Editor’s Note: The political opinions expressed in the interview are not necessarily those of Healthy Wealthy nWise, it’s editors, or it’s staff.

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 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.

Chris Attwood: 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.

John 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 very 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. Those activities through which we grow – through which we expand in knowledge, expand in power, expand in fulfillment–it’s that type of activity that brings us joy-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 to 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 you 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.

Chris Attwood: 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?

John Hagelin: They’re drawn to them because when they tasted them, when they sampled that activity, they immediately experienced growth and progress in that direction. Typically, it’s where their talent lies. It’s a natural channel of creativity for them.

Chris Attwood: What role has that played in your life?

John Hagelin: Passion has been absolutely key to me and, I would predict, key to everybody. Passions are the core of everyone’s life. You are drawn to do things-to follow your passions–because that activity brings you expansion and joy and evolution.

Chris Attwood: 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.

John Hagelin: The pursuit of my passions nourishes and sustains my life. By its 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 is 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. Yet one does have control, to some extent, over what constitutes one’s passion.

What you put your attention grows stronger in your life. You can culture an interest for something. You can develop a talent in an area, which then allows you to succeed in that area, and thus enjoy progress and success and evolution through that channel. That area will become more and more of a passion for you when your activity in that area rewards you with joy, progress, expansion and evolution.

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Actor Stephen Collins, Dr. John Hagelin, actress Heather Graham, actress Laura Harring, and film director David Lynch at press conference to promote a peace-creating group for Los Angeles.

People do have freedom-and it’s probably the greatest human freedom-over what they give their attention to. And that area will become more central, more important in their life. I would recommend that everyone exercise that freedom-to put their attention on projects that are truly worthy, with the potential to bring maximum happiness and evolution to their life and to society as a whole. The more global and far-reaching the project, the more happiness and evolution that project could potentially bring.

We have control over what might become a passion for us, and that’s an important freedom that we exercise. But there are obviously constraints on what could ever become our passion, based upon our core predispositions and genetic make up.

Probably, although I enjoy art, painting will never become a passion for me: I am so utterly lacking in talent in that area that an effort in that direction would almost certainly meet with more frustration than joy. If I had some talent, if I were even moderately talented, I could nurture that talent, enjoy initial spurts of progress, and that could ultimately grow into a passion for me.

So 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 made choices to develop new areas, new passions that weren’t, frankly, that natural to me – talents I wasn’t born with. I was not born a quantum physicist: I was born an engineer.

Chris Attwood: And yet, some have called you one of the greatest quantum physicists of our age.

John 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 strange new realm that was absolutely non-intuitive to me.

I should say, in fairness, quantum mechanics is counter-intuitive to most people. You have to rely solely on your mathematical abilities to delve into these abstract realms for which our intuition provides no guidance. And I wasn’t a born mathematician. 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-and finally I gained some spark of fulfillment. It took time to develop that new channel of creative intelligence, that new channel of progress and satisfaction. It took time to build that new passion.

Chris Attwood: 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.

John Hagelin: That’s the second example of creating a new passion, of developing myself in an area where I wasn’t endowed with God-given talent, for the sake of the higher calling of service to humanity.


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U.S. Rep. Jim Leach, Dr. John Hagelin, and U.S. Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher at a Congressional Prevention Coalition forum.
Public policy didn’t light my fire prior before I undertook this calling to evolve better principles and policies to govern our country and 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. It’s not quantum physics. It didn’t take that long to expose the fallacies of our current policies in such areas as defense, which is based on offense, or health care, which is based on disease care, and so forth-and to construct more life-supporting policies that are in harmony with natural law and that make more efficient and compassionate use of our precious resources.

So this is another example of how my deepest sense of responsibility caused me to actually nurture and build a whole new passion, which then became the driving force of my life for quite a few years.

Chris Attwood: Much of your professional life has dealt with the relationship between human consciousness and the deepest understandings and expressions of physics. Could you, for our readers’ benefit, talk a little bit about your understanding of consciousness, its relationship to the physical, material world, and why it has been such a key and important element in your life and your work?

John Hagelin: As a young seeker of knowledge, I always strove to understand the core reality of life, the truths of existence. What I came to learn after 15 years of higher education is that the material universe is built upon the non-material quantum-mechanical world of abstract intelligence that underlies it. The exploration of deeper levels of natural law at the atomic and nuclear and sub-nuclear levels 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 superstring, 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 foundation of material existence.

I wanted to know the nature of that consciousness, and it was really through Maharishi’s programs, 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 are united at our core, and that truth, that ultimate truth of the unity of life, is the most precious and crucially important understanding to emerge in this scientific age. This is the same reality that has been celebrated since time immemorial in all the great spiritual traditions of the world. But now this same truth is 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®.

Chris Attwood: 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?
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John 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 the emerging global understanding of the essential unity of life.

If all of us could own that vision, if all of us here could deeply understand and experience the unity of life, that unity will be far more easily understood and assimilated by the billions of citizens of our global family.

We are almost at the point where these words, where the ultimate reality of the unity of life, is resonating with people, 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 inevitably dawn in the world today.

Chris Attwood: 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 to 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?

John 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 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 truly unite the world in peace.

I hope that every potential voter throws off any possible rationale or inertia that could prevent them from going to the polls and voting their conscience. I urge them to use whatever influence they have to create the greatest possible turnout, and bring a change in the destructive direction our country has taken in the last few years.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, in a democracy, we get the government that we deserve-the government we elect. So to some extent, Bush’s actions reflect the will 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. I believe it is therefore time for a new leader who is more representative 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, sustained collective meditations. 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, the reward will be a more awakened electorate that won’t allow a repeat of the electoral outcome of four years ago.

Chris Attwood: What is the single most important idea that you’d like to leave our readers with that we haven’t yet discussed?

John 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. Aligning individual intelligence with nature’s intelligence is what is called enlightenment.

Developing the total brain and rising to higher states of consciousness is absolutely key to achieving individual fulfillment, and the key 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.

Chris Attwood: Wonderful. Thank you so much for taking this time.

John Hagelin: Wonderful! Thank you, and good luck.

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