Category Archives: Special Edition

Celebrating Bill Harvey,
a man whose life’s work touched so many

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Bill Harvey
March 1942—September 2026

Today, we, the THEI team, are writing to let you know that Bill Harvey, gifted writer and speaker, innovative researcher, creative inventor, and our beloved friend, has passed.

We will miss his physical presence immensely, and yet he will live on through his work. Bill’s wish was for us to carry on the mission of The Human Effectiveness Institute by making his writings available to all. Bill created a large body of work—some not yet published—which he intended to share with you.  We look forward to making that happen by posting some of Bill’s “new” writings here on Pebbles and, when possible, making them available as printed and/or eBooks.

Bill Harvey loved life. He loved everything he did and always looked for ways to serve and uplift humanity. He radiated joy and enthusiasm for all aspects of life, and he wanted everyone to experience that same joie de vivre.  This led him to establish The Human Effectiveness Institute in 1976. And even at the very end of his life, 50 years later, he remained enthusiastic about discovering what would come next.

Also in 1976, he wrote his first book, Mind Magic, which reflected his desire to help people experience life from a higher viewpoint. Universities, colleges, and even the US military have used Mind Magic as a course text to train people to use their minds more effectively.

Bill was a writer at heart. He loved to write and made time to do so daily.  He wrote more than 10 books, some of which have received awards. He wrote nonfiction, science fiction, and children’s books, as well as numerous published media research papers and articles.

An acclaimed leader in media and advertising research, Bill was also a futurist and an inventor with four issued US patents. He consulted for hundreds of companies, including many in the Fortune 500.

In addition to awards for his books, Bill received awards for his contributions to media research and advertising, including an Emmy in 2022 for his pioneering work in technology. In practical terms, his invention helps diverse audiences with a wide range of interests to get all the types of programs they enjoy the most.

His most recent start-up company, RMT Labs, merges neuroscience, marketing, and media. He brought together a stellar team of professionals who are well-positioned to continue RMT Labs’ early successes.

Bill deeply loved his country and wanted to see everyone get along. He often wrote about how we could and should do that and posted these ideas in his blog, Pebbles in the Pond. He also wrote to presidents and congressional representatives to share his ideas.

A natural public speaker, Bill was invited on many radio talk shows, podcasts, and live engagements. You can view some of those speaking engagements on his YouTube channel, Bill & the Universe, The Bill Harvey Media Channel.

We have been deeply moved by the beautiful tributes from around the world for Bill and would like to share two of these with you.

We are especially grateful to Bill’s industry colleague and friend, Jack Myers, for the eloquent and heartfelt tribute he posted on his Myers Report. Here are some excerpts:

I cannot think of Bill as simply gone. He believed that consciousness extends beyond the boundaries we ordinarily place around it, and that every human life is part of a larger spiritual universe. I believe Bill would want us to understand his passage in that light…

To the media and advertising community, Bill was one of our most original and respected thinkers … continually challenging accepted assumptions. He asked the industry to … recognize that what is easiest to count is not always what counts most. … He understood that … communication carries a responsibility to elevate…

It’s his larger body of work for which I believe he most deserves to be remembered. His work in media was one expression of a much larger inquiry: How do our minds work, what prevents us from seeing clearly, and how can we become more conscious, creative, compassionate, and effective human beings?

Bill did not offer spirituality as an escape from reality. He presented it as a way of entering reality more fully. He believed we could learn to observe our own thinking, quiet the forces that distort it, reach the flow state, and use our minds rather than allowing our minds to use us.

He wrote about the discipline required to imagine ourselves inside another person’s experience. Empathy, for Bill, was not a slogan. It was a demanding exercise of consciousness and one of our responsibilities as human beings. His invitation was simple and profound: “Share warmth. Love to all.”

Bill spent his life exploring doorways into higher consciousness. Now he has passed through a doorway none of us can fully comprehend. … I will remain grateful for the intelligence, generosity, and spiritual light he shared with us. The best testimonial we can offer Bill is to keep his work alive. Read his books. Revisit his columns … Question your assumptions. Observe your own mind. Bring more imagination, warmth, and consciousness into every decision. (Read the full tribute here.)

∞

The following is excerpted from a tribute to Bill by Josh Chasin, posted on LinkedIn, which he delivered at an industry summit this week:

How do you describe the measure of a man who loved measurement, but who was himself immeasurable?

