Week Six Inquiries - The Nature of Life

1. How do you distinguish between living and nonliving systems?
2. What do you feel is the significance of the use of language and tools in chimps?
3. "Chinese Medicine Gaining Respectability in West"?

1.
Living and non-living systems; with more recent discoveries and understandings of the nature of reality through biology, quantum physics, cognitive science, and mathematics, it has become increasingly clear to me that there is really no such thing as a non-living system. This belief/scientific hypothesis also matches my personal experience of reality. Basically, to describe a system as 'non-living' is to describe its relative non-activity or lack of energetic potential, while a 'living system' is one that contains some movement and action of energetic potential;

"An autopoietic machine is a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network." (Maturana, Varela, 1980, p. 78)

Due to the fact that everything is made up of energy, everything is active and carries the potential to organize and/or affect or be taken up into another network of energetic process(es). Consciousness, due to its being a form of energy and an every-present aspect of reality, whenever injected into the equation generates the necessary components needed to have a 'living system'.

Everything is alive in the sense that it is all capable of interaction and of carrying information into and through a process of transformation from one state to another.

2.
What is significant in the human observation of the use of language and tools by other primates (and animals in general) is the awakening of connection, empathy, and modesty on the part of human beings. Western religion and philosophical tradition has developed and progressed through our culture in such a way as to allow us an unabashed arrogance such that we allowed ourselves to separate from the Natural world and the Universe (and our full selves). I believe we are returning to an experience of deep union with ourselves and the natural world/universe. Articles and observations of the human 'realization' of communication and intelligence among other animals, plants, elements and energies is simply the observation of this return.

The Zhouyi - Yijing puts it this way:

FU::RETURN:: Supreme Blessing : the coming and going (cyclic return) : Friends come : nothing inauspicious : Following One's Dao : favorable for going forward -
Fu-Return is the guaranteed return of Spring after Winter and the light of sunrise (yang) after the darkness (yin) of night. Recognizing and following these circular patterns we experience the ease of a smooth and harmonious life. Short term plans succeed in the context of broad view. Things are turning for the better. Routine work comes to fruition. It is favorable to have a clear goal before setting out.

Good for remarriage, retirement, routine travel, vacations, and reunions.
Bad being innovative, ambitious and pressing ahead.

Comment: According to Fu, human happiness is easily found close to home (family & friends) in the simple, small, ordinary tasks of life. The great wisdom of life is found in the plain & routine details of everyday life. If we observe the natural cycle of things, like the seasons of the year, we can be calm and clear. With clarity and equanimity we can see that things naturally go up and down, back and forth - change by themselves. All journeys are circles within circles.

Business: Long-term investments, new businesses, review of business plans

Changing Line two: Return Contented. Auspicious. - Good fortune arises from a careful and timely return. As you advance you adjust your strategy, keeping the goal of return in mind. With this broad, but cautious view, you make satisfactory progress.

Changing Line six: Reversal. Disastrous. Battles lost. Princes dethroned. No recovery for ten years. - Return, in this case, is a complete reversal. From time to time, even great and established structures are naturally upended. Stability is destroyed. In this case, everything is lost. There is humiliation and confusion because you hang on too long to a situation (or relationship) that has ended (dead). Recovery will take a very long time.
(as taken from Liu Ming's translation)

3.
And we flow from the image of Return to discuss the same pattern on the subject of the influence and expansion of Chinese (and all 'Alternative'/Traditional/Eastern Medicines) through the Western cultural-infrastructures...

Just think how amazing it is that we are studying this knowledge and cultivating this wisdom in the United States after such a short time of it's introduction - less than 100 years. Just stop and think about how amazing it is to be studying a deeply rooted knowledge of the human body and its energy systems in a culture that is still unsure of its capacity to provide health-care for itself, to even care for itself.

There is no doubt in my mind that respect is and will continue to grow for the so-called 'alternative' healing traditions and their deep wisdom. my confidence comes from simply observing the truth of the medicine and the way in which it views, interacts with, and transforms the human body-mind.

Articles like the one's we see in the newspapers are little radar blips of the deep mycelial-movements of this knowledge. Just as the wisdom of the interconnections arose from the Taoist insights of 2000 years ago, it rises again; in the image of the mushroom - the mycelial matrix of fungal cells expands quietly underneath the top-soil, below the general awareness and then when the conditions are ripe, the mushrooms explode, quite literally, out from seemingly nowhere and reveal the power and intelligence of this amazing system of individual fungal cells.

Chinese medicine and other healing modalities act in this way. Just watch...

The Immunse System and a New Theory of Cognition

In Fritjof Capra's essay on the Immune System's intelligence, he notes the web-like spreading of the immune system throughout our body:

"Instead of being concentrated and interconnected through anatomical structures like the nervous system, the immune system is dispersed in the lymph fluid, permeating every single tissue. Its components - a class of cells called lymphocytes, popularly known as white blood cells - move around very rapidly and bind chemically to each other. The lymphocytes are an extremely diverse group of cells. Each type is distinguished by specific molecular markers, called "antibodies", sticking out from their surfaces. The human body contains billions of different types of white blood cell, with an enormous ability to bind chemically to any molecular profile in their environment. According to traditional immunology, the lymphocytes identify an intruding agent, the antibodies attach themselves to it and, by doing so, neutralize it.

Recent research has shown that under normal conditions the antibodies circulating in the body bind to many (if not all) types of cell, including themselves. The entire system looks much more like a net- work, more like people talking to each other, than soldiers looking out for an enemy. Gradually, immunologists have been forced to shift their perception from an immune system to an immune network." (Capra)

This reminds me very powerfully of the way in which the fungi spread themselves throughout the ecosystems in which they take root. Stamets describes this complex spread as such, "Covering most all landmasses on the planet are huge masses of fine filaments of living cells from a kingdom barely explored. More than 8 miles of these cells, called mycelia, can permeate a cubic inch of soil. Fungal mats are now known as the largest biological entities on the planet, with some individuals covering more than 20,000 acres." (Stamets) Not only is this simply an amazing interconnected web of living micro-filament, Stamets describes this as the "essential wiring of the Gaian Consciousness".

Something I have noticed in my experience and observations of reality is a pattern of fractalized pattern. "As above, so below," is the basic idea but this concept appears throughout science, mathematics, and everywhere in nature. Try checking out the Fibonacci sequence: