The Biology of Belief
A Three Hour Audio CD Composed and Read by Dr Bruce Lipton
The Biology of Belief, Bruce Lipton’s three-hour audio CD based on his book of the same name, offers the layman a charming and enchanted introduction into some profound and advanced scientific insights. In the process it demolishes many false certainties that have harmed greatly the quality of much contemporary food, medicine and science and replaces them with a world of interacting consciousness, matter and miracles. Of particular importance, it explains that how we see life determines how our biology responds.
The CD cover announces it is about to change both science textbooks and revolutionise the way we live. This is not an exaggeration. It quotes Lipton to the effect that ‘In the past, we’ve been taught that living beings are like machines run by bio-chemicals and DNA’. It continues ‘What we now know is that our entire biology is shaped by the intelligence of each of our more than fifty trillion calls.’
Each of these cells is contained within a membrane, as is each and every cell of every living system. These membranes, or skins of the cell, are so thin they could not be seen until the discovery of electron microscopes. They have oil and water based components, which use a layered structure to separate the cell’s inside and outside. IMPs or Integral Membrane Proteins penetrate these membranes and provide communication between the world outside and the cells inner workings, shaping biological responses within the cell.
Talk of genetic control or determinism has been misguided because the gene depends on the perceptions of the protein to read and interpret the environment and instruct life within the cell. For fifty years it was not properly realised that chromosomes are half DNA and half protein, with many theories developed on a mistaken interpretation that ignored the role of the protein half of the chromosome. Accordingly the determining role played in all life by perceptions of the environment communicated to our fifty trillion cells by proteins has been neglected.
Lipton explores and explains the nature of this epigenetic control. The word epigenetic itself only dates from 1995 and many scientists remain ignorant of what it illuminates about the control exercised over the response of genes. Epigenetic control — prompted by the stimulus of perceptions — can use a single gene to provide over 2000 proteins and can cover for missing genes. This helps explain how the genes of humans, monkey and rats can be almost the same but through epigenetic processes produce very different animals.
Lipton identifies three categories of perceptions:
· growth perceptions that raise possibilities and generate love
· toxic perceptions that repel, seek protection and generate fear
· neutral perceptions that prompt little or no response.
He also outlines the HPA process whereby the hypothalamus interprets perceptions, the pituitary gland receives signals from the hypothalamus and sends signals that coordinate all the cells of the system and the adrenalin gland that receives the signal from the pituitary gland dictating fight or flight. He notes that the response of the adrenalin gland when under stress sends blood to the arms and legs and takes it from the viscera, thereby reducing the capacity for growth and immune protection. This explains why lives lived under stressful conditions are weakened and inhibited from developing their full potential as the nourishing role of the viscera is constrained.
The last of the three CDs provides substantial guidance in learning to understand and shape the role of the subconscious in determining behaviour. It notes that as much as 95 percent or more of human activity, including many basic life functions, is directed subconsciously. It reminds that the practice of yoga has demonstrated the ability to raise awareness and extend conscious influence into these areas as we better comprehend the perceptions of our trillions of cells.
The CD achieves in a time efficient and relaxed manner the goals it declares for itself in its blurb, illuminating the following mysteries:
· The science of epigenetics: why biologists must look further than DNA to find out what shapes life — and how that affects all of us
· Bridging the gap between quantum mechanics and biology — the key to knowing how our cells ‘listen’ to the energy of our thoughts
· The chemistry of stress and love — how our body, mind and immune systems change with each emotional state
· Turning the immense power of our subconscious minds into our most valuable tool for health and well-being, and much more.
Perhaps most important, the new biology makes clear why human beings are best not treated as machines to be mended by surgery, synthetic drugs or genetic engineering. Rather they are organic members of a living community that flourish best when closely attuned to their environment at instinctual, subconscious and conscious levels. It also invites reflection on the ancient Eastern practices of yoga, tai chi and chi gong that appear to have accessed this wisdom through other conceptual pathways several millennia before Western science.
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