The Cellular Choir

Consider the cell, with it's cytoplasmic sea contained within the sheerest of boundary walls, teeming with thousands of mitochondrial mariners caroling to one another.



Behold the cell amongst its fellows, buoyant in a vast ocean filled with similar bodies. The eukaryotic chorus harmonize, singing the body into being.

No song is ever the same, so it is with every human. There are themes sung by our minute sailors, and if we listen closely we can learn to perform our best possible variation on those primal songs. Just as they, we are given a function.

There is a transcendent satisfaction in apprehending yourself to be a vital part of a greater whole. Our various functions, though exponentially more complex than that of the cells of which we are comprised, are nevertheless indespensible to the life processes of our collective organism.

If a man feels himself to be isolated, does it mean that he is disconnected from the greater body? No, it means he has yet to be aquainted with his own nature.

Before we venture farther up the scale of aggregate Bodies, let us pause to examine the structure and actions of the cell, and analgous structures in non-organic phenomena.

The cell is a sweet thing; comprised of a plasma membrane shell around a gooey cytoplasmic filling. Arguably the most important action a cell can take is to communicate with other cells. Cell signalling works thusly:

Cells communicate with each other via direct contact (juxtacrine signaling), over short distances (paracrine signaling), or over large distances and/or scales (endocrine signaling).

Some cell-to-cell communication requires direct cell–cell contact. Some cells can form gap junctions that connect their cytoplasm to the cytoplasm of adjacent cells. (“Mommy, what are those cells doing?” “Ew, don't look, honey.”) In cardiac muscle, gap junctions between adjacent cells allows for action potential propagation from the cardiac pacemaker region of the heart to spread and coordinately cause contraction of the heart.

The Notch signaling mechanism is an example of juxtacrine signaling (also known as contact-dependent signaling) in which two adjacent cells must make physical contact in order to communicate. This requirement for direct contact allows for very precise control of cell differentiation during embryonic development. In the worm Caenorhabditis elegans, two cells of the developing gonad each have an equal chance of terminally differentiating or becoming a uterine precursor cell that continues to divide. The choice of which cell continues to divide is controlled by competition of cell surface signals. One cell will happen to produce more of a cell surface protein that activates the Notch receptor on the adjacent cell. This activates a feedback loop or system that reduces Notch expression in the cell that will differentiate and that increases Notch on the surface of the cell that continues as a stem cell.

Yeah, did you catch that part where the signal determined the function of the nascent cell? We'll get back to that when we get into the morphogenic fields.

In 2003 Mircea Sanduloviciu conducted a study wherein an electrical charge was introduced into a plasma medium. Okay, briefly, about plasma:

The characteristics of plasmas are significantly different from those of ordinary neutral gases so that plasmas are considered a distinct "fourth state of matter." For example, because plasmas are made up of electrically charged particles, they are strongly influenced by electric and magnetic fields (see figure) while neutral gases are not. An example of such influence is the trapping of energetic charged particles along geomagnetic field lines to form the Van Allen radiation belts.

That's the same stuff in your badass St.Pauli neon sign ( it really ties the den together). Anyways. Back to Romania to check in with Dr. Sanduloviciu. This is what happened when they zapped the plasma:

Thus, similar to biological cells, the boundary of a self-assembled gaseous cell provides a selective enclosure of an environment that qualitatively differs from the surrounding medium. The boundary appears as a spherical self-consistent electrical double layer (DL) able to sustain and
control operations such as: (i) capture and transformation of energy, (ii) preferential and rhythmic exchange of matter across the system boundary and (iii) internal transformation of matter by means of a continuous ‘‘synthesis’’ of all components of the system. After its emergence, the CSCC is able to replicate, by division, and to emit and receive information.

Whoa, so, uh, plasma lifeforms, huh? What's the hitch? It pretty much boils down to this: the plasma forms lack inherited material, and can only persist and communicate so long as the current is sustained.

Still, that isn't to say that in certain environments, plasma lifeforms couldn't persist long enough to develop a means of transmitting information in a heritable sense, possibly via electromagnetic frequency resonance. Allelles signaling through the quicksilver of supercharged plasma.

Hey, didn't Carl Sagan riff on gas beings in the Jupiter clouds?

On Earth, water serves as a medium for transporting a huge variety of organic molecules, such as those of sugars and amino acids, with the cell. These molecules are thus able to diffuse and drift freely, enabling enzymes to catch hold of them and facilitate key biochemical reactions, such as the breakdown of sugar molecules to release energy. In the case of extraterrestrial life based on bubbles, however, gas might take the place of water. Simple molecules, such as those of ammonia and methanal (formaldehyde) might move about inside the bubble, while enzymes attached to the inner surface of the bubble latched onto these substances as they drifted past.

Continued

Maintaining plasma requires alot of energy, so they would have to live inside of stars.

And stay there.

Interesting about the juxtacrine signaling. That information is new, well post 1990 anyway.

And now, let's get totally unmoored and float out into the M theory. And here we come abrubtly against the most inconceivably vast permutation of cellular structure: our own universe.



The authors of the Vedas beat theoritcal phycisists to the punch here. Check it out:

According to Vedic Cosmology, there are countless universes, which are clustered together like foam on the surface of the Causal Ocean. The universes are separated from each other by the shell that envelopes each universe. Although the universes are clustered together, interactions between the universes are impossible. Each universe is completely protected by an enormous shell. Thus, each universe has a boundary. The universe is ball shaped and surrounded by an eight-fold shell.

Okay, guys, straighten your pocket protectors and clear your throats, we want to hear about brane cosmology:

In 1998/99 Merab Gogberashvili published on Arxiv a number of articles where he showed that if the Universe is considered as a thin shell (a mathematical synonym for "brane") expanding in 5-dimensional space then there is a possibility to obtain one scale for particle theory corresponding to the 5-dimensional cosmological constant and Universe thickness, and thus to solve the hierarchy problem. It was also shown that four-dimensionality of the Universe is the result of stability requirement since the extra component of the Einstein equations giving the confined solution for matter fields coincides with the one of the conditions of stability.

In 1999 there were proposed the closely related Randall-Sundrum (RS1 and RS2; see 5 dimensional warped geometry theory for a nontechnical explanation of RS1) scenarios. These particular models of brane cosmology have attracted a considerable amount of attention.

We'll find that this is not the first time we'll be scooped by the ancients in these matters. We shall further note here that in terms of those things which exhibit cellular structure, humans occupy the center of a scale that ranges from the atomic to the universal. That's right, the atom. I said it.



It has an electromagnetc “shell” and a nucleus. There's even the faintest ghost of a case to be made that electron transfer counts as an informational exchange.

Let's swap out our electron microscope for a satellite-mounted telescope and turn our sights on the Earth. If we could perceive the electromgnetic fields which enclose her, this is how she would appear to us:



Look familiar? It should by now. The plasma membrane, and the bright nucleus. Are we tiny singers for our Earth? Do we perform a function for our planet? It may be that our purpose is primarily served through communicating with one another; human cell signalling to human cell, down through the millenia, keeping alive one contiguous song: the same twelve themes sung by an ocean of singular voices in endless melodic variation.

And now zoom out, flung wide parsecs in a sickening stellar lurch: there is our galaxy. We must now think we look upon a vast ameoba, bright organelles adrift in a sea of Dark Plasma.

One strong and accepted theory is that large galaxies are clustered together on structures similar to giant soap bubbles, with tinier galaxies sprinkled on the surface of this "soapy" layer.

Everything singing, all the way up the scale.

Originally posted by Semicollegiate
Maintaining plasma requires alot of energy, so they would have to live inside of stars.

And stay there.

True that. Makes you wonder about the stars, doesn't it?

More on that to come.

Excellent thread, an enjoyable and thought provoking read. Thanks

reply to post by OrganicAnagram33


My pleasure.

I'm extremely pleased to know you enjoyed it. We're going some very weird places in the next few posts, so it's good to know that the groundwork rings true.

