COHEN: How do you go to bed with more energy than you woke up with? Is it because you're building it during the day?

RAGNAR: Right. This is why I do what I call Magnetic Qi Gong. I've discovered a way to go to bed with my body buzzing. And the buzz is basically the battery charger. We tested this just last week with a chiropractic acupuncture clinic. They brought their electro-meridian imaging equipment up here, and after I did some chi gong, they tested me. The unit can't even measure past where the life force in my kidneys reached; they said they'd never seen anything like that before. The Chinese say that the life force is in the kidneys, and there are some reasons for that, but nevertheless, they couldn't believe the readings. The readings were off the chart.

And it's not just the kidneys—it's all the organs. If you do certain practices, you can enhance the voltage in all the organs and meridians of the body. Basically, we're buzzing power plants. We're nuclear power plants.

COHEN: And you believe that human life expectancy should be between 160 and 200 years?

RAGNAR: If you look at the rate of maturation of any animal—in other words, the ratio of the length of time it takes an animal to mature to the length of its life span—for most animals it's ten to twenty times. A horse, for example, will mature in two years and live for twenty-five to thirty years. Same thing with chimpanzees, dogs, cats—with all animals, it's at least ten to twenty times. The only exception to this rule is the human species. Even if you take ten times human maturity, which is a low figure, that gives you 180 years. If it's twenty times, then double that.

You've got to get sick in order to die. Nobody dies healthy. I've heard people say, “They just died of old age.” And I say, “No, they had so many diseases, they didn't know which one killed them!” To get sick, you have to get into some type of negativity that damages one or more particular organs.

I'm probably out there by myself on this one, but I feel that we do have ultimate control of our body, because our body is a thought. It's filled with frozen memories—memories that are formed by our experiences that we have already reached conclusions about, and we've emotionalized those conclusions and frozen them into our flesh. Therefore, only when we thaw it out and release, and stop holding on for dear life, can we have dear life.

COHEN: What you're saying is that a lot of the ideas and beliefs that we have about who we are, about the nature of life, and about how long it's possible to live are subconscious and unquestioned. So in this sense, I understand what you mean about them being frozen in our body. And unless they are released, since we are not aware of them, they are likely to determine our destiny.

RAGNAR: Precisely.

COHEN: Okay. That's clear. But when you said that our body is a thought, did you mean that literally?

RAGNAR: Yes, I meant that literally. Actually, I should have said that many, many trillions of thoughts form our body. And it's really the health of our overall life view or worldview that determines our physical health.

COHEN: You seem to have awakened to a perspective where you see the nondifference between the physical, the psychological, the emotional, the spiritual, and the energetic—where you're able to see all these as literally one process. And of course, most of us are in the habit of relating to our experience in a way that is very conceptual and completely divorced from the integrity of the process itself. The way we see our experience is often only a small fraction of the totality of what's really happening. And I suppose that unless one actually gets to the point where one directly experiences this insight into the ultimate nondifference between spirit and matter, there will still be some kind of fundamental separation between what one is doing and how one is thinking about the process, some fundamental duality in terms of oneself.

RAGNAR: You're describing it so well, Andrew, because there is no separation.

COHEN: Some people would say that this insight into the fact that there is a much deeper relationship between the mind and the body than we had previously thought is true up to a point, but that there are certain processes that really won't be affected by what we think, certain processes that are, in fact, unconscious. And you're basically defying that. You're saying that it's possible to become so conscious of these physical processes that we would be able to have absolute control over the whole system.

RAGNAR: Absolutely. There are so many people, for example, who have had spontaneous remissions of cancer. The medical researchers scratch their heads and say they don't know why it goes away. But the reason it goes away is that the intention to live is so powerful, so strong, that it overrides any other negative programming that might be in the body.

A classic example that is cited in psychology texts is the Krebiozen story. A cancer patient, Mr. Wright, got this worthless placebo—at least that's what the AMA eventually said about the drug Krebiozen. He went to a doctor and said, “Look, I'm dying.” He had tumors so big they had to milk them. And the doctor said, “What's it going to hurt to give the guy Krebiozen? He's going to be dead in a weekend anyway. It's an inoperable cancer, the worst of the worst.” After he got the worthless drug, the journals stated, “His tumors melted like snowballs on a hot stove.” He totally recovered from his cancer in ten days' time. No one could explain it. Unfortunately, the story has a bad ending because later, when Mr. Wright read the AMA report revealing that Krebiozen was worthless, he said, “Oh, it was worthless,” and his cancer came back, and he died.

Here you have a classic example of the power of intention. His intent was to stay alive, and when he saw that he had an opportunity, the body said, “Yes sir, what do you want us to do?” All the immune soldiers lined up and saluted him and said, “Whatever you want; you're the commander.” And we are the commander.

COHEN: What do you think happened to the cancer? If it went into total remission, theoretically, it wouldn't be there anymore, so it wouldn't be able to come back. Are you saying that the cancer that was originally present was also a thought?

RAGNAR: Yes, I believe that. Look at how many people die after receiving a diagnosis saying they've got six weeks to live. And sure enough, in six weeks they're dead. Yet what if it was a misdiagnosis, as it has been in some cases?

COHEN: Yes. But one could live next to a chemical plant and get poisoned, or live next to Chernobyl and get cancer from radiation, and that wouldn't necessarily have anything to do with any negative thinking, right?

RAGNAR: It's a hard question to answer because people get very sensitive when you say anything about personal responsibility. But I think that if I had been living in the Ukraine, there would have been something inside me that said, “Get out of here, boy; get out of here.” You know, whenever a severe storm comes, if you look around here, the animals are gone. They disappear; they know. All you have to do is listen to nature, and it tells you everything and anything you need to know about life. The animals know without knowing all the time. Not some of the time, not part of the time, but all of the time. And we do too.

COHEN: But there were thousands of people who would have had no warning. I mean, that has to be part of the equation, doesn't it?

RAGNAR: When do we have no warning? I've said this so many times, and I know it bugs people. It irritates them when I say, “Look, you never have an accident without being warned at least three times in advance. It's just that you fail to hear or see or perceive the very warning that's before you.” Nothing happens to us without us first being told about it. It's like the tsunami. Where did the animals go? They already knew.