Verifiable Memory of Events That Occurred Prior to Brain or Body Prove the Existence of “Spirit”: Biology As Metaphor and Mythology, Part Two — The Epistemology Revealed by Cellular Memory

Biological Phases As Levels of Consciousness

My attempt here is to skeletonize a portion of such an overall endeavor to show how it can be done and what kinds of meanings can arise. I will relate stages in the ontogenetic development of the human body to the dualities (splittings) of consciousness that, according to Wilber (1977), create the spectrum of consciousness.

Specifically, I will correlate the patterns of change in both form and experience (feeling) that a human undergoes with levels of consciousness. I will do this beginning with the sperm and egg; through the fetal, newborn, child, and adolescent forms; to the adult. What I am saying is that the forms that characterize the biological history of each individual (as delineated by the science of biology) and the processes that characterize the psychological history of each individual (as reported to us in the psychological sciences of the new experiential growth modalities) reflect, and correlate with, the changes in consciousness that Wilber describes as creating the spectrum of consciousness.

The Charge of Reductionism

Is this reductionistic? Am I saying that our ontogenetic development creates or causes the spectrum of consciousness? No. I no more mean that ontogeny creates the spectrum than that ontogeny creates phylogeny … in that, as they say, “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.”

One might deduce, however, that since this ontogenetic development, that is, this human prenatal development, is prior (in time) to the spectrum of consciousness that we observe and study in the Now, a cause-and-effect relationship is the most likely connection. But I must respond that this assumes the primacy of the physical form (in its ontogenetic development) over consciousness. This presupposition is, of course, a cornerstone of the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm. Nevertheless, the very existence of consciousness or experience at the earliest levels I will be discussing (specifically, sperm, egg, zygote, and fetal) disputes the primacy-of-the-physical-universe postulate. To put it bluntly, consciousness can hardly be an epiphenomenon of brain activity if it exists when the brain does not.

Conversely, the body, brain, and cells cannot create the spectrum of consciousness for consciousness exists independent of them. The body reveals itself to arise from consciousness; it is the tip of the iceberg, which cannot be the foundation for the structures prior to or “below” or existing independently of it.

So the fact of memory and consciousness existing when the physical cells or the body cannot “create” them points inevitably to the primary reality/existence of something like Consciousness, Spirit, or Mind (or at least Energy) (see Adzema, 1985). Therefore, this type of impossible-to-have-existed-as-experience-or-to-be-existing-as-memory-according-to-the-N-C-paradigm experience can hardly be called the cause of the spectrum of consciousness. Indeed, something that cannot possibly exist within a paradigm can hardly be marshaled in to explain something within that paradigm.

However, if we accept the paradigm in which Consciousness, not form, is fundamentally real (which is exactly what we must do if we are going to look at evidence which supports, if not confirms, such a paradigm), and if we still want to accept the controversial concept of cause and effect, then the most we can really say is that prior experience of consciousness contributes to its later modifications. This perspective is certainly worthy of consideration.

The Legitimacy of Heuristic Inquiry Into Form

But were it true that prior experience causes the later modifications of Consciousness (or as Wilber terms it, “Mind”), that truth is congruent with an analysis such as this one that considers form as to its metaphorical heuristic value in understanding experience and existence (or Mind, Consciousness) as it is immediately apperceived in the only Reality of Now. As Wilber (1977) makes adequately clear, from the only Real perspective of Here and Nowness, Absolute Subjectivity, or Mind, all “past” events are nonreal (i.e., illusory) reflections of the Reality that is Now; they have no existence outside of this Now, so can hardly be called “causes” of Now.

From the perspective of Now, of Mind, of Absolute Subjectivity — which is the essence of the new paradigm — there is no cause and effect; there are only patterns of relationship existing Now. Hence these “prior” events are reflections of the immediate Reality, existing simultaneously in the Now as reflections, as metaphors. It is in this sense that they can be analyzed hermeneutically for their heuristic value in understanding the spectrum of consciousness as it arises this instant in the sole Eternal Moment.

The Legitimacy of Cellular Memory

Despite what I have just said concerning the importance of an analysis of the biological metaphors of form — especially as they exist on the cellular level surrounding conception — as reflecting something of importance to us in a hermeneutic or heuristic sense, I want to at least put out a case for the legitimacy of cellular memory as something in its own right. That is, the rest of Part Two will be based on a comparison of Wilber’s spectrum of consciousness with the observable events and forms (the behaviors of the specific biological forms) as they are known to occur through the observational aspects of the science of biology. Still, the interpretation between the philosophical system and the biological form will be aided, supported, and fed by, among other things, the direct experience of memories of these states and forms, down even to the earliest, by myself and by the reports of such experiences by others.

So while this analysis does not stand on the absolute veracity of those experiences by myself or by others, still the analysis is certainly aided and helped by a belief in their legitimacy. I will say a few words about how memory can occur of such events, and more importantly, how that memory can be related to the foundations of our consciousness. A complete explanation (as I see it) of exactly this — e.g., of how sperm and egg and zygote experience can lead to fundamental mythological, philosophical, and basic assumptions on the world, the self, and reality — can be found in two other recent works of mine (1993c, 1993d).

For our purposes here, let me just say that there are two possibilities that immediately come to mind: (1) what one might call the “prior conditions” theory and (2) Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of morphic resonance and morphogenetic fields. Let us take them in turn.