Abstract

Table of Contents

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

Part VII

Part VIII


     

Part VIII: The Two Species of Homo Sapiens

     SANTIAGO RAMON-Y-CAJAL, one of the outstanding physiologists of a former generation, in his autobiography wrote: (21) "I remember that once I spent 20 hours continuously at the microscope watching the movements of a sluggish leukocyte in its laborious efforts to escape from a blood capillary." It would seem absurd to suppose that a single-celled leukocyte consciously wanted to be free, and yet as Sir Charles Sherrington (22) said, when referring to this statement, there are not a few competent research workers who are persuaded that even such lowly forms of life do have some kind of mindedness.
     The researches of H. S. Jennings, (23) which were published under the title Behaviour of the Lower Organisms in 1906, certainly provided some justification for believing that single celled animals have minds of their own. This is a remarkable circumstance in view of the fact that by reason of their very uni-cellularity they have no organ of mind such as constitutes brain in the higher forms of life. Indeed, Jennings drew the conclusion that if an amoeba were as large as a dog we would undoubtedly ascribe to it all the mental states which we ascribe to dogs, such as fear, anger, and courage.
     Numerous investigators have reported similar findings for the humble little amoeba. Thus Wilhelm Seifriz believed that the amoeba is capable of making decisions. (24) When it is prodded by a needle it may retreat as fast as it can or contract into a ball. In one experiment he held down the edge of an amoeba with a needle. The amoeba pinched off

21. Ramon-y-Cajal, Santiago, Recuerdos de mi Vida, 3rd edition., translated by E. H. Caigie, Toronto, 1937, p.171.
22. Sherrington, Sir Charles, Man on His Nature, Cambridge, 1963, p.209.
23. Jennings, H. S., Behaviour of the Lower Organisms, Columbia University Biology, Series10, Columbia University Press, 1906, chap.13.
24. Seifriz, Wilhelm, Protoplasm, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1956, p.58.

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this portion of flesh and escaped, just as a fox might bite off a leg caught in a trap in order to get free.
     So pervasive does mindedness seem to be in living organisms even of the simplest kind that biologists have coined the term "protoplasmic consciousness." A little higher up the scale of life, neurophysiologists think they can speak meaningfully of "spinal consciousness." With ourselves we locate consciousness in the brain, but there is substantial evidence of consciousness of a more diffuse nature somewhere else within ourselves than in the brain, for the brain itself can be operatively mutilated to an extraordinary degree without the patient apparently having any awareness of change in over-all consciousness. The kind of evidence that I am thinking of has resulted from drastic measures taken to help those who have received very serious head wounds. For example, Penfield and Rasmussen wrote in this connection: (25)

     Popular tradition, which seems to be largely shared by scientific men has taken it for granted that the cortex is a sort of essential organ for the purposes of thinking and consciousness, and that final integration of neural mechanisms takes place in it. Perhaps this is only natural since there has been an extraordinary enlargement of the cortex in the human brain, and, at the same time, man seems to be endowed with intellectual functions of a new order..
     [However] the whole anterior frontal area, on one or both sides, may be removed without loss of consciousness. During the amputation the individual may continue to talk, unaware of the fact that he is being deprived of that area which most distinguishes his brain from that of the chimpanzee.

     Experiments with animals have shown that extraordinary segments of the brain can be destroyed without apparently reducing their consciousness of what is taking place around them. Some of this evidence is discussed in another Doorway Paper. (26) In fact, Ralph Gerard said a few years ago that for all the difference it seems to make, our skulls could be stuffed with cotton batten. (27) This is an exaggeration, of course, but as we shall see, some kind of consciousness seems to inhere in other organs and tissues of the body besides the brain.
     A very low form of life, the fresh-water planarian, has been a favourite subject of experimentation in this connection, because it can be chopped up into pieces in innumerable ways and each piece (except under a few clearly specifiable conditions) will regenerate itself into a whole animal complete with a brain. In his Lectures on Developmental

25. Penfield, W. and T. Rasmussen, The Cerebral Cortex in Man, Macmillan, New York, 1950, p.226.
26. See "The Subconscious and the Forgiveness of Sins", Part VI in Man in Adam and in Christ, vol.3 in The Doorway Papers Series.
27. Gerard, Ralph, "What is Memory," Scientific American, Sept., 1953, p.118.

