Healthy Homes Asia

by Phillip Day

Can your body heal you or not? If so, what does the healing?

Nobel Prize laureate, visionary and famous doctor Albert Schweitzer once wrote:

"It's supposed to be a secret but I'll tell you anyway. We doctors do nothing. We only help and encourage the doctor within."

Thankfully the human body with which God blessed us did not come with a packet of pills with an FDA approval stamp on it. Long before old JD Rockefeller, Morris Fishbein, the American Medical Association, Stephen Barrett, Dr William Jarvis and insurance companies succeeded in convincing us we couldn't do without them, the human body had decent, nutritious food available to it and a T-cell lymphocyte system working away behind the scenes to return us to health if we got sick.

To understand how central diet and lifestyle changes are to a recovery from disease; also to come to terms with modern medicine's creepy hostility to ‘natural healing processes', and why medical doctors can actually be jailed in some countries for treating cancer with nutrition, you have to appreciate some mind-boggling discoveries about the human cell.

For the uninitiated, the cell is the smallest unit of life and you have in excess of 80 billion of these mini-miracles that make you up. Few of us pause to give this micro-world anything like the respect it so richly deserves. What follows will astonish you.

The cell city

Wars are not good for much but they are good for new toys. Following World War II, the cell began to be unlocked with an incredible advancement in technology unavailable in Darwin's day. "What exactly is life?" the age-old question was posed anew, but few were going to warm to the answer.

What confronted scientists down the new electron microscope was not Ernst Haeckel's homogenous glob of undifferentiated protoplasm proposed by Darwinism but a miniaturised city of untold complexity containing molecular machines performing numerous tasks. Professor of Biochemistry Michael Behe writes:

"At the very basis of life where molecules and cells run the show, we've discovered machines, literally molecular machines... There are little molecular trucks that carry supplies from one end of the cell to the other. There are machines which capture the energy from sunlight and turn it into usable energy.... When we look at these machines, we ask ourselves, where do they come from? And the standard answer - Darwinian evolution - is very inadequate in my view."[1]

The flagellum, for example - the ‘tail' which drives the E. Coli bacterium - is essentially an outboard motor. The design comprises a hook with filament or propeller rotating up to 100,000 rpm, a rotor, stator, drive shaft, U-joint, bushings and engine casing (inner and outer membranes).

Its assembly defies any notion of a functional precursor in the evolutionary process. If just one of 40 structural components of the engine is missing, it does not work and the bacterium dies. How then could the flagellum have evolved? It would have to have worked from the very first bacterium for natural selection to become possible thereafter.

The system is said by Michael Behe to be irreducibly complex - in other words, it cannot be simplified further and retain function. Evolutionary biology has to explain how the bacterial flagellum came into being gradually when no advantage or function could be enjoyed at each stage of the evolutionary process until the last of some forty components was installed.

How was this machine built in the first place? Studies of the bacterial flagellum reveal that the parts have to be assembled in a certain order, as with a car engine. Chemicals cannot do this, there has to be information orchestrating the construction. Molecular machines construct the bacterial flagellum in the correct order for it to work. If one piece is mislaid or put in the wrong place the engine won't work, hence ‘irreducibly complex'.

And the machines which make the flagella are in turn made by other machines, which are themselves constructed by further systems which are also irreducibly complex. Such mind-boggling complexity ‘goes all the way down' and has led to an organised re-think into how life is possible. Darwin seemed to anticipate the problem when he wrote:

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."[2]

Well, guess what, Charlie....

The ‘simple' cell? DNA

Even the simplest cells are now known to be unbelievably complex. Biochemists have tabulated their components - mitochondria, nucleus, rough endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi apparatus, cytoskeleton, smooth endoplasmic reticulum, proteins, fats, enzymes, minerals, and so on - but not the biophysical aspects the cell, which include the information required to assemble and replicate the cell, not to mention the bizarre property of one cell being able to communicate with others over distance.[3] Naval engineering graduate Chuck Missler PhD writes:

"The ‘simple cell' turns out to be a miniaturized city of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design, including automated assembly plants and processing units featuring robot machines (protein molecules with as many as 3,000 atoms each in three-dimensional configurations), manufacturing hundreds of thousands of specific types of products. The system design exploits artificial languages and decoding systems, memory banks for information storage, elegant control systems regulating the automated assembly of components, error correction techniques and proof-reading devices for quality control."[4]

This is what confronted scientists after World War II. Different levels of multi-layered reality were peeled back to reveal a far deeper, astonishing order.

"What are the forces that control the twisting and folding of molecules into complex shapes?" biophysicist F Weinhold wants to know. "Don't look for the answers in your organic chemistry textbook."[5]

Twisting in the wind

At the base of the cell's intelligence is James Watson and Francis Crick‘s deoxyribonucleic acid template, DNA, a double-helical design marvel insurmountable for the evolutionist. Dr Jerry Bergman, professor of science at Northwest College, Archibold, Ohio, describes some informational aspects of DNA which have so boggled scientists:

"At the moment of conception, a fertilized human egg is about the size of a pinhead. Yet it contains information equivalent to about six billion ‘chemical letters'. This is enough information to fill 1,000 books, 500 pages thick with print so small you would need a microscope to read it! If all the chemical ‘letters' in the human body were printed in books, it is estimated they would fill the Grand Canyon fifty times!

This vast amount of information is stored in our bodies' cells in DNA molecules and is coded by four bases - adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine (A, T, G and C). The key to the coding of DNA is in the grouping of these bases into sets that are further sequenced to form the 20 common amino acids. Together, these genetic codes form the physical foundation of all life.

We've all been exposed to the basic concepts of DNA and its double-helix structure in our high school biology classes. Perhaps you remember being taught that cells divide through the ‘unzipping' and subsequent replication of the double helix. In all likelihood, though, the incredible evidence of design in this process was not discussed."[6]

Missler argues that:

"...an elegant design is more than the parts themselves; it involves information. It requires information input external to the design itself - and the deliberate involvement of a designer. The Darwinians cannot explain the origin of life because they cannot explain the origin of information. The technology that provides language - semantics and syntax, for example - is quite distinct from the technology of the ink and paper it may be written on. The physical features of the circuits in a computer provide no clue about the design of the software that resides within it." [7]

Prof. Stephen Meyer states:

"Bill Gates says that DNA is like a software program but much more complex than any we've been able to write. The challenge of the chemical evolutionary theorist is to explain the origin of that biological software without reference to a programmer."[8]

Here's your science project for the week. Make a DNA model. Take two strands of mono-filament fishing line 125 miles long, stick three and a half billion bits of information unique to you on them, entwine them, then roll them up and put them into a basket ball in such a way that several times a day you can remove them, unzip them, copy sections of them, then replace them on spools at three times the speed of an airplane propeller without tearing or tangling the structure. Now do this millions of times a day as the conclusion of your test and ensure it's done flawlessly.

So proteins are formed by assembling amino acids according to the information contained in DNA, yet DNA itself is constructed by proteins using the same three-out of-four, error-correcting digital code. This circularity is analogous to very advanced engineering ‘loop' systems, or complex self-modifying arrays in computer programming, where components are formed by processes which themselves are formed by the components! There has to be a start to the process and an extraneous input of information to kick it all off. Now, if you want to go to Cambridge University, don't ask the following question: Who or what does the starting?

In my book, Origins, I give these subjects a fascinating airing. Don't ask your tutor the following either because they won't know and you'll get told off. Is there a ‘doctor within' as Schweitzer contended? Are we here by chance or design? We live on a planet replete with information coded into the very building blocks of our existence. Where did this information come from and what exactly sustains us at the sub-atomic level? How could something as complex as the human cell, comprised of countless sub-systems, ever have self-organised by the unintelligent, random processes of natural selection?

Pierre-P Grasse, editor of the 28-volume Traite de Zoologie, is a former Chair of Evolution at Sorbonne University and ex-president of the French Academie des Sciences. He writes:

"Directed by all-powerful selection, chance becomes a sort of providence which, under the cover of atheism, is not named but which is secretly worshipped.... To insist, even with Olympian assurance, that life appeared quite by chance and evolved in this fashion, is an unfounded supposition which I believe to be wrong and not in accordance with the facts."[9]

The deafening silence

Medical science in general, following evolutionary precepts, eschews nutrition and lifestyle changes in favour of man-made drugs because they cannot afford to surrender their sovereignty to the power in the molecules. Yet what defeats them is the explanation for how things heal and what exactly does the organising. To all but the terminally blinkered, the cell is an incredible designed system, a fact attested to even by Darwin's most obdurate fanatics.[10] What is the cell city made of? The food you eat. How important is food then to your overall health? Let's just say that diet is rather more serious than most people imagine.[11]

Doctors are required to swallow the most enormous paradox that food is good enough to keep you alive but it's not good enough to fix you when you're sick - an intellectually inconsistent argument. All these miracle cells in your body are made out of the food you eat and the water you drink. As Dr Andrew Saul reminds, there isn't one cell made out of a drug.[12] Never mind the bafflement of DNA/RNA and getting from amino acids to the first protein, the human cell is regulated by a further universe of minerals, vitamins, enzymes, fats, sugars and hormones which interact in such extraordinary ways, science can only cast up its hands and reach for the Prozac. In fact, they should be stretching for the salad because that's the designed food their designed body requires to make more of them. Accept no substitutes.

So evolution's scorn of ‘the doctor within' is evident today in the medical establishment's arrogant refusal to train its doctors in nutrition. The miracle of every cell in our body comes from what we eat yet, incredibly, drugs, radiation and surgery are the only options for cancer. Millions have died because of this catastrophic wrong turn.[13] Michael Behe summarises:

"The result of these cumulative efforts to investigate the cell - to investigate life at the molecular level itself - is a loud, clear, piercing cry of ‘design!'.... The observation of the intelligent design of life is momentous. The magnitude of the victory, gained at such great cost through sustained effort over the course of decades, would be expected to send the champagne corks flying in labs around the world. This triumph of science should evoke cries of ‘Eureka!' from ten thousand throats, should occasion much hand-slapping and high-fiving, and perhaps even be an excuse to take the day off.

But no bottles have been uncorked, no hands slapped. Instead, a curious, embarrassed silence surrounds the stark complexity of the cell. When the subject comes up in public, feet start to shuffle and breathing gets a bit labored. In private, people are a bit more relaxed; many explicitly admit the obvious but then stare at the ground, shake their heads, and let it go at that."[14]

Fuel for thought

I remember once pulling my Nissan into a petrol station to fill up. I was somewhat preoccupied with my thoughts and proceeded to pump 40 litres of diesel into my gasoline vehicle by mistake. The problem became evident a mile up the road when my car began smoking Brixton to a standstill and some rather alarming knocking sounds came from the sharp end. 24 hours and a £180 towing/repair bill later, I had solidly learned two very valuable lessons: one, that green means unleaded, and two, my vehicle runs better on the right kind of fuel.

And so do you. If you want to enjoy good health, then the right gas has to go in the machine. Step on the mines, smoke, eat junk, get stressed and indulge in all those vain imaginations, and you too can have a $35,000 joint replacement procedure, an amputation, lung or colorectal cancer and a triple heart-bypass operation - all paid for courtesy of the National Health or Blue Shield.

The good life is the natural life. Most of the ills the body faces while living on a good diet are known as ‘self-limiting' because the body takes care of them eventually. You are encased in an error-correcting, self-repairing, self-replicating, carbon-based machine that knows what it's doing on the cellular level. My advice? Have a little faith in your hardware!

Further resources

Origins by Phillip Day

References

[1] Unlocking the Mystery of Life, Illustra Media, www.illustramedia.com
[2] Darwin, Charles On the Origin of Species, 6th ed, New York University Press, p.154
[3] Stone, Robert B The Secret Life of Your Cells, Whitford Press, 1989
[4] Missler, Chuck In the Beginning, there was Information, audio presentation supplementary notes, Koinonia House, www.khouse.org
[5] Lipton, Bruce, The Biology of Belief, Hay House, 2008, p.111
[6] Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, PO Box 6302, Acacia Ridge D.C., Queensland, 4110, Australia
[7] Missler, Chuck, op. cit. pp.9-10
[8] Meyer, Stephen C, ‘The Origin of Information' lecture, www.khouse.org
[9] Grasse P-P Evolution of Living Organisms Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation, Academic Press, New York, NY, 1977, p.107
[10] When pushed by author Ben Stein on a design inference for the origin of life, Dr Richard Dawkins intriguingly states: "It could come about in the following way. It could be that at some earlier time, somewhere in the universe, a civilisation evolved by probably some kind of Darwinian means to a very, very high level of technology, and designed a form of life that they seeded onto, perhaps, this planet. Now that is a possibility, and an intriguing possibility. And I suppose it's possible that you might find evidence for that if you look at the details of biochemistry, molecular biology, you might find a signature of some sort of designer...."

(Expelled - No Intelligence Allowed documentary, Premise Media Corporation, 2008, www.credence.org)

[11] Day, Phillip Origins - The Greatest Scientific Discovery, Credence, 2010

[12] Food Matters DVD, op. cit. www.credence.org
[13] Day, Phillip Cancer: Why We're Still Dying to Know the Truth, Credence Publications, 2007; also Day, Phillip The ABC's of Disease, Credence Publications, 2004
[14] Behe, Michael, Darwin's Black Box, op. cit. excerpted p.233

by Phillip Day

The sea of energy

"We are rising to the conviction that we are part of nature, and so a part of God.... That the whole creation is travelling together toward some great end; and that now, after ages of development, we have at length become conscious portions of the great scheme and can co-operate in it with knowledge and with joy." - British physicist, Sir Oliver Lodge

"How is it that we know what we know?" - Lynne McTaggart

Studies with plants

Cleve Backster's career had been exemplary. The former CIA scientist had pioneered the polygraph ‘lie-detector' machine and worked as a guest instructor at the Department of Defense Polygraph School and FBI Academy. That all changed one night in 1966 when Dr Backster discovered that a plant could be measured reacting to his thoughts when connected to a polygraph.

If he held the image of burning the plant in his mind, the plant reacted galvanometrically. Yet when the plant was repeatedly threatened with fire but the threat not realised, the plant soon lost interest and failed to react. The plant seemed to know when Backster was faking it. Dr Robert B Stone writes:

"Accidentally cut your finger and the plants receive signals from the dying cells in the drying blood and there is their reaction in black and white. Do it purposely and the results are not the same." 1

The moment reality changed

It was a seminal moment which Backster knew would change everything, and it did. In the ensuing decades he became both pariah and prophet. His conclusions were:

1. A continuum had to exist by which the plant could detect his thoughts. (If so, what was the nature of this field?)
2. The plant was interpreting whether his intentions were honest or not. Where was the seat of this discriminatory intelligence?
3. Our thoughts are known!
4. What an observer thinks becomes part of the experiment!

Backster's findings were not enthusiastically received by his peers, notes Stone.

"Confront classic scientists with the fact that the thing needed to make an experiment scientific, namely protocol, is the very thing that makes it unrepeatable, and they throw their hands up in the air."2

Further experiments revealed that plants responded with extreme agitation when Backster dumped live brine shrimp into boiling water. After a while, however, the plants got used to the death of the shrimp and tuned into his thoughts instead. Backster also found that the plants adapted to death and only reacted initially to the brine shrimp's demise if healthy brine shrimp were used. Sick brine shrimp did not gain any reaction.

Backster thought of placebo, where a doctor gives a patient a fake pill and, through the extent of belief, the patient can recover. But if the patient knows the pill is a fake, the effect is not observed. Does belief create chemicals which somehow activate the body's healing processes? Science only considers the mind through evolutionary processes. If faith healing did work, it was viewed merely as an evolutionary mechanism to ensure the host's survival, nothing more.

Beyond what we ever imagined

But Backster went on to find a lot more. Distance was no object to ‘Primary Perception', as he termed the phenomenon. He could cut off a leaf and wire it up and still get the plant's reaction. He could grind up a leaf and place the electrodes in the powder in another room and get the same reading.

"Equipment was set up and the leaves were to be tested with electrodes. A dish of water and a dish of acetone were placed alongside. If the card turned up was black, the leaf being tested was put in water as a reward. If the card turned up was red, the leaf being tested would be put in acetone - a quick life-terminator. After the second leaf was put into the acetone, all the leaves went into a state of shock or fainting. That is, there would be no reaction on the equipment, neither up nor down, only a straight line." 3

The plants seemed to possess a reactive defence against trauma from threats remotely derived. Further studies confirmed this. Two plants were placed in a room and six students selected lots from a hat. One of the slips instructed the student to murder a plant. The other students and Backster left the room while the student tore the plant out of its pot and ripped it to sheds. Backster then returned and wired up the remaining plant, the ‘witness' to the murder. As each student came in, the plant's reaction was monitored until the murderer entered and the plant's reading went wild.

