Media

Evolution by BITs and Pieces: An Introduction to Fractal Evolution

The membrane boundary enveloping each biological cell comprises the structural basis of a biological processor system (see article: Cellular Consciousness). As a processor, the cell’s membrane receptors scan the environment for signals. Obviously the environment is awash in signals. If all the signals were audible, the environment would sound like blaring noise. However, the specificity of reception that is characteristic for each receptor IMP, enables it to distinguish its complementary signal out of all the jumbled ambient noise. The cell’s ability to selectively filter useful information out of “chaotic” noise resembles the function of Fourier transformations [mathematical filtering processes which find signals within what appears to be noise] on complex inputs to perceive specific frequencies as informational signals. While the environment is in a sense “chaotic,” with hundreds and thousands of simultaneously-expressed “signals,” the cell can selectively read only those signals that are relevant to its existence.

Based upon the functional and structural features of the cell membrane, each single cell (e.g., amoeba) represents a self-powered microcomputer system. As in digital computers, the power or information handling capacity of the “cellular” computer is determined by the number of its BITs it can manage. In computers, the BITs are gate/channel complexes, in the membrane processor, the BITs are represented by receptor/effector complexes. The IMP molecules comprising the cell’s BITs have defined physical parameters and therefore can be “measured.”

The dimension of the IMP proteins is approximately the same as the thickness of the membrane. Since the IMPs, by definition, reside within the membrane’s bilayer, the proteins can only be arranged as a monolayer (meaning theIMPs can not be stacked upon one another). To use the bread and butter and olive sandwich metaphor, there are only so many olives that can be layered on the bread. To have more olives in the sandwich requires the use of a larger slice of bread. The same applies to increasing the number of perception-IMP units in the membrane: the more IMPs-the more surface area of membrane required to hold them. The cell’s information processing capability (reflected in the number of perception proteins) is directly linked to the surface area of the membrane.

The profound point of this discourse…Biological awareness is a measurable property, and is directly correlated with the surface area of the cell’s membrane. Consequently the computing power of a cell is physically determined by limitations imposed on cellular dimensions.

The first phase of evolution of life concerned the development and refinement of the individual biological computer ‘chip’, the primitive bacterium. The size of these primitive organisms is constrained by the fact that they posses a rigid outer skeleton, derived from the polysaccharides of the glycocalyx. The matrix produced by the cross-linking of the sugar molecules in this “coat” provides for the cell’s protective “skeleton,” called a capsule. The capsule physically supports and protects the cell’s thin membrane from rupturing under the strains of osmotic pressure.

Osmotic pressure is the force generated by the desire of water to move through a membrane to “balance” the concentration of particles on each side of the membrane barrier. The cell’s cytoplasm is packed with particles compared to the water in which cells live. Water from the external environment will pass through the membrane to dilute the concentration of cytoplasmic particulates. The cell would swell up with water and the pressure would cause the delicate membrane bilayer to rupture, killing the cell. The glycocalyx exoskeleton resists life threatening osmotic pressure.

Bacteria are the cellular equivalent of invertebrates, (animals not possessing an internal supportive skeleton (e.g., clams, insects, jelly fish). While the skeleton protects the bacterium, its rigid nature also limits it. The bacterial cell size is limited by its outer capsule. The size limitation restricts the amount of membrane the cell can possess. Membrane surface area is proportional to awareness, based upon the number of IMPs it can contain. The bacterial capsule limits the cell’s evolution since there is a cap on the number of units of perception the membrane can contain.

In fact, most of the bacterium’s membrane surface area is used to house the necessary IMP complexes required for cell survival. However, each bacterium is also capable of learning about six additional environmental “signals.” For example, a bacterium may acquire the ability to resist an antibiotic introduced into the environment. It does this by creating a surface receptor that binds and inhibits the molecules of the antibiotic. The new receptor is fundamentally the equivalent of a protein “antibody” that our immune cells create to neutralize an invasive antigen.

The creation of a new receptor, by definition, implies that there must be a new gene created to remember the amino acid code for that protein. In bacteria, these “new” memory genes are present as tiny circles of DNA called plasmids. The plasmids are not physically attached to cell’s heredity-providing chromosome and float freely in the cytoplasm. Bacteria are capable of creating an average of about six different plasmids, each derived from a unique learning “experience.” The limitation on the number of plasmids the cell possesses is not due to an inability to make DNA. For the bacterium can make thousands of copies of any of the individual plasmids it possesses. The limitations must be related to the fact that each “new” protein perception complex requires a unit of surface area to express its functions. The inability to expand its membrane (i.e., surface area) limits the bacterium’s ability to acquire new perceptions (awareness).

The more awareness the greater the ability to survive. Limitations upon individuals increasing their awareness, led to bacteria living in loosely knit communities. If an individual bacterium can “learn” six facts about the environment, than a hundred bacteria are collectively capable of being aware of 600 facts. Bacteria developed mechanisms to transfer copies of their plasmids to other bacteria in the community. By transferring copies of their “learned” DNA, they share their “awareness” with the community. Bacteria can transfer a plasmid to another individual. The recipient bacterium can use the donated plasmid’s “awareness” during its life, but generally can not pass copies of the plasmid on to its daughter cell progeny.

Bacteria possess fine tentacle-like projections that extend from their outer surface called pili. When the pili from two bacteria touch, the pilus membranes can momentarily fuse, joining the cytoplasm of the two cells together. At the moment of fusion, the two bacteria can exchange copies of their plasmids. Bacteria are also able to scarf-up free floating DNA in the environment, so plasmids released into the environment, as might occur when a cell dies and its cytoplasm leaks out, may be scavenged by other cells. However, the environment is tough on free-floating DNA and the plasmids easily break down. A third, more effective means of distributing “awareness” plasmids arose when bacteria learned how to package their plasmid DNA into protective protein shells, creating viruses. Viruses contain “information” that are released to other individual cells in the environment. Some viruses kill the cells that pick them up, while other viruses protect the cells that they “infect.” Sometimes “information” is life affirming, sometimes it’s lethal.

Bacterial communities evolved a means to increase their survival by deploying an polysaccharide extracellular matrix to envelope all of the cells in the community and “protect” them from the ravages of the wild environment. Individual bacteria were able to move through “irrigated” channels within the matrix. The channels also allowed a communication of extracellular materials and information molecules, which provided a communal integration among all of the members of the community. The cellular community may be populated with a variety of bacterial species. For example, oxygen-fearing anaerobic forms of bacteria can live at the bottom of a community, while oxygen-loving aerobic bacteria are present in upper levels of the same community. Bacteria within the community are readily able to exchange their DNA, and in so doing enable the cellular citizens to acquire specialized, differentiated functions.

These matrix-encased bacterial communities are called biofilms (see illustration below). Biofilms have become very important since they are now recognized to protect bacterial communities from antibiotics. The bacteria that form tooth cavities are actually biofilm communities, which resist our efforts to scour them from our teeth. The resistive and protective nature of the biofilms enabled these communities to be the first life forms to leave the ocean and live on the land.

Many years ago, biologist Lynn Margulis founded the concept that mitochondria were bacterial-like organisms that invaded the cytoplasm of more advanced nucleus-containing cells called eukaryotes. At first her ideas were ridiculed by the establishment, but over the years it has become a widely accepted belief. Interestingly, an understanding of the communal nature of bacteria in biofilms offers another interpretation.

The micrograph on the left illustrates a an example of a biofilm in a human lung. The infective pseudomonas bacterial clump is encased in a dark staining extracellular matrix ( see arrow) comprising a biofilm. Encapsulation within the matrix protects the bacteria from the immune system’s efforts to destroy them. The matrix, primarily made of carbohydrates, can also contain the muscle proteins, actin and myosin, which are found bound to the outer surfaces of some bacteria. The external actin and myosin proteins enable the bacteria to move within the film’s matrix.

The micrograph on the right is the same picture, but with a “membrane “ drawn around the film’s periphery. A membrane around the film would enable the bacterial community to finely control the composition and character of their environment, a necessary development that would enhance their survival. This modified film resembles the cytological anatomy of the evolutionarily more advanced eukaryotic cell. In this case the bacteria would represent the cell’s organelles and the film’s matrix would represent the cytoskeletal-rich cytoplasm between the organelles. Interestingly, the eukaryotes cytoplasm possesses many of the same structural components that characterize the biofilm’s matrix. This especially true of the actin and myosin which enable the bacteria to move in the film in the same manner that organelles move in the cytoplasm.

The point of this discussion is that the more advanced eukaryotic cell, rather than being an evolved single entity, might represent the evolution of a bacterial community. A cell would represent a finely tuned community of prokaryotes that have differentiated into organelles. Such a hypothesis supports the beliefs of pleomorphic biologists, a small but staunch group of scientists that believe disease related micro-organisms may represent life forms that arose, budded-off, from dying cells. Makes sense.

Regardless, the second phase of evolution saw the origin of the more sophisticated eukaryotic (nucleated) cell. However, evolution ceased when the nucleated cell reached its maximum specific size, for there are physical limitations imposed on cellular life. If the cell attempts to expand its surface area beyond a given size, the cell will become unstable, for if it exceeds certain dimensions, the membrane will not be physically able to constrain the mass of its cytoplasm. This will lead to a rupture of the membrane and a loss of the membrane potential (from which the cell draws its life-giving energy). Also, if the cell exceeds a certain diameter, than the process of diffusion would not enable enough oxygen for metabolic processing to reach the central portion of the cell.

As a result, in the history of evolution, the first 3 billion years were primarily associated with appearance and evolution unicellular organisms (bacteria, algae, protozoans). It was the origin of multicellular organisms that represented an alternative way to expand the membrane surface area (i.e., awareness potential) beyond the limitations of the single cell. Consequently, in what amounted to a third phase of evolution, an increase in biological “computer” power (awareness) resulted from a the same process of organizing into higher order communities. Rather than increasing awareness of the individual eukaryotic cell, the third phase of evolution was concerned with the ordering of individual eukaryotic cell ‘chips’ into interactive assemblies.

This “phasing” of evolution resembles that which occurred in the computer industry. Texas Instruments developed the chip. Individual chips are the heart of the simple calculator. However, when many chips were integrated and wired together they provided for the computer. When individual computers reached their maximum power, supercomputers were created by assembling many computers into an organized parallel-processing “community.” The bacterium’s relation to the eukaryotic cell is tantamount to the chip’s relationship with the computer. The eukaryotic cell’s relation to the multicellular organism is the same as an individual computer’s relation to the whole in a parallel-processing network.

In computers, the “power” of the machine is measured in BIT handling capacities. In biological organisms, the “awareness” potential is reflected in the number and variety of integrated IMP complexes. Since the quantity ofIMPs is directly linked to “surface area,” awareness becomes a factor of shared membrane surfaces in the multicellular organisms.

Consider that surface area relationship in regard to vertebrate brain evolution. First vertebrate brains are small, smooth spheres. As one ascends the evolutionary ladder, the brains become larger and more surface area is subsequently derived from infoldings of the brain’s surface that produce the characteristic sulci (grooves) and gyri (folds) of more advanced brains. Interestingly, when considering awareness in terms of brain surface, humans are in second place since porpoise and dolphin brains have a larger surface area.

It is proposed that similar to unicellular protozoans, human beings represent another evolutionary endpoint, the highest level of development for a multicellular biological structure. In a series of events redundant to those that occurred in the previous two cycles of evolution, human evolution continued through a process of assembly and integration of individuals into a multi-“cellular” community. In this community known as humanity, each person’s role is analogous to that of a single cell in the human construct. In the global view of the Earth as a living organism (Gaia), humans are the IMP equivalents in the Earth’s surface membrane. Humans, as receptors and effectors, assemble and integrate into patterned networks (community) in the Earth’s envelope wherein they receive environmental “signals” and serve as switching mechanisms of the planet’s membrane gates.

These studies reveal that past and future evolution can be mathematically modeled in the structure and elaboration of the cell membrane. The best way to organize two-dimensional membrane surface area into a three-dimensional cell space is to employ fractal geometry.

In Nature, most inorganic and organic structures express an “irregular” pattern. However, within the apparent chaos of the irregularities, one finds that the irregular structures are “regularly” repeated (i.e., they show a form of order). For example, the pattern of branching in a tree’s twig is often the same pattern of branching that is observed on the tree’s trunk. The pattern of branching of a major river is identical to the pattern of branching observed along its smaller tributaries. The pattern of branches along the bronchus is a reiteration of the pattern of airway branches along the smallest bronchioles. Similar images of reiterated branching patterns in the body are revealed in the arterial and venous blood vessels and peripheral nervous system.

The French mathematician, Benoit Mandelbrot was the first to recognize that the geometry of many of Nature’s objects revealed a similar pattern regardless of the scale it was examined on. The more you magnify the image, the more the structure appears the same. Mandelbrot introduced the term “self-similar” to describe such objects. “In 1975, Mandelbrot coined the word fractal as a convenient label for irregular and fragmented self-similar shapes.

The mathematics of fractals is amazingly simple in that it consists of repeating “operations” of additions and multiplication’s. In the process, the result of one operation is used as the input for the subsequent operation; the result of that operation is then used as the input for the next operation, and so on. Mathematically, all the “operations” use the exact same formula, however, they must be repeated millions of times to get the solution. The manual labor and time required to complete a fractal equation prevented mathematicians from recognizing the “power” of Fractal Geometry until the advent of powerful computers enabled Benoit Mandelbrot to define this new math.

