Epigenetic Biofield Control System of the Organism

Savely Savva
Monterey Institute for the Study of Alternative Healing Arts

Abstract: Developmental biologists, starting with H. Driesch and A. Gurvitsch at the beginning of the 20^th century, suggested the existence of a non-chemical level of organization that controls embryogenesis—the “biofield.” In the middle of the century, developmental biologists called it “epiphenomenon of genome.” In the 1960s, Romanian biochemist, Eugene Macovschi, postulated the existence of cellular “biostructure”—an entity that controls processes in living cells and changes chemical properties of constituent molecules. In 2000, at the announcement of deciphering the human genome, Craig Venter, then CEO of Celera Genomics, said exactly the same—to understand the way the genome operates, it should be considered a “different” (presumably, non-chemical) level of organization.

Yet, in 2005, the absolute majority of studies in biochemistry, molecular biology, biophysics, etc., are about chemical signals associated with developmental, normal physiological and aging processes, and diseases—their structure and presumed mechanisms of action. The control system that arranges these signals is almost never mentioned, although it is clear that any gene, a part of a DNA chemical molecule, does not have the ‘mind’ or the ‘plan’ and the feedback mechanism needed to control anything.

How is the control system of the organism structured, what is its physical carrier, and how is the genetic information re-encoded on it? The contemporary, still Newtonian physics, does not have any answers to these questions. This monograph is intended to clarify the formulation of the problem and to suggest some approaches to solving it.

Hypothesis Of The Biofield Control System (BCS)

Alexander Gurwitsch wrote¹:

Perhaps, the term “biofield” may be somewhat misleading for the field-like, non-electromagnetic control system of the organism, and a better term would be ‘Biofield Control System’ or BCS. The following postulated definition of the BCS, that is broader than the biofield concept engendered in embryology, comes from viewing the organism as a self-controlled cybernetic, thermodynamically open system^2. (Classical thermodynamics was developed for closed systems. Thermodynamics of open systems include effects of external influences and increases of entropy in the extended system.)

Contemporary physics is unable to explain life and life-related phenomena and many physicists have stated this unequivocally. Robert Rosen, who in turn refers to Einstein and Schrödinger, writes:³

The following suggested concept comes neither from a biologist nor from a physicist, but from an engineer and physical chemist who is not bound by the epistemological norms of the current scientific paradigm and who appreciates the universal relevance of Cybernetics. It emphasizes the difference between the field-like control system of the organism and its yet-unknown physical carrier(s). It also suggests ways for further experimental and theoretical studies into both cybernetic and physical aspects of the life phenomenon.

Postulated Definition

The Biofield Control System (BCS) is the operative control system of the organism. In BCS, the genetic information is re-encoded on some other than biochemical physical carrier. It evolves in ontogenesis into a hierarchy of subordinate BCS of the whole organism, organs, tissues and cells. At all levels it holds four fundamental programs of life: development, maintenance, reproduction, and death. The mind is an essential part of the BCS at the whole organism level, serving behavioral aspects of all fundamental programs (in addition to the physiological aspect—see Fig.1)

Figure 1

Control System of the Organism
(control subsystems exist only in higher biological taxa)

Arrows indicate flows of control signals and feedback as well as directions of energy exchange. The “language” of the feedback must be the same as that of the signals.

The Mind

As postulated above, the mind is an essential part of the biofield control system responsible for behavioral aspects of fundamental programs of life. The word “mind” is used rather than “consciousness” in order to distinguish the general “decision-making” mechanism from awareness associated with the latter in higher species. The mind includes fundamental drives or “basic instincts” serving conservation of the individual, population and the species, such as attraction to the food and opposite sex, avoidance of threats, and sticking to the group. The mind holds memory and extracts meanings out of perceived information. It also includes programs prioritizing the organism’s reaction to changing internal and external conditions, i.e., how to behave when, for instance, hunger, threat and sex drives act simultaneously. Development of the nervous system and the brain in biological evolution only broadened the mind capacity.

Biofield Control System at the Organ Level

The ability of many organs to function after transplantation to another organism clearly shows the autonomy and survivability of their control systems.

Besides the sensitivity to commands of the whole organism control system, BCS at the organ level can be illustrated particularly by controlling the transformation of inserted stem cells into specialized cells enhancing the organ’s function. Dr. Evan Snyder of the Burnham Institute in La Jolla, California, who specializes in application of stem cells in neurological diseases, writes:

Clearly, stem cells do not sense anything except for commands of the organs’ and organism’s BCS that control their destiny.

Ascribing the above-mentioned functions of the mind to direct (chemical) interactions with genes is totally incomprehensible. Yet, studies of homozygote siblings indicate that very subtle behavioral similarities are based on a common genetic makeup. Thus, the only way of comprehending this paradox is assuming an epigenetic level of organization—the biofield control system that includes the mind.

Even sperms have their own mind that is a part of their BCS. They must have the control mechanism of selecting the direction (presumably, against the gradient of a chemical signal concentration or temperature), the mechanical mechanism of motion and the energy to produce the motion. It is comparable to a pilot in a cockpit of a plane with a sufficient amount of fuel to accomplish a mission. The sperm as the pilot “knows” what to do.

Biofield Control System at the Cellular Level

In the 1950’s–1970’s Romanian biochemist Eugene Macovschi⁵ persuasively criticized the currently popular theory of the “membrane pump”* as well as the G. Ling’s “Association-Induction” concept⁶ and the “Absorption” concept suggested by Nasonov.⁷ Macovschi’s cellular “Biostructure” is equivalent to the cellular BCS. It is an entity that exists only in living cells and controls chemical processes and properties of organelles and biochemical molecules, leaving space inside the cell for solutions that are in equilibrium with intercellular liquids. Macovschi properly emphasizes the necessity of viewing cells, as well as the whole organism, as most complex cybernetic systems, which was initially recognized by developmental biologists. G. Drochioiu reviews Macovschi’s concept in this monograph.

Indeed, the currently described in detail “pumping” mechanism at the cell membrane may exist only for fine-tuning of the cellular function since Nature is not so wasteful as to spend tremendous energy on pumping ions in and out of trillions of cells against presumed ion concentration misbalance. In 1984 James Clegg wrote:⁸

The cell’s biofield control system carries all fundamental programs of life: development, maintenance (metabolism, repair, etc.), reproduction (mitosis) and death (apoptosis).

Sensitivity of cells’ BCS to signals of the organ’s BCS is mentioned above, but cells are capable of sensing commands of the whole organism’s BCS as well, and even distantly sensing BCS’ of other organisms. This will be discussed later in the article and in the book.

Fundamental Programs of Life

Development. Developmental biologists have been opposing the strictly genetic approach since the beginning of the 20^th century. Lev Beloussov in his article in this book presents the history of the biofield concept from its inception and the attached to his article Commentary by American developmental biologists, Professors John Opitz and Scott Gilbert, briefly describes the ensuing struggle. Even the very beginning of embryogenesis is controlled by a program that is based on the genome but is not chemical—chemistry knows of only stochastic interactions while the first cell divisions are strictly deterministic.

However, ontogenesis, at least in organisms more complex than a single cell, apparently cannot occur without participation of an external BCS—mother’s, egg’s, bee hives, bacterial colony, etc. No more than 80 cells of a human embryo can currently be grown in a test tube. For further development, the embryo must be implanted into an uterus where it is controlled by the mother’s biofield control system—her reproduction program. The birth of the organism means that its own BCS becomes sufficient for further development up to maturity. This subject is being avoided even by the most progressive developmental biologists, perhaps because it challenges current paradigm—what is the physical nature of these BCS communications? The behavioral aspect of developmental programs includes instincts such as sucking milk in mammals, as well as learning, playing, socializing, and so forth (Could one imagine that instincts operate at a chemical level, strait from genes?).

