[The following article is adapted from the author’s newest book, Potentiate Your DNA: A Practical Guide to Healing & Transformation with the Regenetics Method.]
In Reinventing Medicine: Beyond Mind-body to a New Era of Healing, Larry Dossey, the former chief of staff at a major Dallas hospital, examines allopathic medicine in light of the principle of ‘nonlocality’ often studied by quantum physicists.
Putting today’s medicine in quantum perspective, Dr. Dossey asserts that we ‘are facing a ‘constitutional crisis’ in medicine—a crisis over our own constitution, the nature of our mind and its relationship to our physical body.’
To help elucidate this ‘constitutional crisis,’ and to assist humanity in moving beyond it, Dossey outlines three main Eras in the history of Western medicine.
In practical terms, these Eras necessarily overlap to some degree. Conceptually, however, each possesses a defining, exclusive focus (Figure 1).
While these three Eras are associated with specific historical time frames for reference, the characteristic thinking behind each Era appears transhistorical.
In other words, the Eras function almost like archetypes by tapping into distinctive evolutionary thought modes universally embedded in the human psyche. This can, and does, mean that outdated thinking from an earlier Era can be very much present during a later Era.
In Dossey’s model, the first medical Era initiated with Cartesian thinking in the 17th Century and was characterized by a mechanical view of the body. Era I medicine views the human body as a machine that can be manipulated.
In this rather primitive medical approach, which remains firmly entrenched at the center of contemporary allopathic medicine, there is no place for mind or consciousness. Surgery, drugs and vaccines are applications of Era I medicine.
Properly speaking, many often beneficial forms of so-called alternative medicine—ranging from herbs to bodywork to chiropractic—also are based on an Era I perception of the human body as an essentially mechanistic phenomenon.
The 19th Century, according to Dossey, saw the birth of Era II medicine with the acknowledgement of the placebo effect. Characterized by mind-body approaches, Era II thinking fostered the emergence of psychoanalysis and psychiatry.
Era II medicine is based on the fact that your mind and body are interconnected such that your consciousness can benefit your physiology in provable ways.
This is the ‘power of positive thinking,’ to borrow an iconic phrase from Dr. Norman Vincent Peale. Alongside Era I, Era II thinking is established solidly in today’s medical paradigm.
The new kid on the block, which is expanding medical parameters at an exponential rate, is Era III medicine, also referred to as nonlocal.
The cornerstone of Era III thinking is that human consciousness, being nonlocal at its base, is capable of operating outside the confines of the physical body—and even outside the individualized mind—in order to facilitate healing in the self or others.
Some Observations
Having sketched the basic historical outline of Eras I-III, we now can make a handful of important observations that will serve us well as we explore three complementary perspectives on DNA in the following sections.
As shown in Figure 1, we can conceptualize Era I medicine as impersonal; Era II medicine as personal; and Era III medicine as transpersonal.
In other words, Era I medicine, which treats the body as a mindless machine, seeks to heal without regard to individual identity.
Swinging to the opposite polarity, Era II medicine’s therapeutic efforts, as developed primarily through psychology, center almost exclusively on the individualized mind.
A parallel framework sees Era I as a function of the subconscious mind; Era II as a reflection of the conscious mind; and Era III as emerging from the super conscious mind responsible for all creation (Figure 1).
Going above and beyond Eras I and II, Era III medicine is based on a novel understanding of three related truths:
1. Giving rise to the body as well as the egoic mind is a blueprint of consciousness;
2. By working with the consciousness blueprint, it is possible to transcend curing—the goal of Eras I and II—and embrace a new paradigm of permanent healing and radical transformation; and
3. Such healing and transformation ultimately are transpersonal, occurring nonlocally by way of the super conscious mind, or ‘consciousness field,’ which connects us all because we all derive from it.
Era III medicine differs from Era I in that the former encourages healing and transformation on a level that is beyond and yet gives rise to our animalistic physical nature.
Similarly, Era III departs from Era II by grasping the fundamental unity behind all individuality as the domain where genuine healing and transformation must be initiated.
In fact, many Era III techniques do not even require that facilitators know anything about recipients’ conditions or diagnoses in order to be of profound and lasting benefit.
This is because, viewed through the lens of Era III medicine, what is responsible for assisting the recipient to heal is not our individual, egoic mind, but the transpersonal, spiritual Mind—i.e., the consciousness field of our collective beingness where all is one, all is known, and all can be made well.
For this reason, it must be acknowledged that Era III healing occurs through, yet is not of, individual healers. Central to any genuine Era III modality is to allow oneself to be a vessel for hyperdimensional consciousness to flow through in order to assist the self or another on the evolutionary journey.
Figure 1: Three Eras of Medicine. The chart above outlines the evolution of the field of medicine through three Eras that correspond to the development of genetics, epigenetics, and meta-genetics.
As also shown in Figure 1, it can be useful to conceptualize:
1. Era I medicine as concerned with the domain of matter;
2. Era II medicine as focused on bioenergy in the light domain (space-time); and
3. Era III medicine as respecting the primacy of bioenergetic consciousness in the sound domain (time-space) in healing and transformation.
Stated otherwise, Era I ignores bioenergy altogether in its naïve belief that the material world is all that is worth considering for medical purposes. By contrast, Era II displays an appreciation of the role consciousness plays in maintaining or improving wellbeing.
Era II medicine, however, stops short of being able to activate our extraordinary self-healing potential to the extent that it restricts its operation to localized, individualized, light-based, predominantly mental techniques.
Here, I am coming from a shamanic perspective that views light and thought as equivalent energies. The new physics, as well, explains that the act of thinking produces electrical currents that generate hyperdimensional, or ‘torsion,’ waves of light—much as audible sound waves produce torsion waves of sound.
Era II modalities function through light within the light domain and, thus, are restricted in their ability to reset and modify our consciousness blueprint without using sound to access and modify the sound domain.
The above observations relative to Era II therapeutic avenues illuminate why psychotherapy and counseling seem to go in circles; allergy elimination treatments never seem to end; and many forms of energy medicine seem to do so little.
From Light to Sound
Today’s Era III movement from perception centered in the domains of matter and light, to a more holistic understanding of reality rooted in the sound domain, is beautifully expressed by Joachim-Ernst Berendt in his masterful exploration of music and consciousness, The World Is Sound.
‘Many outstanding scholars, scientists, psychologists, philosophers and writers have described and circumscribed the New Consciousness,’ writes Berendt. ‘But one aspect has not been pointed out: that it will be the consciousness of hearing people.’
To be clear: the ‘New Man will be Listening Man—or will never be at all. He will be able to perceive sounds in a way we cannot even imagine today.’
Berendt explains that modern humans ‘with their disproportionate emphasis on seeing have brought on the excess of rationality, of analysis and abstraction, whose breakdown we are now witnessing […] Living almost exclusively through the eyes has led us to almost not living at all.’
In contrast, historically speaking, wherever ‘God revealed Himself to human beings, He was heard. He may have appeared as a light, but in order to be understood, His voice had to be heard. ‘And God spoke’ is a standard sentence in all holy scriptures. The ears are the gateway.’
Emphasizing that humanity’s collective Shift in consciousness will be realized only ‘when we have learned to use our sense of hearing fully,’ Berendt quotes from Isaiah: ‘Hear, and your soul shall live.’
This line of reasoning is echoed by Dennis Holtje in a wonderful little book entitled From Light to Sound: The Spiritual Progression.
‘The stunning simplicity of the Sound energy confounds the mind,’ explains Holtje. ‘We are conditioned to use the mind to solve all of life’s dilemmas, unaware that the … energy of Sound … provides the permanent solution of awakened spiritual living.’
Now, to avoid confusion, allow me to emphasize once again that the transformational sound energy being referenced is hyperdimensional in nature.
It is absolutely true that we can produce audible sounds here in space-time to stimulate repatterning—via DNA—of our sonic templates in time-space.
But please understand that much in the way thought creates torsion light waves, the sounds we make here generate subtle, torsion sounds that technically are inaudible to most people and must be ‘heard,’ ener-genetically, with the ‘inner ear.’
The intimate relationship that unites sound, language and DNA is a truly fascinating subject that must be left for another time. But here, let us outline three perspectives on DNA that correspond to the historical development of Eras I-III in the field of medicine.
Era I: Genetics
In this and the following sections, as we examine three distinct yet complementary ways of viewing DNA, it can be helpful to reference Figure 1.
So, what is DNA? The simplest answer is that in its typical form, DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, is a two-stranded molecule shaped like a double helix and composed of various combinations of four protein bases called nucleotides.
The double helix of DNA is stabilized by hydrogen bonds between the bases attached to the twin strands like the rungs of a ladder. The four bases of DNA are named adenine (abbreviated A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T).
The discovery of DNA in 1953 by James Watson and Francis Crick engendered an elaborate genetic science devoted to studying the biochemical properties of the molecule of life.
Although there is much more that might be stated about DNA, for present purposes it is most important to recognize that genetic science understands DNA as merely a molecular, biochemical phenomenon with no relation to bioenergy, or consciousness.
Let us appreciate that DNA definitely is a molecule, or pairing of molecules. When you initially look at it, that is probably the first thing that stands out.
But let us acknowledge as well that such an understanding, being quintessentially Era I in its conception of DNA as a material matter, constitutes a superficial, Newtonian grasp of DNA—one that completely ignores the latter’s nonlocal, quantum aspects.
Disregarding the energetic qualities of DNA has allowed mainstream genetic science, in true Era I fashion, to focus exclusively on DNA as a self-replicating machine for building proteins, cells, tissues, organs and, eventually, bodies.
This way of defining DNA, in turn, has led to crudely mechanistic, Era I attempts to manipulate DNA such as gene splicing and gene therapy.
Additionally, defining DNA solely in terms of biochemistry has fostered the problematic belief that DNA is the cell’s ‘brain’ and controls gene expression in a robotic, predetermined way.
In due course, this belief has spawned a widespread genetic fatalism, whose dubious assertion that most diseases are hereditary—and thus beyond our individual control—is used to peddle unnecessary pharmaceuticals and surgical interventions to the gullible masses.
In a nutshell, mainstream genetics views DNA as, and only as, a physical molecule whose activity is primary. If this were indeed the case, it would mean that ‘nature’ is more directly responsible for our experience of reality than ‘nurture.’
Fortunately, in recent years a second perspective has emerged that challenges the ‘Primacy of DNA’ and the idea that nurture is less important to our health and wellbeing than nature.
Era II: Epigenetics
Enter the pioneering work of biologist Bruce Lipton, one of the developers of the science of epigenetics.
From the perspective of traditional genetics, epigenetics represents a radical departure that undermines the long-held assumption that DNA and nature are primary.
The following passage from Lipton’s The Biology of Belief neatly summarizes the basic tenets of mainstream genetics. The ‘Central Dogma,’
also referred to as the Primacy of DNA, defines the flow of information in biological organisms … only in one direction, from DNA to RNA and then to Protein … DNA represents the cell’s long-term memory, passed from generation to generation. RNA, an unstable copy of the DNA molecule, is the active memory that is used by the cell as a physical template in synthesizing proteins. Proteins are the molecular building blocks that provide for the cell’s structure and behavior. DNA is implicated as the ‘source’ that controls that character of the cell’s proteins, hence the concept of DNA’s primacy that literally means ‘first cause.’
Lipton’s theory of epigenetics, which grew out of his longtime study of the effect of our individual thoughts and beliefs on our genetic function and overall health, effectively demonstrates that this ‘Central Dogma’ is just that.
In contrast to the materialistic, mechanistic mindset of genetic science’s Central Dogma, it is clear from the research cited by Lipton that our own consciousness always and inevitably impacts the function of our genetic and cellular expression—at least in limited ways.
Such is the case because, according to epigenetics, the cell membrane (not the DNA within the cell) is the cell’s brain. DNA is merely the cell’s reproductive system.