In classical geometry the points, lines, surface areas and cubic structures all represent dimensions expressed in whole integers, 0-, 1-, 2-, and 3-dimensions, respectively. Fractal geometry is employed to model images that are more “interdimensional.” For example a curved line is a 1-dimensional object. In fractals the curve can zig-zag so much that it actually comes close to filling the plane. If the curve of the line is relatively simple it is close to a dimension of 1. If the line’s curves are so tightly packed that they fill the space, the line approaches 2-dimensions. Fractal Geometry fills in the spaces between whole number dimensions.

A structural characteristic of fractals is relatively simple to understand: fractals exhibit a reiterated pattern of “structures” nested within one another. Each smaller structure is a miniature, but not necessarily an exact version of the larger form. Fractal mathematics emphasizes the relation between the patterns seen in the whole and the patterns seen in parts of that whole. For example, the pattern of twigs on a branch resembles the pattern of limbs branching off of the trunk. Fractal objects can be represented by a “box” within a “box,” within a “box,” within a “box,” etc. If one knows the parameters of the first “box,” then one is automatically provided with the basic pattern that characterizes all of the other (larger or smaller) “boxes.”

As described in the Mathematics of Human Life article by W. Allman (cited in reference section), “Mathematical studies of fractals reveal that the branching-within-branching structure of a fractal represents the best way to get the most surface area within a three-dimensional space….” While the cell membrane is in reality a 3-dimensional object, its molecular bilayer possesses a constant and uniform thickness. As such the thickness of the membrane can be ignored and the membrane can be modeled as a 2-dimensional “surface-area” structure. Since evolution is the modeling of the membrane’s awareness (related to its surface area), the efficiency of modeling provided by fractal geometry would most likely reflect that chosen by Nature.

The point is not to get caught-up in the mathematics of the modeling. The point is that the fractal model predicts that evolution will be based upon a reiterated pattern of “structures’ nested within one another! More specifically, as it relates to a concept of Fractal Evolution, “the pattern of the whole is seen in the parts of the whole,” this means that the pattern of the human is seen in the parts (cells) of the human. If one is aware of the pattern by which a cell is functionally organized, than one is also provided insight into the organization of a human. Consider this: the fractal images of smaller structures are miniatures of the larger whole. Therefore, while the structure of humans is a self-similar image of their own cells, the structure of human civilization would represent a self-similar structure of its component humans!

Humans are a fractal image of society, cells are a fractal image of the human. In fact, cells are a fractal image of society as well. The fractal nature of evolution is further implied by the reiterated, self-same patterns observed in each of the three cycles of evolution.

Reprinted from Bridges, 2001 Vol 12(1):5 ISSEEM

Though a human is comprised of over fifty trillion cells, there are no physiologic functions in our bodies that were not already pre-existing in the biology of the single, nucleated (eukaryotic) cell. Single-celled organisms, such as the amoeba or paramecium, possess the cytological equivalents of a digestive system, an excretory system, a respiratory system, a musculoskeletal system, an immune system, a reproductive system and a cardiovascular system, among others. In the humans, these physiologic functions are associated with the activity of specific organs. These same physiologic processes are carried out in cells by diminutive organ systems called organelles.

Cellular life is sustained by tightly regulating the functions of the cell’s physiologic systems. The expression of predictable behavioral repertoires implies the existence of a cellular “nervous system.” This system reacts to environmental stimuli by eliciting appropriate behavioral responses. The organelle that coordinates the adjustments and reactions of a cell to its internal and external environments would represent the cytoplasmic equivalent of the “brain.”

Since the breaking of the genetic code in the early 1950’s, cell biologists have favored the concept of genetic determinism, the notion that genes “control” biology. Virtually all of the cell’s genes are contained within the cell’s largest organelle, the nucleus. Conventional opinion considers the nucleus to be the “command center” of the cell. As such, the nucleus would represent the cellular equivalent of the “brain.”

Genetic determinism infers that the expression and fate of an organism are primarily “predetermined” in its genetic code. The genetic basis of organismal expression is ingrained in the biological sciences as a consensual truth, a belief by which we frame our reference for health and disease. Hence the notion that susceptibility to certain illnesses or the expression of aberrant behavior is generally linked to genetic lineage and, on occasions, spontaneous mutations. By extension, it is also perceived by a majority of scientists that the human mind and consciousness are “encoded” in the molecules of the nervous system. This in turn promotes the concept that the emergence of consciousness reflects the “ghost in the machine.”

The primacy of DNA in influencing and regulating biological behavior and evolution is based upon an unfounded assumption. A seminal article by H. F. Nijhout (BioEssays 1990, 12 (9):441-446) describes how concepts concerning genetic “controls” and “programs” were originally conceived as metaphors to help define and direct avenues of research. Widespread repetition of this compelling hypothesis over fifty years has resulted in the “metaphor of the model” becoming the “truth of the mechanism,” in spite of the absence of substantiative supporting evidence. Since the assumption emphasizes the genetic program as the “top rung” on the biological control ladder, genes have acquired the status of causal agents in eliciting biological expression and behavior (e.g., genes causing cancer, alcoholism, even criminality).

The notion that the nucleus and its genes are the “brain” of the cell is an untenable and illogical hypothesis. If the brain is removed from an animal, disruption of physiologic integration would immediately lead to the organism’s death. If the nucleus truly represented the brain of the cell, then removal of the nucleus would result in the cessation of cell functions and immediate cell death. However, experimentally enucleated cells may survive for two or more months with out genes, and yet are capable of effecting complex responses to environmental and cytoplasmic stimuli (Lipton, et al., Differentiation 1991, 46:117-133). Logic reveals that the nucleus can not be the brain of the cell!

Studies on cloned human cells led me to the awareness that the cell’s plasmalemma, commonly referred to as the cell membrane, represents the cell’s “brain.” Cell membranes, the first biological organelle to appear in evolution, are the only organelle common to every living organism. Cell membranes compartmentalize the cytoplasm, separating it from the vagaries of the external environment. In its barrier capacity, the membrane enables the cell to maintain tight “control” over the cytoplasmic environment, a necessity in carrying out biological reactions. Cell membranes are so thin that they can only be observed using the electron microscope. Consequently, the existence and universal expression of the membrane structure was only clearly established around 1950.

In electron micrographs, the cell membrane appears as a vanishingly thin (<10nm), tri-layered (black-white-black) “skin” enveloping the cell. The fundamental structural simplicity of the cell membrane, which is identical for all biological organisms, beguiled cell biologists. For most of the last fifty years, the membrane was perceived as a “passive,” semi-permeable barrier, resembling a breathable “plastic wrap,” whose function was to simply contain the cytoplasm.

The membrane’s layered appearance reflects the organization of its phospholipid building blocks. These lollipop-shaped molecules are amphipathic, they possess both a globular polar phosphate head (Figure A) and two stick-like non-polar legs (Figure B). When shaken in solution, the phospholipids self-assemble into a stabilizing crystalline bilayer (Figure C).

The lipid legs comprising the core of the membrane provide a hydrophobic barrier (Figure D) that partitions the cytoplasm from the ever-changing external environment. While cytoplasmic integrity is maintained by the lipid’s passive barrier function, life processes necessitate the active exchange of metabolites and information between the cytoplasm and surrounding environment. The physiologic activities of the plasmalemma are mediated by the membrane’s proteins .

Each of the approximately 100,000 different proteins providing for the human body is comprised of a linear chain of linked amino acids. The “chains” are assembled from a population of twenty different amino acids. Each protein’s unique structure and function is defined by the specific sequence of amino acids comprising its chain. Synthesized as a linear string, the amino acid chains subsequently fold into unique three dimensional globules. The final conformation (shape) of the protein reflects a balance of electrical charges among its constituent amino acids.

The three dimensional morphology of folded proteins endows their surfaces with specifically shaped clefts and pockets. Molecules and ions possessing complementary physical shapes and electrical charges will bind to a protein’s surface clefts and pockets with the specificity of a lock-and-key. Binding of another molecule alters the protein’s electrical charge distribution. In response, the protein’s amino acid chain will spontaneously refold to rebalance the charge distribution. Refolding changes the protein’s conformation. In shifting from one conformation to the next, the protein expresses movement. Protein conformational movements are harnessed by the cell to carry out physiologic functions. The work generated by protein movement is responsible for “life.”

A number of the twenty amino acids comprising the protein’s chain are non-polar (hydrophobic, oil-loving). The hydrophobic portions of proteins seek stability by inserting themselves into the membrane’s lipid core. The polar (water-loving) portions of these proteins extend from either or both of the membrane’s water-covered surfaces. Proteins incorporated within the membrane are called integral membrane proteins (IMPs).

Membrane IMPs can be functionally subdivided into two classes: receptors and effectors. Receptors are input devices that respond to environmental signals. Effectors are output devices that activate cellular processes. A family of processor proteins, located in the cytoplasm beneath the membrane, serve to link signal-receiving receptors with action-producing effectors.

Receptors are molecular “antennas” that recognize environmental signals. Some receptor antennas extend inward from the membrane’s cytoplasmic face. These receptors “read” the internal milieu and provide awareness of cytoplasmic conditions. Other receptors extending from the cell’s outer surface provide awareness of external environmental signals.

Conventional biomedical sciences hold that environmental “information” can only be carried by the substance of molecules (Science 1999, 284:79-109). According to this notion, receptors only recognize “signals” that physically complement their surface features. This materialistic belief is maintained even though it has been amply demonstrated that protein receptors respond to vibrational frequencies. Through a process known as electroconformational coupling (Tsong, Trends in Biochem. Sci. 1989, 14:89-92), resonant vibrational energy fields can alter the balance of charges in a protein. In a harmonic energy field, receptors will change their conformation. Consequently, membrane receptors respond to both physical and energetic environmental information.

A receptor’s “activated” conformation informs the cell of a signal’s existence. Changes in receptor conformation provide for cellular “awareness.” In its “activated” conformation, a signal-receiving receptor may bind to either a specific function-producing effector protein or to intermediary processor protein. Receptor proteins return to their original “inactive” conformation and detach from other proteins when the signal ceases.

The family of effector proteins represent “output” devices. There are three different types of effectors, transport proteins, enzymes and cytoskeletal proteins. Transporters, which include the extensive family of channels, serve to transport molecules and information from one side of the membrane barrier to the other. Enzymes are responsible for metabolic synthesis and degradation. Cytoskeletal proteins regulate the shape and motility of cells.

Effector proteins generally possess two conformations: an active configuration in which the protein expresses its function; and a “resting” conformation in which the protein is inactive. For example, a channel protein in its active conformation possesses an open pore through which specific ions or molecules traverse the membrane barrier. In returning to an inactive conformation, protein refolding constricts the conducting channel and the flow of ions or molecules ceases.

Putting all the pieces together we are provide with insight as to how the cell’s “brain” processes information and elicits behavior. The innumerable molecular and radiant energy signals in a cell’s environment creates a virtual cacophony of information. In a manner resembling a biological Fourier transform, individual surface receptors (Fig. H) sense the apparently chaotic environment and filter out specific frequencies as behavioral signals. Receipt of a resonant signal (Fig. I, arrow) induces a conformational change in the cytoplasmic portion of the receptor (Fig. I, arrowhead). This conformational change enables the receptor to complex with a specific effector IMP (Fig. J, in this case a channel IMP). Binding of the receptor protein (Fig. K) in turn elicits a conformational change in the effector protein (Fig. L, channel opens). Activated receptors can turn on enzyme pathways, induce structural reorganization and motility or activate transport of uniquely pulsed electrical signals and ions across the membrane.

Processor proteins serve as “multiplex” devices in that they can increase the versatility of the signal system. Such proteins interface receptors with effector proteins (P in figure M). By “programming” processor protein coupling, a variety of inputs can be linked with a variety of outputs. Processor proteins provide for a large behavioral repertoire using a limited number of IMPs.

Effector IMPs convert receptor-mediated environmental signals into biological behavior. The output function of some effector proteins might represent the full extent of an elicited behavior. However, in most cases, the output of effector IMPs actually serve as a secondary “signal” which penetrates the cell and activates behavior of other cytoplasmic protein pathways. Activated effector proteins also serve as transcription factors, signals that elicit gene expression.

The behavior of the cell is controlled by the combined actions of coupled receptors and effector IMPs. Receptors provide “awareness of the environment” and effector proteins convert that awareness into “physical sensation.” By strict definition, a receptor-effector complex represents a fundamental unit of perception. Protein perception units provide the foundation of biological consciousness. Perceptions “control” cell behavior, though in truth, a cell is actually “controlled” by beliefs, since perceptions may not necessarily be accurate.

The cell membrane is an organic information processor. It senses the environment and converts that awareness into “information” that can influence the activity of protein pathways and control the expression of the genes. A description of the membrane’s structure and function reads as follows: (A) based upon the organization of its phospholipid molecules, the membrane is a liquid crystal; B) the regulated transport of information across the hydrophobic barrier by IMP effector proteins renders the membrane a semiconductor; and © the membrane is endowed with IMPs that function as gates (receptors) and channels. As a liquid crystal semiconductor with gates and channels, the membrane is an information processing transistor, an organic computer chip.

Each receptor-effector complex represents a biological BIT, a single unit of perception. Though this hypothesis was first formally presented in 1986 (Lipton 1986, Planetary Assoc. for Clean Energy Newsletter 5:4), the concept has since been technologically verified. Cornell and others (Nature 1997, 387:580-584), linked a membrane to a gold foil substrate. By controlling the electrolytes between the membrane and the foil, they were able to digitize the opening and closing of receptor-activated channels. The cell and a chip are homologous structures.

