Beyond Fear: A Conversation with Bruce Lipton on Love, Stress, and the Power to Reprogram Your Life

Hasan Sonsuz Çeliktaş: Welcome, Bruce. We’ve been reading all your books and following your studies. Let me say, 20 years ago, when I attempted to learn about spiritual knowledge, people said it’s worthless, it is meaningless. But with your work and that of other experts who combine spiritualism with science, we know today what’s going on in our bodies and lives. I’d like to thank you for that.

Bruce Lipton: I thank you a lot. Listen! I’m a student. I learned it myself. I’m a student like anybody else here. When I learned this information, I changed my life. I changed it to live not just as a human but also as a spiritual human. This gave me a lot of power. It takes away fear.

People fear death. If you can really see that the spirit exists and you don’t die, it takes away the fear from your life. You live in a different way, because you aren’t afraid like “I’m going to get hurt, I’m going to die.” That’s okay, because I’m coming back again and again to this planet.

When people live without fear, their lives are much happier and healthier, because fear is the biggest problem in health. When we’re afraid, the chemistry from the brain is released into the body. So, the picture of fear in your head causes certain chemicals to go through your body. If you’re scared, you can feel it in your body. There are chemicals coming to your body, and these chemicals control your biology. When fear comes and goes, it actually causes illness in your body.

So, this is the biggest problem that people have. We call it “stress.” Stress means something is in your way; something is stopping you, so you cannot go where you want to go. When you are stressed, the chemicals in the brain are called stress hormones. Stress hormones shut down the immune system that protects you inside. The more you are afraid on the outside, the more you are open to sickness and disease.

The reason is this: Let’s say a tiger is chasing you. You need energy to run away, and if you’re using energy in your body, you may not have enough energy to run away from the tiger. The chemicals, the stress chemicals, shut down all the things that you don’t need while you are running away from the tiger. You don’t need the immune system. You want all the energy for your arms and legs to run. When you’re stressed, the chemicals shut down growth in the body. You don’t need to grow when you’re running, and you don’t need the immune system if you’re running.

But in the original days of a long time ago, you only had stress when running away from a tiger. In today’s world, stress is everywhere, all day long. The body was not designed to stay stressed. It was just for running away from a tiger now and then. Every day, we have stress…

It’s everywhere, all over the world, right now. Health is the opposite of stress. When you have stress, you lose your health. In our world, we have to learn how not to be stressed.

Hasan Sonsuz Çeliktaş: What do you do when you are scared but there is nothing to be afraid of? I may still have these chemicals. What do you suggest?

Bruce Lipton: The whole idea is that it’s your mind creating fear. We’re sitting here, with no problems, but if I think and say, “Oh! In an hour, I have to go to do something stressful in my work.” So I’m sitting here and already thinking about stress. What we have to learn is let go of stress. It sounds easy but it needs practice. We have to say, “Look! I’m in charge. I’m in control.” You have to talk to yourself, listen to your mind. Most of the words you hear are “be afraid,” “watch out,” and “be careful.” These words give you stress.

If you have no fear, you say, “I don’t care. I will do my job. If it does not work, I have a family, I have friends, I have a community. I don’t care because my life as a human is more about being close to people, having a community, and being in love. This is more important than anything else.” But what do we do? We say, “My job is more important than my life.” You pick the wrong thing.

First you have to believe in yourself, and if you believe in yourself, you have more power. If you don’t believe in yourself, you’re afraid. Everything is scary. To me, the first thing was that I didn’t believe in spirituality as a scientist, but when I saw how the cells work, I saw my identity, who I was. This is like a TV broadcast. It’s out there. I’m like a television cell. So, I realized I’m not here. I’m the broadcast, and that gives you freedom, because it says you cannot die. You cannot die because you are not this [indicates his body]. You are the broadcast.

If you let go of the fear of death, that’s the biggest fear on this planet. If you can walk and say I’m not afraid, guess what? Nothing can bother you. If the biggest fear in your whole life is death, and you say I don’t have this fear, you now have freedom.

Hasan Sonsuz Çeliktaş: What about if there is a really scary situation. Let’s say someone is pointing a gun at me. Normally, we have few options. We fight, we flee, or we freeze. Is there a fourth option? How can we respond to someone with a gun? I start to feel fear.

