by Gregg Braden
While this may have been true at some point, for at least the last hundred years we have had the ability to build the detectors that would tell us that the Divine Matrix (or the ether, web of creation, or whatever we choose to call it) exists. It may be more accurate to say that the greatest stumbling block to our discovery of the Divine Matrix has been the reluctance of mainstream science to acknowledge that it’s there.
This primal force of energy provides the essence of all that we experience and create. It holds the key to unraveling the deepest mysteries of who we are, as well as to answering the oldest questions about how things work in our world.
THREE EXPERIMENTS THAT
CHANGE EVERYTHING
History will look upon the last century as the one of discovery and scientific revolution. Arguably, the key breakthroughs that have become the foundation for entire disciplines have occurred over the course of the last 100 years. From the 1947 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls to Watson and Crick’s model of the DNA double helix to our ability to miniaturize the electronics for microcomputers, the 20th century was unprecedented in terms of scientific advancement. Many of the findings came so quickly, however, that they left us reeling in their wake. While they opened the door to new possibilities, we weren’t yet able to answer the question “What does this new information mean in our lives?”
Just as the 20th century was a time of discovery, we may find that the 21st is a period for making sense of what we’ve found out. Many of the mainstream scientists, teachers, and researchers of our day are engaged in this process. While the existence of a universal energy field had been theorized, visualized, written about, and imagined for a long while, it’s only been recently that experiments were performed proving once and for all that the Matrix exists.
Between 1993 and 2000, a series of unprecedented experiments demonstrated the existence of an underlying field of energy that bathes the universe. For the purpose of this book, I’ve chosen three that clearly illustrate the kind of studies that are redefining our idea of reality. I emphasize that these are representative experiments only, since others are being reported, seemingly on a daily basis, that offer similar results.
While the studies themselves are fascinating, what really interests me is the thinking behind each investigation. When scientists design experiments to determine the relationship between human DNA and physical matter, for example, we can rest assured that a major paradigm shift is just around the corner. I say this because before these experiments proved that such a relationship exists, the common belief was that everything in our world is separate.
Just as we’ve heard scientists from the “old school” state clearly that if you can’t measure something, it doesn’t exist, in a similar vein, prior to the publication of the following experiments, the belief was that if two “somethings” are physically separate in the world, then they have no effect on one another—no connection. But all that changed in the final years of the last century.
It was during this time that quantum biologist Vladimir Poponin reported the research that he and his colleagues, including Peter Gariaev, were doing at the Russian Academy of Sciences. In a paper that appeared in the U.S. in 1995, they described a series of experiments suggesting that human DNA directly affects the physical world through what they believed was a new field of energy connecting the two.8 My sense is that the field they found themselves working with is probably not really “new” in the truest sense of the word. The more likely scenario is that it’s always existed and has simply never been recognized because it’s made of a form of energy that we’ve never had the equipment to measure.
Dr. Poponin was visiting an American institution when this series of experiments was repeated and published. The magnitude of what his study, “The DNA Phantom Effect,” tells us about our world is perhaps best summarized in the words of Poponin himself. In the introduction to his report, he says, “We believe this discovery has tremendous significance for the explanation and deeper understandings of the mechanisms underlying subtle energy phenomena including many of the observed alternative healing phenomena.”9
So what is Poponin really saying to us here? Experiment I describes the phantom effect and what it says about our relationship to our world, one another, and the universe beyond… . It’s all about our DNA and us.
EXPERIMENT I
Poponin and Gariaev designed their pioneering experiment to test the behavior of DNA on light particles (photons), the quantum “stuff” that our world is made of. They first removed all the air from a specially designed tube, creating what’s thought of as a vacuum. Traditionally, the term vacuum implies that the container is empty, but even with the air taken out, the scientists knew that something remained inside—photons. Using precisely engineered equipment that could detect the particles, the scientists measured their location within the tube.
They wanted to see if the particles of light were scattered everywhere, clinging to the sides of the glass, or perhaps clustered in a pile at the bottom of the container. What they found first came as no surprise: The photons were distributed in a way that was completely unordered. In other words, the particles were everywhere inside of the container—which is precisely what Poponin and his team expected.
In the next part of the experiment, samples of human DNA were placed inside the closed tube with the photons. In the presence of the DNA, the particles of light did something that no one anticipated: Rather than the scattered pattern that the team had seen before, the particles arranged themselves differently in the presence of the living material. The DNA was clearly having a direct influence on the photons, as if shaping them into regular patterns through an invisible force. This is important, since there’s absolutely nothing in the tenets of conventional physics that would allow for this effect. Yet in this controlled environment, DNA—the substance that composes us—was observed and documented to have a direct effect on the quantum stuff that our world is made of!
The next surprise came when the DNA was removed from the container. There was every reason for the scientists involved to believe that the particles of light would return to their original scattered state throughout the tube. Following the Michelson-Morley experiment (described in Chapter 1), nothing in the traditional literature suggests that anything other than this would happen. But instead, the scientists witnessed a very different occurrence: The photons remained ordered, just as if the DNA were still in the tube. In his own words, Poponin described the light as behaving “surprisingly and counter-intuitively.”10
After checking the instruments and the results, Poponin and his colleagues were faced with the task of finding an explanation for what they’d just observed. With the DNA removed from the tube, what was affecting the particles of light? Did the DNA leave something behind, a residual force that lingered after the physical material was removed? Or was an even more mysterious phenomenon at work? Were the DNA and the light particles still connected in some way and on some level that we don’t recognize, even though they were physically separated and no longer in the same tube?
In his summary, Poponin wrote that he and the researchers were “forced to accept the working hypothesis that some new field structure is being excited.”11 Because the effect appeared to be directly related to the presence of the living material, the phenomenon was named the “DNA phantom effect.” Poponin’s new field structure sounds surprisingly similar to the “matrix” that Max Planck identified more than 50 years earlier, as well as the effects suggested in ancient traditions.
— Summary of Experiment I: This experiment is important for a number of reasons. Perhaps the most obvious is that it clearly shows us a direct relationship between DNA and the energy that our world is made of. Of the many conclusions that we may draw from this powerful demonstration, two are certain:
1. A type of energy exists that has previously gone unrecognized.
2. Cells/DNA influence matter through this form of energy.
Produced under the rigid control of
laboratory conditions (perhaps for the first time), evidence arose of the powerful relationship that ancient traditions have held sacred for centuries. The DNA changed the behavior of the light particles—the essence of our world. Just as our most cherished traditions and spiritual texts have informed us for so long, the experiment validated that we have a direct effect on the world around us.
Beyond wishful thinking and New Age isms, this impact is real. The DNA phantom effect shows us that under the right conditions and with proper equipment, this relationship can be documented. (We’ll revisit this experiment in a later part of the book.) Although it stands on its own as a revolutionary and graphic demonstration of the connection between life and matter, it’s within the context of the next two experiments that the DNA phantom effect takes on even greater significance.
EXPERIMENT II
Research has shown beyond any reasonable doubt that human emotion has a direct influence on the way our cells function in our body.12 During the 1990s, scientists working with the U.S. Army investigated whether or not the power of our feelings continues to have an effect on living cells, specifically DNA, once those cells are no longer part of the body. In other words, when tissue samples are taken, does emotion still impact them either positively or negatively?
Conventional wisdom would assume not. Why should we expect such a finding? Refer once again to the Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887, the results of which were believed to show that there’s nothing “out there” to connect anything in the world with anything else. Following a traditional line of thinking, once tissue, skin, organs, or bones are removed from a person, any connection with those parts of the body should no longer exist. This experiment, however, shows us that something very different is actually happening.
In a 1993 study reported in the journal Advances, the Army performed experiments to determine precisely whether the emotion/DNA connection continues following a separation, and if so, at what distances?13 The researchers started by collecting a swab of tissue and DNA from the inside of a volunteer’s mouth. This sample was isolated and taken to another room in the same building, where they began to investigate a phenomenon that modern science says shouldn’t exist. In a specially designed chamber, the DNA was measured electrically to see if it responded to the emotions of the person it came from, the donor who was in another room several hundred feet away.
In his room, the subject was shown a series of video images. Designed to create genuine states of emotion inside of his body, this material ranged from graphic wartime footage to erotic images to comedy. The idea was for the donor to experience a spectrum of real emotions within a brief period of time. While he was doing so, in another room his DNA was measured for its response.
When the donor experienced emotional “peaks” and “dips,” his cells and DNA showed a powerful electrical response at the same instant in time. Although distances measured in hundreds of feet separated the donor and the samples, the DNA acted as if it was still physically connected to his body. The question is “Why?”
There’s a footnote to this experiment that I’ll share here. I was on a book tour in Australia during the September 11 attacks on the American Pentagon and World Trade Center. When I arrived back in Los Angeles, it was immediately clear that I’d come home to a country that was different from the one I’d left only ten days before. No one was traveling—the airports and their parking lots were empty. The world had changed tremendously.
