Dr. Bruce Lipton

A cell biologist describes his own journey to understand the relationship between inner divinity and the world we live in.

The Fuji Declaration:

We affirm the divine spark in the heart and mind of every human being and intend to live by its light in every sphere of our existence

Question: What have you learned from your study of cells that might help us understand better the divine spark as an important metaphor?

Well, number one — while serving as a research scientist, it is important to note that I wasn’t spiritual at all. My work as a biochemist, a geneticist and a cellular biologist was focused on studying the mechanics and chemistry of life. And in that endeavor, the concept of spirituality was irrelevant; it wasn’t necessary to understand biology — at least, that’s what we thought.

Through my research in understanding the nature of the cell and how it worked, I realized at some point that there was a part of my personal identity that wasn’t in the body. Each of us is connected to a unique energy signal from the environment, in terms of quantum physics, this energy “signal” represents part of what we collectively call “the Field.” Each human’s personal identity is in part derived from this energy field, information that is not solely inside our cells.

Cells actually have a set of molecular “antennas” on their surfaces that resemble nano-sized television antennas whose function is to download an environmental “broadcast,” this informs cells of what is happening in their world. Our personal identity is linked to that broadcast. Every human on this planet has a unique set of identity-receiving antennas. The medical community refers to a subset of these protein antennas as “self-receptors” (… receivers of “self”). In transplanting organs and tissues, a tissue-matching process must assure that as many of the self-receptors on the donor’s cells match those on the recipient’s cells, this reduces the immune system’s rejection of the foreign graft. If an individual’s self-receptors are enzymatically removed from their cell’s surface, the cells lose their personal identity, they become “generic” human cells that can be transplanted into any human and not be rejected as “not-self” by the recipient’s immune system.

The moment I realized that my personal identity was something that was separate from my physical body, and represented an environmental signal that played through it … I was in shock! Not being spiritual, and then understanding the nature of this mechanism, I realized my identity was linked to a signal derived from the outer environment.

In a massive and emotional transformation, I realized, “I’m not even in here!” I was blown away by the reality that I, as an aware entity, could not die because I was part of the energy field and not localized in my physical body. In less than a minute, I evolved my spirituality, not through “devotion,” but through the mechanics of science!

While still dazed, I was further blown away by the answer to the first question that popped into my mind after owning what I saw in the mechanics of the cell. “Wow, I exist as both a spiritual entity and as a physical body?” While contemplating this reality, I asked myself, “Why have both a spirit and a body?”

WE AFFIRM THE DIVINE SPARK BY LEARNING TO FEEL MORE FULLY, TO EMBRACE OUR SENSES AS SOURCES OF OUR DIVINE NATURE

In that instant, I fully experienced that my 50 trillion cells forwarded an answer via a direct hotline to my brain. These life-changing answers, were presented as a series of questions: “Bruce, if you’re just a spirit, what does chocolate taste like?” And, “Bruce if you’re just a spirit, what does a sunset look like?” And, “If you’re just a spirit, what does love feel like?”

And then it hit me! I realized that the biological body is the equivalent of a virtual-reality suit controlled by the identity received by my self-receptors. The body’s cells physically function to translate environmental information through a nervous system, and convert sensory information into neurological vibrations, such as those assessed through monitoring EEG. The brain’s information-encoding vibrations are sent back to our identity, a source derived from the Field. The function of the body’s cells is to translate sensory awareness into information returned to the Field. The sense of smell, touch, taste, sound and vision, as well as our emotions, including pain, temperature, pressure — represent many of our senses that are translated by the nervous system and sent to source.

At that moment, I realized one of the most important lessons in my life: While I am alive in a body, a primary function of my life is to physically sense and experience the world. In a quick review of my life, I remember growing up as a young boy and learning to conform to the “program” of not being a sissy. Learning to shut down feelings and being “tough,” which meant we became insensitive. We were programmed to not cry if hit (physically or emotionally); we were programmed not to “feel” things. I instantly realized that my developmental programming was completely opposite to the main function and purpose of the body – to provide sensation.

Much to the chagrin of females, who are developmentally encouraged to be “sensitive,” males are culturally programmed to become “insensitive” louts. The cells revealed that my programming had really disconnected me from my life experiences. At that moment, I vowed to open up to the reality of sensing more of life — seeing, touching, tasting and feeling different things and creating experiences in an effort to fulfill my opportunity to touch and feel this world. This path has been delightful opening for my whole life, because my former program as a “tough, insensitive male,” didn’t help anybody, especially myself.

I give full credit to my cells for awakening me to the wonderful knowledge they have provided in my life. I honor their function of “translating” life experiences and relaying all those sensations acquired by our nervous system back to source

I use the word “source” and “spiritual,” in the scientific concept of “field,” because “spirit” and the scientific term “field” share the same basic definition. They are both defined as: Invisible, moving forces that shape physical reality. The influence of the field’s energy I was studying in my research was synonymous with the ancient term of “spirit.” For me, science and spiritualism came together for me at this moment in my evolution, when I realized that science was recognizing that invisible energy forces around us, the “field,” were instrumental in shaping our reality. We are all individual identities derived from the “field,” a whole that can defined as “All That Is.”

The Fuji Declaration:

The paradigm of the new civilization is a culture of oneness with respect for diversity. Just as the myriad cells and diverse organs of our body are interconnected by their oneness and work together in harmony for the purpose of sustaining our life, so each and every living thing is an intrinsic part of the larger symphony of life on this planet.

These insights profoundly changed the understanding of my cell research. At the time, 1967-1980, I was studying the biology of stem cells (the equivalent of embryonic cells in a human body). My research involved cloning stem cells. I would put one stem cell in a culture dish all by itself. The cells divide around every 10 to 12 hours. First there was 1 cell, then 2 cells, then 4 cells, doubling overtime. After a week, my cultures would have about 100,000 cells. Since they all came from the same parent cell. I had one hundred thousand genetically identical cells in the dish.

I divided this population and inoculated them into three separate culture dishes. My experiment involved changing the chemical composition of the cell’s environment, i.e., the culture medium. In one dish, the cells formed muscle. In one dish, the cells formed bone. In the third dish, the cells formed fat cells.

So, the obvious question is what controls the fate of the cells? It wasn’t genetics! All of these cell types were derived from genetically identical cells. The results revealed that the “environment” was shaping the fate of the cells, not the genes! Well, this discovery (about forty years ago) opened up my eyes to a reality that was in complete conflict with the information I was teaching medical students. It challenged the universal belief held by most education people, an idea that is still being taught in the world today: the belief that genes control our biology.

By 1990, conventional science caught on to my findings and since that time, there is now a revolutionary new field of research called Epigenetics. The old story of genetic control is the belief that genes control our biology and behavior. The new science of epigenetic control is a revolution for the prefix “epi” means “above.” So epigenetic control simply translates as “control ABOVE the genes.”

Science is now recognizing what I realized forty years ago: Genes are controlled by an organism’s environment and more specifically, by an organism’s “perception” of their environment. As an organism’s environment changes, so does its genetic activity. This allows organisms to adapt to their environment rather than dying out in response to dynamic changes in climate and ecology.

My research in regard to what controls the cell revealed that the conventional belief that genes “control” the cell was totally wrong. In fact, I had a precognition of that conclusion in 1967, while undertaking embryology studies at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Research Center in Massachusetts. Biologists have recognized that virtually all of the cell’s genes are stored in a structure called the cell’s nucleus. Based upon the belief that genes “control” biology, textbooks refer to the nucleus as the cell’s “brain,” in controlling life. However, my Woods Hole studies on enucleating cells, that is removing a cell’s nucleus, showed that cells would stay alive for two or more months with no genes in them. Enucleated cells did not just sit there like a lump, they actively engaged appropriate behaviors in response to all environmental information, they ate, they moved around and even formed communities, engaging in every one of these complex behaviors in the absence of its genes. These results completely conflicted with my entire education that genes “control” life.

However, it was the amazing discovery from my cloning experiments that launched me on a mission to understand how environmental signals control behavior and gene activity. This research led me to the understanding that the cell membrane (the skin of the cell) was an information processor, and fully represented the actual brain of the cell. The outer surface of the cell membrane “reads” information about the external environment, while the inner surface of the cell membrane, facing the cell’s cytoplasm, sent signals to control behavior and gene activity. The function of the cell membrane is to read the conditions of the environment and in then engage cellular functions to keep the cell alive. As a side note: The cell membrane, the skin of the cell, is the source of the cell’s brain and nervous system. During human embryology, the skin of the embryo provides for our brain and nervous system!

