What author and researcher Gregg Braden tells us about information that has been lost for so long to the West but zealously guarded in closed societies will vindicate your inner knowing about the truth of the consciousness of the New Age.
What author and researcher Gregg Braden tells us about information that has been lost for so long to the West but zealously guarded in closed societies will vindicate your inner knowing about the truth of the consciousness of the New Age.
The Monthly Aspectarian: Gregg, I usually like to start by having people give a thumbnail of their background.
Gregg Braden: I have a very diverse background. I came up through the hard sciences, the earth sciences. I was educated a geologist and studied the ocean sciences and I worked in the aerospace industry until 1990.
While I was working in aerospace and working in the earth sciences, I was also speaking, lecturing and touring on sacred sites throughout the world focusing on ancient traditions and technologies. The transition from corporate into what I'm doing full time was a very logical progression. Some people see it as a big leap but for me it was a logical progression because the work I'm offering now is my way of expressing the relationship between ourselves and the creative forces of this world, our relationship to one another and to the cosmos.
My interest in the hard sciences is from the perspective of the ancients. They made no distinction between the world around them and religion and science. To them, understanding the world outside of our bodies was the path to understand who we are and ultimately our relationships to one another and to the creative forces of our world.
TMA: There was a more unified view of the universe. At what point in your journeys as a hard scientist did you become interested in ancient sacred spaces and such?
GB: It's been a fascination, almost a compulsion of mine, since before I could even read. My mother was very supportive of my interests in ancient traditions, ancient technologies and ancient mysteries. As I matured, I found ways to go about exploring where my fascination or my passion has always been, which led to my first journeys into the mountains of Egypt and Peru, Bolivia, and most recently into Tibet, beginning in early 1980s on up through the present..
TMA: How was your trip into Tibet?
GB: In April I led a small group of people — there were only 22 of us — with a guide-interpreter that I met in England in 1994. We spent three weeks on the central plateau, in the central highlands researching a series of monasteries. In those three weeks we went to over 15 monasteries and nunneries searching for a body of information that I could only suspect would be there.
TMA: You were able to find functioning monasteries?
GB: Well I'm going to back up a little bit, because I'd like to lay a foundation, and then we can tie into these questions. Where my passion in this information really is, is in the understanding that in our relatively recent past we lost tremendous amounts of information from our sacred texts. Texts that delineate our heritage and our relationship to this world and to the cosmos. We know that huge amounts of information were removed in the year 325 A.D. from what later became our Bible. At least 25 books and 20 supporting documents were taken from our Biblical texts. So 45 texts disappeared. They were relegated to the elite priesthoods and to the mystery schools during the time of Constantine. It was those texts that carried the lineage of our history and the wisdom of our relationship to our world long before there was any religious implications around the texts. So in the year 325 A.D., this information vanished from the common knowledge base that we had accumulated up until that time.
TMA: What exactly occurred in 325?
GB: In 325 A.D., Constantine put together the Council of Nicaea in Constantinople. It was then that we lost the context, the format within which to view the mysteries that are unfolding in our world this very moment.
TMA: How about the burning of the library at Alexandria?
GB: That was a key part of it. But the texts that we lost at the Council of Nicaea weren't destroyed. They were simply taken from our historical records. The records that remained were condensed and rearranged into what we can almost consider to be a "Reader's Digest" format. What we have today is only a fragment of a much greater body of information. I say is it possible that the very basis of our science and our technology and our language, our history, our religion, even the way we relate to one another and how we love, it is possible that all of this is based — as good as it is — it is possible it's all based on an incomplete body of information. And scholars now are saying yes, that's true, and the ancient texts are bearing that out.
The primary authors of these deleted texts were a sect of individuals that we know today as the Essenes, authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as other texts. After the time of Christ, they dispersed throughout the world. They scattered from the Qumran area into the Americas, into what later became Europe, into Egypt, and the records show that they also went into what now is Central China and the highlands of Tibet. So my sense was that in any of these places we may find remnants of these Essene traditions, and they may be less distorted in the remotest, least accessible places. That was what led us to put together a very powerful journey lasting over 21 days into Tibet. Of the many things that happened on this journey, we were able to find a monastery over 15,000 feet in the Himalayan Mountains. Through very heartfelt and empowering experiences that we shared with the monks, they in turn shared with us their libraries. They have recorded, as well as the Buddhist traditions and many of the great traditions of the world, the Christian and pre-Christian traditions. They did not lose those 45 books 1700 years ago.