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Physiology, Alfred Kuhn (28) diagrammed some of these planarian mutilations and showed how extraordinary is this little animal's regenerative power. It is not necessary that some part of the brain itself be allotted to each fragment in order to provide the nucleus of a regenerated and complete new brain. Apparently the animal can build an effective brain for itself out of other parts of its own body.
     Even more extraordinary is the finding that these newly regenerated parts are not merely reacting things with some kind of nervous system that is electro-chemically responsive to stimuli applied externally. The fact is that once these fragments have reconstituted themselves into whole animals they are capable of showing all kinds of reactions which, if they were witnessed in larger animals, or when they are witnessed under a microscope with sufficient magnification, could only be interpreted by the viewer as expressions of quite refined consciousness. Jay B. Best found that these exceedingly simple little bits of protoplasm seemed to be experiencing "boredom, interest, conflict, decision, frustration, rebellion, anxiety, learning and cognitive awareness." (29) In short, they demonstrate not merely consciousness but mindedness. He concluded: (30)

     If the major psychological patterns are not unique to the vertebrate brain but can be produced even by such primitive animals as planarians, two possibilities suggest themselves. Such patterns may stem from some primordial properties of living matter, arising from some cellular or sub-cellular level of organization rather than nerve circuitry...
     An alternative possibility is that the behavioural programs may have arisen independently in various species by a kind of convergent evolution.

     One has to allow this alternative, of course, as a possibility. But one still has to explain what kind of forces are at work that can cause matter, supposedly devoid of consciousness, to evolve a high level of consciousness out of itself no matter how many times you cut it up.
     There are many exceedingly primitive forms of animal life which have been observed behaving in a very purposeful manner when faced with some situation that must be considered exceptional to its normal way of life. Years ago Romanes reported watching a small rotifer attach itself to a much larger one with the forceps which form at one end of its tiny body. (31) Although rotifers are many-celled animals, certain species

28. Kuhn, Alfred, Lectures on Developmental Physiology, translated by Roger Milkman, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1971, pp.419, 420.
29. Best, Jay B., "Protopsychology," Scientific American, Feb., 1963, p.62.
30. Ibid.
31. George J. Romanes: quoted by A. T. Schofield, "The Scope of the Mind," Transactions of the Victoria Institute, vol.32, 1898, p.238, from his Animal Intelligence, 1881, p.18.

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are far smaller than any single-celled amoeba; (32) they are microscopic in size. The larger rotifer at once became very active, moving rapidly this way and that in the water until it became attached to a piece of weed, the small rotifer still hanging on grimly. Here, Romanes tells us, it took firm hold of the weed with its own forceps and began a most extraordinary series of movements to rid itself of the encumbrance. It dashed itself from side to side, but for a remarkable length of time the little rotifer refused to let go. However, after several minutes it was thrown violently away. Then it returned, seeking to re-attach itself for some reason. But the movement of the larger animal was now so violent as to prevent it from doing so. Romanes says that it was impossible to watch this little performance without attributing mindedness to both animals. It is clear, therefore, that there are no size limits imposed upon the possession of mindedness (just as there are no structural complexity limits, judging by amoeba behaviour), at least to the extent that this tiny creature with its sub-microscopic brain was engaged in a conscious struggle with one of its own species even smaller than itself.
     One little unicellular creature which is a favourite among those who experiment with learning in animals is the paramecium. The interest in this microscopic animal lies not only in the fact that it is unicellular and therefore has no brain which could be the seat of its mindedness, but that it can be shown to be quite capable of learning. What interests biochemists is that the learning process is associated with a change in the animal's chemical constitution -- or at least it appears to be. In fact, if the animal is chopped up and fed in the form of a kind of mincemeat to other paramecia, they seem to have acquired from this diet a certain head start in the learning process when subjected to the same regimen of training. (33) There is some debate about the reality of this "memory diet," but there is no question that these little creatures do learn without a brain.
     Some extraordinary experiments have been conducted in recent years with single cells. These experimental cells were not whole animals in the accepted sense, like the paramecia, but rather free moving fragments of a whole animal. Evidence is accumulating from such experiments that in some mysterious way such cells recognize one another and know what to do in order to organize or re-organize themselves into larger aggregates both of organs and whole organisms. Graham Chedd has recently drawn attention to what he quite justifiably

32. Rotifers: see Ralph Buschbaum, Animals Without Backbones, University Press of Chicago, 1938, p.30, plate 1.
33. Paramecium: Sten R. Bergstrom, University of Uppsala, Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, vol,9, 1970, p.220; vol.10, 1970, p.16, 18.