The Fuji Declaration:

We continually and consistently strive to free the human spirit for deep creativity, and to nurture the necessary transformation to forge a new paradigm in all spheres of human activity, including economics, science, medicine, politics, business, education, religion, the arts, communications and the media.

My personal moment of transformation hit like a bolt of lightening in 1985. At the time, I had just defined the biological structure of the cell membrane in a completely novel way. I wrote the following technical definition: The cell membrane is a liquid-crystal, semiconductor with gates (receptor proteins) and channels. After writing that phrase, I realized I had just read the exact same definition, somewhere … but where?

And then I found it and my life changed! The definition was in a book entitled “Understanding Your Microprocessor,” which I purchased along with my first computer several months before. The book provided a technical definition for a computer chip as: “A crystal semiconductor with gates and channels.” At the first instance, I was “amused” that the cell membrane and a computer chip shared the same definition. A moment later, on a structural and functional level, I realized that the cell membrane WAS a chip, a carbon-based information processor. The cell’s nucleus represents the hard drive and its enclosed genes are software programs. The chip’s keyboard is represented by the ~100,000 protein receptors (antennas, gates) on the membrane’s outer and inner surfaces. Through these sensory molecules, environment information is read and then translated via membrane channels into biological behavior. When the membrane receptors are enzymatically removed, the cell expresses no behavior, nor identity, until they are replaced. Simply behavior, genetics and identity are controlled by environmental signals.

It was at that moment that two overwhelming realities transformed my life. Firstly, I am immortal and cannot die, for I am not even “in” this body. Secondly, each human represents a small and unique part of larger, all inclusive All That Is.

Now let’s go from the long story…to the short point! The identity of an individual represents a signal that is received by a complex set of membrane antennas called self-receptors, found on the outer surface of the cell.

The bottom-line conclusion: the personal identity of a cell is not programmed into the cell. And that hit me hard and I thought, “Wait a minute. Wait. An interesting question arises. When the cell dies, does the environmental signal die as well?” The answer would be no. The environmental signals are always there, it’s the cells that come and go. When a cell is present, it can read its personal signal. And when a cell dies, its signal is still there but can no longer be “downloaded” into human form. A cell, or a human body made of cells, is like a television set with an antenna tuned to a station. If the TV breaks, i.e., “dies,” the broadcast is still there and can be received by a new and different TV “tuned” to that frequency. Wow … in biology this would be the same as reincarnation!

The two-way flow of information, from source (“field”) to body, and from body (senses) to source, is one of the most empowering and liberating messages … EVER. To fully understand the implication, it is important to note that the new science of Epigenetics reveals the mechanisms by which consciousness (mind) not only selects, but can also rewrite our genetic activity. Consciousness controls genes! Our mind (consciousness) programs our biology and behavior, which in turn, shapes the character and quality of our lives

The creative conscious mind, connected to our “source,” is the mind that manifests our wishes and desires. Science has revealed that we only control our lives about 5% of the time with the conscious mind. Consequently the character of our lives is primarily controlled by the subconscious mind (~95% of the day).

Unfortunately for most, childhood programming of the subconscious mind (through age 7) was predominately overwritten with disempowering, limiting, and self-sabotaging thoughts. Most so self-critical, that we end up not loving our selves, which by extension simply means we can’t love others.

What would happen if you ran your life with your creative conscious mind and not your programmed subconscious mind? If you have ever fallen in love and experienced the ecstatic Heaven-on Earth of the honeymoon effect that is what real life is like … when we’re not playing programs from the subconscious mind. Thankfully, we can rewrite limiting subconscious developmental programs and replace them with life enhancing behaviors … then Heaven-on-Earth would become a permanent way of life! (Fro more information, visit: www.brucelipton.com)

Is all this really true? All I know for sure is that by applying this knowledge, Margaret and I have been living that juicy heavenly experience for the last 19 years. It’s still working!

While it appears I have drifted off into “New Age” sophistry, its important to note that this “metaphysical stuff” is totally connected with the principles of quantum biophysics and the new understanding of the molecular “antennas” on the membrane’s surface, the cell’s perception units (gates and channels). This “new” biology offers a scientific bridge between the mind, the body, and the all pervasive, energy field, the “spirit.”

And finally an interesting, perhaps mind-blowing, consideration: We have been programmed to believe that when we die we go to Heaven. What if … we were born into Heaven. Our physical bodies are virtual reality suits that enable our immaterial spirit to both physically manifest (create) AND sensorily experience whatever version of Heaven we can imagine.