Actually, the title I wanted was this:
Is the new frontier in cell biology the missing link between the amazing possible multiple realities of quantum physics and our fragmented Newtonian lives?
But that was too long.
The subtitle question: 
And if so, can we laypeople understand the implications of cell biology AND quantum physics, and use the concepts of wave/particle duality and ourselves as a community of cells to improve our lives and the plight of the planet?
If so, it might just save us from a) big Pharma, b) excessive Western self-compartmentalizing, c) excessive consumerism, and d) early illness and death. And I’m not exaggerating.
And you are also going to be curious about how the nuns and monks fit into all this.
Well, it may be a long story, one I am just starting to wrap my own mind around, despite dabbling around the edges of the wave nature of consciousness issues for several years now.
Part of what interested me was that pre-eminent thinkers I have long admired seem to be converging on the theme that science’s newest thinking is leading inexorably to implications about consciousness, spirit, and the essence of the human experience. People like Gary Zukav (American Book Award winner for Science), Bruce Lipton (Stanford and UW cell biology professor and pioneer in cell cloning), and Danah Zohar (MIT trained physicist) , each with respected intellectual training, are turning away from doing the key science in their fields and applying the implications to areas as diverse as the soul and human suffering, health and well-being, and organizational change. What the???? Have they all lost their intelligentsia cred and turned it over for new-age altruism (the polite explanation) or greed (the alternative explanation)? Or is there something so compelling about the new sciences’ implications that these thinkers abandoned their old careers for something so challenging that it makes me cringe a bit when thinking about it?
Here are some key points. What we know about the observable world, the large world, follows Newtonian physics principles, those of simple physical science. But almost nothing in the quantum world, the small world, fits with the predictions or concepts of Newtonian physics. Time is potentially meaningless. Things can occupy multiple spaces simultaneously. The phenomenon of observations is inextricably linked with the observed. Non-locality occurs. Energy is both a particle and a wave. Taken to the logical extreme, intention influences the very nature of reality.
Beyond the implictions of the quantum sciences are the frontiers of cognitive neuroscience. In studying the brain, scientists have found unexplained phenomenon like the 40 Hz vibration of cells that might be the secret to mind, beyond the physiology of the neurons and neurotransmitters and chemical reactions in the brain. Studies of elderly nuns and monks, those who lived a meditative and active life of purpose, found that they had evidenced no decline in apparent clarity and capabilities, despite often showing gross signs of brain deterioration that should have rendered them amnesiac and incapable of functioning. The diaries of nuns showed that not only did they retain their apparent ability to function that was obvious to others, but they retained complete cognitive clarity, and this did not fit at all with the physiological insults of aging. Was there something about the meditative life that saved them? Monks have the same findings: longer than average, healthier than average lives, along with chanting. The practice of chanting may actually re-tune the body’s vibration in an optimizing way. Perhaps these practitioners of purposeful lives, whose lives from the outside seem full of ritual and sameness, actually experience something that maintains their openness and vitality? Somehow, despite declines in their matter, they were able to survive/grow–how?
That is all consistent with some of the new implications of findings in cell biology. Biology studies how life is sustained. Living organisms are either in growth mode, or in protection mode. In growth mode, the organisms (or their consituent cellular membranes) are permeable. In threat/protection mode, organisms shut down all but the critically necessary functions. The metaphor is apt. When we either as a cell, a community of cells, or a sentient being perceive stressors as threats, we become rigid, less permeable, and less interactive with the environment. When we are relaxed, not perceiving severe threats, we are permeable, or mentally open.
Despite the race to unravel the human genome, our genes do not control our destiny. Physiology alone does not control function. Rather, the environment of the genes influences their functioning profoundly, and thus MATTER does not define us. Rather, the ENERGY aspects of our bodies defines us as living beings. Are we growing or protecting? A just-dead body contains the same matter as a live one, but the matter is no longer moving, or expressing energy.
Most of Western medicine aims at influencing molecules, proteins, or even genes, which can be understood as quantum particles, or matter But the interactions of cells, the signals they send to each other, function like quantum waves, and are influenced by the environment. This is true due to the nature of the cellular membranes. Cell membranes, the skin of the cell, have many thousands of switches that exist to respond to environmental signals, which are largely electric–read: energy.
Here’s where Bruce Lipton may be going out on a limb. Our perceptions and intentions are part of the environment, create energy signals, and thus, could be used to change our energy and thus even modify the matter (such as the protein sequences of certain genes) that is us. While there may be physical insults like toxins that harm us (and in the food most of us eat, surely there are!), Lipton urges us to consider the possibility that energy signals may be equally important. Our epidemics of obesity and poor health may be resulting in part from our perception of constant stress. Brain signals, thoughts, are interpreted in the body as energy.
We can thus focus consciousness, and intention, to move from threat to growth mode. The focus on restoring balance of energies is common in Eastern medicine with its 5000 year tradition. Lipton argues that if we accept that belief matters as much as Matter, we can extend our survival without the use of medications with side effects. We can use techniques that increase consciousness (such as meditative practice) to increase our awareness of our identity as a community of 50 trillion living cells and also of our interaction with the environment. This awareness has been described by meditative practitioners as leading to enlightenment, or a profound awareness of the interconnection of all life and energy in the universe.
OK, we’re getting far out here (what good will it do to become aware of my interconection to a distant star system?) All of these writers, Zukav, Zohar, and Lipton, are led to the conclusion that the next steps in human evolution will be increased consciousness, spirituality, culminating in altruistic, non-consumeristic, communal behavior that will save ourselves and the planet. A big leap from the quantum particle, or the cell membrane, but so fascinating to imagine that I can’t stop thinking about it. The implications for psychology are enormous, but I’ll have to deal with those in another post.
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The birthday boy, age 8, with a dessert almost as big as his head!
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