The Divine Matrix – Gregg Braden

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Gregg Braden’s The Divine Matrix: Bridging Time, Space, Miracles and Belief is several parts encouraging and several degrees of confusing. Braden takes physics as a starting point for an exploration of how reality is constructed from imagination. Quantum theory includes an energy field, referred to by some scientists as a matrix, and Braden borrows from scientific theory, mystic poetry, philosophy, anecdote and spiritual teachings to make his case.

His premise encompasses instantaneous healing, “seeing” across time and space, the nonverbal, non-contiguous communication between hearts, the demonstrable effect of the viewer upon the object or procedure viewed, the holographic nature of the universe, and how to rewrite the “code” of reality through imagination, emotion and intention. It’s pretty heady stuff and meant to be very empowering.

The “DNA phantom effect” is a phenomenon in which strands of DNA are shown to have an ongoing effect on the arrangement of photons, even when the DNA is removed from proximity. In other words, matter can affect matter through relationship, even at a distance. And a DNA sample, removed from a volunteer who was then isolated in another room and exposed to emotional stimuli, responded with electrical charges at the same instant that the emotions registered in the subject. Scientists were able to measure this response at several hundred feet but it still happened at several hundred miles. The experiment points to an energy field that exists to host an immediate and continual connection in living tissues. Or it might prove, as Braden surmises, that everything already exists in everything else—no separation.       

What this means for you is that your thoughts and emotions are not in the least ephemeral. They bring things and events into being. If that is correct, then you design and generate your own life. Your emotions have an effect on all around you and influence objects farther away than you realize. By controlling your mind and feelings, theoretically, you could create or change your world. That is an absolutely riveting possibility. It mirrors the “Law of Attraction” concepts popularized in numerous books and in films like The Secret and What the Bleep Do We Know? And it may well be that mystics like Rumi and nuclear physicists running the Hadron Collider have more in common than we perceive.   

The science, as promised, is presented in clear, easy-to-grasp language. Unfortunately, although there are annotations throughout the text for quoted scriptures and published studies, you have to be well-acquainted with the science or take it on faith that Braden’s interpretation of scientific discovery to back up his own theories is sound. While I’m not much in the mood for scientific papers and PhD dissertations these days, I am never quite comfortable taking science on faith. And I am only an armchair physicist and neophyte theologist, if that.

So I read with interest, agreed with many of the assumptions in the book, and closed it still considering the material to be assumptions, as far as I am capable of determining. Maybe some empirical experimentation is in order to test cause and effect before embracing the ideas about manifestation and matrices. I do think there’s something to The Divine Matrix—it makes intuitive sense–but I’ll have to read more physics and reflect on the spiritual teachings Braden cites to create my own synthesis.

The Divine Matrix: Bridging Time, Space, Miracles, and Belief   Gregg Braden | Hay House   2007

A Universe from Nothing – Lawrence M. Krauss

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Astrophysics is a scary, scary science. Forget the ticker-tape-parade-inducing thrill of moon landings and the popular resonance of string theory. Lawrence Krauss turns his cosmologist’s gaze heavenward and sees…nothing, a future that has returned to nothing. A Universe from Nothing isn’t an apocalyptic escape into science fiction. It is science, cutting edge cosmology if Krauss states his case accurately. And the odds for our uninterrupted existence, in his estimation, are not good.

Krauss is a much published and highly regarded cosmologist with advanced degrees from MIT and Harvard and a lifetime spent teaching theoretical physics at top level universities. He carries around an undecipherable (to the average citizen—he can explain it readily) card with a graph that proves the validity of the Big Bang, and launches into a mini-lecture to convert the unbeliever at any possible opportunity. He concedes that this doesn’t often result in any new insights for those who place religion over science but he is undaunted. And he is awash in mathematical proofs—his and others’—to demonstrate the inevitability of Einstein’s theories, and Newton’s and Bohr’s and Hawking’s and Feynman’s and others who have pushed the frontiers of astrophysics to the farthest reaches of space. Beyond, actually.

