The Gift of Life: To Live Heaven on Earth
By, Trish Murray, D.O.
Opening Music: “Livin’the Life” by Martin Sexton
Reading:EXPERIENCE DESCRIPTION: Anita M’s Near Death Experience
I had cancer (Hodgkin’s Lymphoma), and on this morning, I could not move. My husband rushed me to the hospital, where, after doing scans, they diagnosed me with grade 4B lymphoma (the highest grade). The senior oncologist looked at my report and told my husband that it was too late, and that my organs were now shutting down. I only had 36 hours to live. However, the oncologist said he would do whatever he could but prepared my husband that I would most likely not make it, as my organs were no longer functioning. They started me on a chemo therapy drip as well as oxygen, and then they started to take tests,particularly on my organ functions, so that they could determine what drugs to use. I was drifting in and out of consciousness during this time, and I could feel my spirit actually leaving my body. I saw and heard the conversations between my husband and the doctors taking place outside my room, about 40 feet away down a hallway. I was later able to verify this conversation to my shocked husband. Then I actually “crossed over” to another dimension, where I was engulfed in a total feeling of love. I also experienced extreme clarity of why I had the cancer, why I had come into this life in the first place, what role everyone in my family played in my life in the grand scheme of things, and generally how life works. The clarity and understanding I obtained in this state is almost indescribable. Words seem to limit the experience – I was at a place where I understood how much more there is than what we are able to conceive in our 3-dimensional world. I realized what a gift life was, and that I was surrounded by loving spiritual beings, who were always around me even when I did not know it. The amount of love I felt was overwhelming, and from this perspective, I knew how powerful I am,and saw the amazing possibilities we as humans are capable of achieving during a physical life. I found out that my purpose now would be to live “heaven on earth” using this new understanding,and also to share this knowledge with other people.
However I had the choice of whether to come back into life, or go towards death. I was made to understand that it was not my time, but I always had the choice, and if I chose death, I would not be experiencing a lot of the gifts that the rest of my life still held in store. One of the things I wanted to know was that if I chose life, would I have to come back to this sick body, because my body was very, very sick and the organs stopped functioning. I was then made to understand that if I chose life, the cancer would be gone from my energy, and my physical body would catch up very quickly. I then understood that when people have medical treatments for illnesses, it rids the illness only from their body but not from their energy so the illness returns. I realized if I went back, it would be with a very healthy energy. Then the physical body would catch up to the energetic conditions very quickly and permanently. I was given the understanding that this applies to anything, not only illnesses – physical conditions, psychological conditions, etc. I was “shown” that everything going on in our lives was dependent on this energy around us, created by us. Nothing was solid – we created our surroundings, our conditions, etc. depending where this“energy” was at. The clarity I received around how we get what we do was phenomenal! It’s all about where we are energetically. I was made to feel I was going to see “proof” of this first hand if I returned to my body.
I was made to understand that, as tests had been taken for my organ functions (and the results were not out yet), that if I chose life,the results would show that my organs were functioning normally. If I chose death, the results would show organ failure as the cause of death, due to cancer. I was able to change the outcome of the tests by my choice!
I made my choice, and as I started to wake up (in a very confused state, as I could not at that time tell which side of the veil I was on), the doctors came rushing into the room with big smiles on their faces saying to my family “Good news – we got the results and her organs are functioning – we can’t believe it!! Her body really did seem like it had shut down!”
After that, I began to recover rapidly. The doctors had been waiting for me to become stable before doing a lymph node biopsy to track the type of cancer cells, and they could not even find a lymph node big enough to suggest cancer (upon entering the hospital my body was filled with swollen lymph nodes). They did a bone marrow biopsy,again to find the cancer activity so they could adjust the chemotherapy according to the disease, and there wasn’t any in the bone marrow. The doctors were very confused, but put it down to me suddenly responding to the chemo. Because they themselves were unable to understand what was going on, they made me undergo test after test, all of which I passed with flying colors, and clearing every test empowered me even more! I had a full body scan, and because they could not find anything, they made the radiologist repeat it again!!
Because of my experience, I am now sharing with everyone I know that miracles are possible in your life every day. After what I have seen, I realize that absolutely anything is possible, and that we did not come hereto suffer. Life is supposed to be great, and we are very, very loved. The way I look at life has changed dramatically, and I am so glad to have been given a second chance to experience “heaven on earth”.
Reading: Inner Bridges: A Guide to Energy Movement and Body Structure
Fritz Frederick Smith, M.D. pg. 15.
“As we each develop in our personal lives, we consciously and unconsciously create inner views or “mental models” of the universe that become a part of who we are. Most of us know this phenomenon as “building a belief system.” As we move through life, this model or belief system is continually challenged. In order to maintain our physical, mental and spiritual health, we must successfully adapt to these challenges and assimilate new information. Much of what we experience concurs with our model, thus supporting what we already know, or helping us to take our knowledge a step further. The educational system and cultural programming augment this process. However, there are experiences in our lives which seem contrary to our belief systems or completely new to them. When we encounter such experiences, we have the choice of altering our models to accommodate the new information, rationalizing the new data to make it fit our existing model, or ignoring the information by pretending it did not happen or does not exist. Events that challenge our belief systems and ultimately cause us to change our views, thereby decreasing our attachment to previous beliefs, are truly formative events in our lives. They offer new potentials.”
I have been a student in some school or another for most of my life. I hold bachelor, masters and doctorate degrees. But I can tell you that I have truly “learned” more since leaving the confines of educational institutions. We all need a certain level of education,but at this point in my life I completely agree with Albert Einstein when he said “the only thing that interferes with my learning is my education”.
What I am going to present to you today is an introduction to the “New Science”- kind of like the “New Math”. The ideas I will present have been around and percolating since the 1920’s with the beginnings of quantum mechanics. Therefore, physics has been working with these concepts for almost a century, but biology is only recently starting to catch up with these new concepts.
So,what are these concepts?:
Old Science: Based on the ideas of Isaac Newton or Newtonian science.
3primary concepts:
Matter (particle)
Reductionism
Determinism
The belief has been if we examine the matter or physical things in nature and reduce them down to their most intricate parts. If we break down the machine or mechanisms of nature to understand all of their parts,then we can understand how they work. And once we can understand all the parts and exactly how the machine works, then we will understand the laws of nature and can determine outcomes and predict how things will play out.
New Science: Based on ideas of quantum physics or Energetics
3primary concepts:
Energy (wave)
Wholism
Uncertainty
Scientific evidence has shown that everything is made of energy. That the wave,not the particle, is what everything comes from and therefore you cannot understand things without looking at the whole field and how the different energies within the environment are entangled and how they relate to one another. With this in mind one can see that if you focus on only one of the energies and measure it, you will not be able to get accurate information on any other energy at the same time. For example, atoms move throughout space and have velocity. One can at a given moment measure an atoms velocity, but cannot accurately measure it’s position in space at the same moment. And one can at a given moment measure the atoms position in space, but then give up the ability to accurately measure its velocity. Therefore, what one focuses on is what is seen and therefore uncertainty comes into play. The best we can do is to determine a probability for an outcome. Not a specific or exact expectation.
For example, when research studies are done on medications, what physicians look for in the statistics is the number needed to treat. If the number needed to treat for a medication in a research study is 20, this means that 20people will need to take that medicine for one of them to have the desired outcome. We expect from the Newtonian paradigm that if the mechanism of a medicine works in one person than it must work in everyone the same way? But this “number needed to treat” shows us that is not so. Each of us is a complex organism with many different energies, stresses, emotions and physical interactions in our environment that are entangled and cause each of us to react differently to any one medication. So you can see that there is uncertainty built into this concept and the best we can do is come up with the probability that at least one out of 20 will benefit from this medication. The lower the number needed to treat, the more probable it is that the medicine will work, but there is no certainty of that.
Albert Einstein, probably the smartest person of the 20thcentury and most well known physicist stated:
“The field is the sole governing agency of the particle.”
Reading: “The Mental Universe”, Nature, July2005 by Richard Conn Henry, Professor of Physics & Astronomy at John Hopkins University.
“Historically,we have looked to our religious leaders to understand the meaning of our lives; the nature of our world. With Galileo Galileo, this changed. In establishing that the Earth goes around the Sun, Galileo not only succeeded in believing the unbelievable himself, but also convinced almost everyone else to do the same. This was a stunning accomplishment in physics outreach and, with the subsequent work of Isaac Newton, physics joined religion in seeking to explain our place in the Universe.
The more recent physics revolution of the past 80 years has yet to transform general public understanding in a similar way.
The1925 discovery of quantum mechanics solved the problem of the Universe’s nature. Bright physicists were again led to believe the unbelievable—this time, that the Universe is mental. According to Sir James Jeans: ‘the stream of knowledge is heading towards anon-mechanical reality; the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter… we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.” But physicists have not yet followed Galileo’s example, and convinced everyone of the wonders of quantum mechanics. As Sir Arthur Eddington explained: “It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept the view that the substratum of everything is of mental character.”
So,what about Biology?? What is the “New Science” of Biology?
One of the most amazing biologists I have ever read is Bruce Lipton, PhD who wrote a book entitled; The Biology of Belief. He wrote this book after resigning from his teaching position at Stanford University school of Medicine because he found that what he was expected to teach in medical school was no longer true. The teaching of genetic control solely by DNA no longer fit the evidence of science and he could not continue teaching the conventional concepts with good conscience.
For example, 20thCentury biology thought the DNA helices of the genes was the “Central Dogma”. That the DNA of our genes determines and controls everything about us: our traits, our health, even our character and our diseases. We have believed that our genes determine our fate.
And then came the Genome Project. Most of us have heard about the famous Genome Project that started in the late 1980’s and was to take apart our genome and identify all of the human genes. Now, based on the scientific method, when doing science, one develops an hypothesis and then does experiments to prove or disprove the hypothesis. So,modern biology of the 20thcentury hypothesized that humans must have at least 150,000 to200,000 genes because we are such complex and advanced organisms. And of course less complex organisms would have significantly less genes because the evidence up until then was that the genes were what controlled our differences and our complexity.
Well, prior to determining the human genome, first a small 1 centimeter in length worm used a lot in genetic research was experimented on and the result was that it has 25,000 genes. And at the time this so far fit what was expected. But, then the fruit fly was done and it being a much more complex organism with all the intricacies of flying was expected to have significantly more genes than the worm. And the result turned out that the fruit fly only has24,000 genes. Huh? So, now it was time to carry out the human genome project and it was completed in 2001 and guess how many genes we complex humans were determined to have?????
A whopping 26,000 genes. Only 1,000 genes more than a primitive 1centimeter in length worm.
Based on the scientific method the original hypothesis regarding genes and their control of our traits and health, etc…was proven incorrect!!! But how many of us have heard anything about this? Did any of you already know this? I completed medical school in 1999 and residency in 2002 and chief residency in 2003 and I can tell you that in a medical academic setting I was unaware of this. It was never discussed in any lecture or even in small group discussions. Conventional biology has continued to go on treating the genes and the old dis-proven hypothesis as truth.
So, what has been determined since within the science of biology?
This leads to an introduction to the concept of “Epigenetics”, which means the science above the genes. Well, over the last century while science was studying the chromatin where the DNA helics lives and focusing totally on the DNA helics, another significant part of the chromatin was being discarded. This is the protein within the chromatin. In more recent times genetic scientists and biologists have started paying more attention to these proteins and determined more about their role. And it turns out there are receptor proteins that receive signals from effector proteins and regulatory proteins that interact with the environment and they control gene expression:
Reading: “Behind theScenes of Gene Expression”, Elizabeth Pennisi, Science,
August,2001
“Waddington’s epigenetic hypothesis proposed that the complement of genes remains constant, but they are switched on and off differently to make the various cells in the body. In other words, patterns of gene expression, not the genes themselves, define each cell type…. Indeed, the chromatin-modifying enzymes are now considered the‘master puppeteers’ of gene expression…. Epigenetic effects therefore give you a mechanism by which the environment can very stably change things.”
So,what does all this science mean for us here today in a service about angels, energy and healing. Well, it means that science is now finding evidence to support what Anita M. presents in her near deat experience. Life is about energy and how we perceive our environment:
“IfI chose to go into life, the cancer would be gone from my energy and my physical body would catch up very quickly. I then understood that when people have medical treatments for illnesses, it rids the-illness only from their body but not from their energy so the illness returns…I was shown that everything going on in our lives was dependant on this energy around us, created by us. Nothing was solid- we created our surroundings, our conditions, etc. depending where this energy was at. I found out that my purpose now would be to live ‘heaven on earth’ using this new understanding.”
So,science is and actually has been for quite some time now finding evidence to support alternative forms of healing that work with energy. How you perceive and interact with your environment, your energy that you have control over determines your character, your traits, and your health.
Reading: Courageous Dreaming: How Shamans Dream the World Into Being,
Alberto Villoldo,PhD, 2008.
“During the Middle Ages, two stonemasons were working in Paris on what would become the cathedral of Notre Dame. A traveler, intrigued by their activity,stopped to ask the first on what he was doing. ‘Squaring atone’, he replied.
‘I see,’ said the traveler. But his curiosity was still aroused, so he walked over to the other mason and asked what he was doing. ‘I’m building a cathedral,’ reported the man.
Just like these stonemasons, we can choose to live our story in a way that’s limiting or in a way that’s empowering and inspiring. This is the first step to dreaming the world into being: understanding that our actions are occurring in more than one dimension or plane. We can be certain that the man who says he’s building a cathedral has a greater sense of meaning, purpose, and power than the other man who’s merely squaring a stone—even though at one level of reality, both are engaged in the same activity. Building a cathedral happens in the dream time, while squaring a stone happens in linear, ordinary time. The Notre Dame cathedral took nearly 200 years to complete,yet in the dream time or the all at once, the cathedral already existed, and the second mason in the story could be part of a project much greater than he was.”
“Eagle consciousness is the highest level of perception. Brain researchers might say those in this state are experiencing predominantly delta waves, where the activity of their brains is so slow and quiet that it barely moves a needle on an EEG (the machine that measures brain-wave activity). Our brains produce delta waves when we enter our deepest sleep, a state in which we don’t dream because we’re immersed in a realm beyond words or images. This is what we consciously enter when we want to connect with the divine energy matrix, the Luminous Energy Field of the universe, and access its wisdom, power and creativity. The Buddhists call this state ‘emptiness’, and the Earth keepers call it ‘the quiet place’.”
In conclusion, I hope I have presented information today that causes you to think and wonder: Are you living the life you’ve always dreamed of ?
Consciousness: Where Does It Exist?
First Hour By: Sharon Olds That hour, I was most myself. I had shrugged my mother slowly off, lay there taking my first breaths, as if the air of the room was blowing me like a bubble. All I had to do was go out along the line of my gaze and back, feeling gravity, silk, the pressure of the air a caress, smelling on myself her creamy blood. The air was softly touching my skin and mouth, entering me and drawing forth the little sighs I did not know as mine. I was not afraid. I lay in the quiet and looked, and did the wordless thought, my mind was getting its oxygen direct, the rich mix by mouth. I hated no one. I gazed and gazed, and everything was interesting, I was free, not yet in love, I did not belong to anyone, I had drunk no milk yet, no one had my heart. I was not very human. I did not know there was anyone else. I lay like a god, for an hour, then they came for me and took me to my mother.
Birth….,Death…., where do we come from? Where do we go when we die? How can someone have consciousness of any of this? What I hope to get you to contemplate today is consciousness. I will start with the scientific research on near death experiences and then present the latest scientific theories on consciousness.
The scientific study of NDE’s dates back to 1975 when a psychiatrist by the name of Raymond Moody published his first book on the subject and it discussed 12 different elements that may occur during a NDE. Then in 1980 Kenneth Ring, a professor of psychology and NDE researcher, confirmed Moody’s 12 elements but then came up with a new classification distinguishing five NDE phases. These five phases consist of:
Feelings of absolute peace, calm, surrender and bliss.
Leaving the body.
Arriving in a dark, usually peaceful environment.
Hurtling through a tunnel toward a non-blinding, exceptionally bright light which radiates unconditional love and acceptance.
Entering another, unearthly dimension of unbelievable beauty in which one can meet deceased friends and family and/or experience a life review.
Between 1975 and 2005 a total of 42 studies covering more than 2500 patients with a NDE were published in scientific journals. The number of people who have had a NDE in the past 50 years is estimated at more than 25 million worldwide. And surveys in both the United States and Germany suggest that approximately 4.2% of the population has reported having a NDE.
But until 2000 all research studies were retrospectively done. This means that participants came forward in response to newspaper and magazine advertisements or appeals on radio and television. Retrospective studies thus lack a scientifically sound selection procedure. Therefore, in 1988 a Dutch cardiologist by the name of Pim van Lommel, MD along with two psychologists specializing in NDE’s joined together to intiate the first large-scale prospective NDE study ever carried out in the world. The study included all cardiac arrest survivors in ten participating hospitals in the Netherlands. In this prospective study the patients were asked, within a few daysof their resuscitation, whether they had any memory of the period of their cardiac arrest. The patient’s medical data had been recorded in each hospital before, during and after their resuscitation. In other words, all patients in this study had been clinically dead. The study design also consisted of a control group which included those cardiac arrest survivors who did not have any memory of their period of unconsciousness. The longitudinal design of this study was to interview the patients within a few days of their cardiac arrest,at two years and again at eight years.
This study was published in The Lancet, a very highly respected medical journal, in December of 2001. It reported that within the four year period from 1988 to 1992, 344 consecutive patients who had undergone successful resuscitations were included in the study. Of these 344 patients, 282 or 82% had norecollection of their unconsciousness; however, 62 patients or 18% did report a NDE. The initial, two and eight year follow-up interviews were all recorded on tape and transcribed. Remarkably, after two and eight years patients related their NDE in almost the exact same wording, down to the very last detail. This is nearly impossible in the case of a dream or an invented story. Another finding was that those who experienced a NDE were less afraid of death and had a stronger belief in life after death. They showed a greater interest in spirituality and questions of meaning as well as a greater acceptance of and love for oneself and others. The interviews also revealed a sharp increase in heightened intuitive feelings after a NDE along with a strong sense of connectedness with others and with nature. Many of them felt they had acquired “paranormal gifts”. They reported experiencing clairvoyance, premonitions, and visions.
This prospective study and three others since all reached one and the same conclusion: consciousness, with memories and perceptions, can be experienced during a period of unconsciousness—that is, during a period when the brain shows no measurable activity and all brain functions, such as body reflexes, brain-stem reflexes and respiration have ceased. Modern science has believed that memories and consciousness are produced by large groups of nerves in the brain. However, as a result of these studies the commonly accepted but never proven concept that consciousness is localized in the brain should be questioned.
So,if consciousness is not localized in the brain, where is it? Well,the latest theories to answer this question come from concepts in the newer scientific paradigm of quantum physics. Some of the principlesof quantum theory that are being used to explain our consciousness are: nonlocality, entanglement or interconnectedness, and instantaneous information exchange in a timeless and placeless dimension.
These concepts have caused scientists to theorize that there is a nonlocal consciousness that is always present all around us in the form of waves. The brain and the body merely functions as a relay station receiving part of the endless consciousness and part of our memories in what we know as our waking consciousness. This continuous, invisible, and instantaneous interaction can be compared to modern worldwide communication.
For example, the electromagnetic information waves for the cell phone, television,radio, and computer surround and penetrate us at all times and they travel at the speed of light. We are not aware of the hundreds of thousands of telephone calls, hundreds of television and radio broadcasts, and the billions of internet connections around us day and night until we switch on our cell phone, TV, radio, or laptop. The computer does not produce the internet any more than the brain produces consciousness. The computer allows us to add information to the internet just like the brain is capable of adding information from our body and senses to our waking consciousness. Like a computer, the brain functions as a transceiver.
A number of experiments have been carried out that prove the concept of nonlocalentanglement of consciousness. One famous study is called the Love Study which was carried out by Marolyn Schlitz and Dean Radin from the Institute of Noetic Sciences. In this study 31 married couples volunteered to participate and half of the couples received some training in meditation and sending compassionate intention while the other half did not. One partner sat in a reclining chair placed in a one ton, solid steel, double-walled, electromagnetically shielded room. Each inhabitant was fitted to an array of medical gadgetry to measure brain waves, heartbeat, breathing rate, skin conductance and peripheral blood flow. In another chamber 20 meters away, the other partner was seated in the dark, also attached to medical equipment,staring at a small blank TV screen. At different intervals the image of their partner in the other room would flash on the TV screen and at this time they would send a compassionate intention to their partner for 10 seconds.
Some of the physiologic findings in all the couples were:
The sender’s heart rate increased 5 seconds after seeing their partner’s image and an identical increase happened in the receiver of the compassionate intention, which would not happen ordinarily if they were simply resting in a recliner.
Whenever we experience something that stimulates us, the vessels in our extremities constrict slightly, to maximize blood flow to the core of the body. This occurred in all of the senders and shortly after in the receivers.
Simultaneous changes in their brainwaves were also recorded. Visual evoked potentials occurred in the EEG of the sender’s when they saw the image of their partner and EEG changes consistent with receiving a message occurred instantaneously in the receiver.
This study has been replicated by numerous researchers and is felt to confirm the existence of nonlocal consciousness and exemplify anonlocal entanglement or interconnectedness between biologicalsystems. In other words we are all interconnected and our feelings and emotions do affect those around us.
Now, let’s take a look for a moment at the research behind meditation and its effect on our brains. Prior to the 1990’s, the bulk of research examining the electrical activity of the brain during meditation indicated that meditation led to a slowing of our brainwaves. It showed a predominance of alpha rhythms which are slow, high amplitude brain waves with frequencies of 8-13 hertz orcycles/second which typically occur during light dreaming or even slower theta waves (4-7 hertz) which typify the state of consciousness during deep sleep. For comparison, during ordinary waking consciousness, the brain operates much faster, using betawaves which have a frequency of 13-40 hertz or cycles/second.
Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist and psychologist at the University ofWisconsin, put this view to the test. In 1992 Davidson met with the Dalai Lama who agreed to send eight of his most seasoned practitioners of compassionate meditation to Davidson’s lab in Wisconsin. Davidson attached 256 EEG sensors to each monk’s scalp during compassionate meditation. After 15 seconds the monk’sbrains did not slow down; instead, they began speeding up. In fact, they were activated on a scale neither Davidson nor any other scientist had ever seen. The monitors showed sustained bursts of high gamma waves which are rapid cycles of 25-70 hertz. These high frequency brain waves are known to be employed by the brain when itis working it’s hardest such as during deep levels of learning or during great flashes of insight. From this and other studies the conclusion has been made that certain types of concentrated focus,like meditation, enlarge the mechanism by which we receive information and clarify the reception. In other words, it turns us into a larger, more sensitive radio transceiver.
Finally, let’s take a look at healers. In 1999 a psychiatrist by the nameof Elizabeth Targ carried out two studies which tested the possibility of remote healing with end-stage AIDS patients. She recruited 40 healers of every persuasion. Fifteen were traditional Christian religious healers who used prayer; others were energy healers, qigong masters, Native American healers or shamans. Targ had interviewed the healers about their work and found a common thread among their diverse approaches. No matter what their approach, most of them agreed on a single point: the need to get out of the way! They surrendered to a healing force. They framed their intention essentially as a request—please may this person behealed—then stepped back. When Targ examined those patients whose illness had most improved, and analyzed which healers they had been exposed to, those healers who were the most successful were the“channelers”—the ones who had moved aside to allow the greater force in. None of the healers who had been successful believed he/she possessed the power himself.
So,the questions still out number the answers, but in view of all the reported experiences of consciousness, we ought to seriously consider the possibility that death, like birth, may be a mere passing from one state of consciousness into another. Our vision of death is completely transformed by the near-inevitable conclusion that after physical death nonlocal consciousness can continue in another dimension in an invisible, immaterial world that encompasses past, present and future. Consciousness is not confined to the brain because consciousness is nonlocal, and our brain facilitates rather than produces our own personal waking consciousness. Further, the more science proves and we become accustomed to this idea of a consciousness that overflows the organ we call the brain, then the more natural and probable we find the hypothesis that the soul survives the body. And finally, with training and practice all we humans have the ability to tap into a broader and broader portion of nonlocal consciousness and find that the heart of the universe is a peaceful environment of unbelievable beauty and unconditional love where depending on your personal frame of reference angels, power animals, spirit guides, wisdom keepers and God are just waiting for you to interact with them.