The cell is a carbon-based “computer chip” that reads the environment. Its “keyboard” is comprised of receptors. Environmental information is entered via its protein “keys”. The data is transduced into biological behavior by effector proteins. The IMP BITs serve as switches that regulate cell functions and gene expression. The nucleus represents a “hard disk” with DNA-coded software. Recent advances in molecular biology emphasize the read/write nature of this hard drive.

Interestingly, the thickness of the membrane (about 7.5 nm) is fixed by the dimensions of the phospholipid bilayer. Since membrane IMPs are approximately 6-8 nm in diameter, they can only form a monolayer in the membrane.IMP units can not stack upon one another, the addition of more perception units is directly linked to an increase in membrane surface area. By this understanding, evolution, the expansion of awareness (i.e., the addition of moreIMPs) would most effectively be modeled using fractal geometry. The fractal nature of biology can be observed in the structural and functional reiterations observed among the hierarchy of the cell, multicellular organisms (man) and the communities of multicellular organisms (human society).

This new perception on cell control mechanisms frees us from the limitations of genetic determinism. Rather than behaving as programmed genetic automatons, biological behavior is dynamically linked to the environment. Though this reductionist approach has highlighted the mechanism of the individual perception proteins, an understanding of the processing mechanism emphasizes the holistic nature of biological organisms. The expression of the cell reflects the recognition of all perceived environmental stimuli, both physical and energetic. Consequently, the “Heart of Energy Medicine” may truly be found in the magic of the membrane.

The Wisdom of Your Cells is a new biology that will profoundly change civilization and the world we live in. This new biology takes us from the belief that we are victims of our genes, that we are biochemical machines, that life is out of our control, into another reality, a reality where our thoughts, beliefs and mind control our genes, our behavior and the life we experience. This biology is based on current, modern science with some new perceptions added.

The new science takes us from victim to creator; we are very powerful in creating and unfolding the lives that we lead. This is actually knowledge of self and if we understand the old axiom, “Knowledge is power,” then what we are really beginning to understand is the knowledge of self-power. This is what I think we will get from understanding the new biology.

Flying Into Inner Space
My first introduction to biology was in second grade. The teacher brought in a microscope to show us cells and I remember how exciting it was. At the university I graduated from conventional microscopes into electron microscopy and had a further opportunity to look into the lives of cells. The lessons I learned profoundly changed my life and gave me insights about the world we live in that I would like to share with you.
Using electron microscopy, not only did I see the cells from the outside but I was able to go through the cell’s anatomy and understand the nature of its organization, its structures and its functions. As much as people talk about flying into outer space, I was flying into inner space and seeing new vistas, starting to have greater appreciation of the nature of life, the nature of cells and our involvement with our own cells.

At this time I also started training in cell culturing. In about 1968 I started cloning stem cells, doing my first cloning experiments under the guidance of Dr. Irv Konigsberg, a brilliant scientist who created the first stem cell cultures. The stem cells I was working with were called myoblasts. Myo means muscle; blast means progenitor. When I put my cells in the culture dishes with the conditions that support muscle growth, the muscle cells evolved and I would end up with giant contractile muscles. However, if I changed the environmental situation, the fate of the cells would be altered. I would start off with my same muscle precursors but in an altered environment they would actually start to form bone cells. If I further altered the conditions, those cells became adipose or fat cells. The results of these experiments were very exciting because while every one of the cells was genetically identical, the fate of the cells was controlled by the environment in which I placed them.

While I was doing these experiments I also started teaching students at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine the conventional understanding that genes controlled the fate of cells. Yet in my experiments it was clearly revealed that the fate of cells was more or less controlled by the environment. My colleagues, of course, were upset with my work. Everyone was then on the bandwagon for the human genome project and in support of the “genes-control-life” story. When my work revealed how the environment would alter the cells, they talked about it as an exception to the rule.

You Are a Community of 50 Trillion Living Cells
Now I have a completely new understanding of life and that has led to a new way to teach people about cells. When you look at yourself you see an individual person. But if you understand the nature of who you are, you realize that you are actually a community of about 50 trillion living cells. Each cell is a living individual, a sentient being that has its own life and functions but interacts with other cells in the nature of a community. If I could reduce you to the size of a cell and drop you inside your own body, you would see a very busy metropolis of trillions of individuals living within one skin. This becomes relevant when we understand that health is when there is harmony in the community and dis-ease is when there is a disharmony that tends to fracture the community relationships. So, number one, we are a community.

Fact number two: There is not one function in the human body that is not already present in every single cell. For example, you have various systems: digestive, respiratory, excretory, musculoskeletal, endocrine, reproductive, a nervous system and an immune system but every one of those functions exists in every one of your cells. In fact we are made in the image of a cell. This is very helpful for biologists because we can do research on cells and then apply that information to understanding the nature of the human body.

I was teaching what is called the medical model, the perception that human biology represents a biological machine comprised of biochemicals and controlled by genes. Therefore when a patient comes in to see a doctor, the belief system is that the patient has something wrong with their biochemistry or genes, which can be adjusted and can lead them to health. At some point I realized that I had to leave the university because I found great conflict in teaching the students about what controls the cell and yet getting a completely different understanding from the cells in my cultures.

A New Understanding of Science
When I was outside the university I had a chance to read into physics. Again I found information that did not conform to the science I had been teaching. In the world of new physics, quantum physics, the mechanisms that are described completely collide with the mechanisms we were teaching, which were based on the old Newtonian physics. The new physics currently is still not introduced in medical schools. Before conventional science, science was the province of the church. It was called natural theology and was infused with the spiritual domain, teaching that God’s hand was directly involved in the unfoldment and maintenance of the world, that God’s image was expressed through the nature we live in. Natural theology had a mission statement: to understand the nature of the environment so we could learn to live in harmony with it. Basically this meant learning how to live in harmony with God, considering that nature and God were so well connected.

However, through the abuses of the church, their insistence on absolute knowledge and their efforts of suppressing new knowledge, there was what is called the Reformation. The Reformation, precipitated by Martin Luther, was a challenge to the church’s authority. After the Reformation, when there was an opportunity to question beliefs about the universe, science became what was called modern science. Isaac Newton, the physicist whose primary studies were on the nature of gravity and the movement of the planets, provided the foundation for modern science. He invented a new mathematics called differential calculus in order to create an equation to predict the movements of the solar system. Science identified truths as things that were predictable. Newtonian physics perceives the universe as a machine made out of matter; it says that if you can understand the nature of the matter that comprises the machine, then you will understand nature itself. Therefore the mission of science was to control and dominate nature, which was completely different than the former mission of science under natural theology, which was to live in harmony with nature.

The issue of control in regard to biology becomes a very important point. What is it that controls the traits that we express? According to Newtonian physics life forms represent machines made out of matter and if you want to understand those machines you take them apart, a process called reductionism. You study the individual pieces and see how they work and when you put all the pieces together again, you have an understanding of the whole. Charles Darwin said that the traits an individual expresses are connected to the parents. The sperm and egg that come together and result in the formation of a new individual must be carrying something that controls the traits in the offspring. Studies of dividing cells began in the early 1900s and they saw string-like structures that were present in cells that were beginning to divide. These string-like structures were called chromosomes.

Interestingly enough, while chromosomes were identified around 1900, it was only in 1944 that we actually identified which of their components carried the genetic traits. The world got very excited. They said, oh, my goodness, after all these years we finally have gotten down to identifying the genetically controlling material; it appears to be the DNA. In 1953 the work of James Watson and Francis Crick revealed that each strand of DNAcontained a sequence of genes. The genes are the blueprints for each of the over 100,000 different kinds of proteins that are the building blocks for making a human body. A headline announcing Watson and Crick’s discovery appeared in a New York paper: “Secret of Life Discovered” and from that point on biology has been wrapped up in the genes. Scientists saw that by understanding the genetic code we could change the characters of organisms and therefore there was a big, headlong rush into the human genome project to try to understand the nature of the genes.
At first they thought these genes only controlled the physical form, but the more they started to manipulate genes, they saw that there were also influences on behavior and emotion. Suddenly, the genes took on more profound meaning because all the characters and traits of a human were apparently controlled by these genes.

Are We Victims of Heredity?
Yet there was one last question: what is it that controls the DNA? That would be going up the last rung of the ladder to find out what is ultimately in control. They did an experiment and it revealed that DNA was responsible for copying itself! DNA controls the protein and the protein represents our bodies. Basically it says that life is controlled by DNA. That is the Central Dogma. It supports a concept called “the primacy of DNA” that says who and what we are and the fate of the lives we lead are already preprogrammed in the DNA that we received at conception. What is the consequence of this? That the character and fate of your life reflects the heredity you were born into; you are actually a victim of heredity.

For example, scientists looked at a group of people, scored them on the basis of happiness and tried to find out whether there was a gene that was associated with happy people that was not active in unhappy people. Sure enough, they found a particular gene that seems to be more active in happy people. Then they immediately put out a big media blip on “gene for happiness discovered.” You could say, “Well, wait a minute. If I got a sucky happy gene, then my whole life is going to be predetermined. I’m a victim of my heredity.” This is exactly what we teach in school and this is what I had also been teaching-that people are powerless over their own lives because they can’t change their genes. But when people recognize the nature of being powerless, they also start to become irresponsible. “Well, look, Boss, you’re calling me lazy but I just want you to know my father was lazy. What can you expect from me? I mean, my genes made me lazy. I can’t do anything about it.” Recently in Newsweek they wrote about how fat cells are waging war on our health. It’s interesting because in an epidemic of obesity science stands back and says: it’s your fat cells that are waging war in your life.

The Human Genome Project
To come and save us, the human genome project entered our world. The idea of the project was to identify all the genes that make up a human. It would offer the future opportunity of genetic engineering to correct the ills and problems that face humans in this world. I thought the project was a humanitarian effort but it was interesting later to find out from Paul Silverman, one of the principal architects of the human genome project, what it was actually about. It was simply this: It was estimated that there were going to be over 100,000 genes in the human genome because there are over 100,000 different proteins in our bodies; plus there were also genes that didn’t make proteins but controlled the other genes. The project was actually designed by venture capitalists; they figured that since there were over 100,000 genes, by identifying these genes and then patenting the gene sequences, they could sell the gene patents to the drug industry and the drug industry would use the genes in creating health products. In fact, the program was not actually for advancing the human state as much as it was for making a lot of money.

Here is the fun part. Scientists knew that as you go up the evolutionary scale, simple organisms have less DNA and when you get to the level of humans, with the complexity of our physiology and our behavior, we have a lot moreDNA. They thought that primitive organisms would have maybe a few thousand genes but humans were going to have approximately 150,000 genes, which meant 150,000 new drugs. The project began in 1987 and just showed again that when humans really put their heads together they can create miracles. In only about fourteen years we actually had the results of the human genome. It also was what I call a cosmic joke.

To begin the human genome project they first studied a primitive organism, a miniature worm that is barely visible with your eye. These worms had been an experimental animal for geneticists because they reproduce very quickly and in very large numbers and thereby express traits that you can study. They found that this small animal had a genome of about 24,000 genes. Then they decided to do one more genetic model before doing the human and that was with the fruit fly because of the large amount of information already available on the genetics and behavior of fruit flies. The fruit fly genome turned out to have only about 18,000 genes. The primitive worm had 24,000 genes and this flying machine had only 18,000 genes! They didn’t understand what that meant but put it on the back burner and started the work on the human genome project.

The results came in 2001 and were a major shock: in the human genome there are only about 25,000 genes; they expected nearly 150,000 genes and there were only about 25,000! It was such a shock that people actually didn’t talk about it. While there was a lot of hoopla about completing the human genome project, no one talked about the 100,000 missing genes. There was complete lack of discussion in the scientific journals about it. When they realized there were not enough genes to account for human complexity, it shook the foundation of biology

Why is it so important? If a science is based on the way life really works, that science would be good for use in medical practice. But if you base your science on wrong information, then that science could be detrimental to medical practice. It is now a recognized fact that conventional allopathic medicine, the primary medicine we use in Western civilization, is a leading cause of death in the United States. It is also responsible for one out of five deaths in Australia. In the Journal of the American Medical Association Dr. Barbara Starfield wrote an article revealing that from conservative estimates, the practice of medicine is the third leading cause of death in the United States. However, there is a more recent study by Gary Null (see Death by Medicine at: www.garynull.com). He found that rather than being the third leading cause of death, it is the first leading cause with over three-quarters of a million people dying from medical treatment each year. If medicine actually knew what it was doing, it wouldn’t be that lethal.

I left the university in 1980, seven years before the human genome project was started because I already was aware that genes didn’t control life. I was aware that the environment was influential but my colleagues looked at me as not just being a radical but a heretic because I was conflicting with the dogma; therefore this became a religious argument. At some point the religiosity of where I was led me to resign my position. That’s when I started to advance into understanding about brain function and neuroscience. What I was really trying to find out is if it’s not the DNA that controls cells, then where is the “brain” of the cell?

The Computer Within
The new biology revealed that the brain of the cell is its skin, the mem-brane, the interface of the interior of the cell and the ever-changing world we live in. It is the functional element that controls life. This is important because understanding its function reveals that we are not victims of our genes. Through the action of the cell membrane we can actually control our genes, our biology and our life and we have been doing it all along although we have been laboring under the belief that we are victims.

I started to realize that the cell was a chip and that the nucleus was a hard disk with programs. The genes were programs. As I was typing this on my computer one day I realized that my computer was like a cell. It had programs built into it but what was expressed by the computer was not determined by the programs. It was determined by the information that I, as the environment, was typing onto the keyboard. Suddenly all the pieces fell into place: the cell membrane is actually an information-processing computer chip. The cell’s genes are the hard drive with all the potentials. That is why every cell in your body can form any kind of cell because every nucleus has all the genes that make up a human. But why should one cell be skin and another cell be bone or eye?

