Brian Rose asks Bruce Lipton a simple question: how does he start his day? The answer begins with love and ends somewhere much bigger, with a biologist explaining why he came to see this planet as heaven and why he believes we are here to taste the chocolate.
This clip comes from Lipton’s 2017 London Real interview, The Biology of Belief. In it, the former medical school lecturer describes how his work on the cell membrane turned a self-described sceptic into someone who believes our identity lives beyond the body.
Wake up and be in love
For Lipton, the daily practice is not a routine or a technique. “Wake up and be in love,” he says: in love with life, and with the chance to live on this planet at all. He has travelled widely and seen the world in many beautiful ways, and that sense of gratitude is where he starts.
He then goes further. From a biological point of view, he says, he has come to see Earth as heaven. In his words, we don’t die and go to heaven, we come into heaven.
Identity as a broadcast
Lipton explains that he did not always think this way. As a young scientist he did not believe in spirituality at all: life was genes, proteins and cells, essentially machines.
What changed his mind, he says, was studying the receptors on the surface of our cells that the immune system uses to tell “self” from “other”. No two people have exactly the same set, which is why transplanted organs can be rejected. Lipton’s interpretation is that these receptors work like antennas, picking up an identity from the environment rather than generating it. “Our identity is a broadcast,” he says.
He follows that idea to a striking conclusion. If the cells die, the broadcast remains, and if a future embryo had the same combination of receptors, he suggests, that identity could come back in a different body. It is his personal, spiritual reading of the biology, and mainstream science does not share it, but it is clearly one that changed his life. It “blew my mind”, he tells Brian.
Why taste the chocolate?
If we are really spirit, Lipton then asked himself, why have a body at all? The answer, he says with some humour, came from his own cells: if you’re just a spirit, what does chocolate taste like?
His point is that our senses are how we experience the world. Eyes, ears, nose, taste and touch convert the world into signals in the nervous system. A spirit cannot taste chocolate or see a sunset, he says. A body can, and in his view that is the pleasure and the creativity of being alive. We came here, as he puts it, to taste the chocolate and see the sunsets.
Unlearning insensitivity
The clip ends on something more personal. Lipton says his upbringing as a male taught him not to be sensitive, a kind of programming he links to preparing boys to be soldiers. That, he admits, does not help in relationships, and he now sees it as a waste of a life to cut off so much experience.
His advice is refreshingly simple: go out and taste, touch, smell and feel the world. If it’s good, do it again. If you don’t like it, don’t. “So I have choices,” he says.
Who is Bruce Lipton?
Dr Bruce Lipton is an American cell biologist and author. He taught cell biology at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and later carried out research at Stanford University. He is best known for his book The Biology of Belief, which argues that our perceptions and beliefs influence how our genes are expressed.
In his full 2017 London Real episode, he talks with Brian Rose about epigenetics, the subconscious mind and how beliefs shape our lives. You can also watch his Success Secrets.
More on London Real
Transcript
Transcript: Bruce Lipton – Love Your Life: Why We Came Here To Taste The Chocolate
0:00 Brian Rose: Talk to me about Bruce and his life. What are some of your daily practices? How do you start your day? What are things that you do in your life now to make you so handsome and happy, to make you conscious? What have you learned over the years that you put into practice?
0:15 Bruce Lipton: I think that love of everything is the big thing. Wake up and be in love. Be in love with life. I mean, the idea of living on this planet: I have a chance like a lot of people don’t have it. I travel around the world. I’ve seen so many different countries. I’ve seen this planet in so many beautiful ways.
0:35 Bruce Lipton: And I’ve come to another understanding in my life, which is my understanding from a biological point of view. And that is, I perceive this planet as heaven. That we were born in heaven. We don’t die and go to heaven, we come into heaven. In other words, I recognised something I never knew as a biologist until I started to understand the nature of how the brain, the membrane of the cell, worked. I didn’t believe in spirituality. I was genes, proteins, cells: it’s all machines and stuff like that.
1:05 Bruce Lipton: I have since seen the mechanism where our identity is not even in here. Our identity is a broadcast. I have receptors, you have receptors, for an identity. No two people have the same set. They’re called self-receptors.
