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Available
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Publication
Authors Pub Corp (2005), Edition: First Edition, 224 pages
Description
Author Lipton is a former medical school professor and research scientist. His experiments, and those of other leading-edge scientists, have examined in great detail the processes by which cells receive information. The implications of this research radically change our understanding of life. It shows that genes and DNA do not control our biology; that instead DNA is controlled by signals from outside the cell, including the energetic messages emanating from our positive and negative thoughts. Dr. Lipton's profoundly hopeful synthesis of the latest and best research in cell biology and quantum physics is being hailed as a breakthrough, showing that our bodies can be changed as we retrain our thinking.--From publisher description.
User reviews
LibraryThing member artg
Lipton concludes that genes and DNA do not control our biology. DNA is controlled by signals from outside the cell including the energy from our thoughts.
Genes can be removed from a cell and it survives. But it cannot reproduce. The cell membrane is the brain of the cell.
Chapter 5, Biology and
Lipton states that the conscious and the subconscious are interdependent. The subconscious mind is habitual and millions of times more powerful than the conscious mind.
He states that the limbic system chemical communication signals into signals the we experience as emotions. Our self-conscious ability to reflect can allow us to develop misperceptions. Beliefs control biology
The placebo effect is very powerful. In one study those who got fake knee surgery improved just as much as those who had real surgery. Nocebos (negative beliefs) are also effective.
When your conscious mind has a belief in conflict with a "truth" stored in the subconscious, the body's muscles weaken. Pushing an outstretched arm provides a test.
In an Addendum, Lipton mentions PSYCH-K, Rob Williams, www,psych-k.com, as a program that can change long-standing limiting beliefs in a matter of minutes. It uses muscle testing.
Genes can be removed from a cell and it survives. But it cannot reproduce. The cell membrane is the brain of the cell.
Chapter 5, Biology and
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Belief, tells of Dr. Albert Mason who cured a boy of warts by hypnosis. Later he found out that the boy was suffering from a lethal genetic disease. At the time, Mason believed in the treatment.Lipton states that the conscious and the subconscious are interdependent. The subconscious mind is habitual and millions of times more powerful than the conscious mind.
He states that the limbic system chemical communication signals into signals the we experience as emotions. Our self-conscious ability to reflect can allow us to develop misperceptions. Beliefs control biology
The placebo effect is very powerful. In one study those who got fake knee surgery improved just as much as those who had real surgery. Nocebos (negative beliefs) are also effective.
When your conscious mind has a belief in conflict with a "truth" stored in the subconscious, the body's muscles weaken. Pushing an outstretched arm provides a test.
In an Addendum, Lipton mentions PSYCH-K, Rob Williams, www,psych-k.com, as a program that can change long-standing limiting beliefs in a matter of minutes. It uses muscle testing.
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LibraryThing member rmwilliamsjr
The biology of Belief: unleashing the power of consciousness, matter, and miracles
By Bruce Lipton
not really biology but more metaphysics and maybe odd ball spiritualism.
It's an odd book, hard to classify, even harder to grasp the big picture for which the author argues passionately and rather well.
I think that the book is best read like a detective novel, from the 1st page to the last, with an occasional glance at the end of the chapter to see who-dun-it. The personal nature of the writing makes it difficult just to take a chapter out of context and read it for informational content, although one might be tempted to because of the extensiveness of the science. This would be a mistake because the science is not self contained but rather is being used by the author as an explantory way to unify what often appear to be spiritual issues and questions and finding their potential answer in biology.
For example, chapter 3: the magical membrane. The first paragraph is: "Now that we've looked at the protein assembly machinery of the cell, debunked the notion that the necleus is the brain of the cellular operation, and recognized that crucial role the environment plays in the operation of the cell, we're on to the good stuff-the stuff that can make sense of your life and give your insight into ways of changing it." pg75 This is one of the major themes of the book, the cell is not controlled and run exclusively by the nucleus and it's DNA but rather is a complex interaction of the environment and the cell, mediated by receptors in the membrane. Which is a microcosm of the theme of the book, which appears in the last paragraph of this chapter: "which put the control of our lives not in the genetic roll of the dice at conception, but in our own hands" pg 94 This is consistent with the book's theme that the mind-body division is fundamentally wrong, reflected in the division of physics into Newtonian and Quantum, and biology as fixing machinery versus straightening out mental or even spiritual issues, this is where the idea that the quantum revolution in physics needs to be carried out in modern biology and seeing the importance of energy vs matter.
