Candace Pert, pharmacologist, on “God as a Field…”

http://www.candacepert.com/blog/blog.htmSunday, December 10, 2006

God as a Field Interfacing the Spiritual World and Our Own Minds

In 2004 I appeared in the film What the Bleep Do We Know and spoke as a serious scientist lending my research background to the notion that we create our own reality. In 2006 I wrote Everything You Need to Know to Feel Go(o)d with my lifelong friend Nancy Marriott and in it I explored the further reaches of science and spirituality, another Bleep theme.

Most provocative of recent developments has been my “coming out” as a scientist to embrace what I experience as God. Some increasingly vocal hardcore atheists, who fail to make a very important distinction between spirituality and religion, are claiming their way of thinking should be the cornerstone of modern medicine and biology. True, the religion vs. science battle has waged for the past three centuries, but in my new book, I talk about a “new spirituality” that has nothing to do with the Church, but is grounded in more mystical roots. The God I embrace is within me and within us all, manifesting as our oneness, our love and our power. I dare to say that there is a bio-molecular basis for these qualities and experiences, and that when we are in these states of consciousness, we feel good.

Some misread my title because they didn’t see the play on “good/God.” If people want simply to feel good and not embrace their spirituality, they should go to other books. I’m more interested in the bigger picture that brings together human emotion, physical reality and a co-created universe. The heart of science is feminine. Many who can’t embrace a partnership with God are either looking through a dominantly male perspective, wanting objectivity, rationality and separation to rule the day or have rejected religion because of its association with family-induced emotional scarring (all potentially reversible!) in childhood and teen years. God is not rational, something to be proven beyond a doubt. God is closer to a feeling — we sense a field that is mysterious, theoretical and undetectable by the scientific method I still passionately embrace. And we can use this field of infinite possibilities or God (as I prefer) to make our dreams come true in a dance totally consistant with the laws of science!

Dr. Candace Pert is best known for her opiate receptor, endorphin and peptide research. Her work is based on how the bodymind functions as a single psychosomatic network of information molecules which control our health and physiology.

Her new book Everything You Need to Know to Feel Go(o)d is a journey into how mind, body, and spirit are inseparable. We are hard-wired for bliss, which is both physical and divine. She also authored Molecules of Emotion: the Science Behind Mindbody Medicine and recorded the CD Psychosomatic Wellness: Healing Your Bodymind with guided imagery and music to optimize health.

Candace is currently Scientific Director of RAPID Pharmaceuticals where she is developing Peptide T, a therapeutic for treatment of HIV. She is featured in the movie What the Bleep Do We Know!? and Bill Moyer’s TV program Healing and the Mind. She is a former Research Professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine and Section Chief at the National Institute of Mental Health.