We are living in an astonishingly unusual time, according to Krauss and his fellow researchers and theorists. There is still evidence all around us of the Big Bang. We can see billions of stars and multiple galaxies with our own eyes and our super-sophisticated telescopes. We can calculate the speed at which the universe is expanding—we can even prove mathematically that it is expanding—but that very knowledge holds within it the kernel of doom. Because one day, maybe three trillennia from now, the expansion will mean we—or another intelligent life form–cannot see the light from distant stars, measure it, and know something of our place in this universe, and in the multiverse that most probably exists outside our limited view. Remnants of the Big Bang will be gone.  All will be empty space. Our own sun will, of course, long have burned out and earth will be uninhabitable, if it still spins around a dark star. There will be no trace of this moment—maybe there will be nothing at all.

Nothing is what Krauss theorizes the something we know comes from. He presents the mathematical arguments for his ideas—many are by now undisputed proofs. Some are still works-in-progress with as many open questions as solutions. He is fascinated by conjectures about dark energy and the beauty of the science he explores. Krauss is equally certain that the concepts of God, embraced by the faithful of every religion that exists now or ever existed, are willful dealings in fantasy. God makes no empirical sense in the face of the scientific proof about the way things work in this tangible and unseen world we inhabit. “God” cannot explain, logically or metaphorically, the whole of creation, the proven age of the planet, the way biology unfolds and evolves, the revolutionary discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope or the Large Hadron Collider.

But there is much science cannot explain either. What does it mean that an exploding supernova briefly shines with the brilliance of 10 billion stars? And what is our own degree of luminosity, being made entirely of the dust of those exploded stars? How does all of this–a boulder, a butterfly, an ocean, Mars, moonlight–arise from nothing? These are questions for poets to answer, for storytellers to paste up against the night sky, for curious children to ponder past bedtime and for scientists to puzzle through, calculate, weigh against the evidence and imagine answers to. A Universe from Nothing is a book that grapples with magic and mystery. Not an easy read, and for me not always a comprehensible one, but food for an infinite amount of thought.

A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing   Lawrence M. Krauss | Free Press 2012

The Science of Yoga – William J. Broad

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William J. Broad tackles the proliferation of yoga systems and claims in his review and analysis of research and marketing in The Science of Yoga. Yoga, in its ancient simplicity, captivates the imagination. It turns out that it can also enhance imagination—and serenity, stress-reduction, longevity, sexuality and a host of desirable qualities. Yoga can also cripple and come close to killing you so a guided tour through its potential and pitfalls is a useful thing for initiate and adept alike.

At first I was intrigued by the science and Broad’s extensive research into trials and teachers. He pokes some serious holes in claims that have been accepted at face value for generations. He examines hot and sweaty Bikram with its 105-degree studios, meticulous Iyengar with its blocks, straps and other props designed to produce perfect alignment, vinyasa—a flowing series of moves sometimes referred to as “yoga ballet.” He holds up famous experiments and “miracles” to the light and it is not always kind to them.

I began to get irritated with the relentlessly scientific filter through which he reported on a practice which is not entirely quantifiable. It is a problem to have unsupported claims duping thousands of people. It is also a problem to reduce yoga to a lab result, a jogger’s measure of oxygen uptake and carbon dioxide release, an aerobic non-starter of an exercise. Science pushes the frontiers of our knowledge farther out and it is often behind the curve in understanding both physical and etheric realms. Once the most learned scientists of their age taught that the sun revolved around the earth—that earth that was devoutly believed to be flat, until it was not. We can’t know what we don’t yet know but it is surely an immensity.

Eventually and mercifully, the scientific studies published in peer reviewed journals give way to the search for how yoga generates the good feelings, relaxation and bursts of insight practitioners recount. Neuroscience is beginning to confirm the influence of asanas and a regular practice on stage fright and solo performance, creative thinking, the making of art, intensified sexual experience, and the extreme lowering of stress that contributes to vigorous health and longevity.

So, yoga is more than the latest celebrity guru or gimmicky class. Maybe you should rethink your devotion to plow pose, shoulder stand and definitely head stand. Do some homework before you embrace yoga as therapy for your ills—it can be but most yoga therapists are freelancers as there is no professional regulatory body for the field. Do, however, unroll the mat and perfect your Salute to the Sun. The benefits of yoga, scientifically vetted in a lab or gained in an expert class or daily solitude, are many. Feeling good is no small thing, neither is a better life. Broad leaves room for both, even as he debunks common misconceptions and challenges a few iterations that function more like magical gym sessions for buff wannabes than the serious practice of an exacting–and rewarding–discipline.

The Science of Yoga: The Risks and the Rewards   William J. Broad | Simon and Schuster 2012

A More Perfect Heaven – Dava Sobel

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Nicolas Copernicus was a cautious man in an era when darkness shadowed brilliant flashes of insight and discovery. His painstaking calculations that showed the sun is fixed and the earth revolves around it directly contradicted religious dogma. The Church was furiously trying to stamp out the Lutheran heretics and Copernicus was himself a canon of the Church, dependent on it for his livelihood and position. He was also something of a perfectionist about presenting his revolutionary findings to the world.

Dava Sobel dramatizes the discoveries and the eventual publication of Copernicus’ work in A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos. It is, like her other recreations of the scientific breakthroughs that changed how we see things, deeply researched and imaginatively rendered. Copernicus seems to have been a pretty nice guy—smart, brave, responsible, diplomatic, humble, socially savvy, addicted to eclipses and stargazing, and possessed of unshakeable integrity.

The late 15^th-early 16^th century world he lived in was full of intrigue, power grabs, treachery and hardship but it also contained dazzling scholars, clear night skies, a predisposition to inquiry and a useful hunger for fame and glory that Copernicus could turn to his own advantage. When a young scholar shows up at his door, looking to persuade him to publish his massive heliocentric opus, the aging astronomer’s reluctance to stir up a hornet’s nest of ridicule and protest has met its match.

Sobel inserts a two-act play in the center of this book. Based on the real correspondence of Copernicus and his peers, the play portrays what might have happened between the two men and among the clergy and political forces in Poland at the time. Copernicus’ mistress, his bishop, canonical colleagues and the German mathematics professor, Georg Joachim Rheticus, are vivid characters. Sobel creates a believable scenario of how the younger man overcame Copernicus’ objections and eventually helped him to publish the ideas and proofs that would send the world spinning in space.

Dava Sobel delivers another good read about an important scientist who most people know as a name and a theory, if at all. Science is fascinating when it is located in its real narrative, even if the gaps in the story are necessarily filled in by intelligent invention.

A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos   Dava Sobel | Walker & Company  2011

Eaarth – Bill McKibben

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Bill McKibben opens Eaarth with this ominous note in the preface: “The first point of this book is simple: global warming is no longer a philosophical threat, no longer a future threat, no longer a threat at all. It’s our reality.” We’ve blown past the amount of carbon dioxide we can afford to have in the atmosphere. The oceans are 30 percent more acid than they should be due to human activity—and that corrosive state is irreversible. There were 111 hurricanes in the Atlantic between 1995 and 2008—a 75 percent increase over the previous 13-year period. The ice caps at both poles are melting at an alarming rate—faster than anyone ever predicted–and the mountain glaciers that supply fresh water to entire continents are disappearing.

We’ve really mucked it up and we are going to live on a planet that gets worse, much worse, than the conditions we see now. It’s too late to avoid that. McKibben pulls apart the rhetoric and examines the studies to get at how bad things will be—pretty depressing. But no news if you’ve been paying attention. The point of his book is to put forth some ideas about how to live on this new planet we have created. Because he’s sure we will never have the option to live again on the old one.

Corporate greed, political expedience, misguided theories of entitlement, the American drive to get bigger, richer, faster, better, pure mule-headed obtuseness got us here. Poor countries are already paying a tragic price for our shortsightedness and greed. They are awash in killer storms, rising tides and salinity in the drinking water, heat that kills crops, insects that breed disease. We are paying a high price, too. The recession that torpedoed the economy was no accident and has no happy ending. Our reliance on fossil fuels and on some fantasy of endless natural resources to be exploited is a fatal flaw. It’s bad and it’s getting worse and we should wake up and deal with it while we have anything left to support life.

Scary truths are that we don’t know how to stop what we’ve set in motion and we no longer control what happens. The effects of global warming have taken on a life of their own and it threatens ours in ways we can’t even see yet. So, it’s time for Plan B. McKibben offers some practical advice from the trenches. Eat and live local. Find ways to support small local farming and food production and do as much of it as you can yourself. Form strong community bonds to help each other through the inevitable crises and disasters and shortages. Act to change minds and methods—we have to use solar power, and wind power and elbow grease as well. Because we are running rapidly out of fuel and there won’t be other choices.

Dump the gas-guzzling 4-wheel drive you suburban softy—when are you ever going to drive off-road? And how many hours are you willing to sit in gas lines to spend a king’s ransom to fill up the tanks? In fact, get a bike, take a bus, do something radical like walk. Tend your own garden—even in the city you can grow things on terraces, rooftops, patios. Staycation—every holiday and long weekend won’t involve a plane—airports and flights will be shrinking as fuel and demand disappear. We can no longer live those big fat lives that were the envy of the planet—maybe we won’t be supersize nation when the marbled beef and the junk food runs out. Just wake up. You can’t live on a dry rock hurtling through space. If we pretend we can fix this, someday, when we get around to it, then the pretty blue marble turns as drab and lifeless as a piece of space junk. Unless you are the Little Prince, there won’t be any room on it for you.   

Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet   Bill McKibben | Times Books   2010

Flu – Gina Kolata

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In the vague chronicles of family history acquired piecemeal in childhood there are always mysterious bits that get added in later or never quite seem to fit. My maternal grandmother told me once, when I was complaining about my little sisters no doubt, about her sister—a young woman named Josie whom she adored. Josie loved the theater, an ethnic, vaudevillian, song-and-dance entertainment that appealed to immigrants at the turn of the century in New York. And she had a talent for it and could sing, all aptitudes destined to go unremarked in the conservative Catholic world in which she came of age.

“What happened to her?” I asked, imagining a relative to claim who became famous on Broadway or in the Ziegfeld Follies. But there was no celebrity grand-aunt shining on my family tree. Josie died in 1918 in the great flu epidemic. Her young husband died, too. Years later I would find out from my mother that Josie’s two-year-old son was taken in by my newly married grandmother and raised as her own child. The 1918 flu claimed more than 19,000 young people in New York in the space of a few months, half-a-million in the U.S., more than 21 million worldwide. In that deadly year, the flu killed more people than World Wars I and II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined.   

Gina Kolata’s dramatic reconstruction of the lethal influenza pandemic and the late 20^th-century scientific struggle to isolate its cause is a real page-turner. Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It adds up the staggering human cost of a virulent killer that struck overnight and altered the course of history. The facts of the suffering and death, the instantaneous spread of the incurable, horrible plague and the futile efforts to contain and cure it are stunning. The contemporary race to find the DNA of the virus in decades-old tissue samples stored in warehouses, or harvested from exhumed bodies beneath the northern permafrost is as theatrical as science gets.

