Many of you may already know that Michael Toms passed on January 24, 2013. He was 72 years old.
Thank you to the many, many listeners and guests of New Dimensions who have been writing to me with all your good wishes. My heart is full from your tender words. I know as a listener you have deep knowledge and acquaintance with Michael. When one listens over a period of time the personal stories come out like pieces of a puzzle.
Here are three very poignant tributes to Michael that I would like to share.
His voice was always so comforting. I can remember being in a mask shop in Bali and someone recognizing his voice came up and asked if he was Michael Toms. They recognized him by his voice alone.
And also thank you for the donations that support the continuation of this work. It is my true calling and passion to carry on the work of New Dimensions.
Justine Willis Toms
Co-Founder, Managing Producer & Host
New Dimensions
Robert Fuller
New Dimensions Radio is the rare organization that is perfectly named. When Michael and Justine Toms founded it forty years ago, it immediately proceeded to go where no one had gone before: into a new dimension of thought and experience where science and religion were not bitter antagonists but respectful partners.
What made this possible, was Michael’s range of interests and his interviewing style. He listened to his guests sensitively, responded spontaneously, all the while maintaining an intimacy that made listeners feel privy to a conversation around a low fire under the stars.
As host, Michael never competed with his guests. His easy confidence, his not needing to show off, drew the best out of his interviewees. In Michael’s presence, ideas, not personalities, got the spotlight.
NDR opened up a new realm of inquiry, and Michael and Justine peopled it with new voices. The range of Michael’s curiosity and the breadth of his interests were unequalled in journalism. He picked up on ideas that were born on the fringe, and might have stayed there without the open-minded, positive stance he took toward everyone he had on the show. If there’s a common thread to the thousands of interviews now housed at Stanford, it’s that Michael saw a better world before others, reached out to those who saw it, too, and brought that vision into sharp focus for millions worldwide.
Iris Murdock spoke for Michael when she said, “Man is a creature who makes pictures of himself and then comes to resemble the picture.” In more than 4000 conversations, Michael painted a picture of a better world, held it up for all to see, and took a well-earned delight in seeing humankind come to resemble the picture.
Robert Fuller, Ph.D., president emeritus of
Oberlin College and internationally recognized
authority on the subject of rankism and dignity
author of Dignity for All and The Rowan Tree
Patricia Sun
Michael Toms has passed to the next …
He was an eloquent wordsmith with a mindful and reverent attention to words, which were touched and guided by his soul’s commitment to serve and nurture the human expansion of consciousness. With an earnest and humble manner on air, he accessed a personal laser intelligence that served us all more than we can grasp.
His life was a dedication to supporting our nascent awareness of the new dimensions that many souls know is here. He was by far and away the most significant broadcaster of our time. He earnestly and constantly served this century’s most important destiny––a shift in consciousness. A destiny I have always called an evolutionary leap.
I have known, respected and loved Michael for over forty years. We first met when he and his wife and partner creator, of “New Dimensions Radio”, Justine Willis Toms invited me to speak at the very end of a four hour live show about Spiritual Healing on KQED, public radio.
A human person as any other, hindered with unprocessed wounds but a man with a saintly soul dedicated beyond his personality, to enabling the world to have access to, and hear every person of consequence that would aid our maturing consciousness. He combined innocence and discerning brilliance as he questioned his leading edge thinker guests with an interest and awareness that elicited their best and most useful presentation.
He was an Anam Cara to me, Irish for a soul friend. I would say a light of precious quality has left the world but I feel him yet here. And the magnitude of the work that he has left us is an ongoing human legacy gift that will continue to serve us at least all this important century.
As we are ready to listen once again to the magnificent archive of over forty years of interviews of meaningful insight, that continue to matter and reveal, we will be in awe at his accomplishment and the immensity of his gift to us.
Fortunately, Stanford University has recognized the National Treasure that is “New Dimensions” and is digitally archiving all forty years of shows. But you can go to www.newdimensions.org and keep new Dimensions alive and in service still on public radio as Justine Willis Toms beautifully continues the legacy. Support them and your self.
Participate, support and be supported still.
Love and wisdom are close allies.
Thank you, Michael. Love is forever.
Patricia Sun
teacher, workshop leader, and
pioneer in consciousness studies
Dearest Michael,
I am writing to say “Thank you.”
What you and Justine have given us
cannot be measured
in coins or pounds or inches…
Your gift is beyond calculation.
The opportunities you have given us
are beyond all forms of counting.
What you’ve given us
and what you’ve given the people
you’ve enabled us to reach
is ineffable.
First, I will speak for myself.
I didn’t realize I had a Voice,
until you both invited me to speak up,
and speak out.
I didn’t realize my power
as a woman
until you asked me
to say what is true for me,
for myself, as a woman.
What you’ve given me,
is beyond comparison with
anything anyone else
has ever provided.
The Gift of inviting me to talk about my Inner Voice
The Gift of inviting me to talk about my Open Marriage
The Gift of inviting me to talk about how Rumi’s poetry
melted my heart and so much more.
Through these opportunities,
you’ve given me and others the chance of a lifetime
to give beyond measure, to others.
Being interviewed on New Dimensions
by Michael Toms….what a blessing!
Your gentle, and at the same time,
urgent questions.
Your insistence on the truth,
to the extent that we are able to tell it…
Your understated challenges seamlessly
urging us to go deeper.
The elegant subtlety with which you dare us to go past
where we started and end up climbing
a spiral staircase leading to our Truth.
Your broadcasts of interviews with us
have changed the world.
What has seemed out of the question,
takes a daring plunge into what is possible.
You not only held up a mirror,
but showed me how to tilt it,
so it catches the Light…my Light,
and then helped me tilt it again,
so my Light could go out into the world.
Not only what you’ve given me,
yet also what you’ve enabled me to give to others.
You and Justine have provided pathways,
bridges, energetic thruways for us to share
our thoughts and experiences and news and send
that out, out, out through the airwaves
into each other’s minds, into each other’s hearts,
into each other’s souls…
Between minds, between hearts, between souls…
Those of us who have been invited
to speak with you on New Dimensions
have been able reach out in ways we’d never imagined.
The breadth, the depth, the expanse of the outreach
built by you and Justine and the other hardy souls
on your team
has enabled us to take our messages out out out
into the world, into the ethers,
into eternity.
I can never thank you enough for what you have given me and Jim and so many of us who are ready to share
the essence of our awakenings with others
You invite us to reach out,
through the magic of the airwaves…
…your questions and our answers
travel out and out …
into the ethers
and will resonate forever.
With great love,
Dorothy Fadiman,
academy award nominated documentary filmmaker.
Her films include:, Radiance: The Experience of Light and
When Abortions Were Illegal: Untold Stories, plus many others.
See Justine’s announcement of Michael’s passing.
Click here for information about Michael’s long and noteworthy career in broadcasting: