Foundation for Mind-Being Research
Harold Dean Brown: a Tribute, from Saul-Paul Sirag
Two years ago when I was visiting Dean on his 73rd birthday, I found out that he had probably met my grandfather in South Dakota, where Dean was born and raised and went to college. My grandfather was a Congregational minister at Eagle Butte on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. This was were I began first grade in 1946. Dean said that he often visited that reservation and was familiar with that church. He was especially tickled by my memory of chasing and corralling tumble-weeds as if they were stray cattle.
Dean graduated from South Dakota State College in 1948 with a B.S. in physics. He went on to a Ph.D. in 1952 at the University of Kansas. His thesis, "Classical and Quantum Stability" was directed by Max Dresden ( a Dutch-American physicist who went on to an illustrious career at UNY Stony Brook).
Dean spent some time at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, where he met Albert Einstein, John Wheeler, Eugene Wigner, John von Neuman, and many other luminaries. He told me that he used to play Go with Einsteinduring his stay at Princeton.
I first met Dean in the fall of 1973, when I was a research associate to Arthur Young at his Institute for the Study of Consciousness in Berkeley. And I was to meet up with him again and again in subsequent years.
In May of 1988, for example, I was giving a talk at the Parapsychology Research Group in San Francisco on the history of the concept of energy in physics; and I pointed out that the word energy was used in the romantic poetry context before it became a precisely defined (and therefore acceptable) word in physics. Dean was in the audience, and spoke up and
quoted from William Blake, "Energy is pure delight." This is recorded in the book *Silver Threads: 25 Years of Parapsycology Research* edited by Beverly Kane, Jean Millay, and Dean Brown.
An especially fond memory of Dean is of a trip in 1990 that Mary-Minn and I made to visit Dean in Eureka, California. He was spending much time in Eureka caring for his aged aunt, who was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. She had been a school teacher in South Dakota, and seemed to be back in that world much of the time. Dean's dealings with her were very gentle and good humored. We arrived on Mary-Minn's birthday, which just happens to be the 137th day of the year. Dean, as a physicist, was as fond of this number as I was --137 being the fundamental measure of the strength of the electrical and magnetic forces. He looked through his small collection of books he kept in Eureka for a suitable birthday present for Mary-Minn. He gave her a field guide to Wild Flowers--a wonderful present, given his great knowledge ofplant-life -- which he shared with us in walks through the Arcada slough.
In keeping with Dean's interest in things of the spirit as well as plant life, it is interesting that Dean died on June 24th -- which happens to be Midsummer Day, a day on which magical things occur more freely, as in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream." Since plants have traditionally been associated with magic, is seems appropriate to quote from act 2 of that play in memory of Dean:
I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine.
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania some time of the night,
Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamelled skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.
Another poem that Dean himself quoted is from William Blake; and Dean pointed out that Blake sang this poem on his deathbed.
Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my Arrows of Desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire.
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green & pleasant Land.
I imagine that Dean had such thoughts from William Blake on his mind in his last days.
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