S&F for an absolutely amazing thread. And congratulations on not posting the old brain cell/universe pic either. I will have to re-read to fully absorb it all but I will post a quote from an old thread of mine which seems slightly on topic

Originally posted by 1littlewolf
This is a dream I had when I was in my mid teens and has very much colored my view of the nature of the universe:

I was a small boy walking down the beach. The sun had just set and a breeze gently ruffled my hair. It was a warm summer's night and I was enjoying the feeling water washing up over my toes. Looking ahead, I noticed that a small dark stone had been left behind by the retreating waves. I picked it up and began studying all the different grains across its dark surface. One particular grain caught my and and I began to look even closer still....

I could make out each molecule present within this grain, and in turn each atom within this molecule. One particular atom sparkeld with tiny pin pricks of light. I realised they were stars. Around one particular star I saw a number of planets, one of which was blue. Across the surface of this planet were continents, and on the edge of one was a beach. On this beach I began to make out a figure, and I saw it was was a small boy that looked very much like myself. The boy was looking at something. It was a smooth dark stone...

I looked around quickly to the stars above. And for the most fleeting of moments, I swear I saw a a face, my face, staring down at me from the heavens, before suddenly it turned away.

reply to post by 1littlewolf


Whahhhahhh!

This is precisely the stuff!

The whole intuits itself in the part, and the part feels itself to be an integral part of the whole!

Well done. You've pretty much summed up the follow-up postings, and I blush to admit that I will post them anyway.

Really great stuff, I like the incorporation of Vedic Cosmology. I always like to draw parallels like these, I think reality works like a massive multidimensional fractal, which explains repetition and stuff.

reply to post by CREAM


Welcome, mang.

I'm going to try and prove that recursion could not persist without variation.

Wish me luck,

The reader no doubt sees where I'm heading with this: our current definition of a lifeform is too effing narrow. And I'm not the first to have said so.

en.wikipedia.org...

If'n you follow up on that link (and I don't blame you if you don't. ), you'll find all sorts of lifeforms that could arise from a non-carbon base. And that's just in our dimension.

Really.

We have restricted access to the spectrum of Creation.

Our (considerably well-equipped) sensory organs cover but a very small part of the total spectra of percieveable phenomena. Jeez, even migratory birds have it all over us when it comes to seeing things that aren't “there”. Magnetically sensitive cells in their beaks allow them to “see” electromagnetic fields.

Let's go ahead and touch (blindly) upon the invisible electromagnetic stratum of our Earth:

An ionospheric model is a mathematical description of the ionosphere as a function of location, altitude, day of year, phase of the sunspot cycle and geomagnetic activity. Geophysically, the state of the ionospheric plasma (!) may be described by four parameters: electron density, electron and ion temperature and, since several species of ions are present, ionic composition. Radio propagation depends uniquely on electron density.

Well, my stars, perhaps the sun doesn't produce the sole conditions under which plasmic lifeforms might exist. Particularly if they weren't comprised of 3-d particulate matter. Now we sail into bright waters, phosphorecent filaments beneath the surface of the night sea.

Before we bring the good Dr. Alfred into this thread (I probably ought to have e-mailed him first, I'm not entirely certain he'd welcome the inclusion) let us sit round the campfire whith our buddy, Chaz Fort. What about that Super Sargasso Sea, and why would the author of this thread even try to link it to the ionosphere?

Chaz?

So then that the turtle and the piece of alabaster may have had far different origins—from different worlds, perhaps—have entered a region of suspension over this earth—wafting near each other—long duration—...

I think of a region somewhere above this earth's surface in which gravitation is inoperative ...
I think that things raised from this earth's surface to that region have been held there until shaken down by storms—

The Super-Sargasso Sea.

Derelicts, rubbish, old cargoes from inter-planetary wrecks; things cast out into what is called space by convulsions of other planets, things from the times of the Alexanders, Caesars and Napoleons of Mars and Jupiter and Neptune; things raised by this earth's cyclones: horses and barns and elephants and flies and dodoes, moas, and pterodactyls; leaves from modern trees and leaves of the Carboniferous era—all, however, tending to disintegrate into homogeneous-looking muds or dusts, red or black or yellow—treasure-troves for the palaeontologists and for the archaeologists—accumulations of centuries—cyclones of Egypt, Greece, and Assyria—fishes dried and hard, there a short time: others there long enough to putrefy—

But the omnipresence of Heterogeneity—or living fishes, also—ponds of fresh water: oceans of salt water.

