Gregg Braden and the Isaiah Scroll
"In the traditions of the ancients, they made no distinction between the worlds of science and spirituality," said Braden, "and I've never really made that distinction either. For me, it was an extremely spiritual experience working in the industry from a technical perspective, seeing what was happening in the world around me. My passion, however, was rather than simply measure and document those changes, to offer solutions that could bring the wisdom of ancient traditions to bear upon the conditions of our world today." Recently, Braden's path has led him to document, write upon, and share through interactive group intensives the ancient Mid-Eastern Essene text, the Isaiah Scroll. This culture, he says, holds the key to a common lineage that ties such major belief systems as Buddhism, Vedic, ancient Egyptian, Mayan, Native North American, and Christianity together. It hints at a lost mode of prayer that all of us have the power to tap into, a prayer focused through our feelings that has the potential to transform reality. The proof, says Braden, lies in the Isaiah Scroll, one of a number of Dead Sea scrolls discovered in 1946. Braden's most recent book, The Isaiah Effect, focuses on the pervasive influence of its authors, the Essenes. Before persecution and dispersion at the hands of the Roman Empire during the first century, the Essenes were a people highly in tune with nature, and of the belief that we held a power through our prayers to alter our individual and collective realities from seemingly predestined courses. These core beliefs were not unlike present-day Native North American, Tibetan, or South American beliefs, and that's not surprising given that the Essenes, according to Braden, were the originators of these belief systems. Braden theorizes that following their exodus from the Mid-Eastern area, elements of the Essene people carried with them the beliefs, as well as copies of the very texts written by ancient pre-biblical authors, into the highlands of Tibet and the temples of Egypt. Through time, their belief system migrated with the people, splintering out and forming the basis of many of the indigenous tribes of Africa and North and South America. The basis of Braden's Essene theory lies in the 2,500-year-old Isaiah Scroll. The Isaiah Scroll was discovered in one of 11 remote caves near Qumran on the Dead Sea of Israel along with approximately 870 other ancient scrolls compiled by the Essenes. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that it was the only one of the Qumran writings that was found completely intact, and it was written in humankind's oldest "continually" used language: ancient Hebrew. This is important in that, unlike the writings of the Bible, which were compiled by various authors over hundreds of years and translated and dissected many times over, the Isaiah texts are completely unaltered. Thus, there is little speculation as to the meaning of Isaiah's passages. In The Isaiah Effect, Braden documents his many studies and journeys to the aforementioned indigenous tribes and societies, and explains the beyond-chance similarities between texts in such places as Tibet and South America with the Isaiah Scroll. He also emphasizes the importance of our feelings in prayer and everyday life because, as the Isaiah Scroll indicates, they are mirrored in the world around us. "In its completeness, I believe that this one scroll may become a template to understand many other traditions," Braden emphasized. "The concepts are the same in the different traditions. However, they're fragmented in the way they're offered through so many other texts and manuscripts and oral transmissions." Early in 2000, Braden took a ninety-day sojourn from his normal activities, during which time he was focused as an independent researcher of the Isaiah text, which was originally translated by an eight-man team led by Emanuel Tov in the early '90s. Since then, he has presented his findings in his seminars, multimedia presentations during which he re-translates portions of the scroll with the audience and demonstrates some of its theories with modern biomedical technology. One of the most commonly asked questions during these seminars is, "Why haven't we heard of this information before?" According to Braden, it appears new because it was edited from the texts in the Western world during the fourth century. This was before the time of our Bible as we now know it. At that time, the Bible was a loose collection of scrolls, manuscripts, documents, and oral traditions. In A.D. 325, Emperor Constantine of the Holy Roman Empire convened the council of Nicaea. This council's agenda was centered on taking the loose collection of information gathered over hundreds and thousands of years and compiling it into an all-encompassing, easily understandable text. Twenty-five books and twenty supporting documents were taken out of the open literature altogether, and the texts that were left were condensed and rearranged into what we now know as the Western biblical text. "As useful as it is, what we are now beginning to understand is that it is incomplete," Braden said. "So our goal in bringing this information to light is to take a document that has already served us very well and fill in the missing pieces, making it more complete so that it may serve us even better with the great challenges that many scientists believe lie ahead of us." The core of the Isaiah Scroll and Braden's recent work is a lost mode of prayer based on feeling rather than wanting. In other words, the prayer must come from a place of feeling the fruition of the prayer rather than simply uttering the words in an emotionless fashion, or asking for its fruition while your feelings inside say you are not worthy. In The Isaiah Effect, one particularly powerful passage describes a trek by Braden into the sun-drenched hills of eastern New Mexico during the third year of a drought. His friend David, a Native American, had asked him to come along, without divulging the intent of the journey. Upon arriving at an ancient medicine wheel, David divulged his intent to "pray rain." Removing his shoes, David silently walked into the circle of concentric stones and placed his feet into the parched earth. He then walked in circles, eyes closed, never actually stepping on the stones. Suddenly he stopped, raised his hands to a praying position for a moment, and then said, "Let's go. Our work is finished here." That afternoon, the rain started, then came in torrents. When Braden later asked David what he had done at the circle, David explained, "I began to have the feeling of what rain felt like…I imagined that I was in a plaza at our village, barefoot in the rain. I felt the feeling of wet earth oozing between my toes. I smelled the smell of rain on the straw-and-mud walls of our village after the storms." Then he simply allowed his prayer to float out into the cosmos. "Our prayer becomes a prayer of thanks for the opportunity to choose which creation we experience," said David. "Through our thanks, we honor all possibilities and bring the ones we choose into this world." As previously noted, this "lost" mode of prayer is one that was never really lost, but was simply omitted from the Western texts when the Isaiah Scroll was overlooked. However, Braden's journeys have verified his personal belief that the scroll was never really lost, but rather migrated away from the Middle East and into the cultures of Tibet, North America and South America. His evidence lies in the near-identical writings of these varied peoples, and additional factual evidence that a present-day Essene temple lies within the jungles of Peru! Bringing Braden's path full circle is recent evidence in the field of quantum science, which seems to verify the validity of this mode of prayer. "In recent times in New Thought and New Age communities, one of the big buzz concepts is that we create our reality," Braden said. "Well, quantum science says that's close but not quite accurate. Quantum science now suspects that every outcome you could ever imagine for any given event already exists in the ethers of creation in dormant or in sleeping states. We don't create anything at all. Ancient traditions during Isaiah's time…said precisely the same thing in the language of his day." Gregg Braden will give his workshop "The Isaiah Effect: Decoding the Lost Science of Prayer and Prophecy" November 5, 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. at the Nile Country Club. For tickets, $89 through 10/30 or $99 thereafter, call (800) 992-8499, write Park Productions, PO Box 55266, Portland, OR 97238, or visit East West Bookshop in Seattle. Cosponsored by The New Times. |
For Gregg Braden, it has been a long and winding road. From its origins in computer systems design and earth sciences, this road has ironically led Braden to the dusty treks of Egypt and the mountain highlands of Tibet in search of a common tie that binds the spiritual traditions of the earth. For most, a life transition from the sterile boardrooms of corporate America to the exotic backlands of ancient Egypt would seem to be inexplicable. For Braden, it has been a step of logical proportions.