Beyond the "Cell Doctrine" -- Gurdjieff's 3 Bodies & Information Theory

[JGeropoulas]

Recently I was engrossed listening to this intriguing podcast interview of a liver pathologist, stem-cell researcher and practicing Zen Buddhist--who was also well-versed in quantum physics and esoterica. Paralleling other scientific paradigms that have been challenged (i.e. classical physics vs. quantum physics; gravitational universe vs. electric universe), Dr. Theise has challenged the “cell doctrine," which has been central -- and very limiting -- to western medicine.

“Complexity and Consciousness” -- An Interview with Dr. Neil Theise
_http://prn.fm/expanding-mind-complexity-consciousness-020914/

Aside from the biological facts presented, the esoteric implications of what he discussed in the podcast became all the more intriguing as this analogy from the Esoteric Glossary came to mind:

In Gnosis (Vol. 1), Mouravieff states that the position of man in the universe is analogous to that of a cell in the human body. Each cell is part of an organ, which, in turn, is an element of a group of organs that assures proper accomplishment of some definite function of the organism.

Thus the cell in our bodies is subject or placed under two categories or "rules" of laws.

The first keeps the cell in its place. In Esoteric Science this is referred to as the General Law. The second category of laws leaves a certain liberty of action for the cell. This is called the Law of Exception.

The first law is conservative and ensures that the organ of which this cell is part accomplishes its function with no impediment. Thus, the first condition is that during their lives the cells fulfill their roles given to them so as to serve the organ to which they belong. This law obliges these cells to remain in their proper place so as to complete their work and to dedicate their lives to this purpose. Thus this law is beneficial by ensuring the existence of the organs so as to allow the body to endure.

However, the disappearance of a few individual cells goes unnoticed and the organ's functioning is not impaired. Thus the essential role of the General Law is to watch over continuity of function, and the disappearance of a few cells passes unnoticed by it. Therefore it places no further obstacles. Symbolically, one can say that cells which escape from this law now enter the domain of the Law of Exception.

This escape of a few cells is a phenomenon that happens constantly. The Law of Exception makes this possible. All our cells are constantly renewed according to different and variable rhythms. In addition to this renewal from within, there are also disappearances, compensated or not compensated for by new units.

In the body, the cells that pass from the General Law into the Law of Exception do so mechanically. But when man attempts to migrate from the General Law of life to the Law of Exception, it can only be done by conscious efforts.
In choosing the Law of Exception, man continues to serve the interests of the whole, but differently and in an incomparably more efficient manner. ( http://glossary.cassiopaea.com/glossary.php?id=29 )

Background on Dr. Theise:

Neil Theise, MD is a diagnostic liver pathologist and adult stem cell researcher in New York City, where he is Professor of Pathology and of Medicine at the Beth Israel Medical Center of Albert Einstein College of Medicine. His research revised understandings of human liver microanatomy which, in turn, led directly to identification of possible liver stem cell niches and the marrow-to-liver regeneration pathway. He is considered a pioneer of multi-organ adult stem cell plasticity and has published on that topic in Science, Nature, and Cell.

Subsequently, while continuing laboratory and clinical research, he has extended his work to areas of theoretical biology and complexity theory, defining a "post-modern biology." These ideas suggest that alternate models of the body, other than Cell Doctrine, may be necessary to understand non-Western approaches to the body and health.

Current laboratory investigations focus on nerve-stem cell interactions in human livers, melatonin-related physiology of human liver stem cell and regenerative processes, and aspects of human liver stem cell activation in acute, fulminant hepatic failure.

Comments by Dr. Thiese:

Everything I've written about from histopathologic studies to stem cells to cell plasticity to biological implications of complexity theory to metaphysical speculations to integrative medicine – derives from observing liver biopsy specimens with what in Zen practice is often referred to as beginner’s mind and from sharing these and subsequent observations with creative individuals from diverse disciplines.

