Playing in the Field

A Conversation with Gregg Braden

By Matthew Joyce

Note: This article was originally published on PlanetLightWorker.com

Scientist, spiritual seeker, visionary. These are just a few of the appellations used to describe best-selling author Gregg Braden whose paradigm-shattering books are bridging the gap between science and spirituality.

As former computer scientist who lent his skills to Martin Marietta Aerospace during the last years of Cold War in the 1980’s and to Cisco Systems ensuring the reliability of the Internet during the 1990’s, Gregg engages his readers with a deep understanding of topics ranging from quantum physics and biology to history and philosophy. To these notable academic skills he brings a comparable breadth of knowledge gleaned from decades prowling South American villages, Tibetan monasteries, and dusty Egyptian texts for their ancient wisdom.

But Gregg’s true strengths are revealed when he combines these seemingly disparate traditions into a symbiotic and powerful message about the nature of the universe and our place and role within it. Whether he’s writing or speaking to sell-out audiences around the world, Gregg’s message is one of insight, optimism, and personal empowerment. His most recent work The Divine Matrix: Bridging Time, Space, Miracles and Belief reached the New York Times Bestseller List. We caught up with Gregg amidst his busy travel schedule to learn more about his latest project.

Matthew Joyce: So tell us about your new book, The Divine Matrix.

Gregg Braden: What’s so interesting is that western scientists have just arrived at an understanding that corresponds to the place where some of our most cherished spiritual and indigenous traditions begin. That we are bathed in a field of intelligent energy that permeates all of creation. The atoms that form the essence of all that we see emerge from the substrate of this field. So this field literally is running through our bodies in this moment.

MJ: So what is this field and what does it do?

GB: This field fulfills three functions. First, it’s a container that literally holds the universe together. Everything happens within the context of this container. Because we are part of that context, we are part of all we see and all we experience. Second it’s a bridge between our inner and our outer experiences. This field is the conduit that allows our thoughts, beliefs, feelings and emotions to literally have a direct effect on the stuff our world is made of. Third, it functions as a mirror for our deepest held beliefs within us – not always what we think we believe but rather our true fears, loves, judgments and biases. These three things together open up the door to a vast array of possibilities of how we actually function within this field. The field is so new that scientists are yet to agree on a single term to describe it.

MJ: You mean the scientific conception of the field is new, not the field itself.

GB: Precisely. The field itself has been here since the time of the beginning. But in the scientific literature there are numerous references to it. Physicists call it the quantum hologram. Author Lynne McTaggart simply calls it “the field.” Former astronaut Ed Mitchell calls it “nature’s mind.” Stephen Hawkins calls it “the mind of God.” And in 1944 Max Planck, the man many believe to be the father of quantum theory, called it “the matrix.” He said that underlying all matter we must assume the existence of a conscious, intelligent mind. Then he said this mind is the matrix of all matter. So the term “the matrix” or “the divine matrix” is a term that comes from the understandings of all these different discoveries put together.

MJ: OK, scientists, astronauts and journalists are recognizing this field. What can you tell us about your own direct experience of the matrix?

“Scientific validation is bringing science and spirituality closer together. Both describe our universe and the way we work within it in different but complimentary ways.”

GB: We all experience the divine matrix every day in our lives. When we begin to understand that our bodies don’t end with our skin, and when we see scientific evidence that supports what the ancient traditions have said for 5,000 years, we begin to recognize we are truly part of all we see.

MJ: Can you cite an example from your own life?

GB: One of the most powerful examples that I’ve seen is the one I described in the book of the healing of an inoperable cancerous tumor in a hospital in Beijing. The woman came to the clinic as a last resort because all else had failed. She was lying on a gurney and was fully conscious. Three practioners in white lab coats stood behind her and an ultrasound technician held a wand to record the healing in real time. The practioners repeated a mantra that roughly translates into English as ‘already done.” At first nothing happened. Then the tumor quivered in and out of view as if it was teetering between realities. Then within seconds it faded and was gone from the screen. Nothing spooky happened, yet within less than three minutes the condition just disappeared.

MJ: And did you watch that procedure directly or did you watch a video of it?

GB: I watched the video. I don’t think it makes any difference if you’re in the room or if you see it recorded. Experts have validated the registration marks on the film. It’s not a hoax, although they don’t understand why it’s happening. And I simply believe the man who filmed it. I studied with him in 1996. When I saw that film it took this whole conversation out of the realm of academic possibilities because suddenly we’ve seen something that violates what we are told are the laws of physics and biology. So we must either write it off as a hoax or we reconcile what we’ve seen and change our belief systems.

MJ: OK, but can you share a personal example that people can relate to. A way that you’ve put your modified belief system into practice?

GB: Sure. In my own life I’ve had a health condition that gave me a opportunity to apply the practices that I had been sharing with other people for so long without the chance to actually apply it for myself. I actually underwent an exploratory surgery. I went through the whole process only to wake up in the recovery room and hear the doctor saying ‘We don’t know why you’re here. There’s nothing there.”

“We must become the love, forgiveness, healing, abundance, and peace that we seek, because the field mirrors back what we give it to work with.”

MJ: How wonderful!

