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SCIENTIST, SPIRITUAL SEEKER, VISIONARY. These are just
a few of the appellations used to describe best-selling author Gregg
Braden whose paradigm-shattering books are bridging the gap between
science and spirituality.
As former computer scientist who lent his skills to Martin Marietta
Aerospace during the last years of Cold War in the 1980's and to Cisco
Systems
ensuring the reliability of the Internet during the 1990's, Gregg engages
his readers with a deep understanding of topics ranging from quantum
physics and biology to history and philosophy. To these notable academic
skills he brings a comparable breadth of knowledge gleaned from decades
prowling South American villages, Tibetan monasteries, and dusty Egyptian
texts for their ancient wisdom.
But Gregg's true strengths are revealed when he combines these seemingly
disparate traditions into a symbiotic and powerful message about the
nature of the universe and our place and role within it. Whether he's
writing or speaking to sell-out audiences around the world, Gregg's
message is one of insight, optimism, and personal empowerment. His most
recent work The Divine Matrix: Bridging Time, Space, Miracles and
Belief reached the New York Times Bestseller List. We caught up
with Gregg amidst his busy travel schedule to learn more about his latest
project.
MJ: So tell us about your
new book, The Divine Matrix.
GB: What's so interesting
is that western scientists have just arrived at an understanding that
corresponds to the place where some of our most cherished spiritual
and indigenous traditions begin. That we are bathed in a field of
intelligent energy that permeates all of creation. The atoms that
form the essence of all that we see emerge from the substrate of this
field. So this field literally is running through our bodies in this
moment.
MJ: So what is this field
and what does it do?
GB: This field fulfills
three functions. First, it's a container that literally holds the
universe together. Everything happens within the context of this container.
Because we are part of that context, we are part of all we see and
all we experience. Second it's a bridge between our inner and our
outer experiences. This field is the conduit that allows our thoughts,
beliefs, feelings and emotions to literally have a direct effect on
the stuff our world is made of. Third, it functions as a mirror for
our deepest held beliefs within us - not always what we think we believe
but rather our true fears, loves,  judgments
and biases. These three things together open up the door to a vast
array of possibilities of how we actually function within this field.
The field is so new that scientists are yet to agree on a single term
to describe it.
MJ: You mean the scientific
conception of the field is new, not the field itself.
GB: Precisely. The field
itself has been here since the time of the beginning. But in the scientific
literature there are numerous references to it. Physicists call it
the quantum hologram. Author Lynne McTaggart simply calls it "the
field." Former astronaut Ed Mitchell calls it "nature's mind." Stephen
Hawkins calls it "the mind of God." And in 1944 Max Planck, the man
many believe to be the father of quantum theory, called it "the matrix."
He said that underlying all matter we must assume the existence of
a conscious, intelligent mind. Then he said this mind is the matrix
of all matter. So the term "the matrix" or "the divine matrix" is
a term that comes from the understandings of all these different discoveries
put together.
MJ: OK, scientists, astronauts
and journalists are recognizing this field. What can you tell us about
your own direct experience of the matrix?
GB: We all experience
the divine matrix every day in our lives. When we begin to understand
that our bodies don't end with our skin, and when we see scientific
evidence that supports what the ancient traditions have said for 5,000
years, we begin to recognize we are truly part of all we see.
 MJ:
Can you cite an example from your own life?
GB: One of the most
powerful examples that I've seen is the one I described in the book
of the healing of an inoperable cancerous tumor in a hospital in Beijing.
The woman came to the clinic as a last resort because all else had
failed. She was lying on a gurney and was fully conscious. Three
practioners in white lab coats stood behind her and an ultrasound
technician held a wand to record the healing in real time. The practioners
repeated a mantra that roughly translates into English as 'already
done.' At first nothing happened. Then the tumor quivered in and out
of view as if it was teetering between realities. Then within seconds
it faded and was gone from the screen. Nothing spooky happened, yet
within less than three minutes the condition just disappeared.
MJ: And did you watch
that procedure directly or did you watch a video of it?
GB: I watched the video.
I don't think it makes any difference if you're in the room or if
you see it recorded. Experts have validated the registration marks
on the film. It's not a hoax, although they don't understand why it's
happening. And I simply believe the man who filmed it. I studied with
him in 1996. When I saw that film it took this whole conversation
out of the realm of academic possibilities because suddenly we've
seen something that violates what we are told are the laws of physics
and biology. So we must either write it off as a hoax or we reconcile
what we've seen and change our belief systems.
MJ: OK, but can you share
a personal example that people can relate to? A way that you've put
your modified belief system into practice?
GB: Sure. In my own
life I've had a health condition that gave me an opportunity to apply
the practices that I had been sharing with other people for so long
without the chance to actually apply it for myself. I actually underwent
an exploratory surgery. I went through the whole process only to wake
up in the recovery room and hear the doctor saying "We don't know
why you're here. There's nothing there."
MJ: How wonderful!
GB: Well, it is. But
we all do this. We've all had the opportunity to pick up the phone
to call someone we care about and discover that they're already on
the other end of the phone. I think we all have direct experience
that this field exists. We just need the wisdom and the willingness
to recognize how this field plays out in our lives.