Why? Because the plant knows the murderer doesn't fake it. Backster's problem was determining what was being measured here. He later came to the same conclusion Sir Oliver Lodge had decades before, and Deepak Chopra would do in the future. That there exists a universal continuum interpenetrating all living things, which is reactive, and here was the proof. The ‘field' was discerning, which meant it had intelligence. Deepak Chopra called it ‘Thinking No-Stuff'. Oliver Lodge said it was God. All Backster knew was that if he mentioned God to anyone, his scientific career would take on the glide angle of a grand piano. "Naturalistic conclusions are required for everything!"

Mind boggling

The very concept of what Backster was facing boggled the mind. Dr Stone writes:

"Privacy seemed now to be non-existent. It appears to be an illusion. How can there be privacy if everything is connected through a oneness, a continuum of intelligence, a morphogenetic field, a collective unconscious or anything else you want to call it? Your secret thoughts are communicated to every cell in your body and probably to a larger continuum in space."4

Backster found that plants attune themselves to their owner, even over distance. One night, he took an associate home to a surprise party held in the latter's honour. Both men entered to cries of "Surprise!" from the neighbours. When Backster analysed the reactions of the plants in his lab the following day, his journey was laid out, bare for all to see. He had made notes the night before with a chronometer during points in their trip. The precise time they were running for a bus in the Port Authority. Holding the bus door open for someone. Descending into the Lincoln Tunnel. At the exact moment of "Surprise!" the needles careened off the chart miles away, presumably because of Backster's own reaction to the occasion. Backster realised he had established some sort of quantum connection with his plants.

Stone records another Backster experiment, wherein a veteran of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour was asked to watch a video, during which his reactions would be monitored. Painstaking preparations were made to ensure there was no interference in the experiment. The veteran was shown part of a program entitled The World at War on his own television at home. The film was about the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. During the clip, there was a close-up of a naval gunner blazing away at enemy aircraft passing overhead. Stone writes:

"The TV program, also being recorded in the laboratory, then showed the downing of an aircraft. Instantly, the readout recorded a reaction by the veteran's mouth cells. An enemy plane crashing into the sea caused the tracing to make a violent dip down and then up."

Later, the veteran admitted he had been emotionally stimulated at that point, hence the reaction. The old man's cells had been collected, centrifuged and connected to the monitoring equipment in a lab seven miles from his home.5

The Zero Point Field

The Descartian/Newton model of a matter-only universe was falling apart. Matter was not separate from mind, it was mind. Yet science still had the body divided into parts, with each assigned a medical specialty. Always ignored were the whole person and their unfathomable mind.

Placebo/nocebo: what is the mechanism? Bad news kills yet dogs do not react to bad news and neither do sharks. Apparently only humans have ‘evolved' a higher consciousness with which to process and react to ‘information'. Which begs the question, how did man evolve inordinately further than any other creature, with a mind capable of self-harm with negative conditioning thereby (nocebo)? Come to think of it, why do we question? Anything? At all? You cannot stop a three-year-old asking questions as she tries to learn of the world around her.

Lynne McTaggart, an American researcher and author, has been following an exotic line of enquiry into the very building blocks of matter itself. In her book, The Field, she comments:

"The most important quality common to all these researchers was a simple willingness to suspend disbelief and remain open to true discovery, even if it meant challenging the existing order of things, alienating colleagues or opening themselves up to censure and professional ruin. To be revolutionary in science is to flirt with professional suicide. The system tends to encourage professionals to carry out experimentation whose purpose is primarily to confirm the existing view of things, or to further develop technology for industry, rather than to serve up true innovation."6

Auras and energy fields were being measured around people using Kirlian photography. Was this evidence of Backster's Primary Perception? Did this life-force or ch'i find its origins in some Quantum of Solace? A concept known as the ‘Zero Point Field', writes McTaggart, was soon being openly discussed:

"Several thought again about a few equations that had always been subtracted out in quantum physics. These equations stood for the Zero Point Field - an ocean of microscopic vibrations in the space between things. If the Zero Point Field were included in our conception of the most fundamental nature of matter, they realized, the very underpinning of our universe was a heaving sea of energy - one vast quantum field. If this were true, everything would be connected to everything else like some invisible web. They also discovered that we were made of the same basic material. On our most fundamental level, living beings, including human beings, were packets of quantum energy constantly exchanging information with this inexhaustible energy sea.... We literally resonate with our world."7

'Thinking no-stuff'

Peter Hudson writes:

"Energy and matter are the same universal substance, simply vibrating at different frequencies. Recent advancements in quantum physics suggest that the universe is made up of 98% energy and only 2% matter, so it is a great puzzle that we seem to focus far too much, and place too much emphasis on the physical and material aspects of our being instead of the energy that created it."8

Scientists tell us our body is made up of atoms. Dr Stuart Crane reminds that an atom has protons, neutrons and electrons. If the nucleus were the size of a pinhead, scientists have calculated that the first electron in the atom would be 50 yards (150 feet) distant. Everything else in the atom to the Descartian biochemist is... nothing. That's all there is to an atom. If we take all the neutrons, electrons and protons of the atoms in your body and bundle them together, you would be about the same size as a tiny speck of pepper, says Dr Crane. You would weigh the same as you do now because all your atomic weight is in the protons, neutrons and electrons. That's all of you that exists - a speck of pepper. The rest of you... isn't.

If you then take that speck of pepper, do you think you could pass it by another speck of pepper within itself, i.e. 150 feet, without encountering any obstruction? A wall is made the same way we are. A wall, according to atomic physics, is basically nothing. There is absolutely no reason why you cannot walk through a wall, according to all the laws of science except one, says Crane. You bump your nose.

Dr Crane makes the point that much science is dishonest because it does not deal with things as they are, it deals with things that work (events that are demonstrable and repeatable).

"The scientist says: "We had 11,000 people all try and walk through a wall and they all ended up bumping their noses. Therefore we conclude that walking through walls can't be done because noses don't go through and that's what has to go through first."9

Now quantum physics tells us the Zero Point Field is measurable both in the material and throughout ‘the nothing' - Dr Deepak Chopra's ‘Thinking No-Stuff'. Scientists in various fields have been working hard on the enigma despite being shunned by their peers. How does the Field work? Is it a medium through which all atoms are interconnected, distance no object? All sense something mind-boggling just out of reach. For years, quantum mechanics had been loosening up adherents to ‘impossible concepts', such as sub-atomic particles being in two places at the same time, indeed not even existing unless someone observes them! Neuroscientist Karl Pribram was working on the very nature of perception - how we see and think. The nature of reality. Are objects there whether we perceive them or not? Is there a quantum link between all ‘matter'?

Like the internet?

The future of the internet, some say, is in ‘cloud computing', whereby all storage and major processing tasks are carried out remotely in huge computer centres, leaving the individual's PC unencumbered by data and processing chores. Scientists are wondering whether the Zero Point Field acts in similar fashion as some sort of quantum repository, into which all our cells, including our brains, are plugged for retrieval of memory.

Peter Hudson writes:

"If we could take a look through high magnification at our solid bodies, we would find the so-called solid reality lost to a rapidly vibrating matrix of energy fields. In other words, there is a vast... emptiness within our bodies but within the void, the emptiness, is a considerable, very subtle form of energy which radiates within and around all molecular or cellular matter."10

Lynne McTaggart writes:

"The fact that the human body was exchanging information with a mutable field of quantum fluctuation suggested something profound about the world.... If living things boil down to charged particles interacting with a field and sending out and receiving quantum information, where did we end and the rest of the world begin? Where was consciousness? Encased inside our bodies or out there in the Field?"11

Boundless affinity

Backster found that the field responded to love, which meant that the field was discerning and therefore had intelligence. Marcel Vogel also found this at the IBM Laboratories at Los Gatos, California. He would place three leaves by his bed and upon waking, direct feelings of affection towards the outer leaves while ignoring the middle one. In a few days, the centre leaf had withered while the outer two remained green and pliant.