Where is the separation between “you” and all of planetary life? Where is the Earth itself leave off and “you” begin? If you become curious about these questions, what will that do to your notions of the nature of your mind, as well? Curiosity is the theme of our explorations in my upcoming presentation, “Thinking Outside Of The (Skull) Box”

Increasingly, cognitive science presents us with a vision of mind as grounded in the complex transformative processes of life, while neuroscience presents us with a vision of the brain as a complex adaptive system that constantly reshapes itself in response to context, experience, and practice. How can this vision of complexity and transformation enrich our understanding of consciousness—the felt experience of awareness across waking, dreaming, sleeping, and dying? These are the issues we’ll be examining during my workshop, “Zen Brain: Consciousness, Complex Systems and Tranformation”

Podcast Discussion:

Although transcripts aren’t available for this podcast, much of what’s discussed can be found in the two articles linked below he’s written. But here are two ideas that were at the core of it all:

Paralleling other scientific paradigms that have been challenged (i.e. classical physics vs. quantum physics; gravitational universe vs. electric universe), Dr. Theise has challenged the “cell doctrine” central to western medicine. This has grown from his pondering that, if the first microscopes had been more powerful, the first peek into the body would’ve revealed it’s composed of fluid (i.e. the Greek concept) with nuclei and semi-permeable partitions (i.e. cells) floating in it. But because the scale of observation enabled by the first microscopes, the “obvious” conclusion was that the body is an organism composed of discrete, individual cells, which became the foundation of all of western medicine. Devotion to this scientific dogma has prevented more accurate concepts, which would allow for fruitful research into such “mysterious” things as the centuries-old efficacy of acupuncture.

What got really interesting was when the discussing veered into the esoteric realm as he posited that perhaps the “three bodies” mentioned in esoteric writings might be alluding to our body as defined by the varying scales observation (i.e. gross anatomy, cellular, fluid), as well as their particular modes and laws of functioning.

“Beyond Cell Doctrine -- Complexity Theory Informs Alternate Models of the Body for Cross-Cultural [i.e. religious] Dialogue”
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
_http://neiltheise.com/pdfs/fall09_01-nyas_04410.pdfInteract

“Sentience Everywhere: Complexity Theory, Panpsychism & the Role of Sentience in Self-Organization of the Universe”
Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research:
_https://www.upaya.org/uploads/pdfs/TheiseSentienceEverywhere.pdf

Related Forum Discussions:

Dynamic Processes in Regulation
http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,31335.msg415217.html#msg415217

Information Theory
http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,32928.msg451716.html#msg451716

The Field (instantaneous cell communication via biophotons)
http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,7462.0.html

The Body Is The Subconscious Mind (instantaneous cell communication via cellular resonance)
http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,25979.msg309883.html#msg309883

The Body Is The Subconscious Mind (instantaneous cell communication via phonons through liquid crystalline cytoplasm)
http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,25979.msg317455.html#msg317455

 

[obyvatel]

Interesting topic; thanks for sharing JGeropoulas.

[quote author=JGeropoulas]
Paralleling other scientific paradigms that have been challenged (i.e. classical physics vs. quantum physics; gravitational universe vs. electric universe), Dr. Theise has challenged the “cell doctrine” central to western medicine. This has grown from his pondering that, if the first microscopes had been more powerful, the first peek into the body would’ve revealed it’s composed of fluid (i.e. the Greek concept) with nuclei and semi-permeable partitions (i.e. cells) floating in it. But because the scale of observation enabled by the first microscopes, the “obvious” conclusion was that the body is an organism composed of discrete, individual cells, which became the foundation of all of western medicine. Devotion to this scientific dogma has prevented more accurate concepts, which would allow for fruitful research into such “mysterious” things as the centuries-old efficacy of acupuncture.

What got really interesting was when the discussing veered into the esoteric realm as he posited that perhaps the “three bodies” mentioned in esoteric writings might be alluding to our body as defined by the varying scales observation (i.e. gross anatomy, cellular, fluid), as well as their particular modes and laws of functioning.

[/quote]

I did not listen to the podcast but read the first paper of Dr Theise that JGeropuolas linked. As JG mentioned above, the key perspective for challenging the cell doctrine is the perspective of observation.

[quote author=Neil Theise in Beyond the Cell Doctrine]
When the cell walls and cell membranes were first observed with the new microscopes, the word “cell” was applied because it looked like the cell of a monk or of a prisoner: floor, ceiling, four walls, but no furniture. It was empty.With the passage of twenty years or so histochemical stains were developed and substructures within the cell were visualized, beginning with the nucleus. Bit by bit, the details of cell structure were revealed.

What if the technology had been different?

