“The dualistic conception of matter as distinct from energy and consciousness is a constrictive illusion put in place by the forces of empire, and the living reality would be freed from the inert husks of the wrongly conceived natural world” 

-Ray Peat

The Cosmos is alive, Nature, the Life process is intelligent, and purposeful, the level of wisdom, intelligence and beauty present within the artistry of Creation is breath-taking.

I’ve mentioned in previous posts the work of Mae Wan Ho, specifically her book The Rainbow and the Worm, which discusses the biophysics (I think bio-energetics would be a more accurate term, as energy undoubtedly precedes physical matter) of living organisms. The primary focus of her work has been to show that the organism is not an infernally complex machine, made up of separate parts following instructions and protocols read out from a digital genetic blue-print, but a beautifully coordinated, coherent, living whole, her work like that of Ray Peat draws upon the insights of individuals such as Joseph Needham, Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, and Gilbert Ling.

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, so following are images of organisms, taken using a pioneering, but non-invasive technique that allows one to see the whole organism down to the molecules that make up its tissues.

 

“Brilliant interference colours are produced by recombining plane-polarized light split up into slow and fast rays on passing through birefringent liquid crystalline regimes. The principles involved are the same as those used in identifying mineral crystals in geology. Different tissues appear in different colours and varying in intensity according to the orientation and birefingence of the molecules involved as well as their degree of order. The organism – in this case a Drosophila larva about to emerge – is obviously alive. Waves of muscle contraction are sweeping over its body, so one can infer that all the molecular motors and enzymes in the tissues are busily turning and deforming as energy is transformed, so how is it possible that they have a crystalline order? It is most likely because the molecular motions are highly correlated or coherent. As visible light is about 10¹⁴ hz, and correlated molecular motions generally less than 10¹⁰hz, the tissues will appear indistinguishable from static crystals to the light passing through so long as the movements of their constituent molecules are coherent. With this imaging technique, one can see that the movements of the organism are fully coordinated at all levels from the macroscopic to the molecular, and that is what the coherence of the organism entails.”

That such images can be produced requires that the organism be coordinated at all levels, from the level of the organism, its organs and tissues down to the cells and further to the DNA, all the molecules of the body including the water must be aligned and moving synchronously together.

Ho goes on to state, “the molecules of the tissues maintain their crystalline order when they are actively transforming energy. The evidence suggests that the crystalline order is dependent on energy transformation, so that the more energetic the organism, the more intensely colourful it is, implying that the molecular motions are all the more coherent. This is consistent with ultrasensitive high-speed measurements of contracting muscles which show all the molecular motors cycling in synchronous steps. Similarly, X-ray diffraction reveals that a high degree of supramolecular order is maintained during isometric contraction. The coherence of the organism is therefore closely tied up with its energetic status. To be precise, it is tied up with the way energy is stored and readily mobilized over all its space-time domains.”

This of course correlates with the central thesis of Ray Peat’s work, that…

“energy and structure are interdependent at every level”.

Whilst much of contemporary biology focuses on molecules acting on each other through clunky nuts and bolts, lock and key receptor mechanisms, there are those who can see that this model is utterly stupid. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi was one of these, he saw that attempts to explain “the living state” in terms of clunky interactions of macro-molecules were hopeless and instead, like William Koch emphasized the importance of electronic interactions, including redox reactions, now a well accepted and fundamental phenomenon in the krebs cycle (that Szent-Gyorgyi helped discover) and electron transport chain, fundamental to healthy mitochondrial oxidative metabolism.

It is this energy flow that that holds the structure that supports this flow. Interfere with one and you interfere with the other, as they are ultimately one. Szent-Gyorgyi suggested that proteins acted as conductors throughout the body, but for them to function in this manner they need their electrons to be mobile, but as long as the protein molecule’s electrons are saturated they remain immobile, take out one electron and the protein becomes a highly reactive ‘free radical’, increasing its ability to interact with other molecules and form more complex structures and increasingly novel functions.

Szent-Gyorgyi’s first rule of electrobiology:

“the living state is the electronically desaturated state of molecules, and the degree of development and differentiation is a function of the degree of electronic desaturation”.

Ok, so what de-saturates the protein?

For that a charge transfer must occur and for that an electron acceptor is needed, an oxidizing agent, but even if one is found a problem is encountered the creation of 2 electrically charged radicals, the protein (donor) and the acceptor, both of which would be expected to be highly reactive and incompatible with life, however there is way out, if the 2 molecules link, the retain their reactivity, but no net charge is generated. In electronics this is called ‘doping’ and is used in the creation of semiconductors.