I've stumbled trying to write this review for weeks. I finished the book the day after i checked it out of the library(it is a good read, the analogy to a mystery is true), but here it sits, the review unfinished weeks later. Why is it so hard to review? What makes it such an odd book?
It is my difficulty in separating the garbage of the new age movement from it's treasure. My problem of differentiating what is good in the book, what is worth pursuing and learning more about, from the general spiritualist, god is in everything pantheism that the author is heading towards (apparently).
I like the science he presents, i appreciate the goals of reducing the reductionism, dematerializing the gross materialism, and spiritualizing the sciences, but i am concerned that the content of his spirituality is very different and in competition with my orthodox conservative Christianity. It is this loggerheads that makes an analysis of the ideas in the book so hard. I am not a pan or a panentheist, God is not part of His creation but wholely other. And to deify creation, to find our consciousness, our imago dei in the physical universe is not the right way to go. But it is a useful thing to see how someone with this author's spiritual sensitivity walk us through his adventures and share with us his journey. This is a good thing and makes the book a high recommendation for me. I'm just afraid that anything i say about what the book is about will really be more about me and my reaction than that of the author, rats.
Biology has missed the crucial contribution of the environment. This is chapter 2, "It's the environment, stupid". As no man is an island, no cell in an organism, no organism in it's lifetime, no community, is an island, separated from the rest of life. The next chapter,"the magical membrane" is his scientific analysis of why DNA is not the king of the cell controlling everything and responsible for all, but he looks at the membrane as the communication center from the cell to it's environment. Here he is probably not only right but a good antidote to the nucleus-centric thinking that dominates cell and molecular biology. The 4th chapter, "the new physics" is a quick analysis of energy and quantum mechanics as a new physics paradigm that basically says something like: energy is all, matter is but energy in a different form. This chapter is the one most like the Tao of Physics and that genre. The next chapter, "biology and belief" makes the analogy of energy to spirit and matter to physical world and tries to drawn a new biology akin to the new physics. IF you can only read a few pages, pick this chapter, it is the key ideas of the book.
Is it true, does our mind control the physics around us? is it true that god is energy and spirit and accessible to the mind of man? how much of the new biology is the old pagan spirituality, the worship of mother earth and the forces of nature? i don't know. but i'm interesting in reading more.
By Bruce Lipton
not really biology but more metaphysics and maybe odd ball spiritualism.
It's an odd book, hard to classify, even harder to grasp the big picture for which the author argues passionately and rather well.
Show More
The genre is akin to such books as: The Tao of Physics, Dancing Wu-Li Masters, except the science being rewritten is biology rather than physics.The author uses the words: "new biology" consciously to refer to a new paradigm, a system that is more holistic, much less reductionist, more consciousness, less matter in motion. The author is best described, i think, as a teacher that learns his first and most important lessons from looking at himself, much of the book is prompted by inner turmoil, cognitive dissonance and his attempts to reconcile his experience and his scientific education. As such it makes the book not really about biology, although there is lots of it, but rather about how this man looks out from inside his head and sees the reflection of his consciousness in the world. And from there tries to explain what he has found in terms of modern molecular biochemistry but finds that this is just the beginning and so much more is left unexplored because modern science is blinded by a materialist paradigm that depreciates consciousness.I think that the book is best read like a detective novel, from the 1st page to the last, with an occasional glance at the end of the chapter to see who-dun-it. The personal nature of the writing makes it difficult just to take a chapter out of context and read it for informational content, although one might be tempted to because of the extensiveness of the science. This would be a mistake because the science is not self contained but rather is being used by the author as an explantory way to unify what often appear to be spiritual issues and questions and finding their potential answer in biology.
For example, chapter 3: the magical membrane. The first paragraph is: "Now that we've looked at the protein assembly machinery of the cell, debunked the notion that the necleus is the brain of the cellular operation, and recognized that crucial role the environment plays in the operation of the cell, we're on to the good stuff-the stuff that can make sense of your life and give your insight into ways of changing it." pg75 This is one of the major themes of the book, the cell is not controlled and run exclusively by the nucleus and it's DNA but rather is a complex interaction of the environment and the cell, mediated by receptors in the membrane. Which is a microcosm of the theme of the book, which appears in the last paragraph of this chapter: "which put the control of our lives not in the genetic roll of the dice at conception, but in our own hands" pg 94 This is consistent with the book's theme that the mind-body division is fundamentally wrong, reflected in the division of physics into Newtonian and Quantum, and biology as fixing machinery versus straightening out mental or even spiritual issues, this is where the idea that the quantum revolution in physics needs to be carried out in modern biology and seeing the importance of energy vs matter.
