Author, lecturer and guide to sacred sites throughout the world, Gregg Braden has been featured on radio and television programs nationwide.

Following the publication of his books, Awakening to Zero Point: The Collective Initiation and Walking Between the Worlds: The Science of Compassion, he has been a popular guest and keynote speaker for conferences, expos and media specials regarding ancient wisdom, planetary shifts and the role of personal relationships.

Born June 28, 1954, Braden was always attracted to the mysteries of life. "I had a propensity for tearing everything apart to find out how it worked." On his fifth birthday, he received an electric train set. When alone a few days later, he stripped an electrical wire down to copper with a scissors and stuck both ends into an electrical socket. "I honestly don't know what I was thinking, and yet I remember doing it very methodically."

Within two weeks, a second near-death experience occurred at the neighborhood pool.

"I remember going to the deep end of the pool and slipping in, expecting to sink to the bottom. Then I started floating upward until I stopped before the surface of the water. I felt no fear or concern about breathing. I just completely let go."

In both cases, Braden was visited by a presence who offered the choice to return to his body and live, or translate into a different existence. In both, Braden chose to come back.

"Of all the experiences in my life, those two were the most pivotal in relation to what I am doing now. I experienced other worldliness, which was very different from the hard core sciences that believe if you can't see it or touch it, it isn't real. Rather than having me believe in one OR the other, my life was set up very early to integrate the two."

"Plus I am a Cancerian. I'm not into astrology much, but it's true for me that the experiential world of my feelings is very important. As a Cancerian, I am to know my self and my world through feelings. On the other hand, my path has been through the hard sciences and in the corporate world which denies internal experience. So ultimately, to personally survive, I had to find a way to reconcile my feeling world with what the doing world was showing me."

As a child, Braden lived his two worlds. In the experiential world, he had tremendous feelings for nature and the creatures of nature. He would venture off and return with various critters to care for.

"At one time there were so many boxes in the garage that my parents couldn't fit in the car."

He also studied ancient civilizations, especially Egypt and China. And he was intrigued by Earth's geologic history from his study of dinosaurs. Later he became a geologist who noticed evidence in the Earth's crust that corroborates the cataclysmic changes and predictions he read about in ancient texts.

"The geologic record indicates that the magnetic fields of Earth have shifted previously, at least 14 times in the last 4.5 million years. Additional evidence suggest a 180 degree polar shift occurred about 13,200 years ago."

This was a time when it is known there was a sudden melting of the polar caps and tremendous flooding on the planet. It also was a time when humans inhabited the Earth. This led him back to studying ancient teachings.

Braden's study included ancient biblical scriptures, some of which are in India and Tibet and only recently available. He also has studied the philosophical teachings and sacred sites of indigenous peoples in the United States, Mexico, Peru and Bolivia. From these, Gregg offers fascinating vital information.

According to Braden, in 325 AD the Emperor Constantine created "the Council of Nice" to take all of the existing biblical materials and put them together into one text:

"He saw these documents as redundant and too mystical to make sense to people at the time. There was no 'bible', just a lose assemblage of papyrus reed texts, scrolls, sheep skin documents and tablets. Twenty-five books were taken out and an additional 20 supporting reference documents to scholars were removed. Then the Council condensed and reorganized the rest".

 

"The documents that remained and became the original Bible were poorly translated and rearranged in the 12th century. So what we have now in the Bible essentially is a Readers Digest, condensed version of a much broader text. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with the Bible--I'm suggesting that it is incomplete, at best. You can hold the Bible side by side with these ancient texts and see exact wording and whole sections missing."

"The Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, were the precursors to these texts: the Essene Gospels of Peace-Books 1-4, recently discovered Gnostic texts like the lost gospel of the book Q, lost books of the Bible, the Ethiopian manuscript of the Book of Enoch, recent translations directly from the Aramaic of Nazarene texts that had been lost for centuries."

If the message from these texts could be condensed into four key tenets, Braden indicates the first two would be:

• 1) Of the many people on Earth, there is only one of us here. There is a single consciousness expressing through many bodies.

• 2) This single consciousness is moving very rapidly toward a convergence point of Human and Earth history that the ancients call the Shift of the Ages. This point of convergence Braden devotes to his first book: Awakening to Zero Point: The Collective Initiation.

"The nature of The Shift has been questioned, pondered, postulated, hypothesized and worshipped for thousands of years. The consequences of this Shift transcend the boundaries of religion, science and mysticism."

Braden describes the shift using the analogy of water. Water changes states into liquid, gas or solid, as a function of temperature and pressure. Braden claims that we are changing states as a function of a lowered overall magnetic field and elevated frequency of the Earth.

"It is to these frequencies that each cell within our bodies is attempting to 'map' itself."

