I recently had a meeting with Dutch magician Ramana, or Wouter Bijdendijk. Ramana acquired international fame by his levitation act in front of the White House, and before that in the Netherlands through appearances on TV with Jensen and Paul de Leeuw. Hij also did a levitation act for insurance company RVS. In a very surprising conversation, lasting for many hours, I was able to sharpen my thoughts about the future. Below are my notes.I had no idea what to expect from this meeting. Did Ramana possess powers that most people have too, but just are not able to use (any more)? Is it all just one big illusion? How does Ramana handle critique? How does he see the future? What kind of person will he be? And maybe there would be a way we could cooperate. We met at Pacific Parc, close to the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam.
There I met 26 year old Wouter with his girlfriend and business partner Christianne, and their dog Midas. I was there first and found us a table. He came later and the first impression actually was a bit disappointing. No mystic atmosphere, no cold silences or an occult voice, nothing. I just met a nice, intelligent couple with their own special look at life. Wouter graduated in anthropology at the Amsterdam University and is not a woolly person: on the contrary, he is very level-headed. To take away all incorrect expectations he started to say: ‘just to be clear: what I am doing are tricks, it’s all illusion. But good illusion.’ OK, I thought, so no mystical powers I don’t yet understand. Even so, the conversation later turned around quite surprising.
He first explained his background. He told me about his education in India, about the international world of magicians, and about his initiative to start and Indian School of Magics in the Netherlands: The Vazhakunnam Namboothiri Academy of Magical Sciences. In this school Magic is considered a science, just like in India. Students learn practical applications of the centuries old secrets of the Indian magic and illusions. For example you can learn how to stop your heartbeat. I find this very interesting, as I have been practicing meditation for a while, in which control is very important while at the same time very hard.
While we were talking, we concluded that we are both in the business of ‘making the impossible possible’. In my lectures, I often get looks of disbelieve: is it really going that direction? And almost always people are somewhat afraid of that future. Fear of the unknown makes us close our eyes, which stops our creativity to think differently, think outside the box. Visualizing the future, if only through illusion, would add unbelievable power to my lectures. And it fits perfectly with my ambition to work on a night-filling show about the future. Maybe we will work on that together at some point. Besides Ramana told me that he does private sessions with small groups. Something I would like to take advantage of. That is a nice start to get to understand each other better (if you are also interested in such a session, you can contact me.
And of course Ramana had to demonstrate a couple of his tricks. For the first one, he asked me for a nickel. This he put flat on the table. And while he ‘enchanted’ the nickel with his hands at a distance of about 4 inches, it visibly started rising. Then it fell back and tossed. Very special. Then he took a stack of cards. I was asked to get one. I looked at the card and put it back somewhere in the middle. He then got out his business card and wrote on it: 10 Spades. Exactly the card I had taken! After that it got even crazier. He held his hands about half an inch apart and asked me to visualize a virtual stack of cards. Well, as I am in the virtual business, I had no problem doing that. I was asked to pick a virtual card. And I had to remember what card it was. Then I had to put the virtual card back in the virtual stack. Fine. So far, so good. After that, he took a real stack of cards. He showed me all cards with the image up. All cards were in there, except for one. And that was 5 Hearts, exactly the card I had in mind. It drove me crazy! Finally, I got to hold the nickel in my hand. He took my hand at the bottom and I had to concentrate. The nickel then started rising in my hand! I thought I was going mad.
And of course I wanted to know: how in earth did you do this? But I didn’t want to ask. Besides, you will never get the complete answer. That is what we call professional secrecy. But then there was this magical remark: ‘It is an illusion Erwin, it is a trick, yet it does fly!’ I then directly concluded that Ramana has a completely different interpretation of the word ‘trick’ than I do. That we (the western world) think in material tricks (the hat with the double bottoms), while you can also do tricks at a spiritual/energy level. And that his magic is a combination of all kinds of techniques. It is not just a magnet under something, it also is the speed, the ‘invisible threads’, and also your own powers at your energy level. And especially those powers, that I personally have started discovering in meditation, which are considered by many people as ‘there has to be more between heaven and earth’, especially those powers are hard to (scientifically) understand. ‘It all is very subtle’, Ramana explained. At websites I saw his quote that your own inner balance is extremely important. And that seldom means the balance in your body: it means the balance at an energetic level, something we tend to call spirituality. Ramana therefore calls his performance ‘illusions of the supra natural’.
When people think of innovation, of the future, they often think of new material products we will get. That is not the way I see it. I strongly believe that after the virtual world has matured (think of 2030), in a world in which everything is taken care of for us (at a world scale), a world will evolve in which spirituality will revive. And I don’t mean religion, but widely accepted application of the insight that a person’s being doesn’t stop at molecules, at the skin, but is much more than that. And that once you recognize that, you can get much more out of life. Material for my book about 2050, material for pamper planet. Thus my curiosity developed via disappointment in total fascination. Definitely to be continued…