Breathtaking, Mr. Fort.



And maybe not so wide of the mark.

What does our cytoplasmic sea rain down upon us, and what strange fish visit us from on high, lapsing briefly onto our flattened plane?

More to come.

Hey-Thanks for the call, you're right-I do dig this-not sure how I missed it.

As above, so below. The whole thing summed up in 4 words.
The great thing about that is that it allows you to extrapolate and understand layers from the macro to the micro at deeper levels.

Also of note is that we don't only have our physical body but a number of bodies along the spectrum, for instance, our eletromagnetic body.

reply to post by coyotepoet


Dude, I'm glad to have you on board, because we're totally about to crack into that.

Bring on the subtle bodies, and their theoretically cellular structure!

reply to post by mistermonculous

Yeah, did you catch that part where the signal determined the function of the nascent cell? We'll get back to that when we get into the morphogenic fields.

Yes, that was mind blowing. This Juxtacrine stuff is so cool, and it is so aptly named. The idea that they sing out their transcription factors is so inspiring and beautiful.

Whoa, so, uh, plasma lifeforms, huh? What's the hitch? It pretty much boils down to this: the plasma forms lack inherited material, and can only persist and communicate so long as the current is sustained.

Which somehow makes me think that variability would makes sense. I mean variability of voltage, current and resistance. Just like us.

The plasma membrane, and the bright nucleus. Are we tiny singers for our Earth? Do we perform a function for our planet?

I have often thought that we alone keep the whole brickhouse from flying apart. As though we are the true source of gravity. But I tend to get pretty out there with this stuff.

Everything singing, all the way up the scale.

Like the Wykings of Eld. All this talk of Singing Mariners has my mind on Jason and the Golden Fleece.



And I have to post this because it is stuck in my head now. Not good if the intro starts to loop uncontrollably...



Thank you for the very high quality of your OP, MM. It has been very inspiring. You have a very fine mind.

As our good 1littlewolf and coyotepoet have pointed out, and as I'm sure we can all agree:

As above, so below.

It applies to the stuff we can observe and quantify, but what about all that other ____?

It is perhaps inseparable from what we are able to see, despite our blindness.

Let's pluck that String Theory again:

On distance scales larger than the string radius, each oscillation mode behaves as a different species of particle, with its mass, spin and charge determined by the string's dynamics. Splitting and recombination of strings correspond to particle emission and absorption, giving rise to the interactions between particles.

An analogy for strings' modes of vibration is a guitar string's production of multiple but distinct musical notes. In the analogy, different notes correspond to different particles. The only difference is the guitar is only 2-dimensional; you can strum it up, and down. In actuality the guitar strings would be every dimension, and the strings could vibrate in any direction, meaning that the particles could move through not only our dimension, but other dimensions as well.

String theory includes both open strings, which have two distinct endpoints, and closed strings making a complete loop. The two types of string behave in slightly different ways, yielding two different spectra. For example, in most string theories, one of the closed string modes is the graviton, and one of the open string modes is the photon. Because the two ends of an open string can always meet and connect, forming a closed string, there are no string theories without closed strings.

(ed note: ah, Christ, does that mean we have to regard attraction as the opposite of light? Probably not, forgive my late-night ramblings).

Okay, so 3-d particles are contiguous with the larger, more dispersed 4 5 6 7 and 8th dimensional particles.

Phew.

What does that mean for us, and could the cellular model persist in the strata we can't see?

Originally posted by mistermonculous
As our good 1littlewolf and coyotepoet have pointed out, and as I'm sure we can all agree:

As above, so below.

It applies to the stuff we can observe and quantify, but what about all that other ____?

It is perhaps inseparable from what we are able to see, despite our blindness.