"In Biblical terms, the act of consciously vibrating from one state-space into another is referred to as Resurrection. We may define Resurrection as our allowing the mind, body, spirit complex to harmoniously shift to a higher expression of itself rather than give into the urge to separate as death. The living example of the universal Christ demonstrated that, through the conscious use of choice and free will, man in his totality is greater than the fragments of his fear or perceived limitations. Our migration into complete resonance with this new body of information, Resurrection followed by Ascension, is the goal of The Shift."

"The human aspect of The Shift may be consciously facilitated, even accelerated, through the use of choice, free will and emotion associated with the ancient wisdom of the human mind, body, spirit relationship. This is the purpose of The Shift, the ultimate balance and healing of Earth and all life forms that are capable of sustaining the energy of that healing. This is The Shift to a new way of expression for the human form, through the lens of higher frequency; a Christed energy. This is Awakening to Zero Point: The Collective Initiation."

Braden claims the ancients knew that an environment of higher frequencies and lowered magnetics enhances the possibility of ascension and they therefore simulated these conditions in many of the ancient temples for initiates. What Braden emphasizes is that in our times we all are initiates and that a global initiation is taking place. As true initiates, we all have achieved a certain mastery to be here. Our task, however, "must be achieved, using the tools of choice and free will applied to the processes of life."

"Earth will no longer support inharmonic patterns of fear, hate, the polarity of judgment, or the belief systems of an obsolete paradigm. Earth will support one, highly evolved body of information, that may be thought of as the Christed frequencies. This was the gift of Christ, to anchor the information of this consciousness, and all of its possibilities, firmly into the conscious matrix of humankind, through the expression of life in our presence."

"Through his life and Resurrection, Christ's experience was a metaphor for our lives. Through his execution, he modeled for all of humanity a process that each will go through individually, as well as collectively. In the closing years of this cycle, every life form existing upon the Earth will have the opportunity to experience the dimensional translation as Earth shift's from a third to a fourth density experience; a Zero Point awareness and the choice of Resurrection over death."

Many people today report they have always felt they were to accomplish something of special significance in their life. "Some describe this feeling as a sense that they have been in training all of their lives, preparing for 'something' really big." According to Braden, becoming Christed is it, it is this we all are meant to accomplish. Braden describes our "global initiation" as being a "global Christing" and that the challenges of our daily lives provide all of the opportunities of this initiation into our Christing.

"One of the greatest, and possibly least understood, messages that Christ Jesus anchored by living it in our presence, was that of demonstrating love through compassionate allowing: loving others enough to allow the latitude of their experience. To the degree that any aspect of another's experience is judged, to that degree do we remain in the polarity of separation and the charge of that judgment."

"The keys to Compassion, then, lie in our ability to embrace all experience as part of the One without judgment. It is not an invitation to callousness, void of feeling and emotion. Quite the opposite, it is through the very act of allowing ourselves feeling that we are guided toward those portions of ourselves seeking the greatest healing. Feelings and emotions are our tools from which to access the reasons underlying the intensity of our emotion"

Braden asserts that day to day life is our initiation.

"From my perspective, we are capable of only spiritual activity. Life is a spiritual endeavor. As varied and diverse as each path may seem, without exception, I believe that each life, every death, all of the hurt, all of the joy and every experience in between [are spiritual events]."

And within our daily lives, our relationships are most important, in our journey of initiation.

"Our relationships are not separate from our spiritual evolution. Our relationships are our spiritual evolution. Your relationships have become your temples! These temples are your stepping stones to the highest possible levels of human mastery. You are an initiate of the highest order, immersed in a world of logic and emotion to know yourself in all ways."

In his second book, Walking Between the Worlds: The Science of Compassion, he describes the "Seven Mirrors of Relationship" - fascinating information he gleaned from several ancient texts. Used by therapists and educators around the world, the book shows how we are to utilize negative experiences and emotions as our allies in discovering and releasing underlying fear-based beliefs. Each of the seven mirrors is based on the premise that we draw to us what is inside. "Our world is a mirror of processes from within."

With the constant external mirroring of our internal workings, we have the opportunity to shift what is inside and better create what we desire on the "outside". And Braden emphasizes the word constant. Braden asserts that in understanding our thoughts-feelings-emotions as cause and the world "around" us as effect, we must utilize negative experiences and emotions as our allies, as opportunities to release any underlying fear-based beliefs. We thus come into resonance with compassion and our creative potential as spiritual beings.

According to Braden, we all are here to embody, in our bodies and lives, the highest knowing available to us by masterfully aligning our lower emotions with our higher thoughts. Integration occurs in our hearts. Braden distinguishes lower emotions from heart feelings in that the latter reflect integration of lower emotions with higher consciousness. Once done, we truly are fearless and our essence shines through, which is unconditional love, joy and compassion. And Braden gives a whole technology (including the Seven Mirrors) to do this.

What is particularly exciting about Braden's work evolves from the last two of the four key tenets gleaned from the ancient texts.

• 3) Through our lifetimes, in the presence of one another, we remember an ancient science that gracefully carries us through the challenges of life - the science of compassion.