The answer is not because of the gene programs but because of the feedback of information from the environment. All of a sudden the bigger thing hit me: what makes us different from each other is the presence of a set of unique identifying protein keys (receptors) comprising the keyboard on the surface of our cells. The identity keys on the cell membrane respond to environmental information. The biggest “Aha!” was this: that our identity is actually an environmental signal that is playing through the keyboard on the surface of our cells and engaging our genetic programs; you are not inside your cell, you are playing through your cell using the keyboard as an interface. You are an identity derived from the environment.

In my younger days, I didn’t see that religion was offering me truth. I went away from spirit and ended up in science. Realizing that my identity was something from the environment playing through my cells was the greatest shock to my world because I was completely thrown from a non-spiritual reality into the requirement of a spiritual existence. My cells were like little television sets with antennas and I was the broadcast that controlled the readout of the genes. I was actually programming my cells.

I realized that if the cell died, it did not necessarily mean the loss of the broadcast-that the broadcast is out there whether the cell is here or not. All of a sudden it hit me with such profound awe. What I realized was that survival was not that important because of my eternal character was derived from some broadcast in the field. The fear of mortality disappeared. That was about twenty-five years ago and it was one of the most wonderful, liberating experiences I ever had.

Perception: The Power of the New Biology
We perceive the environment and adjust our biology, but not all of our perceptions are accurate. If we are laboring under misperceptions, then those misperceptions provide for a mis-adjustment of our biology. When our perceptions are inaccurate we can actually destroy our biology. When we understand that genes are just respondents to the environment from the perceptions handled by the cell membrane, then we can realize that if life isn’t going well, what we have to do is not change our genes but change our perceptions. That is much easier to do than physically altering the body. In fact, this is the power of the new biology: we can control our lives by controlling our perceptions.
We are holding “truths” about science that are actually untruth, they are actually “assumptions,” and false assumptions at that. Until we correct them, we are misunderstanding our relationship to the planet, to nature and the environment. As a result we are destroying that which has provided us life, the environment.

False assumption number one is that the universe is made of matter and its understanding can be attained by studying matter Our perception of a material-only biology and environment is no longer scientifically accurate. Another assumption is that genes control life. It is actually our perceptions that control life and by changing our perceptions we can get control over our lives. I will discuss more about this later. Assumption number three is a very dangerous assumption: that we arrived at this point in our evolution using the mechanisms of Darwinian theory, which may be summed up as “the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence.” It turns out in the new biology that evolution is based on cooperation. Until we understand that, we keep competing with each other, struggling and destroying the planet without recognizing that our survival is in cooperation and that our continued competition is the death knell of human civilization.

The Future of Medicine
Everything in the universe is now understood to be made out of energy; to our perception it appears physical and solid, yet in reality it is all energy and energies interact. When you interact in your environment you are both absorbing and sending energy at the same time. You are probably more familiar with terms such as “good vibes” and “bad vibes.” Those are the waves at which we are all vibrating. We are all energy. The energy in your body is reflecting the energy around you because the atoms in your body are not only giving off energy, they are absorbing energy. Every living organism communicates with these vibrations. Animals communicate with plants; they communicate with other animals. Shamans talk to plants with vibrations. If you are sensitive to the differences between “good” and “bad” vibrations, you would always be leading yourself to places that would encourage your survival, your growth, your love, et cetera, and staying away from situations and places that would take advantage of you or cancel who you are.

When we are not paying attention to our vibrational energies, we are missing the most important readouts from our environment. Understanding of the new physics says that all energies are entangled and interact with each other. Therefore, you must pay attention to these invisible forces that are involved with what’s going on in your life. While medicine does not train its doctors to recognize that energy is part of the system, they very easily adapted to using the new scan systems to determine what is going on inside the body. It is humorous that they read their scans as “maps,” but do not have the fundamental understanding that their maps are direct readouts of the energy present in the body.

For example, in a mammogram revealing a cancer, one is you are visualizing a characteristic emission of energy distinctive of a cancer. Rather than cutting out the cancer, what if you applied an energy that, through interference patterns, would change the energy of those cancer cells and bring them back to a normal energy? Presumably you would get a healing effect. This would make sense out of thousands of years of what is called “hands-on healing.” The recipient is getting an energy that is interacting with their body through interference and through that interference, changing the character of the energy reflected in the physical matter because the matter is the energy. This is the future of medicine although we are not there with it right now.

Quantum physicists reveal that underneath apparent physical structure there is nothing more than energy, that we are energy beings. That means that we interact with everything in the field. This has an important impact on health care. Quantum physics reveals that energies are always entangled with each other. In an energy universe, waves are always flowing through and interacting with all other waves. We can never separate someone fully from the environment they live in. Quantum physics says the invisible energy is one hundred times more efficient in conveying information than are material signals (e.g., drugs). What we are beginning to recognize is that there is an invisible world that we have not dealt with in regard to understanding the nature of our health.

In other words, rather than focusing on matter, in a quantum world we focus on energy. In the mechanical world we said we can understand everything by reductionism. But in the newer quantum understanding of the universe we have to understand holism: you cannot separate one energy vibration from another energy vibration. We have to recognize that in the world we live in we are entangled in an unfathomable number of energy vibrations and we are connected to all of them!

Here is my definition of the environment: it is everything from the core of your being to the edge of the universe. It includes everything in close proximity to you as well as the planets and the sun and what is going on in the entire solar system. We are part of this entire field. To summarize the significance of this let me give you a quote from Albert Einstein: “The field is the sole governing agency of the particle.” What he says is this: the field, the invisible energy, is the sole governing agency of the physical reality

© 2007 by Bruce Lipton. This article is Part One of a three-part presentation derived from The Wisdom of Your Cells, How Your Beliefs Control Your Biology, published by Sounds True as an Audio Listening Course on eight CDs, www.soundstrue.com. Watch for Part Two and Three of Dr. Lipton’s presentation in the Summer and Autumn 2007 issues of Light of Consciousness.

“We don’t need to save the world, just spend it more wisely” – Swami Beyondananda

We all want to fix the world, whether we realize it or not. On a conscious level, many of us feel inspired to save the planet for altruistic or ethical reasons. On an unconscious level, our efforts to serve as Earth stewards are driven by a deeper, more fundamental behavioral programming known as the biological imperative -the drive to survive. We inherently sense that if the planet goes down, so do we. So, armed with good intentions, we survey the world and wonder, “Where do we begin?”

Terrorism, genocide, poverty, global warming, diseases, famine… stop already ! Each new crisis adds to a looming mountain of despair, and we can be easily overwhelmed by the urgency and magnitude of the threats before us. We think, “I am just one person-one out of billions. What can I do about this mess?” Combine the enormity of the mission with how small and helpless we imagine we are, and our good intentions soon fly out the window.

Consciously or unconsciously, most of us accept our own powerlessness and frailty in a seemingly out-of-control world. We perceive ourselves as mere mortals, just trying to make it through the day. People, on presuming helplessness, frequently beseech God to solve their problems.

The image of a caring God deafened by a never-ending cacophony of pleas emanating from this ailing planet was amusingly portrayed in the movie, Bruce Almighty , in which Jim Carrey’s character, Bruce, took over God’s job. Paralyzed by the din of prayers playing endlessly in his mind, Bruce transformed the prayers into Post-It notes only to become buried under a blizzard of sticky paper.

While many profess to live their lives by the Bible, the perception of powerlessness is so pervasive that even the most faithful seem blind to the frequent references in the scriptures that extol our powers. For example, the Bible offers specific instructions in regard to that looming mountain of despair: “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.“1 That’s a hard mustard seed to swallow. All we need is faith, and nothing will be impossible for us? Yeah . . . right!

But, seriously, with these divine instructions at hand, we ask ourselves, “Is our presumed powerlessness and frailty a true reflection of human abilities?” Advances in biology and physics offer an amazing alternative-one that suggests our sense of disempowerment is the result of learned limitations. Therefore, when we inquire, “What do we truly know about ourselves?” we are really asking, “What have we learned about ourselves?”

In the face of heroic efforts needed to save our own lives, what chance do we have to save the world? Confronted with current global crises, we understandably shrink back, overwhelmed with a feeling of insignificance and paralysis-unable to influence the affairs of the world. It is far easier to be entertained by reality TV than to actually participate in our own reality.

But consider the following:

Fire walking: For thousands of years, people of many different cultures and religions from all parts of the world have practiced fire walking. A recent Guinness World Record for longest fire walk was set by 23-year-old Canadian Amanda Dennison in June 2005. Amanda walked 220 feet over coals that measured 1,600 to1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. Amanda didn’t jump or fly, which means her feet were in direct contact with the glowing coals for the full 30 seconds it took her to complete the walk.

Many people attribute the ability to remain burn-free during such a walk to paranormal phenomena. In contrast, physicists suggest that the presumed danger is an illusion, claiming the embers are not great conductors of heat and that the walker’s feet have limited contact with the coals. Yet, very few scoffers have actually removed their shoes and socks and traversed the glowing coals, and none have matched the feat of Amanda’s feet. Besides, if the coals are really as benign as the physicists suggest, how do they account for severe burns experienced by large numbers of “accidental tourists” on their firewalks?

Our friend, author and psychologist Dr. Lee Pulos, has invested considerable time studying the fire walking phenomenon. One day, he bravely faced the fire himself. With his pants rolled up and his mind clear, Lee walked the gauntlet of burning embers. Upon reaching the other side, he was delighted and empowered to realize that his feet showed no sign of trauma. He was also totally surprised to discover upon unrolling his pants, his cuffs detached along a scorch mark that encircled each leg.

Whether or not the mechanisms that allow fire walking are physical or metaphysical, one outcome is consistent: those who expect the coals to burn them, get burned, and those who don’t, don’t. The belief of the walker is the most important determinant. Those who successfully complete the firewalk experience, firsthand, a key principle of quantum physics: the observer, in this case, the walker, creates the reality.

Meanwhile, on the extreme opposite of the climate spectrum, the Bakhtiari tribe of Persia walk barefoot for days in snow and ice over a 15,000-foot mountain pass. In the 1920s, explorers Ernest Schoedsack and Merian Cooper created the first feature length documentary, a brilliant award-winning movie titled Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life. This historic film captured the annual migration of the Bakhtiari, a race of nomads who had no prior contact with the modern world. Twice a year, as they have done for a millennium, more than 50,000 people and a herd of half a million sheep, cows, and goats cross rivers and glacier-covered mountains to reach green pastures.

To get their traveling city over the mountain pass, these hardy, barefooted people dig a roadway, through the towering ice and snow that blankets the 14,000 foot high peak of Zard-Kuh (Yellow Mountain). Good thing these people didn’t know they could catch a death of cold by being shoeless in the snow for days!

The point is, whether the challenge is cold feet or “coaled feet,” we humans are really not as frail as we think we are.

Heavy Lifting: We are all familiar with weightlifting, in which muscled men and women pump iron. Such efforts require intense bodybuilding and, perhaps, some steroids on the side. In one form of the sport called total weightlifting, burly male world record holders lift in the range of 700 to 800 pounds and female titlists average around 450 to 500 pounds.

While these accomplishments are phenomenal, many other reports exist of untrained, unathletic people showing even more amazing feats of strength. To save her trapped son, Angela Cavallo lifted a 1964 Chevrolet and held it up for five minutes while neighbors arrived, reset a jack, and rescued her unconscious boy.5 Similarly, a construction worker lifted a 3,000-pound helicopter that had crashed into a drainage ditch, trapping his buddy under water. In this feat captured on video, the man held the aircraft aloft while others pulled his friend from beneath the wreckage.

To dismiss these feats as the consequence of an adrenaline rush misses the point. Adrenaline or not, how can an untrained average man or woman lift and hold a half ton or more for an extended duration?

These stories are remarkable because neither Ms. Cavallo nor the construction worker could have performed such acts of superhuman strength under normal circumstances. The idea of lifting a car or helicopter is unimaginable. But with the life of their child or friend hanging in the balance, these people unconsciously suspended their limiting beliefs and focused their intention on the foremost belief at that moment: I must save this life!

Drinking Poison: Every day we bathe our bodies with antibacterial soaps and scrub our homes with potent antibiotic cleansers. Thus, we protect ourselves from ever-present deadly germs in our environment. To remind us how susceptible we are to invasive organisms, television ads exhort that we cleanse our world with Lysol and rinse our mouths with Listerine . . . or is it the other way around? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention along with the media continuously inform us of the impending dangers of the latest flu, HIV, and plagues transported by mosquitoes, birds, and swine.

Why do these prognostications worry us? Because we have been programmed to believe our body’s defenses are weak, ripe for invasion by foreign substances.

If Nature’s threats weren’t bad enough, we must also protect ourselves from byproducts of human civilization. Manufactured poisons and massive amounts of excreted pharmaceuticals are toxifying the environment. Of course poisons, toxins and germs can kill us-we all know that. But then there are those who don’t believe in this reality-and live to tell about it.

In an article integrating genetics and epidemiology in Science magazine, microbiologist V.J. DiRita wrote, “Modern epidemiology is rooted in the work of John Snow, an English physician whose careful study of cholera victims led him to discover the waterborne nature of this disease. Cholera also played a part in the foundation of modern bacteriology-40 years after Snow’s seminal discovery, Robert Koch developed the germ theory of disease following his identification of the comma-shaped bacterium Vibrio cholerae as the agent that causes cholera. Koch’s theory was not without its detractors, one of whom was so convinced that V. cholerae was not the cause of cholera that he drank a glass of it to prove that it was harmless. For unexplained reasons he remained symptom-free, but nevertheless incorrect.”