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terms "good samaritanism" among cells, (34) noting that two reports of metabolic cooperation between human cells of recent date reveal that, where for some reason or other cells have become incompetent to perform their functions properly, competent cells will actually cooperate with them and help them out.
     That cells do co-operate with each other in some way has been demonstrated time and again. More than half a century ago in 1894 the distinguished experimental biologist Wilhelm Roux (35) shook apart the cells of a frog's egg during the early stages of its development, placed the separated cells some distance apart in water, and watched to see what would happen. The separated cells slowly approached each other until they established contact. Whether these cells actually reconstituted themselves into tissue is not clear, but numerous experiments since that time have shown that they are quite able to do so.
     It was reported recently by Nicholas Seeds (36) that mouse brain cells derived from an embryo animal could be gently teased apart and if immersed in a suitable fluid medium would reconstitute themselves into true brain tissue, tissue which contained the all important synapses through which nerve cells communicate with each other and with nerve fibers formed complete with "insulating" myelin sheath. Lapham and Markesbury have demonstrated that human brain cells possess the same capabilities for re-organization. (37) Such single cells, teased apart from embryo brains of various gestational ages (10�19 weeks) which were available because of surgical removal for the purpose of terminating pregnancy, can be cultivated in vitro and will develop into normal brain tissue. These single cells develop the same character as brain cells in the embryo that comes to full term in vivo, and within what seems to be very nearly the same time period.
     It has been known for many years that a heart will continue to pulsate after being removed from the body, provided it is appropriately nourished. (38) What has been recently discovered, however, is that heart cells have an in-built individual rhythmic pulse of their own. If a number of these cells cultivated in vitro are allowed to associate, though

34. Chedd, Graham, "Cellular Samaritans," New Scientist, Oct. 31, 1968, p.256.
35. Roux, Wilhelm: quoted by Ashley Montagu, in On Being Human, Schuman, New York, 1951, p.34.
36. Seeds, Nicholas and Albert E. Vetter, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, vol. 68, p.3219. Also, New Scientist, Apr. 6, 1972, pp.12-14, "ReAssembling the Brain."
37. Lapham, L. W. and W. R. Markesbury, "Human Foetal Cerebellar Cortex: Organization and Maturation of Cells in Vitro," Science, vol.173, 1971, p.829-832.
38. Heart cells: Isaac Harary, "Heart Cells in Vitro," Scientific American, May, 1962, pp.141-152.

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each of them has its own established rhythm, they will unite and coordinate their pulsing so that they beat in unison.
     What is true of heart cells is found to be true of kidney cells. So strong is the power to re-organize, that kidney tissue can be minced up and yet, under appropriate conditions, reconstitute itself into true kidney tissue. (39) In fact, it has been proved experimentally possible to produce normal embryonic kidneys by mincing, pooling, and scrambling kidney tissue from several different embryos.
     There is a growing feeling that consciousness in some way inheres in every cell, although there are some areas of the organism in which the organization of the cells somehow concentrates consciousness, and mindedness finds expression. Certainly cells appear to be quite capable of organizing themselves into larger wholes that somehow contribute to higher levels of consciousness. Sir Charles Sherrington had some notable passages in his famous essay "Man on His Nature," in which he speaks of the apparent purposefulness of cells in the growing organism: (40)

     We seem to watch battalions of specific catalysts, lined up each waiting with stop watch in hand, for its moment to play the part assigned to it, a step in one or another great thousand linked chain process. . . .
     The total system is organized. . .  In this great company along with stop watches, run dials telling how confreres and substrates are getting on so that at zero time each takes its turn.