Lipton cites the fact that enucleated cells (i.e., cells whose nucleus and DNA have been removed) die as evidence that the ‘nucleus is not the brain of the cell—the nucleus is the cell’s gonad!’ Moreover, ‘[g]enes-as-destiny theorists have obviously ignored hundred-year-old science about enucleated cells.’
According to the epigenetic model, genes in DNA simply store instructions for propagating a given species. In other words, the primary function of DNA is not to ‘think’ or interact with the environment, but to pass on—automatically and brainlessly—the basic genetic coding that creates a human being or a chimpanzee.
In Lipton’s words, ‘epigenetics, which literally means ‘control above genetics,’ profoundly changes our understanding of how life is controlled.’ Epigenetic research establishes that ‘DNA blueprints passed down through genes are not set in concrete at birth.’
What is responsible for ‘thinking,’ epigenetically speaking, is the cell membrane—specifically, the various types of interlocking regulatory proteins in the membrane. These have been documented to reconfigure in response to environmental stimuli—including toxins, traumas, energies, thoughts, and beliefs.
Emphasizing that ‘[g]enes are not destiny,’ Lipton points out that ‘[e]nvironmental influences, including nutrition, stress and emotion, can modify … genes, without changing their basic blueprint. And these modifications … can be passed on to future generations as surely as DNA blueprints are passed on via the Double Helix.’
Epigenetics explains how environmental signaling instructs chromosomal proteins to change shape, thus determining which parts of DNA are ‘read’ and allowed to express themselves.
This theory contends that the activity of genes ultimately is regulated ‘by the presence or absence of … proteins, which are in turn controlled by environmental signals.’
‘The story of epigenetic control is the story of how environmental signals control the activity of genes,’ writes Lipton. ‘It is now clear that the Primacy of DNA … is outmoded.’ An updated understanding, in Lipton’s view, should be called the ‘Primacy of Environment.’
As opposed to the old top-down genetic model that enshrined DNA and nature at the apex of the pecking order, the Primacy of Environment explains that ‘the flow of information in biology starts with an environmental signal, then goes to a regulatory protein,’ and then, and only then, passes to ‘DNA, RNA, and the end result, a protein.’
From the brief overview above, we are in a position to make three critical observations about epigenetics.
First, it should be readily apparent that while genetics is invested in the power of nature, epigenetics sees nurture as even more central to life. Thus epigenetics provides a much-needed counterpoint to the formerly one-sided study of biology (Figure 2).
A second observation is that in providing greater balance to the biological sciences, epigenetics empowers people to move beyond genetic fatalism by embracing the fact that our own thoughts and beliefs play an important role in creating health or illness.
‘Rather than being ‘programmed’ by our genes,’ writes Lipton, ‘our lives are controlled by our perceptions of life experiences!’
The third observation is that for all its impressive background science, in the final analysis epigenetics represents essentially a mind-body approach to understanding and interacting with our biological functioning.
The basic concept behind this ‘new paradigm’ is anything but new, having been summed up decades ago by Norman Vincent Peale when he wrote, ‘Change your thoughts and you change your world.’
One important corollary to this third observation is that, at its core, epigenetics grows directly out of Era II thinking.
In the final analysis, epigenetics is light-based and, therefore, limited in its ability to explain or promote thoroughgoing healing and transformation.
Before we introduce Era III’s approach to the biosciences, ‘meta-genetics,’ let us take a brief moment to touch on some problems associated with epigenetics.
Problems with the Epigenetic Model
I am a big fan of Bruce Lipton and applaud his successes and efforts in elaborating a valuable avenue of inquiry in the biological sciences.
In pointing out that epigenetics is an Era II approach with some significant shortcomings, it is in no way my intention to belittle this helpful, necessary model.
Rather, by calling attention to the ‘gaps’ in epigenetics, I wish to segue into an even more revolutionary approach to genetic science and healing that corresponds to the evolutionary current of Era III medicine.