Amen.
* In classical physics Einstein described time as relative after proving that time is not an absolute constant in the universe. When his lifelong friend Michele Besso died, Albert Einstein wrote to his family,
“He has departed from this strange world little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that distinction between past, present and future is only astubbornly persistent illusion.”
“Rain”
by: Lisa Graves
Rain
Falling from the sky
Dancing upon the farm house roof
Its rhythm
Cleansing and quieting my being
My soul.
My thoughts dance and smile
enjoying the tranquility of a moment
that exists beyond the mind.
It seems that the simplicity of being
Is the essence of calming the thoughts
And meeting the soul who patiently waits within us
Wondering if we will ever remember
What lies beyond our human existence
What the soul already knows.
In the novel, The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown who also authored The DaVinci Code, one of the main characters is the secretary of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC and also a free mason. This book has many interesting aspects to the story, but Peter Soloman, this main character, emphasizes throughout the story the belief that ancient cultures already knew a lot of concepts that quantum physics and other modern sciences are discovering as “new”concepts in our modern era. During a lecture he gives he states: “I find it wonderous to note that throughout history, all of mankind’s disparate philosophies have all concurred on one thing—that a great enlightenment is coming. In every culture, in every era, in every corner of the world, the human dream has focused on the same exact concept—the coming apotheosis of man…. the impending transformation of our human minds into their true potentiality.” “What could possibly explain such a synchronicity of beliets?”
“Truth”,said a quiet voice in the crowd.”
Peter Soloman wheeled, “Who said that?”
The hand that went up belonged to a tiny Asian boy whose soft features suggested he might be Napalese or Tibetan. “Maybe there is auniversal truth embedded in everyone’s soul. Maybe we all have the same story hidden inside, like a shared constant in our DNA. Maybe this collective truth is responsible for the similarity in all of our stories.”
Solomon was beaming as he pressed his hands together and bowed reverently to the boy. “Thank you”.
Everyone was quiet.
“Truth”,Solomon said, addressing the room. “Truth has power. And if we all gravitate towards similar ideas, maybe we do so because those ideas are true…..written deep within us. And when we hear the truth, even if we don’t understand it, we feel that truth resonate within us…. vibrating with our unconscious wisdom. Perhaps the truth is not learned by us, but rather, the truth is recalled…remembered…… re-cognized….. as that which is already inside us.”
Today, I hope to take you on a journey starting with some ancient beliefs and concepts and then presenting some modern scientific findings which seem to me amazingly similar; and finally I will discuss what vibrates for me as the truth within it all.
So, first lets start with some definitions and some ancient ideas:
Holismis a Greek word meaning all, whole, entire or total. It is the idea that natural systems (physical, biological, chemical, social,economic, etc….) and their properties should be viewed as wholes,not as collections of parts. Reductionism is seen as the opposite ofholism. The term holism was coined back in 1926 by Jan Smuts, a South African statesman in his book, Holismand Evolution. Smuts defined holism as “the tendency in nature to form wholes that are greater than the sum ofthe parts through creative evolution.”
In the ancient culture of the Melanesians of New Caledonia an isolated individual was totally indeterminate, indistinct and featureless until he could find his position within the natural and social world in which he was inserted.
Interconnectedness means mutually joined or related and the Easterns ages of India some 2,500 years ago spoke in their myths of Indra’sNet.:
“Faraway in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is awonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. Inaccordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each “eye” of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface thereare reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel isalso reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinitereflecting process occurring.”
From the Wikepedia website on Indra’s Net these following ideas are presented:
1. The Interconnectedness of all things:
When any jewel in the net is touched, all other jewels in the node are affected. This speaks to the hidden interconnectedness and interdependency of everything and everyone in the universe, and has an indirect reference to the concept of “Dependent Origination”in Buddhism. Additionally, Indra’s Net is a definitive ancient correlate of Bell’s Theorum, or the theory of non-local causes.
2.Non-locality:
Indra’sNet shoots holes in the assumption of a solid or fixed universe ‘out there’. The capacity of one jewel to reflect the light of another jewel from the other edge of infinity is something that is difficult for the linear mind, rational mind to comprehend. The fact that allnodes are simply reflections indicates that there is no particular single source point from where it all arises.
3.Innate Wisdom:
The ability to reflect the entirety of all light in the universe attests to the inherent transcendant wisdom that is at the core of all nodes,representing all sentient beings, and to the inherent Buddha Nature.
4.Illusion or Maya:
Thefact that all nodes are simply a reflection of all others implies theillusory nature of all appearances. Appearances are thus not reality but a reflection of reality.
5. Universal Creativity:
A familiar concept in various high dharmas is one of an impersonal creative intelligence that springs forth into reality through the instruments of all living beings.
6. The Mirror-like Nature of Mind:
The capacity to reflect all things attests to the mind being a mirror ofreality, not its basis. This is a common thesis among various schools and religions.