     In a similar vein Paul W. Weiss of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research wrote: (41)

     At the moment of its creation or very soon after, each of the million cells that make up a living organism seems to know its destiny. It knows whether it will become part of an eye or a leg or a chicken feather. It knows also how to find and group itself in the proper arrangement with other like cells to make up the living fabric of eyes, legs, feathers, skin, and so forth.

     If my thesis is correct and the basis of reality is spiritual, a spiritual reality in which mindedness is the fundamental element, it ought not to surprise us to find that in whatever form such a reality expresses itself, whether as pure spirit or through materialization, mindedness should always characterize that expression. It is not unreasonable to assume that some forms of materialization will lend themselves only to a very

39. Kidney cells: Paul Weiss and A. C. Taylor, "Reconstruction of Complex Organs from Single Cell Suspensions of Chick Embryos in Advanced Stages of Differentiation," Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, vol.46, no.9, Sept., 1960, p.177-185.
40. Sherrington, Sir Charles, ref.22, p.70.
41. Weiss, Paul W., "Cracking Life's Code," Science News Letter, May 5, 1956, p.275.

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low order of mindedness, while other forms of materialization will lend themselves to very high orders.
     Everything around us, as an expression of God's creative handiwork, may be in some way capable of reflecting and responding to the heart of God, not just to His will. In Western culture we have bifurcated Nature, divorcing the spiritual from the material, separating between the physical world and the spiritual world in a way that other cultures have not done. To us this seems the realistic thing to do, except that in more recent years we have begun to bring them together again, into a unity, but only by reducing the spiritual to a non-spiritual reality, making it merely an aspect of matter. Because our way of thinking about and dealing with matter has proved so successful in our acquisition of power for practical purposes, we have come to suppose that this view of the material world is the only valid one. However, some of our success is beginning to take on the colour of failure, and it may be time for us to give serious thought to the possibility that the non-Western view of the world, a view which is by far the older view, might after all be the truer one.
     Native people from the simpler cultures have treated Nature with a kind of personal respect and as a consequence have not despoiled it as we have done, but have learned to live more in harmony with it. They have respect not merely for the feelings of animals, a respect which we share in part by supporting legislation to protect such creatures, but also for the feelings of plant life � at least certain kinds of plants, chiefly those which contribute in one way or another to their survival or to their culture. The Indians of North America, in carving a face mask, carved it from a living tree and destroyed it when the tree died, believing that with the death of the tree the mask somehow lost its vitality also. The purpose of the Hopi rain dance is to wake up the earth, to prepare it to receive the rain that is about to fall.
     While we look upon such beliefs with some measure of benign condescension and feel that it must be nice to have established this kind of rapport with Nature on a person-to-person basis, most of us have tended to believe it was really rather childish. But in recent years evidence has been accumulating, which to some competent observers suggests that perhaps, after all, these native people were not so foolish. Where they danced and sang to encourage crop growth, we now believe music may have a somewhat similar effect, as recent experiments by Pearl Weinberger have shown. (42) And as for soul life in plants,

42. Weinberger, Dr. P., reported under "Science: Agriculture," in Time, April 12, 1968, p.64. The Russian psychologist, V. N. Pushkin, has recently reported evidence of response in flowers to changes in emotional states of human beings in their presence, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 26, 1973.

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it will surprise many people to find how large a literature of a serious nature there already is on the subject. G. T. Fechner, (43) a pioneer among psychologists, is one of the earliest contributors to this literature. We are on the edge, perhaps, of discovering a whole new world just beyond, but not independent of, the material world.
     And this brings me to the last point I wish to draw attention to in this chapter. How does it come about that the millions of cells which comprise the human body and each of which appears to have an individual consciousness of its own can so organize themselves not only so that each grouping in the form of a specific organ contributes to the continuance and well being of all the rest of the cells in the body, but can somehow pool their multitude of consciousness and generate a unified mindedness? Within ourselves, we are not aware of millions of such discrete consciousnesses but only of a single self. Edward McCrady put it very effectively: (44)

     I, for instance, certainly have a stream of consciousness which I, as a whole, experience; and yet I include within myself millions of white blood cells which give impressive evidence of experiencing their individual streams of consciousness of which I am not directly aware.
     It is both entertaining and instructive to watch living leukocytes crawling about within transparent tissues of the living tadpole's tail. They give every indication of choosing their paths, experiencing uncertainty, making decisions, changing their minds, feeling contacts, etc., that we observe in larger individuals. . . .
     So I feel compelled to accept the conclusion that I am a community of individuals, who have somehow become integrated into a higher order of individuality which coordinates and harmonizes the activities of the lesser individuals within me.