As discussed previously cancer appears to result from interference of energy flow, as evidenced by it’s characteristic redox state and accompanying aerobic glyolysis, this was something that Szent-Gyorgyi felt lay behind the pathology (Szent-Gyorgyi 1977). That a disruption of ordered structure was intimately involved in some way with this redox imbalance was something Szent-Gyorgyi was aware of, and considered a central factor in carcinogenesis, as when a cell’s structure is disrupted enzymes that would otherwise be bound-up can be released,  for example of the glyoxalase system which acts on methylglyoxal (MG) turning it into D-lactic acid. Szent-Gyorgyi suggests MG as a primordial (though weak) electron acceptor from a time when there were much lower levels of oxygen which is the main electron acceptor that allowed for the development of increasingly more complex life-forms. “Disorder, in cells, may lead to the activation of glyoxalase, the destruction of MG, and the release of proliferation from its inhibition”, as when the activity of MG (or other electron acceptors such as CO₂ and O₂) is absent the cell’s redox balance shifts towards reduction (excess electrons). Szent-Gyorgyi suggests that methylglyoxal is acting as a ‘doping’ agent through combining with amino groups allowing proteins to function as semiconductors. Semiconduction has been confirmed in proteins (Rosenberg and Postow 1969).

The creation of free radicals is absolutely essential to the living state, it allows for the flow (de-localisation) of electrons, strengthening the forces by which molecules are joined, and the generation of more complex, more differentiated life. Such cohesion interferes with division and proliferation, so cell division requires a temporary loss of cohesion, and with it loss of differentiated structure, this is a return to a more primal functional state focused solely on growth and multiplication.

Carbon dioxide as discussed previously can function similarly to methylglyoxal, and is likely the more primal ‘doping’ agent facilitating semiconduction in proteins, through bonding to amino groups forming carbamino groups, increasing coherence, it is the agent that facilitates oxygen delivery in the body allowing for energetically efficient oxidative metabolism, CO₂ breathes oxygen into us.

Carbon dioxide is something truly wondrous, it is more essential for life than oxygen, likely acting as the original bio-electric doping agent / cardinal adsorbent / kosmotrope, within more complex life forms it allows for the release and use of oxygen, which in turn facilitates greater energy flow through organisms allowing for the generation of ever more complex and individuated forms of Life, further these organisms as a result of their oxidative metabolisms produce CO_2, which further increases coherency of mitochondrial energy production, increases blood flow and oxygen delivery, having the potential when unimpeded by de-cohering influences to birth ever more holonic biopsychic states.

This arrangement is astounding, the Life process is a Living Fountain, that through the most beautiful reciprocal feedback loops is innately self-evolving / self perfecting. Such intelligent arrangements occur throughout Life,

 

“… ‘Herring gulls’ have a red patch on their beak. This red patch has an important meaning, for the gull-feeds its babies by going out fishing and swallowing the fish it has caught. Then, on coming home, the hungry baby gull knocks at the red spot. This elicits a reflex of regurgitation in mama, and the baby takes the fish from her gullet. All this may sound very simple, but it involves a whole series of most complicated chain reactions with a horribly complex underlying nervous mechanism of the knocking baby and that of the regurgitating mother. All this had to be developed simultaneously, which, if a random mutation, has the probability of zero. I am unable to approach this problem without supposing an innate ‘drive’ in living matter to perfect itself.” (Szent-Gyorgyi 1977b).

For evolution to unfold with such intelligence, intelligence / consciousness must be present at all levels from quark to quasar, carbon dioxide is the Breath of Life, and serves within the Gaian biosphere as a prime coordinator of the evolutionary process.

The energy expressed in this process is Love, how could it be anything else? The totality of the Living Kosmos conspires in nurturing our evolution, to be truly coherent within such a system is to share in the will of that Heavenly conspiracy.

References

Ho M-W, (2008), The Rainbow and the Worm: the physics of organisms 3^rd Edn, World Scientific, Singapore.

Ho M-W, (1995), Bioenergetics and the Coherence of Organisms, Neuronetwork World, 5, pp. 733-750

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/prague.php

Rosenberg B, and Postow E, (1969), Semiconduction in proteins and lipids-its possible biological import, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 158, pp. 161-190.

Szent-Gyorgyi A, (1977), The Living State and Cancer, Biophysics, 74(7), pp. 2844-2847.

Szent-Gyorgyi, Albert. 1977. Drive in Living Matter to Perfect Itself, Synthesis 1, 1(1), pp. 14-26.

For more information on carbon dioxide and its electronic interactions with proteins and central importance in biology take a look at this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZkGxrntmTE

The Biology of CO₂ with Ray Peat.

Images from: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/lab.php

Quantitative Image Analysis of Birefringent Biological Materials – latest research