TMA: No one can deny that this is certainly a time of change. Clearly we're moving from one age into another.
GB: We are, and the ancient calendars and systems of timekeeping and traditions and prophecies have reminded us of this time of change, have pointed to them now for centuries. Western science really doesn't allow for or does not have a frame of reference for the kinds of things that we're seeing unfold in our natural world right now. Whether we're talking about unprecedented explosions on the edge of our known universe greater than any we've ever seen before, to the very core within the earth, undergoing processes that we've never seen before, unprecedented seismic activities and weather patterns and 25 potentially life threatening viruses that weren't here 30 years ago, the crop circle phenomenon — all these things are happening now. Western scientists view them as isolated, independent, non-related phenomenon that coincidentally are occurring and it's a mystery . . . whereas when we travel to other parts of the world — we're in the little villages of the Andes Mountains in Peru, we're speaking to nomads in yak tents at 16,000 feet in the Himalayas — their belief systems account for these extraordinary phenomena because they didn't lose the information. They didn't lose the frame of reference that we lost 1700 years ago.
TMA: Well that, and there's a fundamentalism in science the same as there is in religion.
GB: There certainly is. The beauty of this body of information as we have seen it, and it is scattered throughout many, many texts all the way from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Nag Hammadi Library, all the way through the Coptic Egyptian and Latin and Greek traditions. What we have found is if we could distill all this information down into one nice neat concise text, there are four key tenets that we lost that have direct relevance to our lives today, and actually create a sense of order out of the chaos that we're seeing.
TMA: What are those four keys?
GB: The first one is a very ancient tenet that is deceptively simple. It simply says that of the six billion or so bodies that are living on the planet, the irony is that there is a single consciousness at work; there is only one of us here right now. The first tenet is that there's only one of us here expressing through many bodies.
The second tenet reminds us that that one consciousness is moving toward a collective path that has been known, predicted and prophesized for hundreds of generations. It's a time of great change that the ancients called "The Shift of the Ages." It's during this time of change that we have the opportunity to redefine the very parameters of our lives and our relationship to the world. The second tenet says that history points to now. Now is the time that all these texts, all these traditions, all the prophesies and the calendars say that something big is about to happen.
The third tenet reminds us that the very ancient science of compassion is what allows us to transcend the great challenges of life with grace and with ease. It's interesting that so much focus is being placed on compassion in the world right now. What researchers now have found is that the science of compassion, the quality of thought, feeling and emotion that we call compassion actually has direct effects on the chemistry within our bodies, on the genetic makeup of our bodies. It turns off and on codes of DNA, and it now has been documented to actually affect matter outside of our physical bodies. So this ancient science of compassion is key in allowing us not just to get through, but to gracefully transcend the challenges of life. Today we're faced with the greatest challenges of emotion and relationship and survival that we've ever faced in recorded history.
TMA: When you say the science of compassion, do you mean what the emotions can do as measured by science or are you calling compassion itself a science?
GB: I am calling compassion a science. Very deliberately, in the Western sense of the word. Actually, people ask me this a lot. They say, "How can you use the word compassion and science in the same sentence?" And for me it seems odd not to do that, because in the Western sense of the word —
TMA: Science weighs and measures.
GB: If we hypothesize or theorize that something is so, and then test and re-test . . . and repeatedly and predictably we have the same outcome, then we say that this thing is so. From that perspective, compassion is a science. If we do these things, then this comes about in our body. We state it just like an equation — if this, then that. If we do these things, if we embrace a specific quality of thought, feeling and emotion in our body, then our body chemistry responds in a very specific manner, predictably. That was documented in the New England Journal of Medicine for the first time beginning in 1995, showing how our immune system, the DNA in our bodies, the way our cells regenerate, all appear to be directly linked to a quality of thought, feeling and emotion. One of those qualities is what we call compassion. So that's the third tenet.
