Power to the People
I could be taken for a very large, motile colony of respiring bacteria
Lewis Thomas
Mitochondria, our energy-creators, are very tiny: some 1000 would fit onto this full stop→. They work inside your body cells: sometimes one per cell, sometimes 10,000. Your liver has about 1,000 per cell; the average is about 200. Your body has ~40 trillion x 200 of them (or 100,000 trillion, depending upon who you ask).
Each mitochondrion has organs and systems, just as its host (the cell) does enabling it to import simple raw products and export complex proteins. As a small example: the inner membrane of a mitochondrion (it has two, with different properties and duties) contains proteins with five functions (don’t worry about the technical details….)
- Those that perform the redox reactions of oxidative phosphorylation.
- ATP synthase, which generates ATP in the matrix.
- Specific transport proteins that regulate metabolite passage into and out of the matrix.
- Protein import machinery.
- Mitochondria fusion and fission protein.
The membrane also contains more than 100 different polypeptides and is rich in an unusual phospholipid, cardiolipin, which may help to make the inner membrane impermeable. Unlike the outer membrane, the inner membrane does not contain porins and is highly impermeable to all molecules. Almost all ions and molecules require special membrane transporters to enter or exit the matrix. Proteins are ferried into the matrix via the translocase of the inner membrane (TIM) complex or via Oxa1. In addition, there is a membrane potential across the inner membrane formed by the action of the enzymes of the electron transport chain. (Wikipedia)
If you look at the full ATP process, whereby glucose gets converted into the energy that enables you to cast your eyes across this page, you will be faced with screeds of ever-increasingly technical stuff which makes the paragraph above look like Dr Seuss. Wikipedia says:
‘Some of the ATP produced by mitochondria is generated directly during glycolysis and the Kreb’s Cycle, which is also called the Tri-Carboxylic Acid (TCA) Cycle. More ATP is generated from a chemical called NADPH. This is the starting point of the electron transfer chain (also called Hydrogen transfer). The final Hydrogen acceptor is Oxygen. NADPH is produced during the Kreb’s Cycle. One molecule of NADPH can be used to generate three molecules of ATP.’
A full description takes up pages. This diagram might help. (Diagram thanks to Regis Frey.)
Or maybe this one. (Diagram thanks to Wikipedia)
For a fuller and frankly mind-boggling picture, try https://www.academia.edu/9090670/metabolic_pathways_poster
Note that every cell of your body (apart from red blood cells) carry out most of these extraordinary processes, 24/7 for 70-80 years.
Each mitochondrion has its own strand of DNA called mDNA, which is quite different from your own personal DNA, and is also unique in coming down via the maternal line. Hence your mDNA can be traced back to your various fore-mothers, right back to when She packed her crocodile-skin bag and said goodbye to Olduvai Gorge for good.
A mitochondrion is similar to a bacterium. An Idealist is happy with the possibility/necessity of many levels of Mind in the universe. Are we here witnessing a cosmic engineer’s mind at work? ‘What can we use to generate all that energy for this new monkey-job? How about that little bacteria thing with the twirly motors? Should do just right…’
§ ‘Twirly motors’? Read on…
Mitochondria self-replicate like a normal body cell but they are essentially aliens, albeit symbiotic or synergic, which might possibly have been put to use, somehow, somewhen.
§ Symbiotic: of a mutually beneficial relationship.
Synergic: of an interaction between two or more agents whose combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.
We humans, the strutting Lords of the Earth, can not digest our own food without the aid of trillions of bacteria of various sorts to do it for us. We are, each one of us, a walking universe of little lives: we also have trillions of bacteria on our skin, each variety having its own DNA-genome.
§ There are hundreds of varieties, at densities of up to 500 million per square inch. We also have about 100 times more microbial genes than human genes inside our body, mainly in the gut, thanks to 100 trillion bacteria of 1000 different species (estimates, and subject to change!), which means that half of the cells ‘in our bodies’ are bacterial.
But don’t panic. They are almost all entirely harmless and many are actually beneficial, as they help to convert raw food into nutrients, and synthesise vitamins for us, and protect us from invading pathogens. If there’s a disturbance in their balance, we are vulnerable to such nasties as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Just wash your hands before eating.
Also, each one of our own cells is stuffed with bacteria-mitochondria to power us up to do all that walking and strutting. Some estimates suggest that over 50% of ‘our’ cells are actually bacterial cells. And just about every one of our forty trillion cells is a living and self-replicating entity in its own right. Add that lot together and it means that you, Sir, and you Madam, are Lord/Lady and Master/Mistress of some twenty quadrillion or so tiny little lives, give or take a few multiple trillions: 20,000,000,000,000,000 lives, all dependent upon you, as you are upon them. We are each the Master of a Universe.