This is reminiscent of the story of Jesus and his disciples on their way to the temple in Jerusalem. Jesus sees a fig tree nearby has no fruit upon its branches and he curses the tree: "Let no-one eat fruit from you ever again!" The following day, when they pass by the same spot, the tree has withered up from the roots. Peter cries, "Master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away."

Jesus replies: "Have faith in God [the field?]. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." (Mark 11:20-24)

A secret?

Rhonda Byrne's bestselling book, The Secret, sold millions on the idea of a compliant ‘Universe' and how one might milk it. Predictably, the book provoked criticism from Christian groups for portraying God's principles as some sort of celestial Argos catalogue. Christians believe God's Holy Spirit interpenetrates all things and is the giver and taker of life, so Backster's research was warmly received by many religious groups who saw in Primary Perception a convocation with their own beliefs. Backster's work was also acclaimed by New Age groups who related the ‘quantum living phenomenon' to GAIA, Mother Earth. McTaggart concludes:

"The existence of the Zero Point Field implied that all matter in the universe was interconnected by waves, which are spread out through time and space and can carry on to infinity, tying one part of the universe to every other part. The idea of the Field might just offer a scientific explanation for many metaphysical notions, such as the Chinese belief in the life-force, or ch'i, described in ancient texts as something akin to an energy field. It even echoed the Old Testament's account of God's first dictum: ‘Let there be light', out of which matter was created."12

"...If all sub-atomic matter in the world is interacting constantly with this ambient ground-state energy field, the sub-atomic waves of the field are constantly imprinting a record of the shape of everything. As the harbinger and imprinter of all wavelengths and all frequencies, the Zero Pint Field is a kind of shadow of the universe for all time, a mirror image and record of everything that ever was."13

British biologist Rupert Sheldrake coined the term ‘Morphogenetic Field' ‘as the subset of morphic fields which influence, and are influenced by living things':

"The term [morphic fields] is more general in its meaning than morphogenetic fields, and includes other kinds of organizing fields in addition to those of morphogenesis; the organizing fields of animal and human behaviour, of social and cultural systems, and of mental activity can all be regarded as morphic fields which contain an inherent memory."14

Altered states

In The Biology of Belief, Dr Bruce Lipton considers the different states of consciousness and what they might mean in the debate. For this, he states, we need an appreciation of the three brains at work in the human condition. The conscious mind (pre-frontal cortex), the subconscious mind (hind brain) and the ‘superconscious mind' in the environment - Dr Lipton's term for Backster's Primary Perception, Sheldrake's Morphogenetic Field, Rhine's ESP, GAIA, The Holy Spirit, God, call it what you will.

Interestingly, meditation and prayer are often carried out in the relaxed alpha state of consciousness, in which the brain cycles at around 10Hz. New Age mystics talk of GAIA interconnected in this plane. Shamans and monks chant themselves into a trance for contact with something beyond. Ray Manzarek, of the pop group The Doors, relates how Jim Morrison had his band pound him into an altered state with the sound of their instruments:

"He [Morrison] was not a performer, he was not an entertainer, he was not a showman, he was a shaman. He was possessed, man."15

In two minds

The two centres of action in the brain are the conscious and subconscious minds. The conscious mind evaluates information and forms conclusions. The subconscious mind, located hind brain, is the stimulus-response master computer that runs everything. It can be programmed through repetition, according to Pavlov, and is enhanced using pleasure or pain (aversion therapy).

By comparison, the conscious mind is slow and deliberate. The subconscious mind reacts blindingly fast in flight-or-flight situations and deals with behavioural patterning and the running of life-systems in the body. Depressed people get sick. Dr Lipton contends that the subconscious mind forms our end of a quantum link into the unknown. We not only transmit but receive. This communication is greatly enhanced in the lower states of consciousness experienced in prayer, meditation, trance-states, drug-states and hypnosis. The obvious questions are: What is the nature of what we transmit? What/who is doing the receiving? What is our relationship with what's doing the receiving? How can we know?