The fourth tenet reminds us of an inner technology — and I use that word very intentionally — an internal technology that allows us direct access to the creative forces of our bodies and the world around us. Today we call that direct access "prayer." As I've studied and researched this body of information through the mystery schools, through the ancients texts and traditions, this mode of prayer doesn't look like any kind of prayer I've ever seen before. What I mean is that Western researchers today identify four modes of prayer that we use in the West. We either use them alone or we use them in combination with one another. When I say in the West, I mean throughout Europe, North and South America.
They identify four modes of prayer. One of those, the first mode, is a colloquial mode where we speak to the creative forces of our world informally in our own words, and we ask for intervention. That's a colloquial prayer. The second mode is what we call a petitionary prayer. It's where we actually petition divinity, we petition the creative forces to work on our behalf. The third mode of prayer is considered to be ritualistic, where we recite a predetermined sequence of words at a certain time, such as a dinnertime prayer or at bedtime. The fourth mode of prayer is actually beyond words. It's a meditative form of prayer where maybe we move into the stillness or the silence of just being aware of a very holy presence that surrounds us. I'm not saying there's anything right, wrong, good or bad about those modes of prayer. Those are the modes that researchers identify in the West today that we use alone or in some combination with one another. But in those modes of prayer we are feeling separate from our world and we are inviting the intervention of the creative forces in a situation we feel powerless over.
The fourth mode is actually a very inactive mode. It's where we're empty, still, aware of that holy presence or maybe simply giving thanks, gratitude.
TMA: And this new mode?
GB: This is what's really interesting. Throughout my lifetime of studying these ancient traditions, there have always been references alluding to a mode of prayer in the mystery schools, in the ancient texts, the Dead Sea Scrolls. Most recently in our trip to Tibet, we actually witnessed the monks and nuns participating in this mode of prayer. Rather than speculate from ancient texts, we were able to witness and then question the monks and the nuns that were carrying out this mode of prayer to clarify what it was that they were actually doing, what it was that was happening with them.
TMA: How was it described, and did you experience it yourself?
GB: Yes, and this lost mode of prayer is the one that invites us rather than asking that divinity intervene in a situation in which we feel helpless. This lost mode of prayer invites us to adapt the quality of thoughts, feeling and emotion that assumes that our prayer has already come to pass. In other words, come from a place that the prayer has already occurred and in doing so, we actually create the vibratory template in our world that allows this prayer to come to fruition. So rather than the mental process of asking and coming from a place of lack or of helplessness, this lost mode of prayer actually creates what it is that we are choosing to experience in our world.
TMA: That's very much like what's taught in the New Thought Christian Churches such as Unity and Science of Mind.
GB: What I find different is the role that emotion plays in this mode of prayer. This example may help to clarify it. It's a nebulous concept for some people, and I've found that prayer is such a personal and sensitive issue, it means different things to different people depending on their upbringing. So we're not suggesting that any mode of prayer is incorrect or wrong. We're simply saying that there may be another mode that is not accounted for in the Western models of prayer.
In the late 1980s, I spent some time in the American desert southwest, actually very close to where my home is now in the mountains. The southwest was experiencing one of the worst droughts recorded for this location since we've been keeping weather records. A friend of mine, from one of the indigenous tribes, invited me to accompany him out into the desert while he performed prayers of rain. We went up into the mountains of Northern New Mexico and he took me to a spot where his family had gone for hundreds of generations precisely for this circumstance, this kind of experience. There was a very ancient stone circle there. He removed his shoes, stepped into the circle and faced the western sun. I thought I was going to see a lot of movement and ceremony and chanting and perhaps dancing but I didn't see any of that. He was in the circle maybe three to five minutes. And he came back and said that he was finished. I said, "I thought you were going to pray for rain." And he said, "No, if I pray for rain, I'm acknowledging that rain does not exist. What I'd be saying is that it is not there presently — and I've defeated my prayer. What I did was, I closed my eyes and had the thoughts, the feelings and the emotions that I was in the presence of rain in my village. I smelled the smell of the rain coming off the earthen walls of our village. Through my bare feet I could feel the mud oozing through my toes. I felt what it's like to walk through waist high fields of corn that were abundant because there was so much rain."
