing the guitar work and harmony vocals. We're focusing on mostly
Irish celtic, and some American songs, that have a “planetary
intelligence” feel to them. These are songs that have some sort of
positive effect on your body and make you feel something special. We're
hoping to have the CD finished by the end of 2007.
Planetary
Intelligence is just the first in the series of Planetary
Intelligence books. I'm imagining 7 to 10 titles in the whole series.
It's a lifelong project.
PageOneLit.com: What was the last book you read?
Simeon Hein, Ph.D.: I just finished Dean Radin's Entangled
Minds where he discusses all of the evidence that supports the idea
that humans have some sort of natural, intuitive abilities in the realm
of non-local perception and psychic functioning.
He's collected all
the statistical data, and lots of anecdotes, that overwhelmingly show
that conventional science is wrong to label these phenomena as
“paranormal.” These abilities are actually built into us.
I 've also recently
finished reading James Gleick's book Faster and Carl Honore's
In Praise of Slowness both of which encourage us to slow down and
stop rushing around so much.
PageOneLit.com: Do you have any hobbies? What are they? How
do they enhance your writing?
Simeon Hein,
Ph.D.:As a I alluded to above, I am an acoustic guitarist in the
open-tuning, fingerpicking style. I've written and produced 5 tapes and
CDs of mostly original guitar music (see Amazon or my website
MountBaldy.com for more info). Music is certainly one avenue to a
different level of information from ordinary, logical thinking. But it's
one that many people identify with and enjoy. The popularity of music
shows us that mechanistic thinking isn't enough to make our lives feel
fulfilling. And of course, playing music allows for a type of right
brain, artistic expression that contributes to writing.
I also enjoy
walking, biking and Chinese Chi Kung as a way to stay in contact with my
subconscious mind. The body has it's own logic, and it 's important to
respect and nurture our physical selves as much as possible. Doing so
allows us to cultivate all of the intelligence available to us.
