 Hello and welcome to another episode of the leaders room. I'm Rajiv and you're with the Iklif leadership and governance center today We have the pleasure of having with us in the studio Dr. Mario Varvogles Who is the director of Institute met up see chic in Paris and also formerly the president of the parapsychological Association? the international body of scientific research on parapsychology Besides his interest in parapsychology Mario also is an internationally renowned consultant in Organizational creativity and innovation Mario. It's a pleasure to have you with us. Welcome to the show Thank you Mario. You've been researching psychic phenomena since the mid 70s Is there a particular area in this vast field that you are particularly interested in? Indeed is vast and Everything interests me. I think that Right now where I'm at right now. There are a few things that I'm especially interested in one is the link of these phenomena to What we call altered states of consciousness or modified states of consciousness because it points to? Accessibility it means that we may have a means for voluntarily intentionally boosting or Taking on appropriating these phenomena and states like meditation like Hypnagogic or hypnotic state deep relaxation all seem to systematically produce Higher effects in laboratories Then our normal every diet state. So that's one part of Cy research that interests me very much and the other is what we call bio psychokinesis, which is Influence of the human mind on living systems and in particular on humans because this is Perhaps the basis for what we call psychic healing and if we can really get a grasp on this We may find ways none intrusive None allopathic ways of helping other human beings In terms of health in terms of their energy. Let me go back to your earlier interest, which is Altered states of consciousness. You talk a little bit more about that. What does that mean? And what does the why should somebody who's not studying this area be interested? Well in these states were we're shifting in many ways. We're shifting in the way we think about things We're shifting in the way we perceive We're shifting in terms of our let's say the report the rapport of the ego with the world the self with the world and It seems that as we shift Something is changing in terms of psychic phenomena. This is what we're seeing in terms of scores in the tests So of course if we're not interested in psychic if we're not interested in Interconnectedness because that's the real issue here then maybe older states are not of any interest to us But I think that today Normal human beings and leaders are interested in how we're connected So you think you what you're saying is that in different states of consciousness and altered states of consciousness We can establish a better connection between us and other people. Yes, the the at this this whole Subject is I think about interconnectedness at least between people and perhaps between people and the world at large and altered states like meditation for example like the Hypnagogic state sleep onset we're seeing both subjectively, but also objectively that indeed a sense of interconnectedness is increasing so when I say objectively it means that Scores in ESP tests for example increase when people are let's say in a meditative state So what is an ESP test? well, basically an ESP test is when Let's say let's take telepathy. That's an easy example You have somebody who plays the role of a sender in one room and Somebody who plays the role of the receiver in another room and the sender is going to focus on one Target image which is randomly selected out of many images and The receiver has to try and pick that up and there are different ways of doing this and In the end the receiver Still blind still not knowing what the sender said Sent the receiver must choose the right target from among many decoys and so we evaluate the statistics So what we find in these ESP tests is that when the receiver is in an altered state? Then the scoring is higher is superior. Okay, then when they're in their normal state Got it. Very good So in recent years you've been using technology to explore to allow people to explore their own psychic potential Why are you doing that? well Technology can be an important aid First of all for putting helping people get into an altered state for example or also for detecting subtler Aspects of Psi phenomena. It could be that at some level we're connected at all times At least with people with certain people, but that the conscious mind for many practical reasons filters that out So the technology can help us go below consciousness for example to see if physiological aspects of our body ask physiological aspects are somehow showing Interconnectedness even though on a conscious level we seem to be going about our normal business so technology is important for kind of plunging below the visible level and seeing for example if you're EG or if your Skin conductivity or your heart rate got it being affected at the time that somebody is going for example through a traumatic experience Got it. Okay. Okay, so Hooking somebody on an FMRI scanner an FM scanner and and watching neural activity would be an example at the time Right at a sender is going through right right some experience. Yes. Got it So Changing gears a little bit. What role does the human mind that is thought? intention or attention Play with personal development in terms of what I can do Better at work or in life well in my my professional life I'm a consultant in innovation and creativity and There's certainly one thing that stands out in this aspect it's that innovative leaders and People who truly are creative in an efficient way are people in some sense that Know how to evoke energy to focus the mind on something to pursue it in spite of maybe some difficulties and obstacles and In a way, it's about mind control and heart control and other things How do I get into a state of mind that really is helping me move my life forward as opposed to a defensive state? Or a self-defeated state or just a passive state and what's interesting is that I think this research on psi phenomena is showing some very specific ways in which the mind does indeed Influence its world when the mind is in the right mindset Can you give me an example perhaps? well For example, one of the early psi researchers in the 60s and 70s who was interested in this topic Douglas Dean Did quite a bit of research with business leaders and he was looking Something like 5,000 business leaders were interviewed and a large number of them tested and what he found is that business leaders who? tended to Multiply the the company's Standing by two or three in the last few years