As above, so below....... Very ancient words which can be traced back originally to the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus believed to be a letter from Aristotle to Alexander the Great and first mentioned in recordedhistory in manuscripts dating back to 650AD.

As we all must admit, we know so little about the true nature of reality but when viewed from a beyond universal scale all the way down to a subatomic scale, these words to me sound so logical. Do things really just keep getting bigger and bigger or smaller and smaller? Or does eventually the very big become the very small and we start all over again?

Before I post this next bit I will warn everyone that I am in no way shape or form anything close to a theoretical physicist.

However.......

As everyone knows there is a huge disparity between traditional Newtonian Physics and Quantum Theory. The traditional laws which rule the behaviour of you, me, planets, stars and other things at a macro scale completely break down when we enter the crazy world of photons neutrinos, quarks and other subatomic particles.

Who is to say that the laws which affect things at a subatomic scale don't also apply beyond a universal scale. We've always looked for answers in the very very small. Maybe we should also incorporate the very very very large in our search for a 'Universal Theory of Everything'.........

........if indeed very large and very small even exist anywhere beyond the constructs of our own mind.

reply to post by mistermonculous


Fascinating info, Mister M. Much to digest. I'm a firm believer that the wisdom of the Vedas is far, far older than conventional historians, linguists, anthropologists, Orientalists, etc. would believe. There is astronomical info in the Vedas that suggest they were written down around 10,500 BC. This is the same time the Sphinx would have been facing the constellation Leo rising on the horizon (Robert Bauval). Even though Egypt and India are thousands of miles apart, this date 10,500 BC was significant for both cultures. But I digress.

I believe everything in the Universe is alive -- even things normally classified as inanimate.

reply to post by AuranVector


It's funny, but when I first started to look into the subtle body stuff (we'll get there, I've been preoccupied with finals); I found that I couldn't throw a brick without hitting a Theosophist. They seemed to have anticipated the science, and they seemed to have the whole thing on lock. Alice Bailey and her ilk were to be the go-to guys? You can imagine my squeamishness.

But I held my nose and waded in, and what I found is that:

1. They were a very cohesive crowd. They worked together effectively, churning out material as a collective. Which certainly can't be said for the other operators of that time. They weren't some little hobby lodge. They were a fecking think tank.

2. They pretty much just strip-mined the Vedas for most of their info.

You can imagine my relief. So, yeah. The Ancients knew the tune too, and I can give the Theosophists a wide berth. Okay, maybe we'll wheel Leadbeater out, but we'll be sure to take a machete to his impenetrable Swamp prose style.

Great thread MM. Sorry it took me so long to get here. Internet has been down for a couple days.

But, yeah, you got my attention. I have always been intrigued by the string theory. This all reminds me of a situation in the new testament of the Bible. Luke 19:28-40. Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The crowds were singing and waving palms. The Pharisees were ticked and told him to have everyone stop. And Jesus' reply was that if the people were to be quiet, that the rocks themselves would cry out. Singing rocks!

Another example in the bible, which is mostly my area, would be when Cain slew Able. God went looking for Cain, knew what had happened to Able because his blood had cried out to Him. Singing blood?

Can't wait to see where this goes....

We are lost, and have been lost since we decided to ignore the facts, and instead base our existences in some rather unpleasant fictions that have very little if any, relevance to our daily operational spheres.
But the weary traveler will say, what facts? I see no factual evidence of anything...

Except self replicating hierarchical patterns, everywhere, material and energetically in function and design, interconnections from the Macro to the Micro, cycles cycling away into infinity at speeds beyond our fastest though devices, and still back on earth, flea bitten, spoiled, lonely in tha crowds...

Well, Its right there, MM, you could retire after this thread, the secret of the universe, the mystery of fractal reiterations, solved! or at least explained in a way most can understand, unfortunately, as simple as it may be, it will continue to elude the masses, because as we already know, its not what one knows , but what one ACTUALLY does with what one knows.

There is no greater revelation, everything is connected, it just seems not to be, at this time.

Awesome thread as usual MM! keep hitting them as hard you will!