What if the first structures visible with the new technology had been the nuclei, not cell walls or membranes? Then, a very different answer to the ancient debate would have been conceived. The body would indeed look like an endlessly divisible fluid, only with small little globes suspended in it.

Twenty years later, with the advent of histochemical staining to demonstrate cell membranes, the fluid theory of the body would not have been jettisoned; rather, the new structures perhaps would have been
described as semi permeable partitioning.

[/quote]

Taking the case of the human body (matter) and human psyche and applying a similar argument brought home the "wave reading consciousness unit" description of humans in the Wave. We usually take the physical body as the reference point in our observations, defining its boundaries, studying its internal structure (anatomy) and function (physiology). Then we study how such bodies interact with other bodies in various conditions. The same model is applied at the cellular level where the cell is treated as a body and cellular interactions are rigorously studied and described at various levels of abstraction.

Now let us change the perspective and replace the human body with the human psyche as the reference point as a thought experiment. What are we going to see? The work of Carl Jung is useful in laying down a framework in this perspective. Jung was cognizant of the different view points or perspectives that Theise is talking about - one is the mechanistic/causal perspective while the other is an energetic/emergent perspective. He argued that the concept of energy is as applicable to the domain of human psyche as physical energy is applicable to matter.

[quote author=Jung in On Psychic Energy]
The applicability of the energic standpoint to psychology rests,then, exclusively on the question whether a quantitative estimate of psychic energy is possible or not. This question can be met with an unconditional affirmative, since our psyche actually possesses an extraordinarily well-developed evaluating system, namely the system of psychological values. Values are quantitative estimates of energy.
[/quote]

Jung built up a model of the human psyche with the ego as the center of conscious values. Beyond the ego lies the unconscious in various layers of abstraction. This is described briefly in Instinct and Archetype thread here. There is the personal unconscious which consists of repressed drives as well as other content (memories, sense perceptions) whose energy or value is not high enough to cross the threshold of consciousness. Beyond the personal unconscious lies the collective unconscious, which embraces family, culture, the entire species and beyond. Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance requires and uses the concept of the collective unconscious. Jung's structure of the psyche also contains complexes and archetypes.

This of course is a vast subject but I just wanted to point out to the basic similarity in the alternative view of the human "body" by Theise as "an endlessly divisible fluid, only with small little globes suspended in it" to Jung's view of the human psyche expressed analogically as small boats of ego consciousness floating on a vast sea of the unconscious. I think Jung's model can be extended to include the different bodies that are alluded to by Gurdjieff and in various eastern esoteric doctrines.

Since we have different perspectives from which to study phenomena, the question comes up is one necessarily better than others? Jung was quite pragmatic about the choice of perspective in a given situation. It is simply governed by

[quote author=Jung]
Expediency, that is to say the possibility of obtaining results, alone decides whether the one or the other view is to be preferred.
[/quote]

which sounds very similar to Gurdjieff's concept of "aim" and what takes one closer to the aim is good while what takes one away is bad.

 

[JGeropoulas]

Taking the case of the human body (matter) and human psyche and applying a similar argument brought home the "wave reading consciousness unit" description of humans in the Wave. We usually take the physical body as the reference point in our observations, defining its boundaries, studying its internal structure (anatomy) and function (physiology). Then we study how such bodies interact with other bodies in various conditions. The same model is applied at the cellular level where the cell is treated as a body and cellular interactions are rigorously studied and described at various levels of abstraction.

Now let us change the perspective and replace the human body with the human psyche as the reference point as a thought experiment. What are we going to see? The work of Carl Jung is useful in laying down a framework in this perspective. Jung was cognizant of the different view points or perspectives that Theise is talking about - one is the mechanistic/causal perspective while the other is an energetic/emergent perspective. He argued that the concept of energy is as applicable to the domain of human psyche as physical energy is applicable to matter.

[quote author=Jung in On Psychic Energy]
The applicability of the energic standpoint to psychology rests,then, exclusively on the question whether a quantitative estimate of psychic energy is possible or not. This question can be met with an unconditional affirmative, since our psyche actually possesses an extraordinarily well-developed evaluating system, namely the system of psychological values. Values are quantitative estimates of energy.

