Mind, Growth & Matter

If the existence of what is referred to as the ‘mind/body connection’, which has spawned a massive industry of complementary medicine and given rise to a radical new mindset, still sounds like bunkum to you, hold onto your seat and read on.

The new sciences quantum physics and epigenetics are revolutionizing our understanding of the link between mind and matter, challenging established scientific theories and prompting a complete re-evaluation of life as we have known it.

One of the shining lights to emerge from these new sciences is cellular biologist and best selling author, Bruce Lipton PhD, whose book, The Biology of Belief, was awarded 2006’s Best Science Book of the Year.

Lipton maintains that pivotal to this shift in thinking within the scientific community has been groundbreaking insight into the function of genes.

Bruce Lipton: The old vision was that genes are self-actualising (turn on and off). But current data reveals that there is no such thing as an on/off function for a gene because genes are blueprints (plans) to make proteins, which are the building blocks that give shape to the structure.

The significance of this shift in belief is vast in that the original view led to the notion that we are victims of our biology. Whereas the ‘new’ sciences show that we are actually masters of our biology.

The old vision was formulated by Francis Crick, who together with James Watson deciphered the structure of the DNA
molecule in 1953. Based on experiments that were taken out of context but supported what he and Watson were thinking, Crick became completely enamored with the belief that DNA controls life. Crick came up with what is referred to in literature as the ‘central dogma’, the belief that DNA rules.

The crucial thing here is that this was only a hypothesis. There was never any scientific validation for it yet we all bought it because a belief already existed that this would be the answer to what controls life so when the data looked like it would fit it was simply assumed that this was right. (Lipton, who taught Cell Biology at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine was one of thousands of lecturers who taught the theory.)

This dogma became so fundamental to modern biology it was practically written in stone. It was the equivalent of science’s Ten Commandments.

In the dogma’s scheme of how life unfolds, DNA perched loftily on top, followed by RNA – the short-lived ‘Xerox’ copy of the DNA. The new understanding of how genes work is that this hypothesis is incorrect because genes are actually
blueprints that are read.

Source: Bruce H Lipton, PhD