The Essential Questions
An Interview with Gregg Braden
by Edie Weinstein

“New peer-reviewed scientific discoveries are now telling us a story of our deepest relationships to ourselves and our world around us that is 180 degrees opposed to what we have been led to believe in the past.”

Introduction

New York Times best selling author Gregg Braden is internationally renowned as a pioneer in bridging science, spirituality, and the real world! Following a successful career as a Computer Geologist for Phillips Petroleum during the 1970s energy crisis, he worked as a Senior Computer Systems Designer with Martin Marietta Defense Systems during the last years of the Cold War. In 1991, he became the first Technical Operations Manager for Cisco Systems.

For more than 27 years, Gregg has searched high mountain villages, remote monasteries, and forgotten texts to uncover their timeless secrets. His work is now featured as media specials on the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, ABC, and NBC.

To date, Gregg’s discoveries have led to such paradigm-shattering books as: The God Code, The Divine Matrix, Fractal Time, and his newest, Deep Truth: Igniting the Memory of Our Origin, History, Destiny, and Fate. The Divine Matrix was selected as the source for the made-for-television feature “Entanglement” and is also the textbook for college level courses exploring new discoveries of science and our relationship to the world.

Today Gregg’s work is published in 38 languages and 33 countries and shows us beyond any reasonable doubt that the key to our future lies in the wisdom of our past.

Interview

Edie: Your most recent book is called Deep Truth: Igniting the Memory of Our Origin, History, Destiny, and Fate. That’s quite a mouthful. Where does that title come from and what does that mean to you?

Gregg: I felt passionate about writing this book; it actually was written very quickly, but it took 30 years to do the research. Since our readers are reading this material, they know that this is no ordinary time; certainly in the history of our nation, our world and civilization, and the best minds of our time are telling us we are living in the “time of extremes.” It doesn’t necessarily mean that there are bad things that are happening or even good things for that matter, but big things. We are living in a time of big changes, big shifts, and we are being told we have got to act quickly as these changes are on the horizon. When many people see the change, they call it a crisis and it leads them to think that something is wrong and something is broken. I am watching the greatest minds of our time struggle with multiple, simultaneous crises, whether we are talking about climate change or collapsing economies or energy crises, food crises, health crises. Many different facets of our experience are all lighting up simultaneously and we are being told we have got to act.

My question is, “How can we possibly make the choices we are being asked to make until we understand the deepest truths of our relationships to ourselves, to one another, to the Earth, to the past, and to the way that we think and the way we solve our problems?”

What this book is all about is the 300 years of scientific thinking which has led us to embrace a story of ourselves that is largely one of separation. We have told ourselves historically that we were formed as a random act of nature and that we are separate from our bodies, we are separate from one another, and we are separate from the very Earth that sustains us and gives us life, that civilization is a one-time deal. It began on a primitive level and has evolved to the pinnacle of sophistication that we believe identifies us today, and that nature was based upon this model that Darwin identified as struggle, scarcity, and competition. It is with that world view that we have created this civilization that is now breaking down today. If we look closely, the only things that are breaking are the ones that are no longer sustainable. As I began researching how we can possibly respond to the things we are being asked to respond to, how we can know what policies to enact, what choices to make in our everyday lives, what I began to find is that new discoveries have overturned that 300 years of scientific thinking. New peer-reviewed scientific discoveries are now telling us a story of our deepest relationships to ourselves and our world around us that is 180 degrees opposed to what we have been led to believe in the past. It is a story of connectivity, of unity. It tells us we are not here purely by accident and that there is a deep connection between us and our bodies and a deep interdependence between us and the world around us, that civilization in fact, is cyclic and we are living in what is now known to be the third and probably not the last of these cyclic advanced civilizations that are now being dated back into the last Ice Age, or 13,000 years ago.

The one area of discovery that probably holds the greatest potential for positive impact for giving us a reason to think differently about ourselves and the way we solve our problems, are the discoveries in the life sciences that tell us in scientific terms that nature is based upon a model that is called Cooperation in Mutual Aid, rather than the competition and conflict that we have been led to think about ourselves and one another. People say, “Gregg, Charles Darwin wrote a book in 1859, over 150 years ago and maybe he didn’t get it right, but so what? What difference could it possibly make in this modern high tech, digital world that we live in today?” It’s a really good question and the answer to the question is that, yes, Darwin introduced the ideas of nature and survival of the strongest which is that language that he used that was later interpreted as “survival of the fittest.” Darwin actually said, “survival of the strongest.” It was in the late 1800s and early 1900s when the foundation of the modern world was being put into place, civilization as we know it, the economic system as we know it today, the systems of corporations the way we know them today, the way that nations deal ultimately with disagreements between themselves, all of those principles that are very much a part of our lives were put into place when the world embraced the false assumptions of separation and competition and conflict that were believed to be true at that time. That’s why I think with this book, Deep Truth, it is vital to share this. There is a reluctance and flat out resistance in the main stream to share these discoveries—in main stream media, documentaries, news programs, classrooms, textbooks—for a number of different reasons ranging from economics to ego. They are being asked to solve the problems with the same thinking that led to the problems.

To read the entire interview, please go to www.alternativechoice.net. To contact The Alternative Choice Magazine, call toll free 1-888-559-7787 or visit www.alternativechoice.net.

See the back cover ad of the 19.3 September/October issue of the WHOLifE Journal for details of Gregg Braden’s presentation in Calgary, AB, October 4 and 5, 2013.

Edie Weinstein is a colourfully creative journalist, dynamic transformational speaker, interfaith minister, licensed social worker, BLISS coach radio host (It’s All About Relationships, www.vividlife.me), and the author of The Bliss Mistress Guide To Transforming The Ordinary Into The Extraordinary (www.liveinjoy.org). More about Gregg Braden at www.greggbraden.com.