43. Fechner, G. T., Soul Life of Plants, 1848. Also R. H. France, one of the most eminent of German botanists, published a smaller book sometime after 1901 entitled The Soul of the Plants in which he said: "I have a presentiment that the study of nature and psychology will in some future time make the most beautiful discoveries in a place where no one had expected it -- in the field of plant life." The same author later produced 8 immense volumes in German entitled Das Leben der Pflanzen, a work which was completed in 1913, and which according to the author was largely inspired by Fechner's earlier work. Sir Jagdis Chunder Bose, Prof. Emeritus of Presidency College and Director of Bose Research Institute in Calcutta, wrote the following important works, all bearing on this subject: Responsiveness in the Living and Non-Living, 1902; Plant Response, 1906; and Researches in the Irritability of Plants, in 1912. Later in 1921 he published a four volume work entitled Life Movements in Plants.
  On Plant Consciousness, see also Stanley Cobb, ref.10, p.202. Even Darwin seems to have recognized this possibility, as quoted by John E. Howard, "Creation and Providence, with Special Reference to the Evolutionist Theory," Transactions of the Victoria Institute, vol.12, 1878, p.217. See also Walter Lowrie, "A Meditation on Scientific Authority," Theology Today, Oct., 1945, pp.309ff.
44. McCrady, Edward, Religious Perspectives in Teaching: in Biology, Hazen Foundation, New Haven, 1950, pp.19, 20.

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     This is a situation of which most of us are not aware because we have not considered the implications of the fact that we are composed of cells which have a life of their own. We can, however, see some such unification taking place in Nature. A particularly good example is to be found in the Portuguese Man-of-War in which a very large number of previously independently living animals of simple form unite together, modify themselves somewhat, and form a single free living animal rather like a jelly fish. Here we have, then, a demonstrable example of unification comparable in some respects to what takes place in a living body. (45)
     Just as a single cell with consciousness may merge itself with a vast number of other cells equally having consciousness to form a larger consciousness, so perhaps the larger consciousness of the individual so formed may merge with other individuals to constitute a still larger consciousness.
     Sir Alister Hardy, (46) Emeritus Professor of Zoology in Oxford University, is one of those who believe that flocks of birds that wheel together at some as yet unrecognized signal are in fact responding to a single "mind." This is not merely communication from one mind to another mind, but a response to a single mindedness by all the members of the flock, without conscious individuation. What is envisioned here is not so much that all the birds are individually thinking alike, but that a single thought captures them all by the very fact of their being together as a flock at the time. It is not that each bird has its own thought which happens to agree with the thoughts of all the other birds, it is rather that the whole flock constitutes a group mind. Raymond Pearl (47) held that animals which are acting as herd leaders are performing as specialized sense organs, substituting for the sense organs of the individuals in the herd which then respond to the signals of the sensitive leader. This is not what is intended here. There is no recognizable leader of the flock to which the other animals are responding. It is a kind of directive shared instantly by all. What I am not saying is that a few birds make a decision to turn and communicate this to the rest by some kind of signal. What I am suggesting is that the

45. "In many cases it is a matter of definition as to whether one calls something a colony of single-celled individuals or a single multi-cellular organism. The bases of such a decision may include the ability of isolated cells to survive, the degree of organization into tissues, and the degree of differentiation among the individual cells," Alfred Kuhn, Lectures on Developmental Physiology, translated by Roger Milkman, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1971, p.112.
46. Hardy, Sir Mister, The Living Stream, Collins, London 1965, p.234, referring to Edmund Selous, Thought-Transference, or What, in Birds?, 1931.
47. Pearl, Raymond, Man the Animal, Principia Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 1946, p.115.