Jung built up a model of the human psyche with the ego as the center of conscious values. Beyond the ego lies the unconscious in various layers of abstraction. This is described briefly in Instinct and Archetype thread here. There is the personal unconscious which consists of repressed drives as well as other content (memories, sense perceptions) whose energy or value is not high enough to cross the threshold of consciousness. Beyond the personal unconscious lies the collective unconscious, which embraces family, culture, the entire species and beyond. Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance requires and uses the concept of the collective unconscious. Jung's structure of the psyche also contains complexes and archetypes.

This of course is a vast subject but I just wanted to point out to the basic similarity in the alternative view of the human "body" by Theise as "an endlessly divisible fluid, only with small little globes suspended in it" to Jung's view of the human psyche expressed analogically as small boats of ego consciousness floating on a vast sea of the unconscious. I think Jung's model can be extended to include the different bodies that are alluded to by Gurdjieff and in various eastern esoteric doctrines.

[/quote]

Applying Thiese's ideas about cells and bodies to the psyche gets further into the realm of Thiese's second paper I listed. It all makes me think of what the C's said about safety during the coming transition chaos, "It's not where you are, but what you see". Perhaps if we could "see" our energetic bodies and identify with our energetic psyches, the "sting of death" would be taken away (as the character Jesus said he came to do for humanity). Failing that, death of our physical body will certainly enable us to "see" our energetic bodies.

 

[obyvatel]

Applying Thiese's ideas about cells and bodies to the psyche gets further into the realm of Thiese's second paper I listed. It all makes me think of what the C's said about safety during the coming transition chaos, "It's not where you are, but what you see". Perhaps if we could "see" our energetic bodies and identify with our energetic psyches, the "sting of death" would be taken away (as the character Jesus said he came to do for humanity). Failing that, death of our physical body will certainly enable us to "see" our energetic bodies.

If Gurdjieff was right, then if man can acquire the ability to see his energy body, he would perhaps see something that would not please him- he may not see much at all. Some comments on this topic is here .

I do agree that if one is able to grow this body as G suggested, then what you say about the sting of physical death being taken away would most likely be valid.

Man is ordinarily not aware of his energy body except for rare cases. If he could see it, he would not perhaps be able to sleep as soundly as he does. He would have realized the terror of the situation and would be motivated to do something about it. I would speculate that the traditional one-sided materialistic perspective of observation discussed in the earlier posts may be largely responsible for such a state. This perspective of observation has become a collective habit through group consensus which, if Sheldrake is on the right track, forms our species instinct. Thus our instinctive way of sensing reality is dangerously one-sided - and hence limited.

Changing to the other perspective and starting observation from psyche/energy is not trivial because the species instinct works against it. It is possible though through Work and increase of being/consciousness - or so I hope. To make this possible, one would need to "individuate" and distinguish oneself from the collective habits which are contents of the collective unconscious affecting us most strongly. And here we can perhaps see the danger of unconsciously taking up the traditional perspective and treating individuation as rebelling against the world or physically isolating oneself from it. The process is perhaps fundamentally energetic/psychic in nature - which is why "who we are and what we see" is more important than "where we are".

"Who we are" has to deal with our boundaries in the psychic/energetic sense. In general we are woefully uneducated in this area. Most of humanity spends their entire lifetime(s) simply under the influence of collective habits in their various forms. From the materialistic perspective this would be stuff gotten from parents, society and culture and learned through imitation. The physiological results of this lack of awareness of our boundaries is discussed in When the Body Says No . From the psychic perspective, this comes down to complexes, projections, introjections, collective instincts and archetypes driving our lives with very little consciously being our own. We identify with complexes and archetypes and think it is us. We project stuff on others and pick up others' projections without our knowledge. Becoming more conscious of these dynamics is the way towards individuation and growing the energy body or soul. In this path, we can be inspired by others and learn from them - but imitation and parroting of others' ideas and behaviors would not take us there. In a sense imitation is antithetical to individuation, which is why perhaps Gurdjieff actively discouraged it and stressed on understanding.

Taking up the energetic/psychic perspective and building knowledge from there is like starting all over and learning new ways of sensing reality. A tall order - but then what choice have we got at this time? As Jung said, what is not made conscious often comes to us as fate. And that fate is becoming more clear as the days go by. Perhaps putting efforts towards recognizing our energetic boundaries and holding our own against the proverbial "angels and demons" that are sitting on our shoulders and whispering (or rather shouting) stuff into our ears would go some distance in mitigating the material manifestations of forces of nature in our individual lives?