What he told me was that he was confident in his role as a participator rather than a witness in creation. He was so confident that his thought, feeling and emotion had created a seed of a possibility somewhere in creation that his prayer changed and became a prayer of thanks that continued well into the next day. Thanks empowering the seed, giving it life, allowing it to come to fruition in our world, which is very, very different than feeling helpless and asking that something come to pass and then hoping that it will.
A lot of people have done visualization, a lot of people have done affirmations. There are other modes of prayer similar to this that I've seen in many different traditions, but I've never seen it detailed as I have through the Essene traditions in the texts. They are carried on as a living tradition in the monasteries of central Tibet.
The teachings go so far as to actually detail how to accomplish the quality of thought, feeling and emotion within our bodies that allow us this level of mastery — the awareness to create within our bodies as well as to have an effect on the world, on the quality of life outside of our bodies. This now has been very well documented in the late 1980s through a series of studies that groups of people in consistent, focused meditation and prayer affect human consciousness within a given radius of where those people are. Crime rates drop, thefts, muggings, assaults decrease and when the prayers and the meditators leave, those statistics shoot right back up.
TMA: Just ask the TM people.
GB: That's right. The TM people did a study and they actually gave it a name. They called it "The Maharishi Effect." The reason I believe this is so relevant and where context is so important — almost universally, ancient texts and traditions say that something is happening in our world right now. Something that's never happened before. As we have the opportunity to travel and speak to people, whether they're in little villages along the Nile or in the Andes Mountains or in the monasteries of Tibet or throughout this country, almost universally people sense that something is happening now that has never happened before. For some it's just low level anxiety or tension. Some people say their lives just don't seem to work anymore, the careers, the families, the friendships, where they live — all of a sudden they're feeling this impetus for tremendous change.
TMA: Paradigms are clearly shifting.
GB: We were at a mountain pass 16,000 feet in the Himalayas and knocked on the tent flap of a yak-hide tent, and through our interpreter, we spoke with a nomadic tribeswoman who said, "Of course these things are happening. Of course the weather patterns are changing. Of course there are more earthquakes. This is the end of this great time, the end of this great cycle" — because their belief system allows and accounts for it. Our Western scientific paradigm has no reference, no point of comparison for the things that we're seeing and for that reason, it's a mystery to the West.
The reason this is of particular interest to me is because through these ancient texts, traditions, prophesies, some handed down orally for hundreds of generations, there are many prophesies and predictions of what this time in history may mean for us, leading up to the event of some great shift. The ancients call it the shift of the ages. The Hopi call it the coming of the fifth world. The Mayans traditions talk about this time. The Mayan calendars end right now. None of them go so far as to actually predict the outcome of this time in history because they acknowledge a very potent agent of change that we do not account for. That agent of change is us.
TMA: Human consciousness.
GB: The way to describe this, and what brings the relevance of every life, of every human in every moment of each day to bear directly on this time in history is that this is the last generation to mature before the close of this great cycle. They actually knew that there would be one last generation that would mature — that would have a power that they had forgotten, a power inherent within their being. This generation would have greater challenges of health and survival and relationship than ever witnessed in recorded history. The challenges push this generation to reclaim this dormant power that lives within and it is this power we will awaken. As we are faced day in and day out with the greatest challenges of human history, how each individual responds becomes the collective response determining the outcome of this time in history.
Quantum researchers have come to suspect that time exists as many simultaneous possibilities alive at any one point in history, and that we tune — we literally tune to certain possibilities through the way we respond to the challenges of life. When we respond through anger and fear and rage and hate and killing, the consequence of that is that we tune to one possibility. When we choose forgiveness and compassion and peace, we tune to another possibility.
