“Your life is a printout of your subconscious behaviour.”
In short: Dr Bruce Lipton is a developmental biologist and the author of The Biology of Belief (also on Audible), Spontaneous Evolution and The Honeymoon Effect. In this 2017 conversation, published in August, Bruce told Brian Rose why his early work with stem cells led him to argue that the environment, and our perception of it, shapes how genes are expressed.
Brian, an MIT-trained engineer, admitted that Bruce’s ideas put two parts of his brain in conflict. Over nearly two hours they discussed Bruce’s view of epigenetics, his belief that most of our behaviour runs on programs learned in the first seven years of life, what he sees as wrong with the business of medicine, and how he thinks people can reprogram the subconscious mind.
Bruce also told the story of the personal change that followed his research, explained the idea behind The Honeymoon Effect, and shared his view of evolution as humanity learning to act as one community.
Key takeaways
- Same cells, different environment. Bruce described splitting genetically identical stem cells into three dishes and, by changing only the culture medium, seeing them form muscle, bone or fat. In his view, this showed the environment, not the genes alone, shaped what the cells became.
- A gene is a blueprint. He argued that a gene cannot turn itself on or off, and that the important question is who reads the blueprint. His answer was the mind.
- The first seven years matter most. Bruce said children under seven absorb the behaviour around them in a hypnosis-like state, and that this programming runs most of adult life.
- Look at where you struggle. Rather than digging into the past, he suggested looking at the areas of life that feel like hard work, which in his view point to a subconscious program working against you.
- Repetition reprograms the subconscious. Bruce said the subconscious learns through repetition and hypnosis, which is why he believes daily affirmations and habits work better than reading self-help books.
- Falling in love keeps you present. The idea behind The Honeymoon Effect, he explained, is that people in love stay in the conscious, creative mind instead of running old programs.
- Responsibility comes with awareness. He told Brian that once you know you are responsible for your life, it becomes your job to run it differently, but you cannot blame yourself for what you did not know.
From the classroom to the petri dish
Brian opened by explaining his conflict: trained as an engineer, he had spent six years hearing guests talk about consciousness and energy. Bruce said he had lived the same conflict, teaching medical students that genes control life while his own stem cell research suggested the environment determined genetic activity. If you believe genes control your life, he argued, you see yourself as a victim of heredity.
Bruce described the placebo effect as healing that comes from belief, and argued that negative belief, the nocebo effect, works just as powerfully in the other direction. He explained epigenetics as control above the genes, and said it changes how a gene is read rather than the gene itself.
He described his petri dish experiment, in which identical stem cells became muscle, bone or fat depending on the culture medium, and recalled giving a lecture to colleagues who walked out in silence. He said it took around 20 years before the field that became known as epigenetics caught up with what he was describing.
Money, medicine and stress
Bruce was openly critical of the pharmaceutical industry, which in his view has too much influence over medical research and teaching because it funds so much of it. He also described how universities rely on research grants, drawing on his own time teaching at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine.
He then set out his view of stress: that stress hormones prepare the body for fight or flight by diverting energy away from growth and the immune system, and that people living under constant stress pay a price in their health. These are Bruce’s own views, and he presented them as the reason he believes changing your thinking matters.
The first seven years and the subconscious mind
Bruce said that, like the film The Matrix, the first seven years of life are a download. Children’s brains work mostly in theta, which he linked to imagination and hypnosis, so they record the behaviour of parents and community. Around 95% of adult life, he argued, then runs on those subconscious programs, with only about 5% coming from the creative conscious mind. He connected this to the idea behind Rich Dad Poor Dad, and Brian mentioned his conversation with Robert Kiyosaki.
To change the programs, Bruce said you do not need to remember them: you only need to look at where your life is a struggle. He told the story of living in the Caribbean, professionally successful but alone, until a woman told him he was too needy. He learned to be happy on his own, he said, and only then did the right relationships appear.
Brian, whose son had been born three days earlier, asked how to parent consciously. Bruce said parents first have to recognise their own negative programs, often with the help of a partner’s honest feedback, and to be careful what they say to young children, who record words literally.
Psychedelics, The Honeymoon Effect and evolution
Asked about meditation and psychedelics, Bruce said they work through receptors the body already has, and that in his view they can be a useful way to learn for people who understand what they are doing, though not for everyone. He compared a difficult experience to the hard feedback he once received from the woman on the yacht.
He explained that falling in love keeps the mind present, so people stop playing old programs, and that the honeymoon ends when thinking takes over again. His solution is to make your wishes and desires into new subconscious programs.
Bruce then described evolution as cells coming together into communities, and humans now learning to act as one super-organism, with the internet as its nervous system. He said he sees the current upheaval in the world as old structures breaking down so that something more sustainable can be built.
A biologist finds spirituality
Bruce said he did not believe in spirituality until his work on cell membranes led him to see identity as something received from the environment. His conclusion, in his own words, was that we came here to taste the chocolate and see the sunsets, and that men in particular are often programmed to shut off those experiences.
He told Brian his mission is to share knowledge, because in his view people are far more powerful than they have been taught. He described why he spends time in Santa Cruz and New Zealand, said he would tell his 20-year-old self that life is not as scary as it seems, and said the best advice he ever received came from watching the cells he grew in culture.
Who is Bruce Lipton?
Bruce Lipton is an American developmental biologist. He earned his PhD at the University of Virginia and joined the Department of Anatomy at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine in 1973, and later carried out research at Stanford University’s School of Medicine. He received the Goi Peace Award in 2009.
He is the author of The Biology of Belief (2005), Spontaneous Evolution and The Honeymoon Effect (2013), and shares his work through his website.
Frequently asked questions
This conversation with Brian Rose was published on London Real in August 2017.
He described epigenetics as control above the genes: the idea that the environment, and our perception of it, affects how genes are read, without changing the genes themselves.
In his view, children under seven absorb the behaviour of the people around them in a hypnosis-like state, and these subconscious programs shape most of adult behaviour.
He said the subconscious learns through repetition and hypnosis, so he recommends repeated practice such as daily affirmations, and listening to recordings as you fall asleep.
It is Bruce’s book and his idea that people who fall in love stay present in the conscious, creative mind, and that the feeling can last if those wishes become new subconscious habits.
He said that if you do not like how your life is turning out, recognise that much of it comes from programming, that you can change it, and that you should let go of fear.