Here’s a man who, in 1884, so challenged the accepted medical opinion, that to prove his point, he drank a glass of cholera, yet remained symptom-free. Not to be outdone, the professionals claimed he was the one who was wrong!

We love this story because the most telling part is that science dismissed this man’s daring experiment without bothering to investigate the reason for his apparent immunity, which was very likely his unshakable belief that he was right. It was far easier for the scientists to treat him as an irksome exception than to change the rules they created. In science however, an exception simply represents something that is not yet known or understood. In fact, some of the most important advances in the history of science were directly derived from studies on anomalous exceptions.

Now take the insight from the cholera story and integrate it with this amazing report: Rural eastern Kentucky, Tennessee, and parts of Virginia and North Carolina are home to devout fundamentalists known as the Free Pentecostal Holiness Church. In a state of religious ecstasy, congregants demonstrate God’s protection through their ability to safely handle poisonous rattlesnakes and copperheads. Even though many of these individuals get bitten, they do not show expected symptoms of toxic poisoning. The snake routine is only the opening act. Really devout congregants take the notion of Divine protection one giant step further. In testifying that God protects them, they drink toxic doses of strychnine without exhibiting harmful effects. Now, there’s a tough mystery for science to stomach!

Spontaneous remission: Every day, thousands of patients are told, “All the tests are back and the scans concur . . . I am sorry; there is nothing else we can do. It is time for you to go home and get your affairs in order because the end is near.” For most patients with terminal diseases, such as cancer, this is how their final act plays out. However, there are those with terminal illnesses who express a more unusual and happier option-spontaneous remission. One day they are terminally ill, the next day they are not. Unable to explain this puzzling yet recurrent reality, conventional doctors in such cases prefer to conclude that their diagnoses were simply incorrect-in spite of what the tests and scans revealed.

According to Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona, author of Coyote Medicine, spontaneous remission is often accompanied by a “change of story.” Many empower themselves with the intention that they-against all odds-are able to choose a different fate. Others simply let go of their old way of life with its inherent stresses, figuring they may as well relax and enjoy what time they have left. Somewhere in the act of fully living out their lives, their unattended diseases vanish. This is the ultimate example of the power of the placebo effect, where taking a sugar pill is not even needed!

Now here’s an utterly crazy idea. Instead of investing all of our money into the search for elusive cancer-prevention genes and what are perceived to be magic bullets that cure without the downside of harmful side effects, wouldn’t it make sense to also dedicate serious energy to research the phenomenon of spontaneous remission and other dramatic, non-invasive medical reversals associated with the placebo effect? But because pharmaceutical companies haven’t come up with a way to package or affix a price tag to placebo-mediated healing, they have no motivation to study this innate healing mechanism.

What does science say about this mind over matter stuff? The answer depends upon which science you ask.

The science of conventional medicine tries to reassure us that none of the phenomena we just described actually exists. That’s because today’s biology textbooks and mass media describe the body and its component cells as machines made of biochemical building blocks.

This perception has programmed the general public to accept the belief in genetic determinism, which is the notion that genes control physical and behavioral traits. This sad interpretation is that our fate is inextricably linked to ancestral characteristics determined by genetic blueprints derived from our parents and their parents and their parent’s parents, ad infinitum. This causes people to believe that they are victims of heredity.

Fortunately, the Human Genome Project (HGP) has pulled the rug out from under conventional science’s beliefs concerning genetic control. This is ironic because it set out to prove the opposite. According to conventional belief, the complexity of a human should require vastly more genes than are found in a simple organism. Surprisingly, the HGP discovered that humans have nearly the same number of genes as lowly animals, a finding that inadvertently reveals a fundamental myth-perception underlying genetic determinism. Science’s pet dogma has long outlived its usefulness and needs to be mercifully put to sleep.

So, if genes do not control life . . . (pause to formulate a mind-blowing question) . . . what does?

The answer is: we do!

Evolving new-edge science reveals that our power to control our lives originates from our minds and is not preprogrammed in our genes.

This is great news. The power for change is within us! However, to activate the amazing power of mind over genes we must reconsider our fundamental beliefs-our perceptions and misperceptions-of life.

Our first serious misperception occurs when we gaze into the mirror and see ourselves as singular, individual entities. In reality, each of us is a community of 50 trillion cells. While this number is easy to say, it is almost unfathomable. The total number of cells in a human body is greater than the total number of humans on 7,000 Earths!

Nearly every cell in your body has all of the functions present in the entire human body, which means that every cell has its own nervous, digestive, respiratory, musculoskeletal, reproductive, and even immune systems. Because these cells represent the equivalent of a miniature human being, conversely, every human is the equivalent of a colossal cell!

As we will come to see, our mind represents a government that coordinates and integrates the functions of the body’s massive cellular civilization. In the same manner that decisions by a human government regulate its citizens, our mind shapes the character of our cellular community.

Insights into the nature of the mind, how it influences us, and where it lives, offer an opportunity for us to fully realize our true powers. An awareness of this knowledge allows us to actively participate in the unfolding of our individual lives as well as contribute to the evolution of our collective world.

Bruce Lipton is honored to Receive the 2009 Goi Peace Award. The Goi Peace Award 2008 recipient was Bill Gates

The Goi Peace Award selection committee will bestow the 2009 Goi Peace Award on cell biologist Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. in recognition of his pioneering work in the field of New Biology.

The annual Goi Peace Award honors individuals and organizations in various fields that have made outstanding contributions toward the realization of a peaceful and harmonious world for all life on earth.

Dr. Lipton will receive the award at a ceremony during the Goi Peace Foundation Forum 2009 to be held at Ginza Blossom Hall in Tokyo on November 8, 2009.

“Through his research and educational activities, Dr. Lipton has contributed to greater understanding of life and the true nature of humanity, empowering wide layers of the public to take control of their own lives and become responsible co-creators of a harmonious planetary future”

Hiroo Saionji, president of the Goi Peace Foundation.

Please see the full announcement here: www.goipeace.or.jp

Dear Masami Miyazaki,

I am honored and humbled by the Foundation’s acknowledgment of the evolutionary value of The Biology of Belief and gratefully accept the Peace Award.

Initially, when informed that I was chosen as a candidate for the Goi Peace Prize, my heart soared for I already felt like a “winner,” simply because the members of the Goi Foundation had recognized the value of the new science in supporting global peace and harmony. The Foundation’s recognition of this work had been a high point in my career.

However, your recent message that my research had actually been chosen to receive the award was truly overwhelming, a sign of the graciousness of the Universe. Since 1985, I have been on a personal mission to spread the new science’s important message that we are all powerful creators of both our personal lives and of the world in which we live. It has been a long uphill struggle to get this message of self-empowerment into the hearts and minds of citizens around the world. The award presented by the Goi Foundation profoundly advances this mission by bringing this new awareness to the world’s attention.

I have cleared my schedule so that I will be able to arrive in Tokyo on November 7 and depart on November 10.

I will be forwarding to you a galley-proof of my new book, Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future (And a Way to Get There From Here). This new work, which expands upon the science in the Biology of Belief, will be released in September by Hay House Publishers. The book, an extraordinary guide for navigating this turbulent period in our planet’s history, is an informative and hopeful study that reveals how we arrived at our current crises and how we can effectively redefine the path of our evolutionary journey. I believe it offers scientific insight that fully resonates with the Foundation’s mission of encouraging global peace and evolution.

Dear Masami, would you please extend my deepest gratitude and sincere appreciation to Hiroo Saionji and all the members of the Foundation for this most prestigious honor they have bestowed upon me.

In Light and Love,

Bruce (Lipton)

We must emphasize that even though the vast variety of protein pathways in the cell provides for the functions of life, merely having those pathways does not generate life. Life is dependent upon the precise coordination and regulation of the cell’s protein pathways. The brain and supporting nervous system represent the regulatory mechanism that coordinate all of these many pathways that provide for life.

So . . . where is the cell’s brain? Well, contrary to what you probably know, it’s not in the genes. If you think back to high school or college biology, you probably remember that the cell’s largest organelle, the nucleus, is described as the control center or brain of the cell. Because it was presumed that genes control life and that the genes are housed within the nucleus, it was a no-brainer to assume that this organelle represented the cell’s brain. However, in light of the infamous nature of assumptions, we must question the accuracy of this belief.

Observations from experiments published 80 years ago challenge the assumption that the genes are the brains of the operation. When one removes the brain from a living individual-chicken with its head cut off notwithstanding-that individual dies. But if a nucleus is removed from a cell, a process called enucleation, the cell survives, and many can live for two or more months without their genes! In fact, enucleated cells will continue to function normally until they need to replace protein parts vital to their survival.

Genes are simply blueprints used to make protein parts. Enucleated cells eventually die, not due to an immediate absence of genes, but because they cannot replace their worn-out protein parts and, as a result, they inevitably begin to decay. While traditional thinking has taught us to believe that the nucleus is the cell’s brain, in truth, the nucleus is the functional equivalent of the cell’s gonads, its reproductive system.

This misrepresentation is understandable. Throughout history, science has predominantly been an “old boy’s club.” Because males reputedly think with their gonads, confusing the cell’s nucleus with its brain is, in the light of that bias, an understandable error.

So, if the genes are not the brain, what is? The brain is actually the cell membrane, the equivalent of the cell’s skin. Built into the membrane are protein switches that respond to the environmental signals by relaying their information to internal protein pathways. A different membrane switch exists for almost every environmental signal recognized by a cell. Some switches respond to estrogen, some to adrenaline, some to calcium, some to light waves, and so on.

Although there may be one hundred thousand switches in a cell’s membrane, we don’t have to study each one of them individually, because they all share the same basic structure and function. Following is a conceptual illustration of a genetic membrane switch.

Figure A: Each cell has receptor proteins and effector proteins that extend through the cell’s membrane, connecting its cytoplasm with the surrounding environment. 
Metaphorically, these proteins serve as switches 
that put the cell’s motor and gears into motion.
Figure B: When the receptor protein receives a 
signal from the environment, it modifies its 
shape and connects with the effector protein.

Each membrane switch is a unit of perception, comprised of two fundamental parts, a receptor protein and aneffector protein. The receptor protein, as its name implies, receives, or senses, signals from the environment. Upon receiving its primary complementary signal (Primary Signal in Figure B), the now activated receptor moves to and is, thus, able to bind to the switch’s effector protein.

In the illustration on the right, it appears as if the receptor protein and the effector protein are shaking hands (arrow in Figure B). It is this connection that allows information from outside the cell to be transmitted into the cell where it is used to engage behavior.

When activated by a receptor, the effector protein sends a secondary signal (Secondary Signal in figure B) through the cytoplasm inside of the cell that controls specific protein functions and pathways. The coordinated activity of membrane switches enables the cell to sustain its life by orchestrating metabolism and physiology in response to an ever-changing environment.

Receptor proteins provide the cell with an awareness of the elements of the environment, while the switch’s effector proteins generate signals, which are physical sensations that regulate specific cell functions. Together, these switches, located in the cell membrane, provide “an awareness of the elements of the environment through a physical sensation.

That very phrase offers the key to unlocking the secret of life. Are you ready?

Those words are the dictionary definition of perception, a word that’s Latin roots mean “comprehension” or, literally, “a taking in.” Consequently, the protein switches in the cell membrane represent fundamental molecular units of perception. Because these switches control the cell’s molecular pathways and specific biological functions, we can confidently conclude that perceptions control behavior!

Also, dear readers-the fact that perceptions control behavior at both the cellular and the human level-is the realsecret to life!

New-Edge Biology Conclusion #3
Protein perception switches in the cell membrane respond to environmental signals by regulating cell functions and behavior.

Avatar, The Lost Symbol and TIME Magazine … A Common Ground

Wow! As is clearly evident from today’s headlines, the “evolution” is seriously underway. Political turmoil, economic upheaval, fanatical religious fundamentalism are all signs of a crumbling foundation. The media, unfortunately, is focusing on the fear of the collapse and not really offering much encouragement for a healthier, harmonious tomorrow.

In spite of the looming darkness, messages of empowerment are still being provided to the public through the guise of edutainment, education wrapped in a layer of entertainment. Recently, my lovely partner, Margaret, and I cut the cords attaching us to our computers and ventured off to the beautiful summer in the South Island of New Zealand. During our two-week break before the new teaching semester started, I did something quite unusual for moi … I engaged in some “recreational” reading. I chose Dan Brown’s new book, The Lost Symbol, a page turning mystery fusing ancient history and modern science.

The premise of the book concerns the quest for acquiring Earth-changing empowerment through unlocking mysteries in the long-lost world of hidden esoteric wisdom. I was particularly excited by the book’s underlying story of America’s Deistic spiritual roots. This is the same information I provided in Spontaneous Evolution, knowledge that I believe is relevant to why and how the US was created … and why we have gone so far astray from our evolutionary roots.

Brown’s story also introduces the public to the findings of a field of research known as Noetic Science. In the course of the story, Brown offers the public scientific proof that consciousness influences reality. The storyline incorporates examples of the power of consciousness using information taken from The Field and The Intention Experiment, books by my friend and colleague Lynne McTaggart. His foray into Noetic science focuses on the power of the mind in shaping our lives and the world in which we live … coincidently, the very same message emphasized in The Biology of Belief.

My excitement in reading Brown’s book, in addition to the story, is that through entertainment, he is providing the public with a new science that is vital to our survival and evolution. For the same reason, I was mesmerized by James Cameron’s Avatar. Well, the truth is the amazing 3-D wizardry and advanced animation techniques were a stunning technical tour-de-force that would have captivated me even if the movie didn’t convey such a profoundly important message.

However, in the edutainment category, Avatar’s mythic fantasy reveals deep insight into how human behavior is undermining the environment and precipitating our own extinction. It’s very “un“subtle and profoundly important message is that civilization must recognize and honor its life-sustaining relationship with the environment. Spontaneous Evolution offers the same story, without the 3-D and stunning animation (… maybe that’s where I went wrong!)

Lastly, TIME magazine’s cover story, Why Your DNA Isn’t Your Destiny (January 18),
presented the general public with a personally empowering story on epigenetics, emphasizing how an individual’s environment and lifestyle control genetic activity. Of course, this is the fundamental message introduced and expanded upon in The Biology of Belief. The public media is finally introducing the masses to the knowledge that they influence the readout of their own genes and control their own health. A message of mastery versus the conventional story that they are victims, held hostage by their own genes.

I truly want to thank all of you that have written about your concerns that my work was not cited in this groundbreaking article. Remember, I am still the heretic, wayward scientist who disavowed The Central Dogma. Regardless of the fact that my contributions were not recognized, I send kudos to TIME magazine for through their worldwide distribution, they are spreading this important evolutionary message much farther than I ever could. I do appreciate your support for the “new” science I offer through my writing and lectures. Thanks!

Lastly, Margaret and I were honored to be guests at a most uplifting and energizing concert in Auckland with Deva Primal and Miten. This was the first show kicking off their current world tour. The couple provided beautiful music and chants, but it was the deep love they shared between themselves and everyone in their audience that melded the hearts of the all to form a single loving unity, a family of life.

I’m off to the college to present my first lecture for this year’s incoming students … and so excited because I’m looking forward to blowing their minds with new science. I am fortunate to be visiting faculty at the New Zealand College of Chiropractic, a school based on practicing the philosophy it teaches … a philosophy of love, community and evolution. NZCC is an academic environment that is a living example of the world perceived in The Biology of Belief and Spontaneous Evolution.

Let’s meet again next month. Till then evolutionaries, keep your hearts and minds focused on the beautiful future that lies before us!

With Love and Light,
Bruce

p.s. If possible, I would appreciate you joining me for my first U.S. 2010 speaking engagement with the Hay House “I Can Do It” Conference in San Diego, May 14-16, 2010. For more information.

2010 Live Events
Don’t Miss Bruce Lipton on February 27 for Lesson 5

A renaissance in cellular biology has recently revealed the molecular mechanisms bridging the mind-body connection. These newly identified mechanisms include molecular master switches through which our thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs create the conditions of our body and of our place in the world. In this fascinating discussion, award-winning lecturer and cell biologist Dr. Bruce Lipton takes you on a fast-paced journey from the microcosm of the cell to the macrocosm of the mind. Learn how this new science can inspire your spirit and engage your mind as your experience the enormous real potential for applying this information in your life and career. 
When: February 27, 9:00 a.m.-10:30 a.m. PT 
To register click here

More calendar events
Podcasts

Inside personal Growth. Spontaneous Evolution with Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. speaking: Listen to Podcast

The Books

Spontaneous Evolution: Information, inspiration and invitation to participate in the greatest adventure in human history – conscious evolution!
« Purchase from Amazon
« Purchase from Spirit2000

The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles
« Purchase from Amazon
« Purchase from Spirit2000

©2010 Bruce Lipton Ph.D. All Rights Reserved. 
If you or a friend would like to receive Bruce Lipton’s Newsletter, you can sign-up by going to www.brucelipton.com.

It’s never our intention to send unwanted email. If you’re receiving duplicates or would prefer not to receive Bruce Lipton’s Newsletter, simply Click here. Or go to: http://www.brucelipton.com/unsubscribe to unsubscribe. Thanks for helping us keep our list lean.

May 2010 Dear Imaginal Cells and Cultural Creatives, When May “Comes In Like a Lion, It Leaves Like a …” Crisis ignites evolution. The challenges and crises the world faces today are actually signs that change is imminent… We are about to face facing our evolution.

Two questions: “Do you think it is a good idea to have an emergency kit in your house and in your car?” And, “Do you have an emergency kit in your house and in your car?”

While I cannot guess your answers to these questions, simple logic offers some insight as to what might be appropriate answers.

The preparedness of having an emergency kit implies that we perceive that a chance of an accident or some disruptive event is considered to be a real possibility. However, the answer further depends on what the probability is of that event occurring? If I drive a 1,000 miles a year, there may be far less chance of being in an accident, and therefore a lesser need for an emergency kit, than if I drive a 100,000 miles per year. In the latter case, an emergency kit in the car would make good sense. Probability dictates the need for being prepared.
A second and equally important point to consider is the cost of being prepared. For example, a useful emergency kit containing a selection of aids that may make a life or death difference in the event of an accident may only cost about $50. However, if you felt that a CAT scanner was a requirement for your safety preparedness, the cost of that emergency kit would be $1,000,050. Obviously, I wouldn’t be carrying such a “kit” in my car, although, if enough neighbors (community) were like-minded about the need for the scanner, we could contribute to creating a central facility.

A third point of consideration, can we afford to invest resources needed for life on purchasing something that has a low probability of being used? If I am down and out, spending $50 for an emergency kit might be classified as a luxury item when I am struggling with buying food.

In the end, the final decision on investing in an emergency plan comes down to whether the investment compromises your immediate survival. This calculation is based upon how much energy you have to invest and the perceived probability of an event occurring.

Probability Alert Probability Alert Probability Alert

The reason I am going on about the idea of an “emergency kit,” is that conditions are leading to an almost inevitable global upheaval. With a little bit of preparedness, you will not only weather the storm, but you will be able to fulfill your destiny as Imaginal Cells shaping the evolution of Humanity. With hopes that the following stimulates some personal insights and actions:

Science acknowledges that we are experiencing the sixth mass extinction of life on this planet. A primary factor contributing to the upheaval is human behavior. Civilization has created a massive ecological catastrophe through such behaviors as: clear-cutting rain forests, diverting water from rivers and lakes, over-fishing the ocean, dependence on soil-destroying corporate farming, and our polluting the land, water and air with industrial, agricultural and pharmaceutical chemicals

Will the Earth recover from this tragedy? The answer is absolutely, Yes! However, whether we will be here or not when that happens is still an open question. Steve Bhaerman and I describe in Spontaneous Evolution, that the crises we currently face are propelling us toward an evolutionary choice-point. However, in typical human behavior, we will likely make our choices only when we are confronted with a necessity to do so.

Human behavior, planetary behavior and galactic behavior are now converging and manifesting a “perfect evolutionary storm.” Humans are out of balance, hence the crises facing civilization’s health and survival. Earth is out of balance, hence the life-threatening nature of global climate change. And, our relationship to the galaxy is in upheaval as we transit the Milky Way’s equator in 2012.

The probability of a global catastrophe in the near future is an almost unavoidable reality. Consider the global crises that have arisen since January: An earthquake destroys the nation of Haiti. A volcanic eruption in Iceland shuts down life sustaining air flights that maintain Europe’s economy. A BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico threatens life in all the planet’s oceans. A growing global economic catastrophe, resembling the mini-version that recently occurred in Greece, may lead to civil unrest and the crash of civilization.

Collectively, these crises resemble birthing pains that precede the delivery of a child. A little bit of pain and damage is experienced in launching a new life form. In this “birth” I am referring to, the newborn is an evolutionarily advanced state of Human Civilization. The awareness we need to keep in mind is, that during this birthing process, “business as usual” may be completely out the window before a viable evolutionary transition system becomes self-sufficient.

What does that mean? It specifically means that we must be prepared for a period of chaos in maintaining our lives. What can we do? Create a personal “Evolution Emergency Kit!” Fortunately, at the current moment, the expense of preparing for survival readiness is relatively inexpensive. What is needed in such a kit? To be safe, consider what you would “need” during a loss of services that may last from one to two weeks. For a reality check, how long did it take to get services to victims of hurricane Katrina?

The basics one could consider for such a “kit” would be food, water, first aid supplies and power sources used for lighting, cooking and communicating. Realize that supermarket shelves will be empty within a few hours of any disaster. We could reconsider the old practice of keeping kitchen cupboards stored with enough food to last for two weeks or more. Dried foods, such as beans, rice, and flour are, at the moment, readily available and truly inexpensive. Similarly, we could consider ways to store water, a necessity more essential than food!

Disasters and chaos will likely cause banks to temporarily shut down, which means their ATM machines will be out of order as well. Do you have enough cash available to manage necessary affairs in such a situation? A small stash of cash would be of considerable value in managing your life in times of chaos.

It is not my intention to design your personal “Emergency Kit.” I simply want to alert you to the fact that the probability of an imminent geological and/or social upheaval is not just high, but may be approaching “inevitable.” Investing in a personal “Emergency Kit” now will cost you a few hours and a few dollars. Once you’ve created one, it can be “left in the closet” with the intention that it will never be needed.

What about the investment if there is no upheaval? Well, you didn’t really lose anything, since what ever you provided for yourself in the “kit” was assumed to be necessary for your life anyway. If there is no upheaval … you still can eat the beans and rice!

There are wonderful resources on the web in which experts offer their insights in regard to emergency preparedness in regard to food, health, and sustainable resources. If you have an opportunity, you can get an idea of what being “prepared” means by visiting the following web sites:
Post Peak Living: Prepared for the Peak: postpeakliving.com
Transition Network: transitionnetwork.org 
Transitions U.S. Social Network: transitionus.ning.com

On the personal side, my interest in emergency preparedness also stem from my interest in astrology. In the Biology of Belief, I described how the cells read and respond to “environmental” information, signals that control genes and behavior. Through extension, it was apparent that living organisms evolved within and adapted to energy (information) fields derived from the sun and planets. The expression of a daily 24-hour cycle, a lunar 28-day cycle and solar 365-day cycle are manifest in the behaviors in almost all of the life forms comprising Nature. It was at that time that I realized astrology was, in fact, biologically expressed as astro physiology!

Below is a piece of astrological forecasting that I read in early 2008:
“Saturn (traditional structures) opposite Uranus (in upheaval). Here are the five Saturn-Uranus oppositions:

1. November 4
2008

19º Virgo/Pisces

2. February 5

2009

20º Virgo/Pisces

3. September 15

2009

25º Virgo/Pisces

4. April 26

2010

28º Virgo/Pisces

5. July 26

2010

0º Libra/Aries

These continuing transits create not only the atmosphere and architecture of revolution (Uranus) but it’s reality and actuality – the demand from the working & middle classes for revolutionary change (from out-of-touch traditions & governments and from the rule of Law that has been replaced by politics). It is during these years when the forces of change will clash most violently with the forces of the status quo.”

Needless to say, I was speechless on the day of the first Saturn-Uranus opposition, November 4, when McCain (Saturn-Tradition) was undone by Obama (Upheaval). The other dates also reflected influences on planetary revolution (actually evolution) but were not as dramatic as the November opposition.

The concept of revolutionary drama, with an emphasis on preparing an “emergency kit” were re-instilled in me when a reader forwarded an interesting, to say the least, astrological report by “evolutionary astrologer” Maurice Fernandez, that was first published in early 2009. Much of the insight he offers as to what may happen in 2010, has happened. However, Fernandez expands upon the significance of the Saturn-Uranus astrological information referred to above, for in the months of June and July the planets Jupiter, Mars and Pluto align with Saturn and Mars. In regard to this period, Fernandez writes:

“In normal circumstances, some people go through changes while others continue their routine. Here the alignment is so strong and dramatic that everyone’s life can be considerably affected, it is likely that your life will not be the same by fall 2010! The question that often arises is:” Is it bad, or is it good?” The answer is that it depends on the way one deals with the events; a conscious approach can make a difference.

One thing for certain: do not expect security, consistency, and predictability during this time. Reality is bound to change fast and so it is better to move with the flow, while remaining conscious of what is going on.”

My intention in presenting this month’s information on preparedness is that with consciousness and intention we can more effectively and healthfully manage the transitions that Fernandez suggests lies before us. I feel there is some serious credibility to Fernandez’s predictions and see his insights as truly informative. Consequently, for those who are interested, I pasted his whole report below.

In conclusion, May came in like the proverbial lion, wreaking havoc around the globe. While we would love see this month exit as the “lamb,” the months of June and July may eclipse whatever May does. And, if it turns out to be a wild ride, well Margaret and I will be getting the beans on the stove and preparing for one of our marathon Scrabble tournaments … all the while, hoping you are at home and safe!

With Light and Love,
Bruce

p.s. If possible, I would appreciate you joining me for my first 2010 speaking engagements:

2010 Live Events
I Can Do It, San Diego, CA
Fri-Sun, May 14-16. For more information: 
To register click here

………………………………………….
Meaningful Purpose: The Realization of Our Potential, Walnut Creek, CA
Monday, May 24. For more information: 
To register click here

………………………………………….

I Can Do It, Toronto Canada
Thu-Sun, May 27-30. For more information: 
To register click here

………………………………………….

The Wisdom of Your Cells, Discover Your Inner Potential, Soquel CA
Fri, Jun 4. Register by calling Santa Cruz Chi Center at: 831-465-9088 or email cindie@santacruzchicenter.com

………………………………………….

A new Sounds True deeper learning course:

Spontaneous Evolution and 2012: The Choice to Become a New Species, Live On Line
June 9, 16, and 23, 6-8:30 pm. For more information: To register click here: 
There are many “Live Online Events” this month, as well. Please see my calendar for a complete listing: More calendar events

Teleseries

Healing with the Masters
Thurs, May 20, 4pm
http://www.healingwiththemasters.com

Other Reading

Time of Radical Shift
A Look into the Coming Cycle
by Maurice Fernandez 
(evolutionary astrologer)

Greetings, I feel compelled to write this note about what we astrologers are seeing coming. We are in the beginning of a very unique time in history that will redefine the foundations of our lives. The astrological circumstances are uncommon and very dramatic. Change is likely to affect every level of our being, even though each person will feel it differently and in varying degrees of intensity.

I’m writing this note so that you may make better use of this time and understand what it is about. As astrologers we are aware of cycles that affect our existence; because this coming cycle is very unique, I feel it is important to share this information. I will try to keep it simple and not burden you with a long text and excessive details.

There are multiple planetary bodies that are gradually forming a very particular and rare alignment. This configuration began to form during the fall of 2008. Politically, that time was when the economical crisis exploded and when US president Barack Obama was elected. The configuration will move into a second phase during November 2009 and January/February 2010. (Saturn will move into the Cardinal sign of Libra and will form powerful angle to Pluto in Capricorn)…

The third phase is probably the most dramatic and intense, and will occur from the end of June to the end of July 2010, when all the factors of the configuration will align together in a cross at the very beginning of Cardinal signs in astrology. (Cardinal signs are the signs of new cycles. The planets in questions are Pluto, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars. These planets are slow moving bodies and therefore it is absolutely exceptional that these slow moving bodies end up all aligned in a cross on these very sensitive degrees!

In normal circumstances, some people go through changes while others continue their routine. Here the alignment is so strong and dramatic that everyone’s life can be considerably affected, it is likely that your life will not be the same by fall 2010! The question that often arises is:” Is it bad, or is it good?” The answer is that it depends on the way one deals with the events; a conscious approach can make a difference.

One thing for certain: do not expect security, consistency, and predictability during this time. Reality is bound to change fast and so it is better to move with the flow, while remaining conscious of what is going on. Flexibility is one of the most important assets during this time. This influence is analogous to a gigantic wave forming; you can ride on that wave and go farther than ever expected -experience a powerful transformation that can elevate you to new grounds. But this wave can also destroy a lot of what you are currently attached to.

Redefinition may occur in different fields: you may change vocation, relationships, location, mindsets, to name but a few. New people will move into your life, current ones may leave. New ideas and projects will develop and you may feel inspired to completely reinvent yourself! The cards are re-shuffled! This is a time of an awakening, a revolution; an internal and social revolution.

Everything is shaking up, everything, from November 2009 until August 2010, nothing will stay still. It can be very good, but you have to learn to navigate these changes and seize opportunity when it comes. Don’t try to have it all perfect, don’t try to keep the cake and eat it: change can take you to a completely new and perhaps higher level of what you are about, but you will have to let go of your security during this time. It is a time for risk, reinvention, new ideas, new concepts, new vision, and the impetus to make it happen.

Marriages may break, jobs and possessions may be lost, people may get sick, and simultaneously, new relationships may emerge, new passion may awaken, a completely new lifestyle is in the making…You are embarking on an adventure whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not.

My suggestion: make peace with the idea, don’t resist the adventure. If you are accepting it, you will make the best of it. If you fight and resist it, you won’t win.

This is what I mean by being open to risk taking, it may be time to take that “plunge!” Risking does not mean giving in to every silly venture. It is about hearing a calling for truth, things you have denied, postponed, avoided, feared, but things you know were true. This is a time to be more truthful and follow a calling.

Collectively, while the forces of corruption and manipulation may attempt to control the course of events, they are bound to disintegrate. Scandals will continue to hit the news, Natural events will continue to shake the earth. At worst, a war may break during summer 2010 or later because dramatic changes can spur fear and conflict… But it does not have to go that way; we are creators of our own destiny in the midst of the given circumstances. 
As you go through these changes, it is crucial that you take good care of your immune system because as positive as changes may be, they can overwhelm you and weaken your immune system: eat more healthy, avoid fast sugar, ingest raw garlic and onions daily (sandwich), exercise, take time out of the intensity loop, do not let negativity take over-these are basic tips that can keep you grounded.

Importantly: the situation heating up is like a piece of molten iron that can be beaten into a better form-personally and collectively. Be an ambassador of good and avoid wasting time on trivial details.

For example, as we see the earth being depleted and all resources and species dwindling, people waste time arguing if global warming is or is not happening, if it is man-made or not! IT DOESN’T MATTER! What matters is that the natural world is vanishing before our eyes because of our misaligned actions: excessive pollution, deforestation, and peaking toxicity levels are a reality beyond global warming debates.

Similarly, the economy is not likely to stabilize any time soon, but perhaps, necessarily so. And so it will be with many other aspects of your life … you will not have immediate answers. Be patient and keep doing your best. When the cycle will complete, new circumstances will emerge… This cannot be artificially rushed.

These dramatic times are an opportunity for us to restructure our lives, personally and collectively. As many things are being redefined, we can relinquish bad habits and attachments, open up to new ideas, and invest in what works rather than settle for immediate gratification. Patience is another essential asset.

In this context, do not expect others to change for the better if you don’t do it yourself. We blame the governments and project our frustration on distant “evils,” but fail to open our hearts ourselves. Being pro-active may work better than being self-righteous.

IMPORTANT DATES TO NOTE:
October 30 to early December 2009
January 15 to February 15, 2010
June 25 to August 5, 2010 
November 1 to December 26, 2010

GENERAL SUGGESTIONS:
Understand this is an opportunity to reinvent ourselves in a better way.
Understand there will be a price to pay, something may need to go.
If you lose something or someone, understand this is the sign of these times, use a crisis to venture into new horizons and create something new. 
Understand this is an adventure and risk must be taken.
Understand that this is not a time when we can expect security-we are in transition…
Listen to your inner truth, make you life truly happen now.
Take care of your immune system: avoid bad diets in generalŠthey render you vulnerable to opportunistic viruses. 
Support your friends and family, we all shall need one another for support during this transition time. 
Cultivate your spiritual practice: this is also important for your immune system. 
Do your best to do good: whatever you seed now will have effect now and later.

There is probably more than can be said and explained, but you get the point. An incredible opportunity is arising, now and throughout 2010, this type of cycle has not happened in recent history. We can expect a certain level of destruction to occur-that is the price to pay, but the prospect of experiencing an awakening and creating a better future is now within reach. We are now in the midst of a revolution – a cultural, social, and political revolution. On a personal level, it is a conceptual, emotional, and or spiritual revolution, truly, it is in the making!

The Books

Spontaneous Evolution: Information, inspiration and invitation to participate in the greatest adventure in human history – conscious evolution!
« Purchase from Amazon
« Purchase from Spirit2000

The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles
« Purchase from Amazon
« Purchase from Spirit2000

Other information:
Also, take a look at Dr. Darren Weissman’s new book from Hay House, entitled Awakening to the Secret Code of Your Mind And Jonathan Goldman’s new book, The Divine Name

©2010 Bruce Lipton Ph.D. All Rights Reserved. 
If you or a friend would like to receive Bruce Lipton’s Newsletter, you can sign-up by going to www.brucelipton.com.

It’s never our intention to send unwanted email. If you’re receiving duplicates or would prefer not to receive Bruce Lipton’s Newsletter, simply Click here. Or go to: http://www.brucelipton.com/unsubscribe to unsubscribe. Thanks for helping us keep our list lean.

The Goi Peace Foundation is an organization dedicated to promoting world peace, transcending all boundaries of race, religion, or politics, with a belief that peace begins in the mind of each individual.

Their 2010 peace award will go to our dear friend and colleague Deepak Chopra, M.D., a world authority in the field of mind-body medicine. The award is in recognition of Deepak’s visionary leadership in promoting global peace and wellbeing through human empowerment.

With his deep wisdom and wide outreach, Dr. Chopra has guided many people around the world toward understanding their true nature and achieving health and happiness in their lives. His initiative to inspire each of us to walk the way of peace is helping to create a critical mass of awakened global citizens that will facilitate the transformation of our cultures.

Dr. Chopra is the Founder and Chairman of the Chopra Foundation, dedicated to improving health and wellbeing, cultivating spiritual knowledge, expanding consciousness, and promoting world peace.

I was personally honored to be the recipient of the 2009 Goi Award. Margaret and I were invited to attend the ceremonies in Tokyo last November. At the time, we were profoundly moved by the proceedings, for the gathering revealed an enthusiastic readiness on the part of global citizens to evolve to a higher plane of life. Among the thousand guests in attendance were ambassadors from fifteen nations, which included representatives from New Zealand, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Iran, though notably absent were participants from the U.S. Embassy.

Particularly delightful was the audience’s reception of my 30-minute award accepting address that focused on self-empowerment through raising consciousness. A video of that presentation can be seen at: http://www.goipeace.or.jp/english/activities/award/award2009_01.html

The forum’s participants were specifically responsive to the science of how parental dysfunctions, fears, and perceptions of violence and hate are passed on as subconscious programs to their children before they reach the age of six. As the realization of this important insight spread through the audience, the resultant personal enlightenment literally increased the illumination within the beautiful Ginza Blossom Hall.

My message simply stated that we must step outside the disempowering trance of childhood programming and recover our innate powers of creation. To further this end, Margaret and I have dedicated our efforts to informing the public about the empowering process of conscious parenting, a developmental head start that offers children an opportunity to experience enlightened, healthy and loving lives.

Consequently, upon our return from Japan, we were excited to read that nationally recognized Oprah superstar, Dr. Mehmet Oz, released a new book entitled, YOU: Having a Baby, a parental guide based on epigenetics and conscious parenting.

Two years ago, I had the opportunity of being a guest on Dr. Oz’s Oprah Network radio show. During that interview, which was replayed several times in response to audience demand, I introduced Dr. Oz to the new awareness offered by the science of epigenetics. Our conversation specifically emphasized the process by which environment and perception dynamically influence an individual’s genetic code. The discussion further focused on the mechanisms by which parents serve as genetic engineers through their ability to regulate the readout of their children’s genomes.

Dr. Oz has incorporated that information and the message about conscious parenting into his new book. The following is an excerpt from Dr. Oz’s article, Flicking The Switch: The Phenomenal Circuit Board Of The Epigenetic Frontier, in the Huffington Post (for the full article, visit: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mehmet-oz/flicking-the-switch-the-p_b_3...):

“There are many myths that surround procreation. Perhaps the biggest one is that a baby will inherit its genetic blend from its parents and whatever winds up in this software code of life is to be endured for better or worse. Nothing can be done to change it. We were taught that we are stuck with our genes, so thank your parents and grandparents for your athletic prowess, musical ability, diabetes or pear-like profile. Stop any ten people on the street and ask them what they can do about their genes and I bet all ten throw up their hands in surrender.

But in recent years a medical concept called epigenetics is turning this paradigm on its head. It’s the subject of my show on Tuesday and my new book with Dr. Michael Roizen “YOU: Having a Baby.” Epigenetics reveals how our ancestors developed tools to turn on or off our genes in order to give our species the ability to rapidly adapt to a changing environment. This means we have inherited the ability to control how our genes are used.

… We don’t know everything about how epigenetics works during pregnancy, but we do know that the foods you eat and the chemicals you ingest or inhale push a lot of circuit breakers on or off in your baby. We also know that this isn’t limited to a developing fetus – this continues throughout your life, your child’s life, and can be passed on from generation to generation. By taking proactive healthy steps, you are actually giving your great grandchildren an advantage and a better set of genetic circuit breakers!”

We are very thankful for Dr. Oz’s new direction, for with his public persona, his book is a powerful way to get this new information to the mainstream public! The evolution that lies before us requires our participation, and this is precisely the point Oz emphasizes in his new book.

Fortunately, almost all of you readers are already there … for you are the cultural creatives who are taking responsibility for your lives, and by doing so, helping us all evolve. Thank you for thinking “outside” the box, for that is where the answers are to be found!

See Meryl Davids Landau’s Huffington Post blog with Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. on energy healing.

Over the years I’ve been to a number of energy therapists who’ve used methods ranging from their hands to acupuncture needles to tuning forks to cure whatever’s ailed me (and it usually did). But the last time, when an odd pain kept me from traveling to a practitioner’s office, the ache was vanquished over the phone. Click here to read the entire article

Chapter from:
Leigh Fortson
Author – Embrace, Release, Heal:
An Empowering Guide to Talking About, Thinking About and Treating Cancer
WWW.EMBRACEHEALINGCANCER.COM

BRUCE LIPTON, PHD

Epigenetics
Author of The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of 
Consciousness, Matter, and Miracles
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

WILLIAM JAMES

Dr. Bruce Lipton is a diehard scientist. He’s devoted his life to understanding human biology and behavior. He received his PhD from the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, and then went on to the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, where he was an associate professor of anatomy.

With his traditional track record, why do some people see him as controversial? Why did he step down from teaching medical students and strike out on a career path few had traveled? Simply put, Dr. Lipton has discovered that things aren’t what they seem to be. Nor are they what he was teaching in med school or what we’ve been told to believe.

“Our health is not controlled by genetics,” he told me in his characteristically upbeat and excited manner. “Conventional medicine is operating from an archaic view that we’re controlled by genes. This misunderstands the nature of how biology works.”

Medical professionals from around the globe may curl their lips and snarl, but Dr. Lipton’s research—and the empirical evidence of colleagues—is forcing the issue enough so that changes in medical-school curriculums are currently underway.

But let’s back up for a moment and sit through a blessedly unscientific explanation of Lipton’s mind-expanding logic and what is known as epigenetics, “the study of inherited changes in phenotype (appearance) or gene expression caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence.”

“Medicine does miracles,” he said, “but it’s limited to trauma. The AMA protocol is to regard our physical body like a machine, in the same way that an auto mechanic regards a car. When the parts break, you replace them—a transplant, synthetic joints, and so on—and those are medical miracles.

“The problem is that while they have an understanding that the mechanism isn’t working, they’re blaming the vehicle for what went wrong. They believe that the vehicle, in this case our bodies, is controlled by genes.
“But guess what? They don’t take into consideration that there’s actually a driver in that car. The new science, epigenetics, reveals that the vehicles—or the genes—aren’t responsible for the breakdown. It’s the driver.”

In essence, if you don’t know how to drive, you’re going to mess up the vehicle. In the simplest translation, we can agree that lifestyle is the key to taking care of ourselves. Think well, eat well, and exercise, and your body won’t break down and need new parts.

Dr. Lipton refers to the work of Dr. Dean Ornish to extrapolate. “Dr. Ornish has taken conventional cardiovascular patients, provided them with important lifestyle insights (better diet, stress-reduction techniques, and so on), and without drugs, the cardiovascular disease was resolved. Ornish relayed that if he’d gotten the same results with a drug, every doctor would be prescribing it.”

That’s fine and dandy for people with heart disease, diabetes, or obesity, but what about cancer? Even the strictest lifestyle changes don’t cure cancer in everyone. What about genetic predispositions to getting the disease? “It used to be that we thought a mutant gene caused cancer,” Lipton admitted, “but with epigenetics, all of that has changed.”

Then he explained how his research revealed the science of epigenetics. “I placed one stem cell into a culture dish, and it divided every ten hours. After two weeks, there were thousands of cells in the dish, and they were all genetically identical, having been derived from the same parent cell. I divided the cell population and inoculated them in three different culture dishes.

“Next, I manipulated the culture medium—the cell’s equivalent of the environment—in each dish. In one dish, the cells became bone, in another, muscle, and in the last dish, fat. This demonstrated that the genes didn’t determine the fate of the cells because they all had the exact same genes. The environment determined the fate of the cells, not the genetic pattern. So if cells are in a healthy environment, they are healthy. If they’re in an unhealthy environment, they get sick.”

Dr. Lipton then took this a step further, which brings us back to the cancer question. “Here’s the connection: With fifty trillion cells in your body, the human body is the equivalent of a skin-covered petri dish. Moving your body from one environment to another alters the composition of the ‘culture medium,’ the blood. The chemistry of the body’s culture medium determines the nature of the cell’s environment within you. The blood’s chemistry is largely impacted by the chemicals emitted from your brain. Brain chemistry adjusts the composition of the blood based upon your perceptions of life. So this means that your perception of any given thing, at any given moment, can influence the brain chemistry, which, in turn, affects the environment where your cells reside and controls their fate. In other words, your thoughts and perceptions have a direct and overwhelmingly significant effect on cells.”

This echoes, from a highly scientific point of view, what the intuitive and spiritual healers have been advocating for years: your mind can and does contribute to both the cause and healing of whatever ails you—including cancer.

Other than the mind, two other factors impact the fate of cells, according to Dr. Lipton: toxins and trauma. All three factors have been associated with the onset of cancer.

With this body of knowledge comes promising news. According to Dr. Lipton, gene activity can change on a daily basis. If the perception in your mind is reflected in the chemistry of your body, and if your nervous system reads and interprets the environment and then controls the blood’s chemistry, then you can literally change the fate of your cells by altering your thoughts. In fact, Dr. Lipton’s research illustrates that by changing your perception, your mind can alter the activity of your genes and create over thirty thousand variations of products from each gene. He gives more detail by saying that the gene programs are contained within the nucleus of the cell, and you can rewrite those genetic programs through changing your blood chemistry.

In the simplest terms, this means that we need to change the way we think if we are to heal cancer. “The function of the mind is to create coherence between our beliefs and the reality we experience,” Dr. Lipton said. “What that means is that your mind will adjust the body’s biology and behavior to fit with your beliefs. If you’ve been told you’ll die in six months and your mind believes it, you most likely will die in six months. That’s called the nocebo effect, the result of a negative thought, which is the opposite of the placebo effect, where healing is mediated by a positive thought.”

That dynamic points to a three-party system: there’s the part of you that swears it doesn’t want to die (the conscious mind), trumped by the part that believes you will (the doctor’s prognosis mediated by the subconscious mind), which then throws into gear the chemical reaction (mediated by the brain’s chemistry) to make sure the body conforms to the dominant belief. (Neuroscience has recognized that the subconscious controls 95 percent of our lives.)

Now what about the part that doesn’t want to die—the conscious mind? Isn’t it impacting the body’s chemistry as well? Dr. Lipton said that it comes down to how the subconscious mind, which contains our deepest beliefs, has been programmed. It is these beliefs that ultimately cast the deciding vote.

“It’s a complex situation,” said Dr. Lipton. People have been programmed to believe that they’re victims and that they have no control. We’re programmed from the start with our mother and father’s beliefs. So, for instance, when we got sick, we were told by our parents that we had to go to the doctor because the doctor is the authority concerning our health. We all got the message throughout childhood that doctors were the authority on health and that we were victims of bodily forces beyond our ability to control. The joke, however, is that people often get better while on the way to the doctor. That’s when the innate ability for self-healing kicks in, another example of the placebo effect.

“Jesuits used to say, ‘Give me a child until age six or seven, and he’ll be with the church for the rest of his life.’ They knew that our subconscious minds are programmed through the experiences we have in the first six years of our lives.

“Since the subconscious programs operate outside the range of consciousness, we don’t experience ourselves playing out these behaviors. Therefore, we don’t even see ourselves sabotaging our own lives, and as a result, we don’t take responsibility for the lives we lead. We see ourselves as victims of forces outside of our control. It’s hard to own what we’ve done our whole lives. So we perceive ourselves as victims, and we believe that genes are in control.”

I understand how reclaiming our power can help us heal—that doing so is, in fact, necessary for us to truly heal. Yet too many positive thinkers know that thinking good thoughts—and reciting affirmations for hours on end—doesn’t always bring about the results that feel-good books promise. 
Dr. Lipton didn’t argue this point, because positive thoughts come from the conscious mind, while contradictory negative thoughts are usually programmed in the more powerful subconscious mind.

“The major problem is that people are aware of their conscious beliefs and behaviors, but not of subconscious beliefs and behaviors. Most people don’t even acknowledge that their subconscious mind is at play, when the fact is that the subconscious mind is a million times more powerful than the conscious mind and that we operate 95 to 99 percent of our lives from subconscious programs.

“Your subconscious beliefs are working either for you or against you, but the truth is that you are not controlling your life, because your subconscious mind supersedes all conscious control. So when you are trying to heal from a conscious level—citing affirmations and telling yourself you’re healthy—there may be an invisible subconscious program that’s sabotaging you.”

The power of the subconscious mind is elegantly revealed in people expressing multiple personalities. While occupying the mind-set of one personality, the individual may be severely allergic to strawberries. Then, in experiencing the mind-set of another personality, he or she eats them without consequence.

Even though the influence of our subconscious is interesting, on the face of it, this is not great news for those of us who are doing all we can to heal with our conscious minds. If health is largely determined by subconscious beliefs I’m not even aware of, then I’m brought right back to the original programming: I’m a victim with no control!

Dr. Lipton went on: “I used to say, ‘You are personally responsible for everything in your life,’ but people would look at me as if I’d slapped them. Now I say, ‘Once you become aware of the fact that invisible programs from the subconscious mind are running your life, then you are responsible for it.’

“Becoming aware means accessing the behavioral programs in your unconscious mind so that you can change the underlying limiting or self-sabotaging thoughts that don’t serve you. It’s easy to figure out the nature of your subconscious programs. Just take a look at the character of your life. It’s a printout of your subconscious programs. The things you’re having trouble with are because of that programming.”
Dr. Lipton said that to break free of the programming, you have to first recognize that your subconscious mind exists. You must accept that the manifestation of limitations or disease is because of what’s happening in the field of invisible subconscious programs. (Although he also recognizes that about 3 to 5 percent of disease is due to “birth defects”—alteration of the genetic code that occurred before birth.)

That’s the hard part, because, of course, you say to yourself, “I wouldn’t create this!” Anyone who has been through diseases such as cancer bristles at this idea, because we absolutely would not create the situation consciously. Dr. Lipton, however, urges us to consider that the subconscious mind has been running programs that most likely brought the cancer on. He says that before we can begin the work of really healing, first we must let go of guilt and self-blame—after all, we were downloaded with limiting behavioral programs in our childhood without our conscious awareness.

“You can rewire yourself,” he said. “If a disease such as cancer has progressed to an advanced stage, then you might do a round or two of chemo, but at the same time you need to be reprogramming your mind and recognizing your involvement in the disease. You must recognize that you are a participant in the unfolding of your life. Then you can go into your subconscious program and find out where the problems are.”

Dr. Lipton’s research suggests that the subconscious mind is built on habituation. It learns from patterns and repetition of patterns. By accessing that invisible field, you can rewrite those habits. The million-dollar question is, how?

According to Dr. Lipton, we can do this in many ways. “Through processes such as hypnosis, subliminal tapes, the religious use of affirmations, Buddhist mindfulness, or a series of reprogramming modalities collectively referred to as energy psychology, such as PSYCH-K, Emotional Self-Management (ESM), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), among many other new techniques, we can rewrite those destructive programs that occupy our subconscious field.”

The core of Dr. Lipton’s premise is that by rewiring the subconscious thoughts that negatively impact our cells, we have a far greater chance of healing. The absence of doing this kind of work could also explain why cancer recurs, even after hard-core treatment and years of remission.

Science, said Dr. Lipton, is onboard with the platform of epigenetics, even though most of modern medicine disregards it. Given the profound implications of his research, and the evidence he’s witnessed that proves its merit, it seems unbelievable that the medical world rejects it. But that’s the point; medical professionals don’t want to believe it.

“The amount of money you have invested in a belief system (‘Doctors have the authority; I am ruled by my genes; drugs are the only cure’) determines how willing you are to change it. The financial investment we have in medicine—and especially pharmaceutical drugs—is far too high for those factions to make a change. They don’t want change, no matter how much good it could do.

“Medical institutions are operating on fear. The funding and regulatory elements know that within each of us is the power to heal. For example, it is a proven fact that one-third of all healings are due to the placebo effect, which is controlled by the mind, but medical-related corporations based on making a profit don’t want us to know this. It’s interesting that more than 85 percent of doctors don’t even belong to the policy-making professional union called the American Medical Association. That means that the decisions made by 10 percent of the US medical community control the outcome of the entire medical profession. They determine standard practices, but they’re controlled by investors. And the FDA is heavily invested in the pharmaceutical business.”*

It’s curious to contemplate if an entire industry can possess a subconscious mind. Ideally, people go into medicine because they want to help other people. Yet, the very system in which they work can block those good intentions, since they can only pull from a very limited pool of (FDA-approved) resources, when in fact there exists a wide range of viable alternatives. If there is a sabotaging belief in the subconscious mind of the drug industry, I wonder what it would be, and how it could be exhumed.

Political dynamics are nothing new in the world of medicine, as Dr. Lipton described: “Back in 1925, physicists discovered that everything in the universe is based on energy—not matter. Everything physicists thought they knew had to be revised. In other words, consciousness is primary in creating the world. They went from believing in the machine itself to what runs the machine, but they couldn’t yet take it into the world; it was too radical an idea for the public to accept. Therefore, they arbitrarily agreed to restrict the principles of quantum physics to the realm of atoms and not bring it into the realm of people, societies, or communities.”

Given the politics of medicine, I asked Dr. Lipton where science and spirituality actually intersect. “Quantum physics,” he replied with confidence. “The definition of spirit is ‘an invisible moving force that influences life or matter.’ Einstein said, ‘The Field is the sole governing agency of the particle.’ According to physicists, the Field is defined as exactly the same thing: ‘an invisible moving force that influences life or matter.’ As it turns out, the Field and spirit are the same. The observer creates reality.”

After observing his own reality and admitting to difficulties in his personal life, Dr. Lipton pursued rewiring his own subconscious programs. Although he spoke as a scientist, his passion flowed from personal experience. “I was living a life of folly. I went in and out of trusting this stuff—all of which I’ve now come to know as true. Being a teacher, I had to learn it, but I had grave doubts. I went through some very tough times at first. Then, when I needed something, and I asked God (the Field) to give it to me, something would come forth. I’d say, ‘Show me something,’ and the universe would show me. Finally, I had to own it. Now, I don’t know what the future will bring, but I know that folly doesn’t work. Now I live in a wonderful reality.

“There’s a force moving within us, a biological imperative to survive and to avoid death. It’s built in. Right now, there’s the question of our own extinction, and none of us want to die.”

What is it in the subconscious mind of the individual—or the collective whole—that takes us to the brink of destruction? Only through entering the world of the subconscious mind’s programming will we find out. “I was living in a self-imposed world that resembled purgatory,” Dr. Lipton recalled in a quiet voice. “I thought, ‘What the hell is wrong with this world?’ Now I’m walking in heaven. I’ve recognized who I really am and have rewritten the limiting programs that disempowered me.”

The new science of epigenetics promises that every person on the planet has the opportunity to become who they really are, complete with unimaginable power and the ability to operate from, and go for, the highest possibilities, including healing our bodies and our culture and living in peace. ***