A well-studied subset of these receptors, called self-receptors or human leukocytic antigens (HLA), are related to the functions of the immune system. If your self-receptors were to be removed, your cells would no longer reflect your identity. These self-receptor-less cells would still be human cells, but without an identity they would simply be generic human cells. Put your personal set of self-receptors back on the cells and they again reflect your identity.

When you donate an organ, the closer your set of self-receptors match the receptors of the person who is to receive the organ, the less aggressive the rejection reaction launched by the recipient's immune system. For example, let's say that a set of 100 different self-receptors on the surface of each cell is used to identify you as an individual. You are in need of an organ graft to survive. When my set of 100 self-receptors is compared to your self-receptors, it turns out that we have only 10 receptors that match. I would not be a great organ donor for you. The very dissimilar nature of our self-receptors reveals that our identities are very different. The vast difference in membrane receptors would mobilize your immune system, shifting it into hyper-drive to eliminate the foreign, i.e., not-self, transplanted cells. You would have a greater chance of success if you could find a donor whose self-receptors more closely match the ones on your cells.

In your search for a better donor, however, you will not find a perfect 100 per cent match. So far scientists have never found two individuals who are biologically the same. However, it is theoretically possible to create universal donor tissues when you remove the cells' self receptors, though scientists have yet to carry out such an experiment. In such an experiment, the cells would lose their identity. These self-receptor-less cells would not be rejected.

While scientists have focused on the nature of these immune-related receptors, it is important to note that it is not the protein receptors, but what activates the receptors that give individuals their identity. Each cell's unique set of identify receptors are located on the membrane's outer surface, where they act as "antennas," downloading complementary environmental signals. These identity receptors read a signal of "self," which does not exist within the cell but comes to it from the external environmental.

Consider the human body a television set. You are the image on the screen. But your image did not come from inside the television. Your identity is an environmental broadcast that was received via an antenna. One day you turn on the TV and the picture tube has blown out. Your first reaction would be, "Oh, #*$?!! The television is dead." But did the image die along with the television set? To answer that question you get another television set, plug it in, turn it on and tune it to the station you were watching before the picture tube blew out. This exercise will demonstrate that the broadcast image is still on the air, even though your first television "died." The death of the television as the receiver in no way killed the identity broadcast that comes from the environment.

In this analogy, the physical television is the equivalent of the cell. The TV's antenna, which downloads the broadcast, represents our full set of identifying receptors and the broadcast represents an environmental signal. Because of our preoccupation with the material Newtonian world, we might at first assume that the cell's protein receptors are the "self." That would be the equivalent of believing that the TV's antenna is the source of the broadcast. The cell's receptors are not the source of its identity, but the vehicle by which the "self" is downloaded from the environment.

When I fully understood this relationship I realized that my identity, my "self," exists in the environment whether my body is here or not. Just as in the TV analogy, if my body dies and in the future a new individual (biological "television set") is born who has the same exact set of identity receptors, that new individual will be downloading "me." I will once again be present in the world. When my physical body dies, the broadcast is still present. My identity is a complex signature contained within the vast information that collectively comprises the environment.

Supporting evidence for my belief that an individual's broadcast is still present even after death comes from transplant patients who report that along with their new organs come behavioral and psychological changes. One conservative, health conscious New Englander, Claire Sylvia, was astonished when she developed a taste for beer, chicken nuggets and motorcycles after her heart-lung transplant. Sylvia talked to the donor's family and found she had the heart of an 18-year old motorcyle enthusiast who loved chicken nuggets and beer. In her book called A Change of Heart, Sylvia outlines her personal transformational experiences, as well as similar experiences of other patients in her transplant support group. [Sylvia 1997] Paul P. Pearsall presents a number of other such stories in his book, The Heart's Code: The True Stories of Organ Transplant Patients. [Pearsall 1998] The accuracy of memories that accompany these transplants is beyond chance or coincidence. One young girl began having nightmares of murder after her heart transplant. Her dreams were so vivid that they led to the capture of the murderer who killed her donor.

One theory about how these new behaviors become implanted into the transplant recipient along with the organ is "cellular memory," i.e. the notion that somehow memories are embedded in cells. You know I have immense respect for the intelligence of single cells, but I have to draw a line here. Yes cells can "remember" that they are muscle cells or liver cells, but there is a limit to their intelligence. I do not believe cells are physically endowed with perception mechanisms that can distinguish and remember a taste for chicken nuggets!

Psychological and behavioral memory does make sense if we realize that the transplanted organs still bare the original identity receptors of the donor and are apparently still downloading that same environmental information. Even though the body of the person who donated the organs is dead, their broadcast is still on. They are, as I realized in my flash of insight while mulling over the mechanics of the cellular membrane - immortal, as I believe we all are.

Cells and organ transplants offer a model not only for immortality but also for reincarnation. Consider the possibility that an embryo in the future displays the same set of identity receptors that I now possess. That embryo will be tuned into my "self." My identity is back but playing through a different body. Sexism and racism become ridiculous as well as immoral when you realize that your receptors could wind up on a white person, a black person, an Asian, or a male or female. Because the environment represents "All That Is" (God) and our self-receptor antennas download only a narrow band of the whole spectrum, we all represent a small part of the whole...a small part of God.

Earth Landers

But let's look a little more closely at how the Mars rovers work. The rovers have antennas ("receptors") that are tuned to receive information broadcasts by a human being in the form of a NASA controller. The Earth-bound controller actually sends information that animates the Mariner on Mars. But the information is not a one-way street. The NASA controller also learns from the lander, because the vehicle transmits information about its Mars experiences back to Earth. The NASA controller interprets the information about the lander's experiences and then applies that new awareness to better navigate the Martian terrain.

You and I are like "Earth landers" who receive information from an environmental controller/Spirit. As we live our lives, the experiences of our world are sent back to that controller, our Spirit. So the character of how you live your life influences the character of your "self." This interaction corresponds to the concept of karma. When we understand it, we must take heed of the life we live on this planet, because the consequences of our life last longer than our bodies. What we do during our lifetime can come back to haunt us, or a future version of ourselves.

In the end, these cellular insights serve to emphasize the wisdom of spiritual teachers throughout the ages. Each of us is a spirit in material form. A powerful image for this spiritual truth is the way light interacts with a prism.

When a beam of white light goes through a prism, the prism's crystalline structure diffracts the exiting light so that it appears as a rainbow spectrum. Each color, though a component of the white light, is seen separately because of its unique frequency. If you reverse this process by projecting a rainbow spectrum through the crystal, the individual frequencies will recombine, forming a beam of white light. Think of each human being's identity as an individual color frequency within the rainbow spectrum. If we arbitrarily eliminate a specific frequency, a color, because we don't "like it," and then try to put the remaining frequencies back through the prism, the exiting beam will no longer be white light. By definition, white light is composed of all of the frequencies.

Many spiritual people anticipate the return of White Light to the planet. They imagine that it will come in the form of a unique individual like Buddha, Jesus or Muhammad. However, from my newly acquired spirituality, I see that White Light will only return to the planet when every human being recognizes every other human being as an individual frequency of the White Light. As long as we keep eliminating or devaluing other human beings we have decided we don't like, i.e. destroying frequencies of the spectrum, we will not be able to experience the White Light. Our job is to protect and nurture each human frequency so that the White Light can return.

As is Above...As is Below
I've explained why I am now a spiritual scientist. Now I'd like to explain why I am an optimist. The story of evolution is, I believe, a story of repeating patterns. We are at a crisis point, but the planet has been here before. Evolution has been punctuated with upheavals, which virtually wiped out existing species, including the best-known casualties, the dinosaurs. Those upheavals were directly linked to environmental catastrophes just as today's crisis is. As the human population increases, we are competing for space with the other organisms with whom we share the planet. But the good news is that similar pressures in the past have brought into being a new way of living, and will do so again. We are concluding one evolutionary cycle and preparing to embark upon another. As this cycle comes to an end, people are becoming understandably apprehensive and alarmed by the failures in the structures that support civilization. I believe however that the "dinosaurs" that are currently raping Nature will become extinct. The survivors will be those who realize that our thoughtless ways are destructive to the planet and to us.