Modern Science discoveries of Holism and Interconnectedness:
Truths from ancient times?
Now I would like to present three new concepts or ideas in science and as I present them notice if they seem similar to the concept of Indra’s Net?
First, I need to remind you of what biology has presented for many many years as the structure of a cell. There are two diagrams in your order of service that I would like you to take out and focus on now. One of them has three sections to it: A, B and C. If you look at the top left corner image, letter A, you will notice it presents a diagram of the old view of a cell which could be described as amembrane bound bag containing a solution of molecules. Inside the cell membrane is the cytoplasmic soup with organelles and an innernucleus that float in this soup. And outside each cell is the extracellular matrix or connective tissue and as the diagram shows these two entities: the extracellular matrix and the cell itself have always been thought to be separate.
This idea was developed by biochemists who have studied the chemical reactions taking place in the “soup” or solution within the cell. Their research has consisted of centrifuging cells to separate the dissolved molecules from the solids. Centrifuging cells is like putting them in a blender and breaking them up to the point that the different materials separate and settle based on their density or weight. And what the biochemists have always focused on is the soup in the blender and they have discarded the heaviest material that sinks to the bottom of the blender. As a result oft his, it has always been thought that the chemical reactions that goon in the life of a cell occur randomly. For example, section B ofthe diagram is showing the different chemical steps of glycolysis,which is a ten step sequence of chemical reactions that break down glucose or sugar in our cells so they can turn it into energy. But as section C shows, we have always thought that these chemical reactions happen randomly and haphazardly as the different enzymesand reactants float about in the cytoplasmic soup.
More recently some scientists have started to study the material at the bottom of the blender that previously has always been discarded and they have realized that the cell is not a membrane bound bag of solution. We now know that the cell is so filled with filaments and tubes and trabeculae- collectively called the cytoplasmic matrix orcytoskeleton that there is little space left for a solution of randomly diffusing ‘billiard ball’ molecules…. Many of the enzymes that were previously thought to be floating about within the cytoplasmic ‘soup’ are actually attached to structures within the cell and the nucleus.
If you now look at the other diagram in your order of service you will see this represents the new view of a cell and shows that the extracellular matrix or the connective tissue is continuous like a web all through each and every cell connecting every intricate part of us to every other intricate part of us. The “living matrix” is acontinuous and dynamic supramolecular webwork, extending into everynook and cranny of the body: a nuclear matrix within a cellular matrix within a connective tissue matrix. In essence, when you toucha human body, you are touching a continuously interconnected system,composed of virtually all of the molecules of the body linked together in an intricate webwork. The properties of the whole net depend upon the integrated activities of all of the components. Effects on one part of the system can and do spread to all other parts of the system.
And this leads to the second scientific concept I want to discuss today, which I’ll introduce by asking a question: What makes us think that this continuous interconnected system ends at the skin?
Dr.Harold Saxton Burr was a scientist at the University of Yale Schoolof Medicine from 1916 into the 1950’s who measured with a voltmeter the electrical field of every living thing from a single celled organism such as protoplasm, to mice and frogs, and trees and plants and humans. He conducted his research for greater than 40 years. He called the electro-dynamic field of all living organisms the “LifeField” or the “L-field” and he wrote and published more than 90scientific papers hypothesizing that these L-fields are the architectural blueprint for life.
He also wrote a book entitled: Blueprint for Immortality: The Electrical Patterns of Life,and in this book he presents his ideas and explains his different research studies. One research study measured the electro-dynamicfield of women who had been diagnosed with ovarian or uterine cancer and those who did not have a cancer of the female genital tract and the study findings showed that voltage gradient changes where present in the genital tissues of women with cancer and not in women without.
Another study Dr. Burr did was to measure constantly the electrical voltage potentials of two trees, the earth and the air on his land at his home in Lyme, Connecticut from 1953 until 1961. From these constant measurements he saw changes in the electrical potentials of all three that occurred simultaneously and cyclically over the years. And many of the energy potential changes he measured were not explainable by any local phenomenon such as temperature, humidity, pressure,rainfall or sunlight. However, he did find that the electrical changes concurred with alterations in sun spot activity and lunar phases.
Al lof Dr. Burr’s work led him to conclude that there are valid,measurable interrelationships between the electrical properties of aliving system, of all living systems, and the field of electrical environment in which they exist. He states..” the L-fields of this planet are themselves influenced by the greater fields in which our world is enmeshed, as we found from the effects of sun-spot activityon the fields of trees. They are subject then, to a ‘higherauthority’- so to speak, which compels them to change in various ways. And, no doubt, the fields that surround this planet are themselves subject to the greater fields of space. In other words,L-fields are links in a ‘chain of authority’. This starts with the simplest living forms, runs upwards through all the life on this planet to the most complex form we know- man- and then extends outwards into space and upwards to an infinite, ultimate authority, about which we can only speculate.”