§ Yogis know all about the complexity of our bodies, and make a point of regularly thanking their ‘little lives’, without whom they know they could literally not lift a finger. They also know that it is they themselves who somehow hold together these quadrillions of little lives in one coherent whole, until it’s time for the Yogi to move on in the DarwinPlus-samsaric process of evolution, at which point the cohesion-pattern is withdrawn, the body dies, and what we call rot sets in. ‘Dissolution’, in fact. Pattern lost. Cosmos returning to chaos; a Mind moving on, or back… A microcosmic Brahman has breathed in….
***
Professor Paul Boyer and Dr John Walker were jointly awarded a Nobel Prize for work on what Dr Walker called The Motor of Life. This ‘motor’ is an enzyme called ATP synthase, which rotates at about 6,000 revs per minute. It exists in and through the membrane of a mitochondrion, and is about 200,000 times smaller than a pinhead. Every cell in your body has hundreds, if not thousands of them.
These motors are what enable us to move, as they make energy available from chemical and physical entities and processes.
§ Dr John Illingworth, of the University of Leeds says: ‘The parallels between the molecular motors in living organisms, and the mechanical systems in modern vehicles are remarkable, although the components differ ten million times in size. Among the cellular machinery we can already identify emission control systems, fuel pumps, heaters, batteries, turbines, electric motors, drive shafts, gearboxes and universal joints. The major difference is that the cellular systems are self-maintaining and achieve performance levels that Ferrari can only dream of.’
Not only is this critter the tiniest motor in the world, it is also rated as the most powerful ‘for its size’. (Picture thanks to John Kimble http://biology-pages.info.)
One last bit of techno talk, this time on how ATP synthase works, just to reinforce the levels of complexity and organisation we are talking of here. Don’t worry about understanding every detail. Just consider the intricacy:
In mitochondria the free energy stored in transmembrane electrochemical gradients is used to synthesize ATP from ADP and phosphate via the membrane-bound enzyme ATP synthase. ATP synthase can also reverse itself and hydrolyze ATP to pump ions against an electrochemical gradient. ATP synthase consists of two portions: a membrane-spanning portion, Fo, comprising the ion channel, and a soluble portion, F1, containing three catalytic sites. Both Fo and F1 are reversible rotary motors. Fo uses the transmembrane electrochemical gradient to generate a rotary torque to drive ATP synthesis in F1 or, when driven backwards by the torque generated in F1, to pump ions uphill against their transmembrane electrochemical gradient. F1 generates a rotary torque by hydrolyzing ATP at its three catalytic sites or, when turned backwards by the torque generated in Fo, as a synthesizer of ATP.
Remember that the mitochondria are microscopically minute motors, which pump out some 1021 protons per second (between them!), and that are found by the multiple quadrillion in every human being. A Materialist is bound by his dogma to say it’s all ultimately accidental. Rational thinkers will differ.
§ One further and final example of the level of design that surrounds us at all levels: every tiny carrot seed (roughly 2,000 to a small spoonful) contains the following chemicals: acetone, acetyl-choline, alpha-linolenic-acid, alpha-pinene, alphatocopherol, apigenin, arachidonic-acid, arginine, asarone, ascorbic-acid, bergapten, beta-carotene, beta-sitosterol, caffeic-acid, camphor, chlorogenic-acid, chlorophyll, chrysin, citral, citric-acid, coumarin, elemicin, esculetin, ethanol, eugenol, falcarinol, ferulic-acid, folacin, formic-acid, fructose, gamma-linolenic-acid, geraniol, glutamine, glycine, hcn, histidine, kaempferol, lecithin, limonene, linoleic-acid, lithium, lupeol, lutein, luteolin, lycopene, magnesium, manganese, methionine, mufa, myrcene, myricetin, myristicin, niacin, oleic-acid, pantothenic-acid, pectin, phenylalanine, potassium, psoralen, quercetin, scopoletin, stigmasterol, sucrose, terpinen-4-ol, thiamin, tryptophan, tyrosine, umbelliferone, xanthotoxin and many other vitamins and minerals. It would not be a carrot seed without just one of these chemicals, nor would it grow successfully into a proper carrot.
***
Materialists are troubled by ‘free will’. Their dogma demands a pointless blind (non)mechanism which creates everything, including a Materialist’s own ideas, of course.
