An Interview With Dr. Bruce Lipton
Earlier this year, ODOC had the opportunity to bring Bruce Lipton, Ph.D. and Dennis Perman, D.C., to our Spring Convention. From that association, Dr. Lipton had the opportunity to speak to the Masters Circle programs throughout America, which lead Dr. Perman to do an interview with Bruce for the MasterTalk recordings. This interview has been transcribed and is presented here with the permission of Dr. Perman. Attend the ICPA Extravaganza this spring and hear the Masters Circle Dr. Bob Hoffman and Bruce Lipton, Ph.D.
Dennis: We are on location in the MVP in Chicago and I just had the extraordinary experience of three hours with one of the most brilliant presentations I have had in recent memory. The gentleman I am about to introduce to you is an absolute treasure in chiropractic. Remarkably, he is not a chiropractor. But he is someone who got turned on to the chiropractic message in a very unique way and has something so significant to offer…This is future Nobel Prize stuff, people…Let me introduce to the MasterTalk audience, Dr. Bruce Lipton.Bruce: Thank you so much.
Dennis: Bruce, to try and encapsulate your research in a twelve-minute interview is near impossible. But I need you to make an opening statement about the environment vs. the previous understanding of the primacy of DNA. Could you give us a one or two-minute synopsis of what you just spoke about so I can use it as a jumping off point for the rest of the interview?
Bruce: Absolutely. The basic question we bring up is that our current belief or nature is that we believe that we are genetic automatons…that the concept of genetic determinism wherein our genes control our biology, our behavior, our emotions so that we become more or less a machine, and the character and quality of the machine is based on heredity, so that we become more or less a victim, I guess. If we got good stuff we are very happy and if we have negative characters we attribute that to things out of our control… our genes.
Dennis: Now, this idea of the signal that turns on what makes us tick, makes us work, being from the outside rather from the inside is a revolution! It is opposite of what has been “established,” quote-unquote, in organized science. So, this not only demonstrates a proof for the chiropractic premise, but it also very much demonstrates the proof for the Masters Circle premise, because what we say is, “Who you are determines how or what you do works…that success comes from you, not to you.”
I would like to spend some time talking about perception and belief, and how those factors contribute to the internal environment that leads to better and better function.
Bruce: Yes, so basically as we talked about, the old idea was that genes controlled it, but the new idea recognizes a new idea, a new process called epigenetics, and that means control above the genes. This is all within about the last decade or so. It is such a radical departure from our belief because it shows that genes don’t actually control anything, but that genes are responsive to the environment. So the cells have perception molecules that read the environment and then adjust the genes. The nature of it is very dynamic. Basically, it says that the genes would never know the plan for the future. So the belief that we are genetically determined is really fallacious, because how could a system know what was going to happen next and already plan for it. The system is dynamic, the genes turn on and off as they’re needed, and the response of the gene matches the need of the environment. So, then all of a sudden, we realize that then between the genes and expression is the perception. Well, the relevance about the perception is that that is a live-time event, as I am perceiving the environment right now. Well, the interesting part about the perceptions, is that these perceptions are then interpreted by the body which the adjusts the behavior and the genes of the system to meet the demands or needs of the environment.
Well, there are two levels of perception. One level of perception is that which we have learned over time. Once it is learned, we don’t have to relearn them again and again and again. So that, when the stimulus shows up, instead of going through our cognition and awareness, it just bypasses that and goes right to the learned behavior. In chiropractic, that is called “The Educated Mind.” The Educated Mind is a very good thing because it allows our mind not to be focused on everything at once, and therefore, all the small details are taken care of.
This is a good thing, but it has potential for messing with us, the reason being that we acquire the Educated through our experiences. Therefore, the experiences we have had may be good experiences, or bad experiences. Whatever way they are, we learn them, so that a negative experience could become an educated process that runs our biology. Then, instead of doing an adjustment that is a benefit to us, we adjust ourselves out of sync with the environment. And since it is “Educated,” we don’t even see that, and as a result the unfoldment of our life is controlled by our past experience.
Dennis: So this is the contrast you were talking about between the subconscious programming and the conscious decision-making.
Bruce: Yes, and the conscious decision-making says, I am observing my behavior and the old way I used to do this. I used to make stupid mistakes, castigate myself or problems and be mad at myself. Now, with consciousness, when I observe that behavior, I have the power to say, “Don’t play that tape, let’s play a different one, a new tape. So I begin to learn, and as I learn I can re-educate the “Educated.”
So the problem I was trying to bring out in today’s lecture was very importantly this…That the Educated tapes that run our lives were acquired in our earliest formative period, during our fetal development and through the first six years of our life. These are not tapes that we created with consciousness; these are observed behaviors in our environments. We observed how our parents handled their lives, how they handled each other and all the nuances of dealing with the community. We “download” those exactly. The relevance is that when we are not paying attention, by definition, the Educated runs our system. Therefore, when we are not paying attention, we are exercising and expressing behaviors that are not ours from our conscious belief, and maybe conflict with our conscious beliefs.
Dennis: This is what Larry [Markson] talks about when he talks about MFTP, Mothers, Fathers, Teachers and Preachers. It is that purpose of many of the technologies that we use in the Masters, affirmations, visualization, goalsetting, resource-building, anchoring, to be able to selectively create new conscious impressions, so that you can override the Subconscious Educated.
Bruce: Right, and in that process, put in a better Educated. It is not to not have Educated, Educated is great because… Let us think of it this way. If we were raised in a family situation where the parents always expressed “win-win” situations, where they were always in balance with the environment and all that. Then just think about it, our Educated Mind would be programmed with all those types of programs. Therefore, the rest of our lives, even if we weren’t conscious, that Educated process would always lead us to success, even without us paying attention.
Dennis: So you would say then, from that then you would conclude that putting yourself in an environment of positivity that is consistently re-enforcing the conscious decisionmaking that comes from that positive environment would probably make it easier for someone to succeed.
Bruce: Not probably…would! Therefore, what you have to do is find yourself an environment that supports you, that sends you environmental signals of how qualified you are, how good you are and all that, rather than the kind of signals from a dysfunctional family, like, “you’re a stupid child” or ” you’re not good at these things,” or that you don’t deserve something.
Dennis: Or what you hear in certain chiropractic gatherings nowadays, about the demise of the profession, about how difficult it is to make it right now. That clearly is not true; there never has been a better time to be a Chiropractor.
Bruce: That is, unless your Educated is off. I talk about this in the lecture. I talk about how living systems have an “Innate” and an “Educated.” Innate is always 100% right and 100% right for you. The Educated is where the problems come from. Chiropractic, as a profession, is a living system. What I experience is that Chiropractic, in general, experiences its own subluxations, meaning, that it has an Innate, which is Philosophy. And it has an Educated, all the little details you learn in courses. What has happened is that people have gotten so caught up in, which details are the right or wrong details, that their Educated is in the way of the bigger picture…the Innate, the Philosophy. If everyone would back off their Educated and get back in alignment with their Philosophy, then the Subluxation would disappear and there would be harmony in the field. So, it is interesting, in that Chiropractic is a patient in and of itself.