I've stumbled trying to write this review for weeks. I finished the book the day after i checked it out of the library(it is a good read, the analogy to a mystery is true), but here it sits, the review unfinished weeks later. Why is it so hard to review? What makes it such an odd book?
It is my difficulty in separating the garbage of the new age movement from it's treasure. My problem of differentiating what is good in the book, what is worth pursuing and learning more about, from the general spiritualist, god is in everything pantheism that the author is heading towards (apparently).
I like the science he presents, i appreciate the goals of reducing the reductionism, dematerializing the gross materialism, and spiritualizing the sciences, but i am concerned that the content of his spirituality is very different and in competition with my orthodox conservative Christianity. It is this loggerheads that makes an analysis of the ideas in the book so hard. I am not a pan or a panentheist, God is not part of His creation but wholely other. And to deify creation, to find our consciousness, our imago dei in the physical universe is not the right way to go. But it is a useful thing to see how someone with this author's spiritual sensitivity walk us through his adventures and share with us his journey. This is a good thing and makes the book a high recommendation for me. I'm just afraid that anything i say about what the book is about will really be more about me and my reaction than that of the author, rats.
Biology has missed the crucial contribution of the environment. This is chapter 2, "It's the environment, stupid". As no man is an island, no cell in an organism, no organism in it's lifetime, no community, is an island, separated from the rest of life. The next chapter,"the magical membrane" is his scientific analysis of why DNA is not the king of the cell controlling everything and responsible for all, but he looks at the membrane as the communication center from the cell to it's environment. Here he is probably not only right but a good antidote to the nucleus-centric thinking that dominates cell and molecular biology. The 4th chapter, "the new physics" is a quick analysis of energy and quantum mechanics as a new physics paradigm that basically says something like: energy is all, matter is but energy in a different form. This chapter is the one most like the Tao of Physics and that genre. The next chapter, "biology and belief" makes the analogy of energy to spirit and matter to physical world and tries to drawn a new biology akin to the new physics. IF you can only read a few pages, pick this chapter, it is the key ideas of the book.
Is it true, does our mind control the physics around us? is it true that god is energy and spirit and accessible to the mind of man? how much of the new biology is the old pagan spirituality, the worship of mother earth and the forces of nature? i don't know. but i'm interesting in reading more.
Show Less
LibraryThing member booktsunami
As I come to review this book I am wondering what made by buy it in the first place? Normally, I'm fairly careful about the books I buy and I check the contents, some of the other reviewer comments (and weigh up how much weight I should give to them). But in this case, I'm relieved to report that I
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only paid $2 for this book at some second hand bookstall for charity. It has a sticker on the dust jacket proclaiming it as a "Best Book, 2006 awards...and around the rim of the seal are the words "Best science book". I must check this out further because I can't believe it. It is a most unscientific book. My initial attraction was due to the title. "The Biology of Belief". I have long been interested in the philosophy of values and one of the issues I came up against was the difference between belief and values. Most writers never bothered with trying to define what they meant by "belief"...And Bruce Lipton is no exception. We all think we know what a belief is until one is asked to define it ..and then it becomes a bit more complicated. The "Biology" part of the title looked to me like I was going to learn about the neurochemistry of the brain and how it caused or interacted with beliefs. Perhaps how beliefs could be changed by changing the chemistry of the brain. Alas, I was to be disappointed. Lipton spends a good deal of the first part of the book explaining his personal journey and his eureka moment when he realised that the cell membrane played a large role in biological outcomes. Now this may be true but most of the book relates to Lipton's personal journey and culminates in a sales pitch to embrace PSYCH-K...."making use of left brain/right brain integration techniques effect swift and long lasting changes". We are even referred to a web site for further information. Somewhere along the long journey of Lipton's intellectual development we have morphed from more straightforward descriptions of the cell membrane to Lipton's conversion to a "spiritual scientist". To my mind that is a contradiction in terms. The book certainly did not deliver what the title promised to me. I would not recommend this book. Oh, and by the way, I checked out the publishers, Hay House USA and found that they publish widely across the fields of; "Oracle Cards", "Past Life Regression", "Crystals", "Shamanism" and "Energy Healing"....to name but a few. Now maybe these have their place ...but to my mind they are not leading contenders for peer reviewed science or even for the scientific method. Bottom line.....don't waste your time ...or money...even if you pick it up for $2 at a book sale like I did. Show Less
LibraryThing member GreyhoundLover
Really got into this book. Made me wish I'd gone for a science degree of some sort. Made me want to read more about quantum physics.