I cannot conjure a mental picture of Bill where he isn’t positively beaming, the light of life and love and wonder emanating from him like a beacon. He didn’t just make us better or smarter … He made us happier.

Perhaps the greatest legacy Bill could ask for would be that that smile, and that light, lives on in all of us. (Read the full tribute here.)

As mentioned earlier, we will be posting more of Bill’s writings here, in his continuing blog, Pebbles in the Pond.

Next week, we will continue serializing the revised 50th anniversary edition of Bill’s 1976 book, Mind Magic: The Science of Microcosmology.

To learn more about Bill, please read his books and the reader testimonials, available on the THEI website.

We also invite you to share your experience of Bill and his books, videos, and podcasts below in the comments. We would love to hear from you.

We hope you’ll revisit Pebbles in the Pond often to read new content from Bill.

We wish you all the best.

As Bill often signed off –
Love to all,

The THEI Team
Karen L. Harvey, Advisor
George Niver, CEO
Christine Niver, Art Director
Yana Lambert, Publishing Director

Even in Uncivil War, Can We Agree On Some Things?

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Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog
Created February 13, 2026

George Washington

This July 4th is the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The USA has been around for a quarter of a millennium. The longest running Noble Experiment in Self Rule by The People. Often referred to in the past as the Greatest Hope For The World.

And yet these are among our darkest hours, on a par with the Civil War, the War of Independence, and the early days of WWII, when we were not sure we could win it. Another one of those times when the continued existence of the USA as conceived by The Founders is not guaranteed.

We have not had many of these existential threat periods in our history. Only a few of us alive today were there the last time this happened, which was the dark period between December 7, 1941 (Pearl Harbor) and February 2, 1943 (the battle of Stalingrad). The Allied victories at El Alamein and the battle of Midway, followed by Stalingrad, turned the tide and made us feel certain we were going to win, surely at terrible cost in lives.

We are back in one of those situations again, perhaps the worst of all, because we are internally at war with ourselves, as in the Civil War. But this time it seems to go much deeper than in the Union vs. Confederacy war. Is it because of the mind-bending media we now have, which are being used intentionally and unintentionally to divide us? The race issue is still a part of it, but now there appear to be many more issues which divide us. Is one key difference between the Civil War and today’s internal polarization that we now face a horde of irreconcilable issues?

I wonder. It’s conceivable that we are closer together than we realize on a great many (not all) issues. What puts the venom in the situation is the divided loyalties caused by the existence of two teams that have always been rivals, and that rivalry in recent decades has become increasingly bitter (see quote from George Washington at the top of this article).

If We The People still want to rule ourselves, and if we are dissatisfied with both political parties to some extent, can we set aside the teams for a while and just talk amongst ourselves about the issues? (Thanks to Bob DeSena for his ongoing emphasis on issues, without which I might not have gotten this idea.)

But let’s not look at that one idea as a panacea. It’s likely that even when discussing the issues, there will be a tendency to flare up when it becomes evident that one’s party has a very different vision on that issue than the other party. It will be difficult for people to be able to separate party loyalties from the issues. In higher states of consciousness (Observer state and Flow state), one can perform this trick, but in the default network state of Emergency Oversimplification Procedure (EOP), automatic reactions will follow ingrained patterns.

So what can we do to bring us all back together again?

It’s still worth thinking creatively about issues, and sharing any innovative ideas in social media, with your government representatives, and with your friends, family, and acquaintances. Good ideas tend to bubble up in the zeitgeist. Don’t look for getting credit for your good ideas, spread them unselfishly for the good they may do, and be satisfied if they get a public hearing, even though no one remembers it was your idea.

The political discourse has, in my lifetime, been plagued by a paucity of creative new ideas. It always seems to be the same old ideas recirculated again and again. People want a change from that.

There is something else we can all do, which will have a positive effect even though it may sound like magical thinking.

Imagine the two warring sides gradually, like a giant zipper that has been unable to zip closed, finally slowly closing, one click at a time, as the two sides see ways to agree on one little thing at a time. Picture how it might happen. Two people discussing one of our many problems and somehow, between them, converging on common ground solutions that have never been tried or even thought of before.

Outside of politics, these Aha moments happen every day. People are more creative than ever before. Thirty million Americans are now Creators; everyone is writing books, blogs, doing podcasts, and we are more creative now than ever before. Let’s bring politics into the creativity game. It doesn’t have to be a sad show forever. It wasn’t a sad show to be a patriotic American for a quarter of a millennium. It has only been sad for a little while, and we are feeling like there is no light at the end of the tunnel. That feeling itself can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Undo that feeling.