GB: Well, it is. But we all do this . We’ve all had the opportunity to pick up the phone to call someone we care about and discover that they’re already on the other end of the phone. I think we all have direct experience that this field exists. We just need the wisdom and the willingness to recognize how this field plays out in our lives.

MJ: What implications will this new understanding and use of the divine matrix have on the world as it plays out in our lives in terms of our religious or spiritual thoughts?

GB: Good question. I can think a couple of different ways I could answer it but I think perhaps the greatest impact is going to be a union between two schools of wisdom. On one hand, science is a relatively recent language. Its only about 400 years old, depending on when we believe the scientific method actually came into play. Most people accept that this happened during the time of Newton’s formulation of the fundamental laws of nature. Science describes the universe, how it works, and our relationship to it. And the best scientists will admit that as good as science is, it’s incomplete. It’s not that it’s wrong but there are gaps and in some cases inconsistencies in the story that science tells us about our universe.

MJ: Sure. There is much more we can learn and explore. And some of it will supersede our previous understandings, like the way that Einstein’s theory of general relativity changed our view of gravity as a warping of space-time. It’s not that Newton was wrong, but Einstein explained it more completely.

GB: Right. Their theories go together. On the one hand, there are other languages that have been around for a long time. Seven thousand years in the case of the Hindu Vedas. They also describe the very same thing – the universe, how it works, our roles, capabilities, and limits within this universe. And it’s done in a very non-technical, non-scientific language.

So it’s taken 400 years for western scientists to say there’s a field and everything is part of it. Science explains to us the mechanism of how things work, but now they’re asking how we apply this in our lives. This is where it becomes valuable to look into the ancient and the indigenous traditions. Because rather than spending hundreds of years validating the existence of this field those ancients began with an understanding that everything is connected and spent their time learning how to apply that connection in our lives.

So to answer your question, scientific validation is bringing science and spirituality closer together in the same conversation. We’re recognizing that both describe our universe and the way we work within it in different but complimentary ways. So I think we’re moving to a new understanding that takes the best of each tradition and weaves them together. With this new belief system that says we’re empowered to participate in what happens in our lives and our world we’ll begin to do things differently. It’s not about control or manipulation. It’s about consciously choosing our personal and collective futures. It’s about healing our bodies and creating peace in our world because those things are at our fingertips as we accept the power that we’re given through our connection in this divine matrix.

“Science has demonstrated that human belief, emotion, and feeling extend beyond our bodies. We literally have a power within us to rearrange the stuff our universe is made of – physically and biologically.”

MJ: Have you got any ideas about what might be coming in the next five to 10 years in terms of actually putting this into practice in some way?

GB: I certainly do. We are faced with challenges that humans have never been faced with before. I believe the conditions of our lives and our world are pushing us to the place where to survive we literally have to find new answers and we’ve got to find them quickly, but I’m an optimist. I believe that the things we’re talking about now that science has demonstrated beyond any doubt that human belief, human emotion, and human feeling can extend effects beyond our bodies. We literally have a power within us to rearrange the stuff our universe is made of – physically and biologically. I think those understandings now become part of the new science that will help us to address the challenges of our time.

MJ: Great overview. Can you provide a specific example?

GB: Sure. There are a number of new viruses that are cropping up in other parts of the world – the Avian flu or Ebola or HIV. On the one hand, science has been hard pressed to come up with antibodies like we did with polio. On the other hand, in 1988 the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Centre did a global blood study to see where the pandemic of AIDS was leading. What they found is that a percentage of the human population had developed what they were calling a high resistance to the HIV virus. They took a bit of virus and tested it against human DNA. The DNA was resistant so they doubled the viral load. And they doubled it again and again until they had 3,000 times the amount of the viral load that would normally infect human DNA. Still the DNA did not succumb to the virus.

So why this is important is because we were led to believe when HIV was discovered in the early 1980s that it had a 100% mortality rate. Yet something has happened when we see genetic changes. Normally we see a challenge in one generation and then their offspring develop the genetic changes to meet that need or the immune response. But we discovered that newborn babies who were born HIV positive from HIV positive parents and were tested months afterwards didn’t have it anymore. It’s not that the HIV was in remission. It was gone. It no longer existed in their bodies.

MJ: Thus we’re collectively responding as a species to challenges that we face with our lives.

GB: Precisely. The babies weren’t living in the fear of being told they weren’t going to survive because they had HIV. I think where this is leading is that we can no longer leave us out of the equation of how it is that we address the challenges that we find in our lives.

MJ: OK, the last question is a multipart inquiry. If you could express only a single truth to help people what would it be? And what specific steps would you recommend so that people can implement it?

GB: I would say we must become the love, compassion, understanding, tolerance, forgiveness, healing, abundance, and peace that we choose to see in our families, in our communities, in our checkbooks, in our bodies. And the reason is because this field is a neutral unbiased field that simply will mirror back what it is that we give it to work with. So we’ve got to give that field something to work with. And what it is that we give it is what we’re going to experience.

MJ: And that is the essence of the steps we need to take – to give out what it is that you want to experience.

GB: Precisely. The bottom line is that we are invited to become in our lives the very things that we’d like to experience in our world.

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