Live from a Place of Love: An Interview with Wayne Dyer

In an interview with Spirituality & Health in 2012, Wayne Dyer talked about the soul/body connection. 

Dr. Wayne Dyer is a famously self-made man who was born in Detroit in 1940 and spent his early years in orphanages. He became a high school guidance counselor and then a professor of guidance counseling at St. John’s University in New York. In 1976, he created a best seller out of Your Erroneous Zones by selling books out of the back of his station wagon. Now called “the father of motivation,” Dr. Dyer has a worldwide audience for his more than 30 books, including his latest, Wishes Fulfilled: The Art of Manifesting, published this month by Hay House. Paul Sutherland caught up with Dr. Dyer at his beach house on Maui.

Paul Sutherland: I watched your film The Shift and have been reading Wishes Fulfilled, so I know you have gone through a dramatic shift. Could you describe it?

Wayne Dyer: It’s really hard to put all of that stuff into words, because the experiences simply defy words. But here goes (laughs). I’ve been an exercise maniac most of my adult life, running marathons and triathlons, doing that as a regular way of life. I ran eight miles a day, every day for 29 years and missed one day in 29, so some call that obsessive. Then, a couple years ago, I was diagnosed with leukemia. I was told that there were restrictions that I would have to practice for my white blood count: They said, “You’re going to have to stop the Bikram yoga because of the heat, and you’re going to have to slow down the exercise, and you’re going to feel more fatigue.” And I bought into what I was being told. I just forgot who I am. I forgot that I am God and that I have divine powers and so on. So, for about 11 or 12 months, I got sicker.

What started your healing?

It was perfect storm of “coincidences” last April, but the big shift started when I was supposed to go down to Abadiania in Brazil for a healing with John of God. I canceled the trip because I was writing this book, and I wanted to finish the deadlines, but my friend Rayna Perscova went anyway. When she got down there, she wanted photographs taken of me. They had to be from the front, from the back, from the right, from the left, all dressed in white…

This is for John of God?

For John of God, yes. So, all of this was done, photographs were taken, and they were sent down to him, and he looked at them, and said, “I cannot do the surgery on him, because he’s not taking these supplements, and he needs to be drinking this blessed water.” Now, I have a healthy degree of skepticism but have a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing, and who am I to say?

So Rayna called me back and said, “I’m having these herbs FedEx’d up to you. They’ll be there on Monday, and I want you to take three in the morning, three at noon, three at night, and then have the pictures retaken after two days.” So, sure enough, the herbs arrived. God bless this woman; she’s a medical doctor herself, an eye surgeon. She went to all of this trouble, and so I went along with it. I took the herbs and drank the blessed water. My daughter was here, and she took the pictures again: front, back, right, left, all dressed in white, and he looked at them, and said, “Yes, the surgery will be Thursday morning, the 21st of April.”

What did you expect?

I didn’t know what to expect. I was told this is real surgery, but it’s remote. I mean, I’m in Maui, and he’s in Brazil (laughs). There’s a big, big gap there, but in the world of spirit, that’s like being this close, you know? So, at seven o’clock the next morning, I was told the surgery would be performed, and then I got a phone call about quarter to eight. It was Rayna, and she said, “You have to go right to bed and sleep for 24 hours. You have to treat this as if it were surgery.” And I didn’t. I hung up, and I said, “I’m going for a walk” (laughing). And I got up, I went down the stairs, and I got about 100 yards away, and I collapsed. I could hardly get back. I had to have help getting back into my room, and I literally stayed in there for a week.

What was it like?

Just like I had had some kind of major surgery. I was so weak. Everything was hard. I mean, I could only drink a little bit of water, drink a little bit of soup, get up to go to the bathroom and then right back into bed. I remember looking out at the ocean and wondering if I would ever be able to swim again, because just the idea of walking from here to the ocean, which is only 50 yards or so, just seemed too daunting.

Anyway, a week went by, and then Rayna called from Brazil, and she said, “Wednesday night, go to bed at 11 o’clock, because they will be removing the sutures.” So I said, “I don’t have any sutures.” And she said, “No, it’s just the term — and it will be done by these entities who actually did the surgery.”

On leukemia?

I don’t know how you do surgery on leukemia, because it’s just a blood disease, but she said that’s what they call it, for want of a better word. So, I went to bed at 11 o’clock at night. I did everything I was supposed to. I was dressed in white; I ate the foods I was supposed to eat; I avoided the ones I wasn’t supposed to eat. I had a big pitcher of blessed water that Rayna had sent up to me from Brazil. I set my intentions, I went to sleep, and I woke up the next morning — at what I thought was seven o’clock — when my friend called me from the airport and said, “Well, so how did it go?”

She was giving me a hard time, and I said, “Well, it’s only seven o’clock.” She said, “No, it’s not seven o’clock; it’s 8:20.” I said, “No, no, it’s seven o’clock.” I’ve got this watch that is guaranteed to never lose or gain a second, literally. But my watch had stopped for 80 minutes during the night. So that was the first thing that I thought was weird. Then I came out into the kitchen, and my son and my daughter looked at me and said, “What happened to your eye?” It looked like someone had gone into my eye and just scraped my eye during the night — it was all bright.

Did it hurt?

It just itched, nothing hurt. I didn’t … I wasn’t … I was so … Paul, I was so peaceful, so content, and I just stood there and said, “I don’t know. I just never have felt better in my life.”

That was the 28th of April. My 71st birthday was 10 days later. I was in San Francisco, and I went out, and I took a big wad of 50-dollar bills, and I gave them to homeless people, and talked to them, and had the most beautiful experience I can remember. Since that day, I felt something. And the something was, I was infused with a kind of a love. I’ve always been a generous and a kind person and so on, but never, ever have I experienced that kind of love. The world just looked different to me and still does. I began to “see” with a capital “S.”

What about the leukemia?

I don’t know what the healing was with my physical body, because I decided I’m through with looking at numbers on sheets of paper, and reports, and what it says on the Internet to decide whether or not I’m well. I have declared that I am well. I am in perfect health, and I feel great, and I’m back doing yoga at a higher level than I’ve ever done it before. My writing has intensified dramatically. I’ve just finished a new PBS show that something just occupied my body when I was up there.

And that’s the shift?

So many things happened. Ultimately, I just believe that at this time in my life, as a spokesperson, a person who has a big audience around the planet, that I have a mission to teach something called Divine Love. And Divine Love is the kind of love where your primary focus is on the God that is within you. That we are all beings of light and beings of love, and that you do your meditation on that, and you stay in that place, and you only extend love to everyone. Christ consciousness, Sidi consciousness, Buddha awareness — whatever you want to call it. It’s almost like I was pushed over the cliff and into a place where my ego was just sort of left behind, and I became a being of light, a being of love.

Following his passing on 29th August 2015, Wayne Dyer’s daughter shared information regarding her father’s autopsy report:

“I am so proud and awed to announce that after the autopsy that was performed on my Dad to discover the cause of death, we were told that there was absolutely no trace of leukemia. When he was diagnosed with leukemia we were told that this particular type was incurable. However he always believed that he had cured himself through spiritual healings and positive belief. This is confirmation that everything he said and believed was true. Many people have been saying that he should have treated his leukemia and that he would probably still be alive today had he done so. Please spread the word that this is not the case because I feel it is an insult to his memory and to his life’s work to say that he passed away due to his leukemia.”

This is an extract of the interview with Dr. Wayne Dyer by Paul Sutherland . The full interview appears on Spirituality & Health.