 The body's wisdom is a good entry point into the hidden dimensions of life, because although completely invisible, the body's wisdom is undeniably real – a fact that medical researchers began to accept in the mid-1980s.
The former view was that the brain’s capacity for intelligence was unique. But then signs of intelligence began to be discovered in the immune system, and then in the digestive system. In both these systems, special messenger molecules could be observed circulating through every organ, bringing information to and from the brain, but also functioning on their own. A white cell that can distinguish between invading enemy bacteria and harmless pollen is making an intelligent decision, even though it floats in the bloodstream apart from the brain.
The ancient intelligence of the cell
Ten years ago, it would have seemed absurd to speak of intestines being intelligent. The lining of the digestive tract was known to possess thousands of nerve endings, but these were just remote outposts of the nervous system – a way for it to keep in touch with the lowly business of extracting nutrition from food. Now it turns out that the intestines are not so lowly after all. Their scattered nerve cells form a finely tuned system for reacting to outside events – an upsetting remark at work, the threat of danger, a death in the family. The stomach’s reactions are just as reliable as the brain's thoughts, and just as intricate. Your colon, your liver, and your stomach cells also think, only not in the brain’s verbal language. What people had been calling a ‘gut reaction’ turned out to be a mere hint of the complex intelligence at work in a hundred thousand billion cells.
In a sweeping medical revolution, scientists have stepped into a hidden dimension that no one had ever suspected. Cells have been out-thinking us for millions of years. In fact, their wisdom, more ancient than cortical wisdom, could be the best model for the only thing more ancient than they, which is the cosmos. Perhaps the universe has been out-thinking us, too. No matter where I look, I sense what cosmic wisdom is trying to accomplish. It is much the same as what I myself want to accomplish – to grow, expand, and create – the main difference being that my body is cooperating with the universe better than I manage to.
Cells have no problem fully participating in the mystery of life. Theirs is a wisdom of total passion and commitment. So let’s see if we can link the qualities of bodily wisdom with the hidden dimensions we want to uncover:
The Wisdom You Are Already Living
Identifying with the Body's Intelligence
1. You have a higher purpose.
2. You are in communion with the whole of life.
3. Your awareness is always open to change. From moment to moment, it senses everything in your environment.
4. You feel acceptance for all others as your equal, without judgment or prejudice.
5. You seize every moment with renewed creativity, not clinging to the old and outworn.
6. Your being is cradled in the rhythms of the universe. You feel safe and nurtured.
7. Your idea of efficiency is to let the flow of life bring you what you need. Force, control, and struggle are not your way.
8. You feel a sense of connection with your source.
9. You are committed to giving as the source of all abundance.
10. You see all change, including birth and death, against the background of immortality. Whatever is unchanging is most real to you.
None of these items are spiritual aspirations; they are facts of daily existence at the level of your cells.
Higher purpose: Every cell in your body agrees to work for the welfare of the whole; its individual welfare comes second. If necessary, it will die to protect the body, and often does - the lifetime of any given cell is a fraction of our own lifetime. Skin cells perish by the thousands every hour, as do immune cells fighting off invading microbes. Selfishness is not an option, even when it comes to a cell's own survival.
Communion: A cell keeps in touch with every other cell. Messenger molecules race everywhere to notify the body's farthest outposts of desire or intention, however slight. Withdrawing or refusing to communicate is not an option.
Awareness: Cells adapt from moment to moment. They remain flexible in order to respond to immediate situations. Getting caught up in rigid habits is not an option.
Acceptance: Cells recognize each other as equally important. Every function in the body is interdependent with every other. Going it alone is not an option.
Creativity: Although every cell has a set of unique functions (liver cells, for example, can perform fifty separate tasks), these combine in creative ways. A person can digest food never eaten before, think thoughts never thought before, dance in a way never seen before. Clinging to old behaviour is not an option.
Being: Cells obey the universal cycle of rest and activity. Although this cycle expresses itself in many ways, such as fluctuating hormone levels, blood pressures, and digestive rhythms, the most obvious expression is sleep. Why we need to sleep remains a medical mystery, yet complete dysfunction develops if we don't enjoy its benefits. In the silence of inactivity, the future of the body is incubating. Being obsessively active or aggressive is not an option.
Efficiency: Cells function with the smallest possible expenditure of energy. Typically, a cell stores only three seconds of food and oxygen inside its cell wall. It trusts totally on being provided for. Excessive consumption of food, air, or water is not an option.
Bonding: Due to their common genetic inheritance, cells know that they are fundamentally the same. The fact that liver cells are different from heart cells, and muscle cells are different from brain cells, does not negate their common identity, which is unchanging. In the laboratory, a muscle cell can be genetically transformed into a heart cell by going back to their common source. Healthy cells remain tied to their source no matter how many times they divide. For them, being an outcast is not an option.