When Kolata researched and wrote her book, scientists were deeply immersed in isolating genetic information to identify the cause of the rapid deaths from the 1918 flu. People who complained of a fever and headaches sickened so rapidly that they were often dead within days—or hours. They died painfully as their lungs filled up with blood-tinged liquid and suffocated them. Their skin darkened and feet blackened and there was no relief for their agony. So many people died so quickly that there were no morgues, undertaker parlors, cemetery plots or caskets to handle the bodies. “Plague” victims were sometimes left on door steps for collection like garbage and disposition in mass graves. Survivors were terrified of becoming infected.

The flu took young adults in the healthy prime of life. It often spared babies, toddlers and the elderly, typically the first victims of flu outbreaks. No one understood the mysterious killer but the world reeled under the impact of rapid spread and massive death counts. In a sense, our panicked reaction to flu outbreaks like SARS and Swine Flu stems from the indelible terror impressed on every society by the 1918 flu. Kolata creates vivid images of expeditions to find tissue samples, meticulous and arduous laboratory procedures, years of disappointments and the rare breakthrough that advanced the quest for knowledge. The book is an amazing read.

Some of the scientists conducting experiments and research when Kolata wrote Flu have since concluded that the epidemic of 1918 was a cause-and-effect killer. In 2008, they announced that the strain of flu in 1918 stripped the nose and throat of its protective cells, allowing deadly strains of bacterial pneumonia to invade the body and destroy its host. Modern medicine had not advanced enough at the time to find and stop the virus or protect those who first sickened from deteriorating further. The researchers speculate that a large number of people would have been saved if there were antibiotics to counter the bacteria infections.

In 1918, as WW I raged and the disease decimated military bases, cities and industries, the blow dealt by the flu pandemic was not easily absorbed. It had far reaching economic and human consequences. Most families can trace losses to the devastating outbreak. I wonder what difference Josie would have made to our family had she lived well into her eighties, like my grandmother. Some of the questions raised by contemplation of a plague can never be answered in a lab, or a book.

Flu : The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic  Gina Kolata | Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2000

Longitude — Dava Sobel

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Longitude is the story of a self-educated carpenter’s improbable invention of the marine chronometer, a saga colored by poisonously envious sabotage, heroic feats of astronomy and a lot of really bad shipwrecks. Dava Sobel has turned a dense thicket of scientific inquiry and discovery into a readable, revelatory tale of adventure that traces the interconnections of Captain Cook, Charles Darwin and Sir Isaac Newton and a number of key characters you likely never heard of. Money is a big motivator – no surprise – merchant trade and royal coffers were both impoverished by the uncertainties of the sea. Solving the navigation problem was critical enough to merit a prize worth the equivalent of millions.

John Harrison was a skilled carpenter who taught himself clockmaking and then set out to create a device that would keep such perfect time at sea that it could determine longitude. Latitude was easy enough. Star siting, sun angles, day length — even an unskilled sailor can find the distance from the fixed equator using those. But the long lines that curve from pole-to-pole were harder to pin down and a tiny mistake, an off-guess, could send you and your ship hundreds of miles off-course, onto perilous rocks in the dark or straight to the bottom of the sea.

The search for longitude inspired great observatories, led to advances in astronomy, engaged such luminaries as Galileo Galilei, Edmond Halley and Isaac Newton and produced the British Longitude Act of 1714 with its enticing cash prize. Harrison set himself to win the prize and created four separate “clocks” that were marvels of technology for his time and that still work perfectly today. He succeeded in developing a workable and elegant chronometer, the first, but not in avoiding the backstabbing and manipulation that nearly cost him the prize.

The story tacks back and forth from Harrison and his endless tinkering to astronomers charting the path of the moon and the positions of the stars. Ships are lost, treasure galleons are pirated, men die of scurvy or go blind squinting at the sun to calculate position. It seems so long ago, in this day of GPS talking cars and satellite positions, that setting out from port meant you were as likely to get lost as you were to get lucky. But one determined, unlettered visionary changed all that and Dava Sobel’s Longitude sheds light on an obscure passage in history that produced important nautical instruments we still use today.

Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time  Dava Sobel | Walker Publishing Company 1995