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individual birds are like the cells which lose themselves in the whole in order to form a single source of consciousness, just as the billions of cells in the brain appear to merge themselves to become a single mind. The consequence is that the birds act rather like a single organism composed of a multitude of separate cells. All the birds experience whatever thought any one of the birds experiences.

     We have moved now through a series of levels of consciousness, each one depending not so much on an increase in number of cells as it does upon the level of organization of the individual consciousnesses which form the aggregate. At the lowest level of life we have single cells which seem to know what they are about. These small bits of mind are manifestly capable of gathering themselves together to form larger organs, and in the developing embryo of coordinating themselves as organs and in due course into a single conscious individual.
     From this point we move on to groups of individuals who seem capable of acting in unison in a way which suggests the real existence of a "group mind." Flocks of birds and schools of fishes and herds of animals seem to bear witness to this phenomenon. On a smaller scale, though certainly involving as many individuals, we have in such creatures as the Portuguese Man-of-War, an example of many individuals surrendering their autonomy to become a larger self which thereafter acts as though but one mind was in charge. It is very possible that the same phenomenon of unification is actually involved within the larger community of individuals which we term a species, and that a species is bound into a unity by something more than merely a common genetic endowment. If it is true that the ultimate reality is not material but spiritual, the ultimate reality of speciation by which the members of the species recognize one another and feel a sense of commonality with each other might well be a spiritual one also. There is, then, not merely a psychic unity which binds all men, but also a psychic unity which binds every other species within its own membership. There is, as it were, a feline psychic unity, a bovine psychic unity, a canine psychic unity, as well as a psychic unity of Homo sapiens.
     It is with some such concept as this in mind that Sir Alister Hardy, though not by any means sharing the views I am expressing in their larger context, suggested: "Might it not be possible for there to be in the animal kingdom as a whole...a sort of psychic 'blueprint,' shared 

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between members of a species?" (48) He elaborated this thought subsequently: (49)

     It is possible to imagine some such pattern of shared unconscious experience: a kind of composite species pattern of life. It is important to remember that in the concept of the individual mind we are faced with a mystery no less remarkable. The mind cannot be anchored to this or that group of cells that make up the brain. The community of cells making up the body has a mind beyond the individual cells. . . .
     In the scheme I am suggesting, a sort of psychic pool of experience would be shared subconsciously by all members of a species, by some method akin to what we are witnessing in telepathy. Individual lives, animals' minds, would come and go -- but the psychic stream of a shared behaviour pattern in the living population would flow on in time parallel to the flow of the physical DNA material.

     The point I am making here is that not only does the evidence suggest that the spiritual aspect of the universe is more basic to its existence than the material, but also that the spiritual unity between individuals, which binds them into a kind of community which we term a species, is more basic to the existence of the species than the material genes which we have hitherto considered the decisive factor in speciation. With respect to man, what makes him a true species is his fallenness. And I think C. S. Lewis was perfectly right when he said: (50)

     What man lost by the Fall was his original [my emphasis] specific nature. . . This condition was transmitted by heredity to all later generations, for it was not simply what biologists call an acquired variation. It was the emergence of a new kind of man; a new species, never made by God, had sinned its way into existence. . . .

     This aborted species, which is not God's creation but of man's own making, no longer represents true manhood as God originally intended man to be, but it does constitute a species. By contrast, what makes the Body of Christ a real species, and at the same time a different species, is its redeemedness, as Paul states the case so succinctly (1 Corinthians 12:12): "For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are of one body: so also is Christ." And Scripture says, by implication: "As the body is one and hath many members, and all the members of that one body (millions as they are) are of one body: so also is Adam." It is not surprising that the Lord is called a Last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45) by contrast with the First Adam. There are now therefore in existence two species of Homo 

48. Hardy, Sir Mister, The Living Stream, Collins, London 1965, p.257.
49. Ibid., p.258.
50. Lewis, C. S., The Problem of Pain, Macmillan, New York, 1948, p.70.

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sapiens, in place of one, whose specific identities as species are more real than the genes suggest, because the basic difference is a spiritual one, and the spiritual is more fundamental than the material.
     In the final Chapter we will look at the nature of this re-created species in the light of these facts.

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