MJ: What implications
will this new understanding and use of the divine matrix have on the
world as it plays out in our lives in terms of our religious or spiritual
thoughts?
GB: Good question. I
can think a couple of different ways I could answer it but I think
perhaps the greatest impact is going to be a union between two schools
of wisdom. On one hand, science is a relatively recent language. It's
only about 400 years old, depending on when we believe the scientific
method actually came into play. Most people accept that this happened
during the time of Newton's formulation of the fundamental laws of
nature. Science describes the universe, how it works, and our relationship
to it. And the best scientists will admit that as good as science
is, it's incomplete. It's not that it's wrong but there are gaps and
in some cases inconsistencies in the story that science tells us about
our universe.
MJ: Sure. There is much
more we can learn and explore. And some of it will supersede our previous
understandings, like the way that Einstein's theory of general relativity
changed our view of gravity as a warping of space-time. It's not that
Newton was wrong, but Einstein explained it more completely.
GB: Right. Their theories
go together. On the one hand, there are other languages that have
been around for a long time. Seven thousand years in the case of the
Hindu Vedas. They also describe the very same thing - the universe,
how it works, our roles, capabilities, and limits within this universe.
And it's done in a very non-technical, non-scientific language.
So it's taken 400 years for western scientists to say there's a field
and everything is part of it. Science explains to us the mechanism
of how things work, but now they're asking how we apply this in our
lives. This is where it becomes valuable to look into the ancient
and the indigenous traditions. Because rather than spending hundreds
of years validating the existence of this field those ancients began
with an understanding that everything is connected and spent their
time learning how to apply that connection in our lives.
So to answer your question, scientific validation is bringing science
and spirituality closer together in the same conversation. We're recognizing
that both describe our universe and the way we work within it in different
but complimentary ways. So I think we're moving to a new understanding
that takes the best of each tradition and weaves them together. With
this new belief system that says we're empowered to participate in
what happens in our lives and our world we'll begin to do things differently.
It's not about control or manipulation. It's about consciously choosing
our personal and collective futures. It's about healing our bodies
and creating peace in our world because those things are at our fingertips
as we accept the power that we're given through our connection in
this divine matrix.
MJ: Have you got any ideas
about what might be coming in the next five to 10 years in terms of
actually putting this into practice in some way?
GB: I certainly do.
We are faced with challenges that humans have never been faced with
before. I believe the conditions of our lives and our world are pushing
us to the place where to survive we literally have to find new answers
and we've got to find them quickly, but I'm an optimist. I believe
that the things we're talking about now that science has demonstrated
beyond any doubt that human belief, human emotion, and human feeling
can extend effects beyond our bodies. We literally have a power within
us to rearrange the stuff our universe is made of - physically and
biologically. I think those understandings now become part of the
new science that will help us to address the challenges of our time.
MJ: Great overview. Can
you provide a specific example?
GB: Sure. There are
a number of new viruses that are cropping up in other parts of the
world - the Avian flu or Ebola or HIV. On the one hand, science has
been hard pressed to come up with antibodies like we did with polio.
On the other hand, in 1988 the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Centre
did a global blood study to see where the pandemic of AIDS was leading.
What they found is that a percentage of the human population had developed
what they were calling a high resistance to the HIV virus. They took
a bit of virus and tested it against human DNA. The DNA was resistant
so they doubled the viral load. And they doubled it again and again
until they had 3,000 times the amount of the viral load that would
normally infect human DNA. Still the DNA did not succumb to the virus.
So why this is important is because we were led to believe when HIV
was discovered in the early 1980s that it had a 100% mortality rate.
Yet something has happened when we see genetic changes. Normally we
see a challenge in one generation and then their offspring develop
the genetic changes to meet that need or the immune response. But
we discovered that newborn babies who were born HIV positive from
HIV positive parents and were tested months afterwards didn't have
it anymore. It's not that the HIV was in remission. It was gone. It
no longer existed in their bodies.
MJ: Thus we're collectively
responding as a species to challenges that we face with our lives.
GB: Precisely. The babies
weren't living in the fear of being told they weren't going to survive
because they had HIV. I think where this is leading is that we can
no longer leave us out of the equation of how it is that we address
the challenges that we find in our lives.
 MJ:
OK, the last question is a multipart inquiry. If you could express only
a single truth to help people what would it be? And what specific steps
would you recommend so that people can implement it?
GB: I would say we must
become the love, compassion, understanding, tolerance, forgiveness,
healing, abundance, and peace that we choose to see in our families,
in our communities, in our checkbooks, in our bodies. And the reason
is because this field is a neutral unbiased field that simply will
mirror back what it is that we give it to work with. So we've got
to give that field something to work with. And what it is that we
give it is what we're going to experience.
MJ: And that is the essence
of the steps we need to take - to give out what it is that you want
to experience.
GB: Precisely. The bottom
line is that we are invited to become in our lives the very things
that we'd like to experience in our world.
©
Matthew Joyce, 2007
Want
to learn more about connecting with your Higher Self? Check out my weblog.
Check
out the excerpt
from Gregg's new book The Divine Matrix
elsewhere in this same issue of PlanetLightworker.com! |