Mind control

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was keen to know more, but for other reasons. The Agency's infamous MK-ULTRA and MONARCH programs in the fifties and sixties were spawned out of Josef Mengele's ‘research' on his prisoners in Auschwitz using trauma-based mind control techniques. Infliction of torture on a subject was found to produce a breakaway persona or 'alter' which could be programmed and given access codes like a computer file. The idea was to find a way to develop the perfect assassin using buried alters, creating a subject who would assimilate into society and be triggered to kill or maim years later via radio frequency implant or spoken codeword.16

Dr Ewen Cameron, erstwhile head of the Canadian, American and World Psychiatric Associations, received millions of dollars from Allen Dulles (CIA) through front organisations such as the Investigation of Human Ecology, over which Cameron presided. Experiments in mind control and euphemistically named ‘basic programming' were conducted in Montreal, mostly at McGill University, St Mary's Hospital and Allan Memorial Institute. Cameron pioneered 'psychic driving' (constant auditory repetition), drug-induced coma and the application of electroshock trauma for alter programming. Many victims were drugged and kidnapped under guise of an ‘alien abduction' or recruited through medical ‘guinea-pig' programs. Cameron has been conveniently left out of most psychiatric journals probably due to MK-ULTRA being publicly exposed in the 1970's through lawsuits filed by Canadian survivors and their families. The CIA and Canadian government settled out of court to avoid being compelled officially to admit any wrongdoing.17

Such events seem far-fetched and hard to believe for the man in the street, yet documentation on ULTRA, if not MONARCH and associated operations is extensive and persistent. Over the years, the press has mentioned some aspect of these programs:

• A London Sunday Times, Feb 1978, article revealed that in a NATO conference on Stress Reduction, a Navy Lieutenant-Commander Thomas Narut, stationed in Naples, admitted to a training program for killers and assassins
• New Federalist journalist Anton Chaitkin asked former CIA Director William Colby directly, "What about MONARCH?" Colby replied angrily, "We stopped that between the late 1960s and the early 1970s."
• Washington Times, December 27th 1988 page A-2, author Bill Gertz
• Defense News, January 11-17, 1993 page 29, author Barbara Opall
• Tactical Technology, February 3rd 1993 pages 1-5 - Russian Technology Used For Mind Control
• Aviation Week and Space Technology, May 24th 1993 - Army Prepares For Non-Lethal Combat
• Aviation Week and Space Technology, June 7th 1993 - Washington Outlook Still Under Wraps (discusses the use of non-lethal means on David Koresh and his followers)
• Defense Electronics, July 1993, page 17, author Mark Tapscott - DoD Intel Agencies Look at Russian Mind Control Technology, Claims FBI Considered testing on Koresh
• Wall Street Journal, January 4th 1993, pages A-1/4, author Thomas E. Ricks hosts a lengthy article exploring the future battlefield use of non-lethal weapon systems

Conclusion

Quantum physics declares that the fundamental particles of matter are not matter. That sub-atomic particles can be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Einstein believed that the speed of light set limits on how fast a material entity could travel. Now we learn that space-time is an illusion. Is everything the Field and a projection of the Field? Are we as much a part of the Field in death as in life? Yes, say some scientists. When you die, nothing of your spirit/energy in the Field dies. As the Alanis Morrisette song goes: "How about not equating death with stopping?"

Further reading

Origins by Phillip Day (Take the Origins Tour....)

The Secret Life of Your Cells by Robert B Stone

References
1 Stone, Robert B, The Secret Life of Your Cells, op. cit. p.19

2 Ibid. p.18

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid. p.38

5 Ibid. pp.68-69

6 McTaggart, Lynne The Field, Element, 2003, p.16

7 Ibid. p.XXI - XXII

8 Hudson, Peter J Where Do We Go From Here? Mayfair Publishing, 1999, p.8

9 Crane, Dr Stuart The Montreal Conferences, 1976

10 Hudson, Peter J, Where Do We Go From Here? op. cit. p.18

11 Ibid. pp.125-126

12 McTaggart, Lynne, The Field, op. cit. p.29

13 Ibid. p.32

14 Sheldrake, Rupert The Presence of the Past, Inner Traditions Bear and Company, 2000, p.112

15 Schimmel, Joe, Rock and Roll Sorcerers, www.goodfight.org

16 Chapter 3, part 4: "Supreme Court Dissents Invoke the Nuremberg Code: CIA and DOD Human Subjects Research Scandals." Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments Final Report. Retrieved on 24th August 2005. "The CIA program, known principally by the codename MKULTRA, began in 1950"

17 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Ewen_Cameron