It happens first in our individual lives, and then all those little individual lives become the collective response to this time in history. It is for this reason that I feel the passion for sharing this lost mode of prayer. We can choose to create in our world at this time, at the close of this great cycle, global peace and partnership and cooperation and an end to suffering and illness and disease. This is within our grasp technologically — we have all the tools. We have more than enough food to feed everybody and we have the means to distribute it.
The consciousness in this lost mode of prayer becomes key now, as it has been in the past for the ancients, in developing the template of a possibility. That template is what we then give thanks for. That allows these things to become real in our world. Rather than saying, "Please God, let there be peace in this world" where we're acknowledging at some level that peace doesn't exist, it's not here, and we may even be affirming that! Through the lost mode of prayer what we do is find peace in every aspect of life, even places where we haven't seen it in the past. We give thanks for the peace that's already in this world, the peace that's already in our bodies, and by doing so, we expand that possibility and build an even greater template. That is the value, I believe, of this lost mode of prayer.
TMA: It's an equation. Mass consciousness creates and defines physical plane reality.
GB: We've known that in our hearts for so long, and many people need no validation.
TMA: What we need to do now is shift this to the healing of the planet.
GB: That is the great possibility of the lost mode of prayer; of bringing forth that which we most choose to have in our lives. If we choose a world of forgiveness, of peace, compassion, discernment — we're not talking about complacency, we're talking about discernment. Then the lost mode of prayer allows us to participate in the outcome rather than feeling a helpless witness and wondering how this is going to come out.
Within the last few months, Jimmy Twyman and Dr. Doreen Virtue and myself have done two mass media experiments on the internet linking prayer globally. The first was called The Great Experiment. The second was called Transmuting Prophecy. The results surpassed anything we had even suspected. First of all, just the response! We're preparing to do another series within just the next few weeks based on events that are unfolding in our world right now.
TMA: We have an opportunity to return the earth to the Garden.
GB: Precisely. The opportunity is this moment. We have a choice as to how we participate and co-create the outcome — and one of the keys is what we call faith.
Faith has come to mean something different today than it meant a long time ago. In the ancient traditions, faith was acknowledging our direct access as a directive force participating in the outcome of creation rather than simply trusting that something is going to happen. It's our knowing of the power, of the potency of our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. That's why my Native American friend, once he had the sensations, once he created the thoughts, feelings, and emotions of rain, knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had created something. He was so confident that he could walk away with no outward expression of the prayer. He had an awareness that was giving thanks for what he'd created until he witnessed this prayer come to fruition, which by the way it did the next day with more rain than the ground knew what to do with.
At the very least this is a very different way of thinking for many people. It poses possibilities, and it's an invitation to embrace those empowering possibilities for our families and our communities to participate in the outcome of this time in history. I firmly believe that history will look back at this, at the close of this millennium, at this generation — and they'll say that this is the time when humanity chose life.
As the ancients remind us, this is the generation that will walk between the worlds, and that, hence, is the name of my latest book, Walking Between the Worlds. Between the worlds of all that's ever been and that which is yet to be — the worlds of light and dark, the worlds of matter and spirit. As we remember our role in between the worlds, the ancients actually go so far as to say that our greatest challenge will be to think the thoughts of angels and to do as angels do, and to do it while we're walking on the earth rather than in heaven.
Author, lecturer and guide to sacred sites throughout the world, Gregg Braden has been featured on radio and television programs nationwide. Following the publication of his books, Awakening to Zero Point: The Collective Initiation and Walking Between Two Worlds: The Science of Compassion, has been a popular guest and keynote speaker for conferences, expos and media specials regarding ancient wisdom, planetary shifts and the role of personal relationships within the context of these changes.
Professional careers as an Earth Scientist and Aerospace Software Engineer have provided Gregg with the tools to offer his powerful seminars with clarity and relevance. Two "near-death" experiences early in life provide the intimate language to express his message of hope and opportunity.
When the timing and conditions allow, Gregg leads groups on Sacred Journeys to Sacred Sites in Egypt, Peru, Bolivia, Tibet and the American Desert Southwest.
Gregg will present Living in the Days of Prophecy at Transitions Bookplace on Saturday, November 28, from 9AM to 6PM.