• 4) We have today, and have always had, direct access to the creative forces of our bodies and our outer world, through an almost lost technology called prayer.

The fact that we draw to us what is within our consciousness (as discussed in the Seven Mirrors) suggests we are very powerful beings indeed, and that we have a profound effect on each other and the world. Braden claims 50% of the Essene prophesies that were removed from what later became the Western Bible were prophesies of hope and joy during our time in history; "another path of unprecedented peace and cooperation." This positive creation comes from within, from each of us emanating high heart feelings.

"Quantum physicists have openly discussed that at any given moment in our history - even this moment - there are simultaneous possibilities playing out. Parallel possibilities exist in the same time and space. And scientists say we literally tune into specific possibilities without even knowing it through the choices that we make - in each moment, in each day."

From reading the ancients texts, Braden realized there is a certain kind of prayer that is very effective in realizing outcomes. To get clarity on this most promising prospect, he decided to venture into Tibet. Since Tibet was encroached upon in recent history, he reasoned that any remaining documents would be the least distorted.

Thus, in April of last year, Braden and 21 others went on a 22-day journey through Tibet to 13 monasteries and two nunneries and had "a series of beautiful, synchronistic, heartfelt experiences. We found in libraries there, Buddhist and pre-Christian history documenting this mode of prayer. We also were invited to participate with the monks and nuns as they embraced this mode of prayer." After exploring, reading, asking questions and deciphering much interpretation, Braden understood the key to this prayer which the monks and nuns use to heal people.

"It is based on emotion. Science documented in 1985 and '86 the relationship between emotion and the DNA of our bodies. While it is important to change our thoughts, thinking is simply incomplete until the component of emotion has been added. In our workshop we show a video from a hospital in Beijing, China, where this prayer heals cancerous tumors inside a woman's body. On the video, you see a real-time ultrasound image of the cancerous tumor dissolving in less than three minutes. The woman is fully awake and fully conscious."

According to Braden, when thoughts, feelings and emotions are in complete harmony, we directly access the creative healing forces. What he emphasizes is that rather than praying for something, we must pray with our thoughts focused on the feeling of the positive outcome already present. This mode of prayer is more like a celebration of something, especially peace and harmony. In this way thoughts can easily be in complete resonance with feelings and emotions, at their highest.

"Quantum physicists would say that rather than a 'healing' taking place, what happened with the woman in the video was that a new outcome was chosen."

Last year, Braden teamed up with others, most notably James Twyman, singer song-writer, author of Emissary of Light and international peace troubadour who sings 12 prayers of peace from the 12 major religions to leaders around the world. Together they have performed peace concerts, some of which were broadcast over the internet in real-time and involved countless people from over 80 countries.

"In Japan during The Great Experiment we did in April last year, there were two and three-hundred people gathered around a single monitor in some places."

"I can't prove that our celebrations of peace caused certain things to happen but I can tell you that during those broadcasts, unprecedented peace agreements were made in the parts of the world on which we were focused. There are studies showing the effect of prayer on crime rates. Global prayer is an opportunity to choose, and bring into focus peace and life. In doing so, we release the focus of catastrophic destruction, loss of life and warfare. In November during one of our Internet prayer broadcasts, Clinton called back fighter planes headed for Iraq. War can't exist when millions are focused on peace."

"We don't pray for certain things to happen for a leader or country, we simply emanate and celebrate peace. Peace is a state of being that allows for the greatest expressions of compassion, love, creativity and life. It is within the presence of peace that we have the opportunity to realize our greatest possibilities. Peace is an awareness, a consciousness, rather than something we do. It's something we become."

With lowered magnetics and elevated frequencies of the Earth, these are the times, Braden asserts, when our thoughts and emotions manifest with a short enough lag time to witness and understand ourselves as cause. Awareness of our current conditions by the ancients may be the basis of both the apocalyptic and utopian prophecies. In any case, according to Braden's work, these are very important times to come into resonance with peace.

"Our world is giving birth to a new Earth, Land masses, weather patterns, ice caps and magnetic shifts bear witness to the changes. If our outer world does, in fact, mirror our inner awareness, then we have the evidence of a new consciousness. We are both pioneers and midwives. Together we are birthing a new era of unity and global cooperation, unprecedented in recorded history. The labor has already begun as we live the days of prophecy."

Braden's passion about his work with prayer can be understood in terms of his life-long attempt to integrate his feeling, experiential world with the scientific.

"Prayer in it's pure form transcends religion, it transcends mysticism and transcends science as we know it today. Maybe prayer is the best of what the three have to offer. It is science, religion and mysticism married together into a technology that we have yet to name. Prayer is an inner technology."

Thus Braden has developed an extensive inner technology of compassion (see his first two books!) and now, with the help of others and ancient materials, he offers an inner technology of prayer. At minimum, the two offer tremendous opportunity to enhance our personal relationships and our lives. Ultimately, they prepare us for what he calls "The Shift of the Ages" and the realization of a new, loving and cooperative reality ancients long ago predicted.