Secrets of Your Cells: Discovering Your Body's Inner Intelligence (23 page)

We each create a field of energy, regardless of how we name it. All living things generate an electromagnetic field around them. When I was first studying qigong, our teacher took us out to a grove of trees overlooking the Pacific Ocean. He told us to stand before a tree and use our hands to gather qi or sense energy from different parts of the tree. I was surprised to feel differences. He also put produce in a paper bag and had us feel the field of energy of the hidden mystery substance inside. Here was another lesson for this original skeptic: it was unmistakable—garlic and ginger had “hot” energy while an apple had “cool” energy. Was this the morphogenetic field or qi at work? I cannot say. But this kind of experience was proof to me that everything has an energy signature. When we are receptive, we may even notice that it’s there.

When I pray in the redwoods, I feel a sense of peace that I don’t feel in my house. The trees, the forest, the ocean, our gardens, and our pets all share energy with us. We only have to take the time to be with them to know and embrace this gift.

Sacred Energy

We end this chapter where it began: asking about the nature of the energy of life. Where does it come from? Scientists argue about molecules and electromagnetic fields; theologians argue about soul and the God force. What is inarguable is that our trillions of cells are tiny cauldrons of life-giving energy until the day we die.

Perhaps a way to consider life’s energy is to examine what happens at the moment of death. If you have witnessed the death of a loved one as I have, you will have indelible recollections of what death looked like, perhaps what it sounded like, and how you felt. And you will have impressions—maybe unexpected, and probably beyond articulation—of what has taken place. One minute your dear friend is alive, and the next moment he releases his life force, exhaling it away. The light that has shone through his eyes goes out. His body, his cells and molecules, remain, but his vitality—the sacred energy that has animated him—has traveled on. The instant of death is both a sad and sacred moment. Is this life force our soul?

In their quest to understand what it is that has left a person after the light retreats, people have gone to the extent of measuring the weight of an individual before and after death. They found no difference, of course. The infinitesimal spirit, the powerful energy of life, is weightless, and it is visible only in how it animates a person. My little friend Alvaro’s sister had profound questions for me. “Where will he go when he dies?” she wanted to know. I couldn’t even answer any such questions for myself: what
is
the energetic force that has animated his little body, and where
will
it go? Perhaps, looking again at E = mc
²
, we can speculate that the life energy is transformed into light.

We may never find scientific answers to these questions, and that’s OK. What we do have is the option, now, while we live, to view the thrumming in our cells as divine energy—the sacred spark that the mystic rabbis speak of as God’s gift to each of us. The way we use and invest this energy while we are here on earth allows our spirits to live on: in the
love we have given and shared and in the legacies we leave behind. The ways in which we have spent our brief journey here, loving and caring for others and our planet, ensure that traces of our divine energy will live on long after our physical bodies are gone.

In touching and animating our world, we return a host of favors. Dying stars give us our elemental substance; trees and plants gift us with breath and food; friends and family nurture our hearts and our spirits. In receiving these miracles without question, our sacred cells vibrate with energy and intelligence, and we are touched by the divine.

Energy is indeed present in all living things. Living organisms draw it from their environment. . . . They accumulate it in their own bodies and use it to power their movements and behavior. When they die, the energy . . . in their bodies is released to continue its way in other forms. The flow of energy . . . is part of the cosmic flux, and the energy within you will flow on after you are dead and gone, taking endless new forms.

— RUPERT SHELDRAKE
The Rebirth of Nature

Chapter 6

Purpose–Create

The blueprints, detailed instructions, and job orders for building you from scratch would fill about 1,000 encyclopedia volumes if written in English. Yet every cell in your body has a set of these encyclopedias.

— CARL SAGAN
The Demon-Haunted World

I
n this chapter, we will go deeper into the skills our cells possess as we discuss the role our genes play in cellular life. We will also discover that though our genes and DNA have become modern cultural icons, they may also mirror ancient metaphysical information still accessed today.

Before either the membrane or cytoskeleton was considered to be the key to cellular intelligence, our genes—a scripture of coded information—held that prominent position. But genes are passive; they can do nothing unless acted on by something else—molecules, the cytoskeleton, the environment, mind, or movement. Remember from
chapter 4
that a cell’s genetic expression determines whether the cell will reproduce or mature, manufacturing the markings and makings of a fully developed cell. Though a cell carries genetic abilities for both, it can only do one thing at a time: reproduce
or
mature. And of course, the final option, death, is also written in the codes of our genes. Hidden in plain sight are the architectural clues in DNA that reveal secret codes and the mysteries of life and death (see
figure 6.1
).

Figure 6.1
Photomicrograph of DNA from calf thymus

I have been intrigued with DNA for decades from scientific, artistic, and metaphysical perspectives. As a photographer, my earliest “art” images through the microscope captured the beauty of spiraling molecules of DNA. As a research scientist, I explored whether we could change how genes express themselves within human cells. Having seen the devastating effects of chemotherapy and radiation in people with cancer, I was eager to test the possibility of another trail to treatment: rendering cancer cells normal. Instead of killing them—along with some healthy cells—could we program them differently? And could we do this with simple, benign natural substances?

There are basically two kinds of genes that we know of now: those that carry information about structure and those that regulate cell growth. In the case of cancer, I wanted to see if we could find a way to make the regulator genes switch programs. In other words, could cancer
genes be turned off while healthy genes are turned back on? My colleagues told me to give up the idea of such “way-out holistic research.” Yet I received major funding from the National Cancer Institute to test this approach. This was a very pleasant surprise, since my approach to investigating and treating cancer this way was not very common at the time, in the early 1980s.

My research showed that some human leukemia cells (malignant white blood cells) will indeed acquire traits of normal cells when treated with benign chemicals and hormones.
¹
I was excited to learn from these discoveries that yes, we could change genetic expression in the test tube, yet I was acutely aware that much more extensive research was needed. But continuing to explore this line of research would entail using radioactivity, something I did not want to be involved with. Instead, I chose to leave basic scientific research and—to even my own surprise—began exploring whether ancient healing strategies labeled “unconventional” might help people with cancer. My goal at the time was to uncover the scientific underpinnings of ancient methods and apply these findings at the cellular level to the problem of cancer.

Then, as I began to work with
people
with cancer instead of their cells in the lab, my focus shifted yet again. I wanted to find ways to enhance a person’s quality of life
whether or not
cancer cells changed their malignant course. How could we make life better even if disease persisted? Meanwhile, other scientists carried on their work at the cellular level, and as you travel through this chapter you will learn that they have indeed begun to effect genetic changes in malignant cells.

A Requirement for Life

You may recall that the requirements for life include the ability to reproduce. What facilitates that process is held in the nucleus of our cells, and like all cellular mechanisms, reproduction involves a coordinated effort that engages other parts of the cell. Yes, hidden in our genes, within the nucleus, are the instructions needed for cell duplication; yet for cells to
reproduce, growth-regulating genes must first receive signals from the coordinated activities of the cell membrane and the cytoskeleton, which tell them, “It’s time to express yourself!” Remember that genes are simply encoded instructions that require a “reader” of the code to act on them.

Architectural Design: The Language of Life

In the “heart” of each sacred cell—its nucleus—are the inherited instructions for making the entire organism, packaged into genes. DNA is the amazing molecule that encodes our genetic inheritance. About thirty years ago, scientists set out to decipher and catalog all the human genes through what is called the Human Genome Project.
²
(A genome contains the entire genetic code for an organism.) It is estimated that the human genome contains twenty-five to thirty thousand genes. The genome of a mouse has twenty-five thousand genes, a roundworm, nineteen thousand genes, and the single-celled
E. coli
bacteria’s genome contains about five thousand genes.

DEFINITIONS

Cell nucleus:
A membrane-enclosed region within the cell that is the sanctuary of genetic information.

Genome:
Represents the entire genetic repertoire of a species.

Gene:
The basic unit of genetic information.

Chromosomes:
Genes and regulatory proteins are packaged in chromosomes. Human cells contain forty-six chromosomes.

DNA:
The long, threadlike molecule that encodes the biological information of the genes.

The genetic code:
Consists of a sequence of three-letter “words” written one after another along the DNA strand.

Genes are stretches of DNA that contain instructions for all the body’s proteins, both structural and regulator proteins. Encoded by DNA, proteins are large, complex molecules made up of smaller subunits called amino acids. They perform most cellular activities and comprise the bulk of our cellular structures. Our hair is made of protein as are the enzymes in our saliva that break down those crackers we eat into useable molecules for our cells. Proteins are the regulators and messengers, identity markers and receptors. Without protein, life would not exist. The human body contains at least a hundred thousand different proteins.