How can I be so sure? My certitude comes from my study of fractal geometry. Here's a definition of geometry, which will explain why it is important for studying the structure of our biosphere. Geometry is a mathematical assessment of "the way the different parts of something fit together in relation to each other." Until 1975, the only geometry available for study was Euclidean, which was summarized in the thirteen-volume ancient Greek text, The Elements of Euclid, written around 300 B.C. For spatially oriented students, Euclidian geometry is easy to understand because it deals with structures like cubes and spheres and cones that can be mapped on graph paper.

However, Euclidian geometry does not apply to Nature. For example, you cannot map a tree, a cloud or a mountain using the mathematical formulas of this geometry. In nature, most organic and inorganic structures display more irregular and chaotic-appearing patterns. These natural images can only be created by using the recently discovered mathematics called fractal geometry. French mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot launched the field of fractal mathematics and geometry in 1975. Like quantum physics, fractal (fractional) geometry forces us to consider those irregular patterns, a quirkier world of curvy shapes and objects with more than three dimensions.

The mathematics of fractals is amazingly simple because you need only one equation, using only simple multiplication and addition. The same equation is then repeated ad infinitum. For example, the "Mandelbrot set" is based on the simple formula of taking a number, multiplying it by itself and then adding the original number. The result of that equation is then used as the input of the subsequent equation; the result of that equation is then used as the input for the next equation and so on. The challenge is that even though each equation follows the same formula, these equations must be repeated millions of times to actually visualize a fractal pattern. The manual labor and time needed to complete millions of equations prevented early mathematicians from recognizing the value of fractal geometry. With the advent of powerful computers Mandelbrot was able to define this new math.

Inherent in the geometry of fractals is the creation of ever-repeating, "self-similar" patterns nested within one another. You can get a rough idea of the repeating shapes by picturing the eternally popular toy, hand-painted Russian nesting dolls. Each smaller structure is a miniature, but not necessarily an exact version of the larger form. Fractal geometry emphasizes the relationship between the patterns in a whole structure and the patterns seen in parts of a structure. For example, the pattern of twigs on a branch resembles the pattern of limbs branching off the trunk. The pattern of a major river looks like the patterns of its smaller tributaries. In the human lung, the fractal pattern of branching along the bronchus repeats in the smaller bronchioles. The arterial and venous blood vessels and the peripheral nervous system also display similar repeating patterns.

Fractal Evolution - A Theory We Can Live With
Are the repetitive images observed in Nature simply coincidence? I believe the answer is definitely "no." To explain why I believe fractal geometry defines the structure of life, let's revisit two points.

First, the story of evolution is, as I've emphasized many times in this book, the story of ascension to higher awareness. Second, in our study of the membrane, we defined the receptor-effector protein complex (IMPs) as the fundamental unit of awareness/intelligence. Consequently, the more receptor-effector proteins (the olives in our bread and butter sandwich model) an organism possesses, the more awareness it can have and the higher it is on the evolutionary ladder.

However, there are physical restrictions for increasing the number of receptor-effector proteins that can be packed into the cell's membrane. The cell membrane's thickness measures 7-8 nanometers, the diameter of its phospholipid bilayer. The average diameter of the receptor-effector "awareness" proteins is approximately the same as the phospholipids in which they are embedded. Because the membrane's thickness is so tightly defined, you can't cram in lots of IMPs by stacking them on top of one another. You're stuck with a one-protein-thick layer. Consequently, the only option for increasing the number of awareness proteins is to increase the surface area of the membrane.

Let's go back to our membrane "sandwich" model. More olives mean more awareness - the more olives you can layer in the sandwich, the smarter the sandwich. Which has more intelligence capacity, a slice of cocktail rye or a large slab of sour dough? The answer is simple: the larger the surface area of the bread, the greater the number of olives that can fit into the sandwich. Relating this analogy to biological awareness, the more membrane surface area the cell has, the more protein "olives" it can manage. Evolution, the expansion of awareness, can then be physically defined by the increase of membrane surface area. Mathematical studies have found that fractal geometry is the best way to get the most surface area (membrane) within a three-dimensional space (cell). Therefore, evolution becomes a fractal affair. Repeating patterns in nature are a necessity, not a coincidence, of "fractal" evolution.