1:20 Brian Rose: That’s a hell of a name. Self-receptors.
1:22 Bruce Lipton: Receivers of self. Well, it is. It’s a broadcast. My identity is picked up on the surface of my cells. I have these antennas, like a combination lock. You have a set on your cells, but we don’t have the same set. We may have some overlap, but not the same set. No two people have the same set, meaning I can’t take cells or organs out of my body and put them in anybody else, because they have a different self and the immune system will eliminate it.
1:47 Bruce Lipton: So where’s the self? The immune system recognises it: it’s these receptors. I said, what if you take these receptors off? Well, then it’s a generic human cell. It can go to anybody. But when the self-receptors are on, it’s a unique human cell, it’s an individual. I said, yeah, but the receptors, we were counting those, that’s what makes us different. I go: they’re antennas. They receive a signal from the environment. So my identity is something being picked up from the environment and played through my cells.
2:12 Bruce Lipton: If I die, which is the thing that really hit me, I said: well, the cells and the receptors are gone. Yeah, but the broadcast is still here. So if another embryo shows up in the future with the same combination, then I’d be back on the air again, but in a different body.
2:36 Brian Rose: OK. And that’s a new observation for you.
2:39 Bruce Lipton: For me, it blew my mind, because I didn’t believe in spirituality.
2:43 Brian Rose: So your soul will live on. You will live on.
2:45 Bruce Lipton: Yeah. And what we do is an exchange. As a scientist, at that moment I said: oh my God, I’m an identity, I’m a broadcast. I said to myself: why have a spirit in a body then? Why not just be the spirit? And my cells, being quite humorous, I think, responded by saying: Bruce, if you’re just a spirit, what does chocolate taste like?
3:05 Bruce Lipton: And then it hit me. I said: oh my God, all of our senses are mechanisms. Eyes, ears, nose, taste, touch: they convert our world into sensation. But the nervous system doesn’t see pictures or smell things. It just gets the vibrations. And remember I said you could put wires on your head and read your brain activity? Well, there’s a newer device: not an electroencephalograph, a magnetoencephalograph. The difference is the probe is out here, and I could read your brain activity out here.
3:40 Bruce Lipton: Which all of a sudden says: oh my God, we are converting our experiences into nervous system vibration. The communication is all vibration, electromagnetic vibration, and we broadcast that. And I said, well, where’s it going? Going back to source. A spirit cannot taste chocolate, it doesn’t have taste buds. It can’t see a sunset, it doesn’t have eyes. But if I get into this virtual reality suit and have all these experiences, my nervous system translates them into a vibration and they go back to source.
4:09 Brian Rose: So it’s essential, being in this body.
4:12 Bruce Lipton: Yeah, but that’s the pleasure and the creative aspect. That’s why I look at it as heaven. In a body, I am creative. I can build, I can move, I can do things, I can sense things. And now I realise: oh my God, we came here to taste the chocolate. We came here to see those sunsets.
4:31 Bruce Lipton: And all of a sudden I realised, boy, my programming in the first seven years as a male offset that. Because what did we learn as males, generally? Not to be sensitive.
4:44 Brian Rose: Right.
4:45 Bruce Lipton: And I go: well, that’s right away the difference between women and men. Women are allowed to be sensitive. We have shut it off. Why? Well, if you’re going to be a soldier, you can’t be sensitive. So we have been programmed to be insensitive. Of course, that makes a crap relationship with women, who are sensitive, because they look at you: oh, you’re insensitive. And it’s like, that was my programming. I thought: wow, what a waste of a life, to cut off those sensory experiences.
5:11 Bruce Lipton: And so one of the things I learned after the cells taught me was: go out and taste it and touch it and smell it and feel it. And if it’s good, do it again. If you don’t like it, don’t do it again. This is an opportunity to experience the planet. Most of us shut off our experiences through programming.
5:35 Brian Rose: So you’ve deprogrammed that, and now you’re out there feeling and enjoying and having options.
5:41 Bruce Lipton: If I don’t like it, damn it, I’m not doing it again either. So I have choices.