Bruce Lipton: What you have to do is this: Yes, you told me I could fight, I could flee, or I could freeze, and you say what the next option is? Next one is as I told you: Try to talk to the person’s heart because inside, the brain may be crazy, but the heart is always true. If you can touch somebody’s heart, the heart overrules the brain. We know the brain goes out of the window when love comes along. No matter if the brain is crazy, if the brain has anger, if the brain is violent, if you can touch the heart, you can change a person.

If you cannot touch the heart, and you’re in such a situation, you just have to let go because fighting will not help you at all. If he has a gun and I don’t, as you said, I could either take a chance in taking it. If the heart doesn’t get touched, you will most likely try to grab the gun. If you don’t, it’s the end anyway. The idea is that if you’re afraid, the other person can see you’re afraid. When a person is strong and the other is afraid, the one who is strong says, “I’m strong. I can control him.” If you’re not afraid, he can’t control you.

Hasan Sonsuz Çeliktaş: I understand the point. You say love. Your last book The Honeymoon Effect is about relationships. I know that a relationship is the second problem after fear.

Bruce Lipton: Yes, you’re right. Relationships come from the heart. Unfortunately, we have a belief program. We learn things when we grow up. We see how life works when we are babies. We’re watching and watching, and we figure it out. I know how it works. Then, you fall in love. First, it touches your heart. Love is beautiful. Love is like heaven on earth. That’s what it is.

But if you start thinking, then your behavior is different. That behavior, from the thinking mind, is not your real behavior. It’s the behavior you learned while growing up. So, it’s not important who you are in the heart but here in mind. Love starts from the heart, but after some days, we start using our minds. And then the heart is not important anymore.

Hasan Sonsuz Çeliktaş: We try to control love.

Bruce Lipton: Yes. You have no control at first. Then you try to control love. You squeeze it like a neck, and when you squeeze love, it dies.

Hasan Sonsuz Çeliktaş: Can you tell us more about your book The Honeymoon Effect?

Bruce Lipton: The truth is that for 50 years, I was no good at love. I had a family, then I got divorced from like lots of people. My relationships were not good. Then I realized I was controlling my relationship with my mind. But where did I learn how to have a relationship? I watched my mother; I watched my father. So, my mind does not have my wishes in it. My mind has “Oh! How my dad did it. How my mom did it.” My behavior is not mine. If it is not coming from the heart but from the mind, my behavior is not mine. My behavior is from watching and watching my mother and my father, so I became them. You’re just like your mother—you’re just like your father, because the program came from them.

So, do you want to have your love or your parents’ love? If you want to have your love, you have to let this program go. Just follow your heart. Your heart always leads you to love. But the moment that you put the head in the way, it is the programmed behavior that you have. It is not yours. It is what you have learned. If you had bad teachers, if your mother and father didn’t know how to love, if they didn’t have a good relationship, then what was your tip? What did you learn? You’ll make the same mistakes. That’s why people are just like their parents. A boy is like the father, and a girl is like the mother. I don’t want to be like my dad. I don’t want to be like my mum.

So, stop using your mind. What do you feel in your heart? Don’t ask your head. If you ask your head, you will just get the program. If you ask your heart, you will get the real one. This is the best one. We think with our head, but we love with our heart.

Hasan Sonsuz Çeliktaş: How can we change the program?

Bruce Lipton: We have to understand there are two parts to the mind: The conscious mind and subconscious mind. Sub means below, so when I’m using my subconscious mind, I’m not thinking. It’s a program. It’s like a program below. It’s like a tape. You’re not thinking. Push the button, play the program: It’s not thinking. People think, “Oh! I’m controlling my life.” No! You’re controlled by the program. You just don’t see it because the program is in the subconscious mind.

Why is this important? Because we think we’re running our life with our wishes and desires. That is the conscious mind. But no! Science says 95% of your life is a program. If you have a bad program, you play it 95% of the time. But you don’t see it. Why? Because it plays when you don’t pay attention.

If you want to change it, well, the conscious mind which is connected to your spirit, is who you are. The conscious mind is the creative mind. It can change by just thinking. You say, “Oh! I want to do something different,” and then the conscious mind can change. The subconscious mind is like a recorder. It records your behavior. Every time you push the button, it plays the same behavior.