I was scheduled to speak at a conference there in L.A. shortly after returning, and even though it appeared that very few people would show up, the hosts made the decision to go forward with the program. When the presentations began, the producers’ fears were realized: Only a handful of attendees had shown up. As the scientists and authors began their talks, it was almost as if we were presenting to one another.
I’d just finished offering my program on the interconnected nature of all things, complete with the Army experiment I just described. At dinner that evening, another presenter came up to me, thanked me for my program, and informed me that he had been a part of the study that I’d spoken of. To be accurate, the man, Dr. Cleve Backster, had designed the experiment for the Army as part of an ongoing project. His pioneering work on the way that human intention affects plants had led to the military experiments. What Dr. Backster offered next is the reason why I’m sharing the story here.
The Army stopped their experiments with the donor and his DNA when they were still in the same building, separated by distances of only hundreds of feet. Following those initial studies, however, Dr. Backster described how he and his team had continued the investigations at even greater distances. At one point, a span of 350 miles separated the donor and his cells.
Furthermore, the time between the donor’s experience and the cell’s response was gauged by an atomic clock located in Colorado. In each experiment, the interval measured between the emotion and the cell’s response was zero—the effect was simultaneous. Whether the cells were in the same room or separated by hundreds of miles, the results were the same. When the donor had an emotional experience, the DNA reacted as if it were still connected to the donor’s body in some way.
While this may sound a little spooky to us at first, consider this: If there’s a quantum field that links all matter, then everything must be—and remain—connected. As Dr. Jeffrey Thompson, a colleague of Cleve Backster, states so eloquently, from this viewpoint: “There is no place where one’s body actually ends and no place where it begins.”14
— Summary of Experiment II: The implications of this experiment are vast and, to some, a little mind-boggling. If we can’t separate people from the parts of their bodies, does this mean that when a living organ is successfully transplanted into another human being, the two individuals somehow remain connected to each other?
On a typical day, most of us come into contact with dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of other people—and often that contact is physical. Each time we touch another person, even simply by shaking his or her hand, a trace of that individual’s DNA stays with us in the form of skin cells that he or she leaves behind. At the same time, some of ours remains with the other person. Does this mean that we continue to be linked to those we touch as long as the DNA in the cells we share is alive? And if so, just how deep does our connection with them go? The answer to these questions is yes—it appears that the link exists. The quality of that connection, however, appears to be determined by how conscious we are of its existence.
All of these possibilities illustrate the magnitude of what this experiment is showing us. At the same time, they lay the foundation for something even more profound. If the donor is experiencing emotions within his or her body and the DNA is responding to those emotions, then something must be traveling between them that allows the emotion to get from one to the other, right?
Perhaps … or perhaps not. This experiment could just be showing us something else—a powerful idea that’s so simple it’s easy to overlook: Maybe the donor’s emotions didn’t have to travel at all. It could be that there’s no need for the energy to travel from the donor to a distant location in order for it to have an effect. The person’s emotions might have already been in the DNA—and everywhere else, for that matter—the instant they were created. I mention this here to plant the seed of an amazing possibility that we’ll explore with all the consideration that it deserves in Chapter 3.
The bottom line—the reason why I’ve chosen to share this experiment—is simply this: For the DNA and the donor to have any connection whatsoever, there must be something that links them together. The experiment suggests four things:
1. A previously unrecognized form of energy exists between living tissues.
2. Cells and DNA communicate through this field of energy.
3. Human emotion has a direct influence on living DNA.
4. Distance appears to be of no consequence with regard to the effect.
EXPERIMENT III
While the effect of huma
n emotion on our body’s health and immune system has long been accepted in spiritual traditions throughout the world, rarely has it been documented in a way that’s useful to the average person.
In 1991, an organization named the Institute of HeartMath was formed for the specific purpose of exploring the power that human feelings have over the body, and the role that those emotions may play in our world. Specifically, HeartMath chose to focus its research on the place in our bodies where emotion and feeling seem to originate: the human heart. The pioneering work of its researchers has been extensively published in prestigious journals and cited in scientific papers.15
One of the most significant findings reported by HeartMath is the documentation of the doughnut-shaped field of energy that surrounds the heart and extends beyond the body. This field of electromagnetic energy exists in a configuration called a torus and is between five and eight feet in diameter (see Figure 2). Although the heart field is not the body’s aura or the prana described in ancient Sanskrit traditions, it may well be an expression of the energy that begins in this area.
Knowing that this field exists, the HeartMath researchers asked themselves if there could be another kind of energy we haven’t yet discovered that’s carried within this known field. To try out their theory, the researchers decided to test the effects of human emotion on DNA—the essence of life itself.