§ Some experiments in neuroscience have established that the brain may sometimes show a signal connected with a specific motor action before the person has deliberately chosen to carry out that action. This invokes a sense of panic for Materialists because it implies that the brain knows what you’re going to do before you do, thus clearly negating free will and imposing some sort of creepy mind control by mindless chemicals! (Although I’m not sure why they should be surprised, as that is the very thing they claim the brain does all the time when it makes our thoughts for us.) But for an Idealist, there is no problem, as the ‘I’ is the one in charge. ‘I’ decide to do something, and this non-material decision, plus the power of Will, starts up the electrical circuitry in the brain, which then tells the monkey-suit what to do. There is a brief time gap as the process gets underway: ie, while the Intuitive/Higher Mind instructs the Lower Mind (somehow) via the brain mechanism. Hence, we can measure the brain firing up before the person’s Lower Mind or body feels the urge.
How and why the brain signals come into being simply by willing it so, is still a mystery, of course: the Mind/Body problem will not go away.
For more details on this shocking neuroscientific discovery see the excellent Thirteen Things That Don’t Make Sense by Michael Brooks.
Six of the ‘things that don’t make sense’ (‘sex, death, free will, homeopathy, the placebo effect’ and…’Life’ itself) are horribly perplexing or paradoxical to a Materialist, but they all fit quite rationally within the Idealist/DarwinPlus paradigm: even ‘sex’ and ‘death’ which are baffling to Materialist-evolutionists, as in their view a simple budding or splitting system is surely a more efficient means of reproduction than all that messy passion and wasted energy.
One last example of the paradoxical non-sense you are driven to if you insist upon the Materialist fallacy: Steven Pinker, a Harvard Professor of Psychology, is on record as saying ‘Free will is a fictional construction. But it has applications in the real world’. So which is it to be, Professor? Fiction or the real world?
(It amazes me how glibly Materialists accept their own paradoxes and expect us to do so as well.)
But if we follow the Yogic/Esoteric path, along with Karma + Choice, we can allow that we do after all have free will, as we always knew but didn’t dare claim for fear of our biology teachers. Even the family mutt has free will. After all, he can choose whether to turn left or right when he’s booted into the garden. By what Primordial Physical Law could he possibly be pre-programmed for each turn he makes after every unseemly odour? And the cat… and Grandma…
So, given D+ and free will, what of normal Darwinian somatic evolution? If we can accept that the stuff in Chapter 21 is all rational and therefore possibly correct, we can play with the concept of the Collective Mind. Thus: an experience of an individual animal or person can (somehow) add to the overall experience of the Collective Mind of the species, and thus enrich it (100th Monkey?). This addition might then be diffused around to other individuals of the species via some sort of field/vibe/resonance/Intuitional process. The stronger the repetition, the greater the power (think back to ‘thoughtforms’ and ‘magic’ if you dare!). And thus, as Mind controls all, including pattern and design in body forms, this suggests that individual experiences might be fed back into the evolutionary process of the species, perhaps via Rupert Sheldrake’s ‘morphic resonance’.
§ There is some evidence for this, as subsequent generations of mice and rats can find their way more quickly round mazes than their predecessors.
Students of evolution will see where this is leading: is there some truth after all in Lamarck’s idea of ‘inheritable characteristics’? Does a creature somehow, via its own choices, efforts, and will, help to alter the physical features of the next generation? For example, does the giraffe’s determination to stretch her neck ever higher actually determine that her infant’s neck will be longer at birth?
We now know that DNA is just a chemical which requires a separate force (and ‘Mind’ seems to be the obvious candidate here) to switch its various genes on and off in order to produce the various physical patterns and ‘characteristics’ Lamarck was concerned with. As Mind must be involved, why should individual mental effort not be relevant? Modern epigenetics** suggests that this does indeed happen and that DNA/gene behaviour is not ‘fixed’ but alterable by our thoughts and behaviour switching genes on and off. You are definitely not the slave of ‘selfish genes’.
Darwin never discounted the idea that a characteristic might be inherited, which is an embarrassment to modern Materialists. Thus they either ignore the fact or ‘work round it’ by insisting that Darwin really was a proper sound Materialist who dismissed Lamarckism as silly.
§ He did occasionally show a little of his own frustration, even in early days…
‘But as my conclusions have lately been much misrepresented, and it has been stated that I attribute the modification of species exclusively to natural selection, I may be permitted to remark that in the first edition of this work, and subsequently, I placed in a most conspicuous position – namely, at the close of the Introduction – the following words: ”I am convinced that natural selection has been the main but not the exclusive means of modification.” This has been of no avail. Great is the power of steady misrepresentation; but the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long endure.’ Charles Darwin, last chapter, The Origin of Species, 6th and final edition.
In other words, he expressed his concern in every edition…. And a hundred years later still nobody listens…. The ‘power of steady misrepresentation’ does indeed endure; and for a long long time. Something the great man was wrong about.