Well! How do you change this? I said you cannot change by talking to it. A lot of people say I talk to myself. I say, “No, don’t do this!” It’s the subconscious mind, and there is nobody inside. It’s like a machine, just like a CD player. Every time you push play, it plays the same song. Talk to the CD player. Can you say, “CD player, play something different?” The CD player plays nothing different. Why? Because it’s a machine. There is nobody in there. The subconscious mind is a machine. So, if you talk to yourself, you talk to a machine. I said it’s a big mistake. Why? There is nobody inside to listen to you.

If you want to change, you should understand how to push the record button. There is a record button to change the program. You have to learn how to push the record button and then you can change the program. If you want to change your mind, you have to change the way the subconscious learns.

The conscious mind learns, and as I said, it’s creative. You can say, “Bruce, this is a new story.” Then I say, “Oh! Learn it.” My conscious mind then learns the new story. But my subconscious does not learn in this way. My conscious mind can learn, but my subconscious stays the same. This is the biggest problem because people read self-help books, they go to lectures, they watch videos. The conscious mind, the creative one, says, “Yeah! That’s good. I like that.” So, they finish the book, and they go out in life. The conscious mind learns the new story, but it only works 5% of the time. So, 95% of the time, you’re using the other mind. That didn’t change from reading the book. That doesn’t change from going to a lecture. That’s not how it learns. One mind is smart, but the other is just a recorder. Record and play back, record and play…

The biggest problem is that we have a smart conscious mind, and 5% can come from this smart mind. The other 95% comes from the program you’ve got. Where does the program come from? Your mother, your father, your family, your community. I have a smart conscious mind but the program? That isn’t my own. I learned it. Unfortunately, as I said, science shows that 95% is coming from this program. What’s wrong? I didn’t put the program in there. It’s not my belief. It’s what they told me.

If you want to change, then you have to understand the way the subconscious mind learns. It’s different than the conscious mind. With the conscious mind, you read a book and learn. The subconscious mind learns in three ways. One, with hypnosis. The child, to the age of 7, operates with hypnosis in the brain. The child learns everything from the mother and father, recording what it sees like a video camera. All it does is watch and learn. So, the subconscious mind doesn’t have my program in it. It has my teacher’s program.

If you want to change your mind, hypnosis is the way. Sometimes people use headphones at night when they go to bed. If they play a tape, a new belief, a new program, a new way of living and listen while sleeping, the program doesn’t go to the conscious mind—it goes to the subconscious mind. So, every night, I can reprogram the subconscious mind by playing a tape with headphones on. During sleep, the subconscious mind is listening to the tape.

Hasan Sonsuz Çeliktaş: So, you say that using headphones at night is a useful way.

Bruce Lipton: Absolutely, because when you go to sleep, look! First, I’m paying attention you’re here and then all of a sudden, I’m not here. But my subconscious mind is still awake. So, if my conscious goes to sleep and I put on the headphones, my conscious mind is not listening. My subconscious mind is listening and programming itself. That’s the first way.

The second one is habit practice. The hypnosis recording only works up to age seven. After age seven, you still can make a new program, but you do it in a different way. You practice, you repeat, and you get a habit. How did you learn the alphabet? How many times did you have to start with A before you got to Z? Every day, you say your ABCs. Every day, you learn some new letters. You repeat it, you repeat it, and one day you go from A to Z and say, “I’ve got it. I don’t need to repeat it again.” Or, you don’t know how to drive a car. But you get in a car and practice and practice, and guess what? One day you don’t even think about driving a car. It’s so automatic. When you’re in the car, you don’t think about the details. I’m in the car, I go to the store…you don’t think about driving the car because it becomes a habit. How do you get a habit? You practice, you repeat it, like a behavior. The more you repeat, the more you learn. It’s not doing just once. I have to practice it. After a short time, I’ve repeated so much that the brain remembers. I don’t have to learn it anymore, because it’s in the program.

Hypnosis and habit practice takes a long time, but there is a faster way. It’s called energy psychology. It’s a new way. On my website, I have a list of all these. You can make a program change in ten minutes. If you do it the other ways, it could take 20-30 days to get results. Energy psychology is what we call super learning. It’s learning fast, very fast. Maybe you have seen or heard about people reading a book in minutes. You say, “Oh my! How can they do that?” It’s super learning. If you use super learning, you can learn a new behavior in minutes. Energy psychology is a bunch of different ways for engaging super learning.