And the third new concept in science that I would like to discuss today is the concept of epigenetics. The prefix epi means above, so the term epigenetics means the study of changes in gene activity that do not involve alterations in the genetic code itself. The epigenomesits on top of the genes and tells your genes to switch on or off orto speak loudly or to whisper. Charles Darwin taught us that evolutionary changes take place over many generations and through millions of years of natural selection. But scientific evidence is now showing that environmental factors in a person’s life like diet, stress, emotional well being, physical trauma can make an imprint on the genetics of a person during their own lifetime and can also make modifications that are passed from one generation to the next.
We all know that we can shorten our own lives by smoking, too much alcohol, or over eating; but it’s becoming clear that these same bad behaviors can also modify our genetics in a way that is past on to our children. Rather than spending a lot more words to explain this concept, I have brought a picture that speaks a thousand words.
The four people shown were arrested on numerous occasions related to drugs and alcohol related offenses. The first image of each person on the left is a picture of them when they were first arrested and the image to the right is a later picture, but you’ll notice that none of the time spans is greaterthan 7 years. These transformations are meant to demonstrate the strong effect that one’s environment can have on their genetics.
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Holism and Interconnectedness are Keys to Optimal Health and Wellbeing:
Holistic Medicine or Mind, Body, Spirit Medicine has been around for a long time. I can remember the actress, Shirley McClane, speaking about the chakra’s and finding balance in one’s energy. But, it seemed on the fringe and not accepted by the mainstream even though somehow it resonated truth within my being. In my twenties I used to run canoe trips into the lakes region of northern Ontario, Canada and the people who I met and ran trips with were very into Native American ideas and practices. I learned then of the word “metaquiasin”,which is a Native American word that means all my relations. I don’t know which tribe this word is from specifically and I didn’t nor do I now know any details behind this word other than it speaks to the Native American belief that there is no hierarchy in the world of creatures and living things. Everything is a circle of life and allis part of our family relations. So, even though I have never known or understood all the details about this word or the culture from which it came; it has always resonated truth with me and with my unconscious wisdom I say metaquias in whenever I am feeling connected to nature and the universe in a moment of connectedness. The other night when I got out of my car and the night sky was crystal clear with a gorgeous full moon and endless stars…… staring up at all this, from my mouth automatically came the word “metaquiasin”.
As I moved on in my life and became an Osteopathic physician the tenets or founding principles of osteopathy have always resonated truth for me even though at first I did not understand all the details behind these principles.
1. A person is a unit of body, mind and spirit.
2. The body has self healing and self regulating mechanisms.
3. Structure and function are inter-related
4.Rational treatment is based on these principles.
And as I have learned my trade and worked with my hands to relieve peoples pain, I have felt and come to know the energy that flows through each of us, interconnects all of our systems and extends out all around us. Feeling and being aware of this led me to pursue more understanding of this energy by studying Shamanism for the past tenyears. Shamanism comes from indigenous cultures that completely understood in their subconscious wisdom that we consist of a body, amind and a spirit and it is the luminous energy or spirit body that shaman’s work to balance and heal.
So,when I imagine Indra’s Net or the interconnecting web or field oft he universe I see an all flowing and all interconnecting universal energy. It flows through space to the earth’s energy to our own individual luminous energy bodies, and continues through our skin in our connective tissue to the cell membrane of every cell in our bodies and through the cell membranes to the cytoskeleton which then brings this flow through our nuclear membranes directly into the nucleus of our cells and to our genes. This constant flow and interconnectedness of our entire beings resonates truth with my soul and this is why I feel Body, Mind and Spirit Medicine or Holistic Medicine are keys to optimal health and wellbeing. The body, mind and the spirit all have to be attended to to live in optimal health and wellbeing. Your entire environment: physical, mental, and spiritual environments all need to be attended to in order to live a balanced and optimally healthy life.
If you contemplate a moment, can you think of someone you know who lives their life completely in the mental and spiritual realms and never notices or focuses on themselves physically? Or can you think of a person that is always focused on the physical realm and never contemplates the spiritual? Then ask yourself, are these people in balance?
Both of my parent’s died this past Fall and the grieving process is tough as any of you who have lost a loved one knows. I have thanked spirit everyday going through this process for my strong belief and faith in the support and love of the universe because it is this faith that is helping me walk this path of grief. I observe my siblings of which I have four and some of them have no spiritual practice or belief and they are truly struggling and physically ill in ways they have never been since our parents have passed. If you list body, mind and spirit hierarchically in our modern world Mind would be given the most weight and importance, followed by body and finally spirit maybe on Sunday; but, if you look at the way indigenous cultures listed the importance it was spirit first, body second and mind brought up the rear. This is one of the biggest weaknesses in our modern culture because it leaves so many feeling so alone.
What makes my heart sing is the fact that evidence in hard science is now supporting holistic and Mind, Body, Spirit Medicine and illustrating scientifically what the indigenous cultures already knew.
Maybe,in order to find the answers we seek individually and as a collective community we don’t need to look forward to unknown knowledge, but rather to quiet our beings and go beyond our minds and remember what our soul’s already know.
Amen.
