The lost science

Gregg Braden asked the taxi driver his name. He asked him how his day was going. Then he smiled, closed his eyes and thanked him in advance for the

ride. Braden lives his life according to a philosophy he has gleaned from sources as diverse as the

Dead Sea Scrolls and quantum physics. The premise is that, rather than what we do, it is what we think and feel that determines everything from the quality of a taxi ride to the future of our planet.

In Chicago to view the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Field Museum and to promote his new book, ´´The Isaiah Effect - Decoding the lost science of prayer and prophecy,'' Braden said his research led him to a lost form of prayer. He believes this prayer form is key to averting doomsday scenarios of war, disease and tragedy that prophets through the ages have predicted for the early years of the 21st century. ´´We now know that predictions offer isolated possibilities. We also know that we choose our possibilities with each breath that we take, in each moment of every day,'' said.

Part of Braden's research focused on the works of the prophet Isaiah, the most complete texts among the 2,500-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in the 1940s by Bedouin tribesmen in the Qumran area caves above the Dead Sea. Braden noticed the Isaiah prophecies and others, including those of 16th century prophet Nostradamus and the 20th century's Edgar Cacey, often describe alternate, gentler, more positive outcomes along with their doomsday forecasts.

The prayer form he found in these ancient texts was lost to the West in the 4th century when holy scriptures were edited into what became the Bible, he said, adding that the form means allowing oneself to embrace the thoughts, feelings and emotions one would experience in the presence of a desired outcome.

For example, peace is not created by praying for peace. Rather, it occurs when enough people align their thoughts, feelings and emotions to those they would experience in the presence of peace. He said it is this inner state that creates a mirroring state of peace in the external world. The 46-year-old former geologist and computer systems designer, who once worked on the MX missile and the Magellan space probe, said the principles of quantum physics lend credence to the power of this lost prayer form. ´´Quantum physics suggests that by redirecting our focus - where we place our attention - we bring a new course of events into focus, while at the same time releasing an existing course of events that may no longer serve us,'' he said, pointing to research that showed that under the right conditions two atoms occupy exactly the same space at the same time: ´´If two of the basic building blocks of our world may coexist at the same instant, then the doorway has been opened for many atoms, resulting in many outcomes, to do the same.''

Braden also referred to research that showed a correlation between a scientist's feelings about the outcome of an experiment and the actual outcome. And he cited Russian quantum biologist Vladimir Poponin's research in the early 1990s that showed DNA affected light particle patterns in a vacuum not only when it was physically present but also after it was removed. Poponin wrote that those results left him ´´forced to accept the working hypothesis that some new field structure is being excited.'' It is this energy field structure that Braden argued is affected by prayer and could explain correlations between mass prayers and certain events such as an acceleration of the peace process in Northern Ireland and an unusual change of course by an asteroid away from a collision with the Earth in 1996.

In his book, he wrote that studies in 24 U.S. cities in 1972 and in Jerusalem in 1983 showed that even less than 1 percent of a population engaging in unified forms of peaceful prayer correlated with reduced rates of crime, accidents and suicides in a community. Braden is not alone with his views of the power of prayer. A study published in an October 1999 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine concluded that coronary care patients who were prayed for, unbeknownst to them, fared better. The ´´lost form of prayer'' Braden addressed in his book is similar to a technique being practiced today at the Huaxia Zhineng Qigong Clinic and Training Centre, also known as ´´the medicine-less hospital,'' in the city of Qinhuangdao, China.

In a case documented on video, a woman's 7.6 centimetres bladder cancer tumour was shown via ultrasound quivering, then vanishing, as three men using a centuries-old healing practice chanted what loosely translated into English as ´´already gone.'' ´´The key to this story and the healing of the woman's cancer is that the group's focus was on the feeling of the outcome,'' said Braden.

Raised in Independence, Missouri, outside any one religion, Braden says the real power of prayer is not in the words spoken but in the inner state created by the act of praying.

It is that feeling or emotional state that holds the power to affect every aspect of what we experience in our lives and on our planet: ´´We have direct access to the forces of our world and we have come full circle. This is the language to move mountains.''