My point is not to get caught up in the mathematical details of the modeling. There are repetitive fractal patterns in nature and in evolution as well. The strikingly beautiful, computer-generated pictures that illustrate fractal patterns should remind us that, despite our modern angst and the seeming chaos of our world, there is order in Nature and there is nothing truly new under the sun. Evolution's repetitive, fractal patterns allow us to predict that humans will figure out how to expand their consciousness in order to climb another rung of the evolutionary ladder. The exciting, esoteric world of fractal geometry provides a mathematical model that suggests that the "arbitrariness, planlessness, randomness, and accident" that Mayr wrote about is an outmoded concept. In fact, I believe it is an idea that does not serve humanity and should, as rapidly as possible, go the way of the pre-Copernican Earth-centered Universe.

Once we realize that there are repeating, ordered patterns in nature and evolution, the lives of cells, which inspired this book and the changes in my life, become even more instructive. For billions of years, cellular living systems have been carrying out an effective peace plan that enables them to enhance their survival as well as the survival of the other organisms in the biosphere. Imagine a population of trillions of individuals living under one roof in a state of perpetual happiness. Such a community exists - it is called the healthy human body. Clearly cellular communities work better than human communities - there are no left-out, "homeless" cells in our bodies. Unless of course, our cellular communities are in profound disharmony causing some cells to withdraw from cooperating with the community. Cancers essentially represent homeless, jobless cells that are living off of the other cells in the community.

If humans were to model the lifestyle displayed by healthy communities of cells, our societies and our planet would be more peaceful and vital. Creating such a peaceful community is a challenge because every person perceives the world differently. So essentially, there are 6 billion human versions of reality on this planet, each perceiving its own truth. As the population grows, they are bumping up against each other.

Cells faced a similar challenge in early evolution as described in Chapter 1, but the point bears repeating. Shortly after the earth was formed, single-celled organisms rapidly evolved. Thousands of variations of unicellular bacteria, algae, yeast and protozoa, each with varying levels of awareness, appeared over the next 3.5 billion years. It is probable that like us, those single-celled organisms began to multiply seemingly out of control and to over-populate their environment. They began to bump up against each other and wonder, "Will there be enough for me?" It must have been scary for them, too. With that new, enforced closeness and the consequent change in their environment, they searched for an effective response to their pressures. Those pressures led to a new and glorious era in evolution, in which single cells joined together in altruistic multicellular communities. An end result was humans, at or near the top of the evolutionary ladder.

Similarly, I believe that the stresses of the increasing human population will be responsible for pushing us up another rung on the evolutionary ladder. We will, I believe, come together in a global community. The members of that enlightened community will recognize that we are made in the image of our environment, i.e. that we are Divine and that we have to operate, not in a survival of the fittest manner but in a way that supports everyone and everything on this planet.

Survival of the Most Loving

You may agree that Rumi's words on the power of love are noble ones, but you may not believe that they fit these troubled times, when survival of the fittest may seem more appropriate. Isn't Darwin right that violence is at the core of life? Isn't violence the way of the natural world? What about all those documentaries that show animals stalking animals, animals snaring animals, animals killing animals? Don't humans possess an inborn inclination to violence? The logic goes: Animals are violent, humans are animals, and therefore humans are violent.

No! Humans are not "stuck" with an innate, viciously competitive nature any more than we are stuck with genes that make us sick or make us violent. Chimps, who are the closest to humans genetically, offer evidence that violence is not a necessary part of our biology. One species of chimps, the bonobos, create peaceful communities with co-dominant males and females in charge. Unlike other chimps, the community of bonobos operates not with a violence-driven ethic but an ethic that can be described as "make love, not war." When the chimps in this society become agitated, they don't engage in bloody fights; they diffuse their divisive energy by having sex.