If the power of positive thinking were the end-all be-all; if affirmations and visualizations were the final key to healing; if transforming our reality simply involved adopting a mental attitude of ‘don’t worry, be happy,’ why have such Era II approaches failed to work for so many people—myself included?
I spent the better part of a decade unsuccessfully trying to heal myself from a mysterious autoimmune illness through a combination of Era I and Era II techniques ranging from raw food diets to the Rife Machine to Process Oriented Psychology. But it was only when I embraced the transpersonal, transformational potential of Era III that my health was restored.
There are several problems with the epigenetic model that deserve mentioning.
For starters, as previously pointed out, epigenetics is restricted to the light domain, which curtails its ability to effect thorough healing and transformation to the extent that it cannot access or modify our consciousness blueprint in the sound domain (Figures 1 and 2).
Secondly, epigenetics is concerned with space-time and thus constitutes a ‘local’ model that largely ignores the nonlocal basis for our being in time-space (Figures 1 and 2).
Here in particular, epigenetic theory can be misleading. While our own thoughts and beliefs do affect our space-time reality, they do not, in the strictest sense, create it.
Lipton has admitted as much, writing that ‘soul or spirit’ represents ‘the creative force behind the consciousness that shapes our physical reality.’ Indeed, the ‘structure of the universe is made in the image of its underlying field.’
Practically, however, epigenetics turns a blind eye to the consciousness field. While acknowledging that humans are ‘Earth Landers’ in constant dialogue with our ‘controller/Spirit,’ Lipton’s model fails to probe the profound ‘meta-genetic’ ramifications of this concept.
Instead, Lipton zeroes in on epigenetic ‘control’ over our lives. But here in space-time, we actually control very little.
Although we have free will to interpret and respond to events and situations however we like, our greater spiritual identity in the consciousness field—which can be conceptualized as our Higher Self—ultimately controls our life experiences.
Compared to the reality-engendering Consciousness in the sound domain that gives rise to our intuition, imagination and inspired thoughts, any so-called thinking rooted in the light domain is a variety of egoic, bodily consciousness whose ability to alter reality is quite circumscribed.
Rather than using the language of control to characterize the impact of our individual perceptions on our experiences, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that our own perceptions of events and situations help us epigenetically ‘manage’ them.
Thirdly, a related point. In characteristic Era II fashion, epigenetics is largely individualistic, centered for the most part on the individual’s thoughts and beliefs (Figures 1 and 2).
While this approach laudably encourages people to take responsibility for their lives, it can have the unintended effect of discouraging people from seeing themselves as spiritual beings on a human journey with a more collective, unified origin outside their immediate physical environment.
Just as critically, the idea that there might be functional applications, ones that could be understood and proven by way of the biosciences, to focusing outside our localized space-time to our spiritual templates in the nonlocalized realm of time-space is left hanging in the balance.
In other words, in the epigenetic model as elaborated by Lipton, the spiritual ‘creative force’ that operates in the sound domain remains a nebulous, basically unusable concept that is—effectively if not entirely—dismissed.
Yet from the perspective of Era III medicine, this very creative force—which we have called torsion energy, bioenergy, and consciousness—is the key to healing and transformation.
Two additional problems with epigenetics, which are best understood in retrospect as we discuss some of the implications of meta-genetic theory in the following section, need only stating here:
1. In discounting the role DNA plays in terms of consciousness and our conscious experience of reality, epigenetics does so while ignoring ninety-seven percent of the DNA molecule; and
2. Because it ignores the vast majority of DNA, where our meta-genetic interface with the consciousness field occurs, epigenetics cannot account for the origin and evolution of species any more than genetics can. Only meta-genetics can explain these two interrelated phenomena.
Era III: Meta-genetics
In order to grasp the basics of meta-genetics, how this revolutionary science goes above and beyond both genetics and epigenetics, it is necessary to be absolutely clear as to the manner in which Eras I and II view DNA.
According to the genetic model that grew out of Era I thinking, only three percent of DNA is worth studying. There was no misprint in the previous sentence. Decades ago mainstream genetics dismissed ninety-seven percent of the DNA molecule!
The three percent of DNA observed ‘doing something’—i.e., building proteins—is referred to as ‘exons’ or ‘coding DNA.’ The rest—which from a materialistic perspective, appears to ‘do nothing’—is called ‘introns,’ ‘noncoding DNA,’ or simply ‘junk.’
Various theories have been proposed to account for ‘junk’ DNA. According to some geneticists, these chromosomal regions could be the remains of ancient ‘pseudogenes’ that have been discarded and fragmented during evolution.
Another idea is that ‘junk’ DNA represents the accumulated DNA of retroviruses. Alternatively, ‘junk’ DNA might constitute a data bank of sequences from which new genes emerge.
Happily, more and more scientists who have asked how nature could be so mind-numbingly inefficient are beginning to rethink ‘junk’ DNA.
When DNA is mentioned in the epigenetic theory of Era II, what virtually always is being referenced is the three percent of coding DNA whose activity has been studied by traditional genetics.
In this regard at least, epigenetics is basically no different from genetics: both theories discount the vast majority of the genetic apparatus. In fact, you will not find ‘junk’ DNA mentioned anywhere in The Biology of Belief.
Nevertheless, recent findings have indicated that ‘junk’ DNA has a number of vitally important functions. The very conservation of noncoding DNA over eons of evolution, rather than signifying genetic detritus, provides tantalizing evidence of such functions.
More to the point, a wealth of Era III research in wave-genetics has shed light on extraordinary meta-genetic activity in ‘junk’ DNA.
This ninety-seven percent of the DNA molecule, which I call potential DNA, appears to have much more to do with creating a specific species than previously acknowledged.
For instance, if we only examine the tiny portion of DNA made up of exons, there is practically no difference, in terms of genetics, between a human being and a rodent. There is also precious little at the level of exons that differentiates one human being from another!
Others who have studied the mystery of ‘junk,’ or potential, DNA have concluded that the three percent of the human genome directly responsible for building proteins simply does not contain enough information to build any kind of body.
Faced with this puzzle, many scientists have started paying attention to fascinating structures called ‘jumping DNA,’ or ‘transposons,’ found in the supposedly worthless ninety-seven percent of DNA.
In 1983 Barbara McClintock was awarded the Nobel prize for discovering transposons. She and fellow biologists coined the term jumping DNA for good reason, David Wilcock has noted, as ‘these one million different proteins can break loose from one area, move to another area, and thereby rewrite the DNA code.’
This mysterious, malleable majority of DNA that, based on reasonable observation alone, must carry out significant functions for the organism, is the focus of meta-genetics.
This emerging science, famously substantiated and applied through the work of Peter Gariaev in wave-genetics, understands that potential DNA constitutes the biological organism’s interface with a hyperdimensional ‘life-wave.’
The life-wave, originating in time-space, is responsible for giving rise to a particular physical species or individual identity in space-time by nonlocally directing the activity of the three percent of coding DNA to build species-specific, individualized bodies.
Figure 2: Primacy of Consciousness. This figure demonstrates that genetics and epigenetics are not mutually exclusive, but are subsumed and reconciled by meta-genetics, which understands that both nature and nurture are functions of consciousness.
While epigenetics allows us to manage gene expression and cellular function to a limited extent from our local position in space-time, what more directly controls our collective and individual genetic blueprints is the meta-genetic consciousness field in time-space.
Because consciousness dictates our biological reality, not the other way around, I coined the term meta-genetics to highlight the ultimately metaphysical nature of genetic functioning.
We now are in a position to replace both the Primacy of DNA and the Primacy of Environment with that which subsumes both nature and nurture and resolves their apparent contradiction within the unified field: the Primacy of Consciousness.
The Primacy of Consciousness makes it easy to see that the real Brain behind the majority of our biological functioning resides neither in DNA nor in the cell membrane, but in the sound domain of time-space.
In the meta-genetic model of Era III, the primary role of the vast majority of DNA is to mediate ener-genetically between our collective Mind in the consciousness field and our individual bodies (Era I) and brains (Era II) that exist as expressions of this bioenergy field in space-time.