Giving: The primary activity of cells is giving, which maintains the integrity of all other cells. Total commitment to giving makes receiving automatic – it is the other half of a natural cycle. Hoarding is not an option.
Immortality: Cells reproduce in order to pass on their knowledge, experience, and talents, withholding nothing from their offspring. This is a kind of practical immortality, submitting to death on the physical plane but defeating it on the nonphysical. The generation gap is not an option.
The mystery of life, encoded in the body
When I look at what my cells have agreed to, isn't it a spiritual pact in every sense of the word? The first quality, following a higher purpose, is the same as the spiritual qualities of surrender and selflessness. Giving is the same as returning to God what is God’s. Immortality is the same as a belief in life after death. The labels adopted by the mind are not my body's concern, however. To my body, these qualities are simply the way life works. They are the result of cosmic intelligence expressing itself over billions of years as biology. The mystery of life was patient and careful in allowing its full potential to emerge. Even now, the silent agreement that holds my body together feels like a secret because, to all appearances, this agreement doesn’t exist. More than two hundred and fifty types of cells go about their daily business: The fifty functions that a liver cell performs are totally unique, not overlapping with the tasks of muscle, kidney, heart, or brain cells – yet it would be catastrophic if even one function were compromised. The mystery of life has found a way to express itself perfectly through me.
Scan the list of qualities again and take note of everything marked ‘not an option’: selfishness, refusing to communicate, living like an outcast, overconsumption, obsessive activity, and aggression. If our cells know not to behave in these ways, why do we? Why is greed good for us and yet spells destruction at the level of our cells, where greed is the basic mistake made by cancer cells? Why do we allow overconsumpton to lead to an epidemic of obesity when our cells measure to the molecule how much fuel to consume? The very behaviour that would kill our bodies in a day hasn’t been renounced by us as people. We are betraying our bodily wisdom, and worse, we are ignoring the model of a perfect spiritual life inside ourselves.
Why I feel urged to unlock the mystery
My latest work, The Book of Secrets, was not born out of a sense that people are spiritually weak and inadequate. It was born from a moment of crisis in my family that gave me new hope instead. My father died a few years ago when no one expected it. Still vigorous at eighty-one, he had spent that January day watching a new U.S. president being inaugurated. Retired from his long medical practice as a cardiologist, my father still kept a professional hand in, and he had spent that evening discussing medical cases with a circle of his students.
My mother, who was sleeping in a separate room because of poor health, didn't hear Krishan go to bed. But after midnight, when she was still unable to sleep, he appeared at her door in his bedclothes, barely a dim outline in the darkness, and said that he was leaving. Immediately my mother knew what he meant. My father kissed her goodbye and said that he loved her. Then he padded quietly back to his room where only the night sounds of crickets, tropical birds, and Delhi traffic penetrated. He lay down, called to God three times, and died.
Our family was swept up in turmoil. My younger brother and I rushed to India from the United States as fast as we could, and within hours, having traditionally dressed my father's body for the funeral and strewn it with marigolds, we carried it downstairs to the wailing of women mixed with sacred chanting. Not long after that, I was standing over a pile of ashes at the burning ghat by the river, performing the eldest son’s duty of smashing the remains of the skull with a stick to symbolically release the earthly bonds to the life my father had led.
I couldn’t escape the feeling that he had completely and utterly disappeared, this man who had been the most loved person in my life and the last one I thought of losing so soon. But the fact that he had passed with such clear, calm awareness kept all of us from feeling the deepest pangs of grief. Although I was certain Krishan Chopra was gone in the form of the body and personality I knew, my emotions couldn't rest until I articulated, in every detail possible, what he had become. The mystery was changing him from one state to another, and I realized that the same transformation is happening in myself and in everyone. We are all held together and we all dissolve according to mystery, nothing else.
Instead of investigating the mystery of life as an intimate part of ourselves, we’ve been acting as if it doesn’t exist. Everyone has suffered for this neglect, and more suffering, perhaps on an unheard-of scale, is looming over the horizon. My father departed from a world sunk in the depths of gloom. When the evening news comes on tonight, trouble will be breaking out everywhere, as it always is, and the answers being offered won’t be anywhere close to the wisdom of a single cell. Many people lose heart and withdraw from the challenge of so much suffering. Others assume that they must leave where they are and find something they do not yet have – a new relationship, a new job, a new religion or teacher – before they can feel alive again.
Would the cells in your body accept such defeatist logic? If where you are isn’t good enough, then love and healing and God will remain forever out of reach. After generations of life spent in chaos, are we ready to let the mystery save us now? Is there any other way?
From The Book of Secrets, copyright 2004 by Deepak Chopra, published in the UK by Rider.
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