A belief may be troubling your life. Let’s say I don’t have a good relationship. My program says my relationship is bad. You put on a tape at night and listen for 10, 20, or 30 days. With the tape, the program will be changed. Practice can also take 20 to 30 days, but with this new energy psychology, I can help you put in a new program in just ten minutes. I can change your life in ten minutes. It’s a special process. This is new, and this is necessary. We don’t have a lot of time to invest in making a change, so this new energy psychology is what we need.

The world changes fast, and we’re not doing well. Not just in Turkey, not just in Greece—the USA is also not doing well. We have the same problems. We have a very rich population of 1%, but the very poor population is 99%. It’s the same all over the world. Don’t think my country is bad, because every country I go to has the same thing. I go to England, and they say the same thing. I go to Italy, and they say the same thing. I come to the USA, and it’s the same thing. We have problems. Where are the problems? It’s “thinking” because we don’t know who we are. We believe we are victims. I want a beautiful life and look! My life is not beautiful. It’s not me. I want a beautiful life. Who is giving you this shitty life? If you say someone else is, then you have a problem, because you’re blaming your life on them. You don’t see that you are the one responsible.

My book, The Honeymoon Effect, shows us that we’re creating our lives. As I said, 95% is the subconscious mind below the conscious. You do behavior, but you don’t see it, although other people see it. Sometimes you see your behavior, and realize, “Oh! I’m like my mother.” But it’s happening all the time. It means you’re not living your life. You are living the life of the program.

You know, it’s very important. The idea of being programmed or being controlled by a program is not new. In the 1600s, 400 years ago, the Jesuits said, “Give me a child until age seven, and I will show you the man of the future.” What’s that mean? You give me seven years to program a child through hypnosis, and the child will become the program. Whatever you put in those first seven years determines the life of the child. Okay, so it’s not a new idea. But the point is that we’ve already known that we’ve been programmed. We’re not running our lives. We’re running a program, just like a computer. I didn’t put the program in, so I don’t control the program. But we know that we have the program.

If we want to change the program, there are three ways: hypnosis, habit practice, and energy psychology. Those are the things to push the record button, so I can change the program. I can put in a new program that helps me. It doesn’t make me a slave. I put in a program of what I want, my wishes. I want my wishes in the program. When it plays, automatically, it creates my wishes. Right now, I’m creating somebody else’s behavior. What’s the power? The power is you know you have a program. You’re playing the program. You are the one who can go there [indicates his head] and change the program. If you do that, you are the master of life, not the victim…

I had to learn this myself. I said for 50 years that I was bad at relationships. I changed the program. I put in the wishes, what I wanted in my relationship. I want love, I want happiness, I want a honeymoon. For 20 years, I’m in a relationship that is a honeymoon every day. Why? Because even if I’m not thinking, it’s automatic. My automatic program is to be in love. I don’t have to think about it because I’m in love…

Hasan Sonsuz Çeliktaş: Thank you, Bruce!

Bruce Lipton: It’s very important for me to be here. People feel they are in trouble. People see the world is under control. They don’t have their control because the program didn’t give them control. If you understand this, you can change the program. When you change the program, you become the master of the program, not the victim. If everybody knows this, it becomes very good. When people take over control, they can fall in love. If everybody fell in love, the planet would become heaven. That’s my message.

Don’t get caught up by the subconscious program. This is a program. You can change this program. When you change it, you become the master, and you are powerful. You can create a life of total love. That’s my message. It’s not just an idea. I put in my program, and all my life changed. My life is completely different. This is where we have to go. We have to create a Heaven on Earth. That’s what we all want to have.

Hasan Sonsuz Çeliktaş: Bruce, thank you for accepting our invitation for this interview. We’ve learned some great things. You shared some magnificent information with us.

Bruce Lipton: It’s my pleasure, and I thank you, because I want to give this message to everyone. And you’ve given me the chance to do that. The whole idea is this: If we want to change the world, we have to teach the new learning. Don’t forget! If you change your program, you are not the victim anymore.