had a strong confidence in their intuitions in their Gut sense of where things are going their confidence and these same business leaders tended to have good scores inside tests Psychic tests in other words if you can believe it you can do it exactly and but we actually had Two objective indices one is of course their reports and they're saying and we see that their companies went ahead But we also had independent tests that are objective showing that they influence Systems slightly more but systematically than people who have not doubled their company fortunes in the past few years so what do you know what I'm hearing you say is that they are Positive about their own beliefs. They are in tune with their intuitions And they are is a direct correlation between that and business results exactly, but taking that a step further Can we ordinary people learn some of those skills? Well, I think it's I don't think it's genetic So I think that by definition we can do better right and there are lots of ways We can do better just it's kind of similar to creativity training Maybe most of us are not going to become Mozart's or Da Vinci's or Einstein's But we certainly can remove some of the personal and cognitive Obstacles that prevent us to move forward our own inhibitions and things that our own limiting factors I believe so many factors interpersonal factors just pure lack of awareness Also, because some people are not even aware that one can improve so they never try they say for example I'm not creative. Of course, you're not creative if you say you're not creative But once we start looking at that more closely We see that you might be quite creative if you put your mind to it and if you learn how to do it And I think it's similar with intuition and sigh If we put our mind to it at least we can remove some of the obstacles We may not become psychics, but we can move ahead and we can move ahead considerably Very good So when it comes to psychic phenomena and sigh research You have the believers and you have the non-believers and clearly the non-believers are pretty cynical and They reject all of this as even sometimes called pseudoscience And there's a lot of resistance to all this great work that's going on How do you deal with such cynicism and resistance and more importantly what keeps you going despite all this resistance? This is a good question I think that One has to step back a little bit and get first of all historical perspective on things and Understand I don't remember what great physicist said. Maybe it was Pauly said that Mines don't change when they're too engaged. They just die people that they're generation after generation things are progressively changing and Mines are opening up So that's one perspective is to just say well if truth is there truth will win out. That's the let's say that's the optimistic perspective then I have another reaction which is kind of indignation and Because there's there's a lot of irrational very irrational falsehood and just refusing to see things and All one can do is keep coming back and say please look at the data Please look at the changes in our conceptual system because a lot of this irrationality is coming from a paradigm that is in the process of Not dying, but it's starting to become we try starting to have a Relativistic perspective on seeing that the classical paradigm is Kind of like a Approximative description of what's happening and whereas we're looking at fundamental physics and as we're looking at neuroscience And as we're looking at cycle research, we're starting to see things are much subtler Then the classical, you know Mechanistic paradigm used to tell us so I think that the way to deal with that is to just say We have to keep working at it We have to keep showing where things are going and where they're at because we have really excellent data and In a way, we have to be patient and wait How did you get interested in this field in the first place? Well, I'd like to say that was a coincidence, but of course I don't believe too much of that Basically, I was when I first went to the United States I was living in Greece and I went to the States for my doctor for my undergraduate and then my doctoral studies I met this woman who kind of talked me into visiting What was at that time? Laboratory in a in a hospital It was a the Memonites hospital quite well-known hospital in New York where there was this strange Thing going on there were actual scientists doing research on dream telepathy and at first. I was saying this cannot be But I kind of was intrigued and I kept looking at how they were doing it I became a volunteer progressively because this was much more interesting than what I was doing in my undergraduate You know experimental psychology studies So progressively I kind of get drawn into it because I'm saying this is extremely significant if it's true and I want to know more so It started as volunteer work and then progressively when I did my doctoral work in a normal classical program I decided to do have a thesis that's looking at some of these phenomena in Experimental context and so then progressively I kept I worked in Princeton and then I moved to France and I kept on working in this field And the work that you're doing now with business leaders on creativity and innovation How are you connecting that with your research interest? well the I'm living in France and France is a Paragon of rationalistic and and pretty tight Not tight thinking but not very flexible thinking So I don't always mix the two Because it's made too much for some business leaders there But there are a lot of lessons that we learned from Psychical research that introduced in business research For example mental flexibility and openness which correlates with experimental psi phenomena Also correlates with creativity and There are things that we learn about states of consciousness and mindset in Psychical research that can be used in business Also applications are you finding that people who meditate on a regular basis are better at creativity or any such correlations I think that in the West at least in it Meditation has not come on big enough at least in the business community to Yet leave its mark at least not in Europe. I think it's happening in the States. It's starting to happen in the United States and Certainly even if it's not official I think that business leaders that know how to take time to stop to take what I call a Creativity break a pause know how to go inside how to still the mind and to open it to these subtle messages that are coming from their own unconscious and So I think it's coming but it's slow and coming Mario, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you very much. Thank you