Also:
‘My argument has always been that the mind and the spirit, while being influenced by the struggle for existence, have not originated through natural selection.’ (My emphasis, CG.) Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer of the process of Natural Selection.
Might it be that a species develops via its own collective experiences (as well as the brute forces of ‘accident’ in environment, as Darwin and Wallace pointed out) up to a point where it can go no further in its current format in its quest for ever-increasing knowledge and awareness? If Mind is behind all; if everything is evolving, from atom to ‘god’; if we all have free will….? And if Evolution is about Mind, not simply body..? In fact Wallace went so far as to suggest that there was a higher intelligence behind Life, animal consciousness and human intelligence itself.
§ Ie, the Collective Mind/Deva/whatever ensures that the individuals under its dominion get as much useful experience as possible from being, say, a sabre-toothed tiger before extincting that physical strand and returning to the physical later as a more generalised ‘big cat’. Ridiculous to a Materialist, but not necessarily so to an Idealist.
Perhaps there are ‘extinctional’ leaps from species to species, brought about as the potential of each collective samsaric experience is exhausted: ‘quantum evolution’ if you like, which might explain why some 98% of every species that has ever existed has become extinct. It might also perhaps reconcile the current split between the ‘gradualist’ and ‘saltationist’ schools of evolutionary theory: the academic battle being fought between the self-styled ‘creeps’ and ‘jerks’.
§ Ie, did evolution always proceed by endlessly slow and progressive steps over millions of years, or did it occasionally take an unexpected jump? There is a precedent for jumping in Nature, as electrons seem to take sudden quantum leaps from one energy state to another. Perhaps the old Esoteric saying of ‘As above, so below’ has a point.
Perhaps they are both right. Perhaps evolution is gradual via Natural Selection; but once the Mind/Deva has exhausted the total potential of that particular physical form and its capacity for awareness, then the job is complete and it’s time for a leap forward, via extinction + reincarnation in a new form with greater potential for learning/awareness: another step up the slow and slippery slope from zero to hero: from a brain/soma capable of ‘lower-awareness’ to one that can handle ‘higher-awareness’.
Naturally, a larger brain will be required, and brain morphology, as I understand it, does suggest that brain size might develop in jumps.
In fact, might ‘the struggle for life’ that CD found so wearying and troublesome be more realistically seen as ‘the struggle to understand better’?
§ There seems to have been a gradual increase in brain size among hominins over a three million year period. Then, about 200,000 years ago, there was a sudden increase of about 30% or so, for no apparent purpose. D+ would suggest that this was purposefully brought about in preparation for Man’s next stage in his journey.
If there is any truth in this suggestion, and speciation is indeed the mechanism whereby ever higher levels of awareness are achieved, then perhaps emotional and mental niches are similarly explored, showing up as political and religious developments. Hence the very slow but discernible trend towards personal responsibility in religion and the even slower trend towards social justice and harmony in politics?
***
Cosmologists are puzzled by the fact that the universe seems to be just right for human life to exist in it. Fundamental values of gravitation and binding forces are balanced to within a tiny fraction of a percent. A tiny bit more of x, and the universe would fly apart; a fraction less, and it would collapse. A tiny alteration in y would mean particles could not form, never mind chemical elements and water. If z were not ‘just so’ there would be no chance of ‘life emerging’. It all looks as if the universe saw us coming, as somebody once put it. But this, of course is anathema to Materialists, for whom there can be no purpose in the universe or in anything else; presumably including their own theories.
One final thought: another thing that bothered clear-thinking Darwin about his own theory was that where we ought to find millions of transitional creatures in the fossil record, for example between ape and man.. we find no such thing. We find only ape or man. In CD’s own words ‘Why do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms?’
Among ‘evolutionists’ the expectation of finding transitional creatures was high, as was famously demonstrated by ‘Nebraska Man’ in the 1920s, who was fully reconstructed in imagination and then illustrated as a classic cartoon ape-man: all derived from a single discovered tooth.
The tooth was later shown to be from a pig. But the ‘dogma of expectation’ converted it unquestioningly into ape-man all the same.
Time etc.
Concepts which have proved useful for ordering things easily assume so great an authority over us that we forget their terrestrial origin and accept them as unalterable facts. They then become labelled as ‘conceptual necessities’, etc. The road of scientific progress is frequently blocked for long periods by such errors
Albert Einstein
Everything has been thought of before, but the problem is to think of it again
Goethe
If the Yogic/Esoteric Understanding is reasonably accurate, then there are a number of ‘matters arising’. Some concern Physics. If you don’t find Physics appealing, please just give it a try. At the level we’re concerned with it’s all just common sense, really.