Recent research by Stanford University biologists Robert M. Sapolsky and Lisa J. Share has found that even wild baboons, among the most aggressive animals on this planet, are not genetically mandated to be violent. [Sapolsky and Share 2004] In one well-studied baboon troop, the aggressive males died out from contaminated meat they foraged from a tourist garbage pit. In the wake of their deaths the social structure of the troop was reinvented. Research suggests that females helped steer the remaining, less aggressive males into more cooperative behaviors, which led to a uniquely peaceful community. In an editorial in Public Library of Science Biology where the Stanford research was published, chimp researcher, Frans B.M. de Waal of Emory University, wrote: "...even the fiercest primates do not forever need to stay this way." [deWaal 2004]

In addition, no matter how many National Geographic specials you've watched, there is no dog-eat-dog imperative for humans. We are at the top of the predator/prey food chain. Our survival is dependent on eating organisms lower in the hierarchy, but we are not subject to being eaten by organisms higher in the chain. Without natural predators, humans are spared from becoming "prey" and from all the violence that the term implies.

That does not mean that humans are outside the laws of nature, of course, for eventually, we too shall be eaten. We are mortal and following our demise, one would hope after a long and violence-free life, our corporeal remains will be consumed and recycled back to the environment. Like a snake turning on itself, humans at the top of the food chain will eventually be devoured by organisms that are the lowest in the chain, the bacteria.

But before that snake turns, we may not live a violence-free life. Despite our lofty position on the food chain, we are our own worst enemy. More than any other animal, we turn on ourselves. Lower-level animals sometimes turn on themselves, but most aggressive encounters among members of the same species are limited to threatening postures, sounds and scents, not death. And in social populations other than humans, the primary cause of intraspecies violence is either the acquisition of air, water and food required for survival, or the selection of mates for propagation.

In contrast, the violence among humans that is directly linked to securing sustenance or in the process of mate selection is quite minimal. Human violence is more often associated with the acquisition of material possessions beyond what is necessary for sustenance or the distribution and purchase of drugs to escape the nightmare world we have created; or child and spousal abuse passed down generation after generation. Perhaps the most widespread and insidious form of human violence is ideological control. Throughout history, religious movements and governments have repeatedly prodded their constituents into aggression and violence to deal with dissenters and non-believers.

Most human violence is neither necessary nor is it an inherent, genetic, "animal" survival skill. We have the ability, and I believe an evolutionary mandate, to stop violence. The best way to stop it is to realize, as I emphasized in the last chapter of this book, that we are spiritual beings who need love as much as we need food. But we won't get to the next evolutionary step by just thinking about it just as we can't change our children's and our lives simply by reading books. Join communities of like-minded people who are working toward advancing human civilization by realizing that Survival of the Most Loving is the only ethic that will ensure not only a healthy personal life but also a healthy planet.

Remember those under-prepared, under-appreciated Caribbean students who banded together, like the cells they studied in their histology course to form a community of successful students? Use them as role models and you will help ensure a Hollywood ending not just for individuals mired in self-sabotaging beliefs, but also for this planet. Use the intelligence of cells to propel humanity one more rung up the evolutionary ladder where the most loving do more than just survive, they thrive.

 

References:
DeWaal, F. B. M. (2004). "Peace Lessons from an Unlikely Source." Public Library of Science - Biology 2(4): 0434-0436.

Mayr, E. (1976). Evolution and the Diversity of Life: Selected Essays. Cambridge, Harvard University Press.

Pearsall, P. (1998). The Heart's Code: Tapping the Wisdom and Power of Our Heart Energy. New York, Random House.

Sapolsky, R. M. and L. J. Share (2004). "A Pacific Culture among Wild Baboons: Its Emergence and Transmission." Public Library of Science - Biology 2(4): 0534-0541.

Sylvia, C. (1997). A Change of Heart: A Memoir. Boston, Little, Brown and Company.

 

This Epilogue is excerpted from The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles by Bruce Lipton, Ph.D. [www.brucelipton.com], published by Mountain of Love Productions, Inc. in cooperation with Elite Books. Publication date: May, 2005.

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