A systems view of biological health

Section 2: Theory

33 : Not just biology

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Cognitive consciousness interleaves with cellular and organic consciousness.

So far I have (for the most part) focussed on biology – which according to present scientific norms implies only the physical. However, I have also included terms such as "consciousness" – stating that all levels of physical biology are conscious (or sentient) to some degree. With sentience comes the capacity for intelligent (as opposed to automaton-like), discriminatory response in which choice is meaningfully exercised. This of course opens up a can of worms, because although the signs of intelligent behaviour can be observed in single cells and plants (implying consciousness), neither intelligence nor consciousness are physical attributes. We are therefore looking at phenomena that lie beyond the capacity of physical science to investigate and have scientific opinion of – but nevertheless there are a lot of quite strong opinions!

So here I am going to very briefly outline some of the phenomena [1] observed in physical and psychological therapy sessions, and experienced by a fairly high portion of patients (though they may not necessarily understand or describe them in this way) – and relate them to the description of how biological health operates.

Just like physical information the body, consciousness is multiplexed – occurring in many "frequencies" which may or may not resonate with each other and so may or may not combine or interact. Is consciousness a truly frequency-domain phenomena? No. In fact it sometimes behaves almost more like a cold plasma, a fog-like amorphous field of electrically charged particles. If we take consciousness to be a body-temperature Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) then it resides in microtubules [2] – which for sure are far more prevalent in neural tissue, but which are also found in almost every cell. A BEC is a pretty good contender for consciousness. It implies a coherence across a local volume, and also allows for sub-domains (such as we find in the hierarchy of embodied biological consciousness) with various restricted degrees of cross-communication (down to zero). Recent research has found that the myelin sheaths that surround "faster" nerves are capable of producing entangled biophotons [3] - which also probably assist large otherwise not specifically connected volumes of the brain and body to be coherent[4].

Consciousness also has a vibrational quality, and "steps down" into the physical via electromagnetic and quantum states. Valerie Hunt identified high-end EMG [5] as having a very complex and broad frequency range (from about 10kHz up to well over 200KHz) the activity of which correlates to general patterns of thought, emotion and health/illness in the body.

The usual assumption is also that thoughts, mind, consciousness equate to brain. There is no doubt that the brain is involved. But the evidence (so far as our knowledge extends) seems to point to the brain "just" being particularly rich on microtubules and myelinated nerves – and these are also present elsewhere in the body. Certain brain architectures are better "tuned" to particular organs, processes, functions, and so mediate this activity. But we would not equate a TV aerial to the TV (or the telephone line to the conversation it is carrying); and would certainly not equate the pictures on TV to the people who appear on it. Like everything else this is a representational system. It is most likely that the physical mechanisms we can identify are merely step-down mechanisms – rather like the dust that allows us to see beams of sunlight in a room.

One common meaning of "Thoughts" equates to mental self-talk – where self-talk is just one aspect of a sensory system include more generic mental-emotional states, feelings, sensory information, hunches, memories, inner vision (imagination) and the imagin-al. For convenience, lets use the term "thoughts" to describe whatever is in the fug of consciousness that is present through and around the physical body – that rises up into the sphere of consciousness or near-consciousness. Whatever any "causal mechanism" (or "mechanism that arises from cause") of consciousness might be, its attributes (for the purposes we have here) include:

• Conflicted, forceful, strongly emotive conscious thoughts or strongly focussed attention "lock up" the connective tissue and suppress the kind of normal physiological micro-movements that accompany self-reorganisation (including self-healing) of the physical and metabolic body.

• Thoughts operate not unlike radio transmissions, and in some circumstances people can pick up these transmissions. Very few people are capable of real mind reading. And there are all kinds of other factors – such as – how do all the other thoughts that permeate the environment get to be filtered out? But there are many cases of commonly experienced thoughts – such as inventions occurring in different parts of the world at the same time, people with strong ties being sometimes aware of each other’s state, empathic transactions such as Transference and Counter-Transference, and the "zeitgeist" – ideas that are of their time.

• The body is capable of being an aerial for thoughts from other people, particularly people we have an affinity for (or have a direct if temporary connection to). We live in the fug of the collective consciousness.

• Given that there is a shock, reactive or overwhelm response in the physical tissue that the thought resides in, then thoughts can be stored almost indefinitely in body tissue as a self-sustaining entity. Which then may affect those parts of the body or physiology, or affect or displace the active consciousness of a person. Thus, memories are passed down through generations as thought-entities that have a very tenuous physicality, but nevertheless may have a huge impact on someone’s life.

• Dissociation of the kind that reduces what we call "embodiment" (the ability to be present in and with the somatic sensations of the body) is a zone of thoughts that cannot be accessed.

• Consciousness coupled with body tissue creates a layer of proprioception in addition tothe action of proprioceptors [6] (nerve endings that detect stretch and other ways to "know" where a limb or the body is relative to a central reference.

Given these properties, it is possible to see many spiritual practices of prayer and meditation as – at the very least – tried and tested methods by which thoughts are brought under some degree of control, unhelpful thought-entities released from the physical body, and thoughts that sustain health are reinforced and cultivated. The phenomena (this is based on experienced phenomena, not a theory) described above also begs many other questions well beyond the scope of this small book.

Given that it’s usual to stop the causal mechanistic chain at least one level before this point (and leave a large God of the Gaps), none of this explanation is of direct importance to the application of the exercises in Section 4. It’s perfectly possible to apply them with just a generic understanding of Plan A / Plan B. But the fact is that this explanation of consciousness is – like the explanation of biological systems – is just a metaphor for something that is infinitely complex that we live in for our whole lives but do not actually understand. Understanding comes eventually through asking the "right" questions and being open to the internal experiences that arise when those questions are asked. In this case, "right" means that many of the questions usually asked implicitly presume too much of the answer, expect that it will be in some intellectual form that complies with what we already know. Also, it is culturally normal to pay insufficient attention to replies that come from other parts of the sensory system – sensory channels other than the "head-space" self-dialogue, that include the imaginal and (given that the body is an aerial and a vessel for all this activity) the somatic.

It is unrealistic to provide a practical methodology that demands some belief system or requires years of experience of meditation or devotion. So I have put together a set of simple practices that require no particular pre-existing skill or belief – other than a willingness to try them out as they are (with no embellishments) and to be curious as to the immediate response. If you already have some meditation experience, this may or may not be helpful, and the "notes for meditators" is provided just in case.