LibraryThing member Jotto
Well written book that explains current understanding of cell governance. Author argues that the cell is primarely dependant upon external electro-magnetic fields for moment to moment operation. The nucleus is primarely concerned with re-production. It is the receptor and effector proteins embedded
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in the membrain of a cell that receive and transmit external data to the internal mechanisms of the cell including the protein sleves that control how the DNA functions. Show Less
LibraryThing member hkustlibrarything
Should be an very interesting book - Steve
LibraryThing member DubiousDisciple
Lipton is a cell biologist whose “study of cells turned [him] into a spiritual person.” This is a highly readable science book, defining how beliefs control behavior and gene activity, and consequently the unfolding of our lives. It’s a fun learning tool that doesn’t dig too deeply, with an
Belief truly is biological. One interesting topic that Lipton addresses is the placebo effect. It “is quickly glossed over in medical schools so that students can get to the real tools of modern medicine like drugs and surgery. This is a giant mistake. The placebo affect should be a major topic of study in medical school.” Of course, Lipton is a realist; he realizes placebo pills are a threat to the pharmaceutical industry, as well as the scalpel holders, and Lipton is not one to mince words.
It should be pointed out that this is no dry textbook; it borders in places on metaphysical and holistic speculation. But the book is so darn fun. In this light, do not ignore the epilogue; it’s the best part of the book, where Lipton deals with speculative conclusions regarding our “me-ness” and the power of the mind that transformed him into a bubbly, optimistic believer. His “aha” moment was the realization that every protein in our bodies is a physical/electromagnetic complement to something in the environment … that environment being the universe, or to many, God. As we are inextricably intertwined with the divine, survival of the fittest turns out to mean survival of the most loving.
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uplifting message.Belief truly is biological. One interesting topic that Lipton addresses is the placebo effect. It “is quickly glossed over in medical schools so that students can get to the real tools of modern medicine like drugs and surgery. This is a giant mistake. The placebo affect should be a major topic of study in medical school.” Of course, Lipton is a realist; he realizes placebo pills are a threat to the pharmaceutical industry, as well as the scalpel holders, and Lipton is not one to mince words.
It should be pointed out that this is no dry textbook; it borders in places on metaphysical and holistic speculation. But the book is so darn fun. In this light, do not ignore the epilogue; it’s the best part of the book, where Lipton deals with speculative conclusions regarding our “me-ness” and the power of the mind that transformed him into a bubbly, optimistic believer. His “aha” moment was the realization that every protein in our bodies is a physical/electromagnetic complement to something in the environment … that environment being the universe, or to many, God. As we are inextricably intertwined with the divine, survival of the fittest turns out to mean survival of the most loving.
Show Less
LibraryThing member knightlight777
I'm not sure what to make of this book really. I got it from a bibliography from all things of a book about trading. So I was thinking I would get something on spiritualism or motivation/self improvement. Something along those lines. The book mostly focused on fairly high level biology of cell
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behavior. What was kind of funny is he inferred he did not want to get too technical being a biology professor then proceeded to spend about three-fourths of the book talking about technical biology matters. For me anyway. The tie in from biology to belief was vague. There were nuggets of interesting things he pointed out about learning and being programmed that refuted the hard wired concepts of genetics. At the very conclusion he got into some of the things I was anticipating in the book but also gave what I construed as the typical sermon of new age principles relating to the environment and living in harmony with nature. I can hardly endorse the book due to the far flung nature of the things he gets into but for some it might just be their cup of tea. Show Less
LibraryThing member GlennBell
The author is a cell biologist who noted some often misunderstood functions of the cell membrane including the integral proteins and the role of DNA. He notes that it is the cell membrane that allows for perception of the extra cellular environment. Environmental chemicals and molecules can
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generate signals in the cell that allow reactions to the environment. The DNA is the reproductive blueprints for protein manufacturing. Dr. Lipton then looks at the organism as a whole, which is a collection of cells. He eventually gets to the observation that humans conduct actions based largely on reactive program or reflexes but that higher level cognitive actions can override some of these learned routines. I really liked this book and find the observations logical and powerful. Show Less
Awards
American Book Fest Best Book Award (Winner — Science — 2006)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2005
Physical description
224 p.; 6.5 inches
ISBN
0975991477 / 9780975991473