Here’s what some of our Presidents said about these subjects, worth remembering in honor of Presidents’ Day:

John Adams, the second President of the USA:

“The happiness of society is the end [goal] of government.”

“There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.”

James Madison:
“The Constitution is the guide which I will never abandon.”

James Monroe:
“The best form of government is that which is most likely to prevent the greatest sum of evil.”

“A free, virtuous, and enlightened people must know full well the great principles and causes upon which their happiness depends.”

“National honor is national property of the highest value.”

John Quincy Adams:
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

“’Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.”

Andrew Jackson:
“Every good citizen makes his country’s honor his own, and cherishes it not only as precious but as sacred.”

“As long as our government is administered for the good of the people… it will be worth defending.”

“Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly better man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error.”

Abraham Lincoln:
“The struggle of today is not altogether for today – it is for a vast future also.”

“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus so far nobly advanced.”

“With malice towards none, with charity for all… let us strive on to finish the work we are in.”

Thomas Jefferson

Love to all,
Bill

 

POWERFUL MIND 12 Simple Keys
available February 16

POWERFUL MIND 12 Simple Keys by Bill Harvey

SPECIAL EDITION: An Eye for An Eye

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Created April 15, 2024
Special Edition

The Iranian tactic has an ancient basis in the respective bibles of the “People of The Book.” As a species we have known for a long time the disastrous consequences of escalation.

This demo by Teheran starts a new era in geopolitik.

It was prophesied in my 2022 novel Pandemonium: Live To All Devices. Not to make more of a spoiler than necessary, a virtual reality television star leads a coalition to prevent escalation, sort of a global NATO, and it works by careful judgment of the optimal degree of retaliation (e.g. page 457).

Israel will now know that unmanned missile and drone attacks are the preferred mode of making “just enough” reparations. Next time there is an October 7th type action. But can anyone afford one more such action?

Does this new context offer an increased feeling of safety, that forms of mischief which have been vaguely tolerated in the past, fighting terrorists but not the people that sent them, those mischief forms are now off the table? Would anyone blame Israel for using these same air missile and drone tactics on Iran if there were to be one further provocation?

Should not everyone take the moment to back away from provocations they are causing right now? Start quietly winding them down?

We have reached a moment that was easy to see coming. For the past 8 years and even longer, governments around the world have been continuing to rattle sabers and appear as strong as possible to one another, as if we were still using TNT, as if bioweapons and cyberweapons and thermonuclear weapons and propaganda weapons were still back at the primitive WWII level.

A bunch of macho men in a life raft, each loaded to the gills with all sorts of exotic and superpowerful weaponry, goading each other in a dominance drill that goes on for a seeming eternity, until one of them accidentally shoves another due to a sudden ocean swell, and there is an explosive bloody free-for-all, which they all call off when they see they are all going to die.

That’s where we are folks.

Time to bring cooperation and competition back in balance.

We have been unbalanced in the competition direction as far back as we can see in written history.

The Greeks and the Romans made slightly better use of cooperation for a time, and rose as empires as a result.

These United States have until recently (with the exception of the Civil War) shown an amazing degree of cooperation. The Native American tribes had been the inspiration for the Federalist philosophy of government which the Founders adopted. This gave us the States.

If we are – the whole universe is – a single consciousness at play, this would explain the reason why cooperation works so well. It’s natural to our nature.

Nature also shows us competition, for mates, for land, for food.

We are hard wired and soft wired for both cooperation and competition.

Hard wired meaning in our physical structure including nervous system. Soft wired meaning programmed by our experiences.

Perhaps we were looking to the animals as our role models when we started off on this competition kick, where cooperation is less to be seen. And yet we see incredible cooperation among cetaceans, fish, birds, certain insects. In WWII we saw incredible cooperation by the Allies. We saw it on April 13th (EDT) when so many nations pitched in to work against an attack.

The U.S. Congress which has been commandeered and far from successfully achieving actual cooperation, is not going to play deaf to this wakeup call “courtesy” of Iran. If the public does not see a change in behavior it will demand the immediate removal of obstructors, those who show no sincere intention to legislate for the good of the public. I think we will see improvement before it goes that far. The moment calls for showing that one is alert to some need to change something. And that it cannot be delayed, procrastination rarely helps in a fire.

No more nonsense.

My Best to all,
Bill