The Maintenance program includes obtaining and distributing energy from the environment, breathing, thermal stabilization, self protection, i.e., immunity and avoiding threats, reparation at all levels of organization from a gene to the whole organism as well as population-supporting behavior and so forth. The latter particularly illustrates how far those programs are from the biochemical mechanisms acting in the organism. Biological population is commonly defined as a group of individual organisms of the same species sharing common trophic and reproduction bases, territorial location or migration patterns. Mechanisms of forming and maintaining a population are different in different taxa of the biological taxonomy.⁹ Hierarchical populations in mammals are maintained by individual (psychological) instincts. At work are drives (or instincts) to protect the social rank, to raise it at an opportunity and to stick to the group. Essential is that the drive to raise the social rank is broadly distributed among individuals in a population with respect to intensity. Hence, a very small, highly motivated minority would risk their lives for a chance to get the leadership position while the rest of the population would watch the fight from aside.¹⁰ Yes, it involves the gene pool of the population but the organism’s biofield control system incorporating the mind must be sensitive to the mind of the population. Even bacteria can communicate with each other and get a feedback from the group—perhaps, from the group biofield control system. Bonnie Bassler, professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University, believes that cell-cell communication in bacteria involves the production, release, and subsequent detection of chemical signaling molecules called autoinducers. This phenomenon, known as ‘quorum sensing,’ changes bacterial behavior, appearance and metabolism, manifesting in luminescence when the population reaches a particular size.¹¹ But where is this program stored?  The above example indicates that populations have their own BCSs that play especially important roles in simplest biological taxa.

These examples are cited to illustrate the complexity of the fundamental BCS programs.

The Reproduction Program includes both the physiological function and the reproductive behavior controlled by the mind of the BCS. Mothers’ reproduction program in mammals, as mentioned earlier, controls embryonic development and, for instance, milk supply at the physiological level. Attachment, care and protection of the child work at the mind level. Pheromones may be only one of many signals engaging the male reproduction program in some species. Here again the nice, simple, word “instinct.” The reproductive instincts are definitely not rooted in the biochemical processes of the brain: worms have no brain but they have reproduction instincts—sexual drives.

The Program of Death is an immanent feature of life. It manifests in rather stable life spans characteristic for every biological species and works at all levels of the organism, including programmed aging and diseases. The dying process of the organism can illustrate the autonomy of lower levels of the BCS hierarchy. After the organism’s death, the organs, that is their BCS, are still alive and can be transplanted into other organisms. When the organ is no longer alive (cannot be revitalized by another organism) the tissues and cells are still alive and can be maintained alive in anabiosis for a rather long time at near 0^oC temperature or being fast frozen. When we buy meat and fish in stores we buy living tissues. They rot when they die. The latter is the realization of the program of death at the cellular level: the cellular organelles, DNA, proteins and other complex organic molecules are being destroyed by complex genetic and biochemical mechanisms. Rather recent studies indicate that even bacteria and yeasts have programmed death.^{12-14 ***}

Control Subsystems

More complex organisms are operated by the BCS through four separate control subsystems that use different agents and channels of communication: nervous (electric), humoral (chemical), electromagnetic (hypothetical electromagnetic coherencies and biophotons in tissues and organs, proposed and studied by the F.-A. Popp group¹⁵) and one manifested in acupuncture (called Qi, prana, and so forth, in Oriental cultures) that may have the same physical carrier as the BCS itself.

Biofield Control System and Biological Evolution

In the current discussion between promoters of ‘Intelligent Design’ (ID) and Neo-Darwinists, M. Behe is absolutely persuasive in showing the “irreducible complexity” of the blocks of a living organism such as the eye, cellular cilium or bacterial flagellum, etc¹⁶. These and other most complex organizations could not possibly emerge by random (undirected) mutations. Emergence of a new species is associated not with just one mutation but with a long chain of mutations that are clearly not random and must occur simultaneously. Until the whole chain is accomplished, the individual, let alone a population or the whole species, would not have any advantage in adaptation selection, as J. Bockris noted in his book.¹⁷ This was understood by many distinguished biologists like Lev S. Berg who wrote his Nomogenesis in 1922—there must be laws determining ontogenesis as well as phylogenesis and there is no place for randomness in the biological evolution.¹⁸

The problem with the current discussion is that it seems more ideological than scientific. Darwinism from the beginning enjoyed an overwhelming support of the scientific community because it presented an alternative to the religious creationism. Then, it became a dogma with the same function as any religious dogma—to keep the social organization stable, in this case the scientific community. However, the actual alternative to Darwinism is not Intelligent Design but the broadening of the scientific paradigm. To paraphrase Einstein, an Omnipotent Designer would not “play dice,” he would know what he wants to begin with. He would not leave abundant dead ends on the branches of the evolutionary tree still providing a reasonable food chain—the omega point in terms of Teilhard d’Chardin. And indeed in the religion mythology he starts with Adam and Eve.

One cannot exclude some intelligence behind the whole Universe, but this intelligence must have produced all the physical forces, laws of their interactions and universal constants, including those yet unknown interaction that are responsible for emergence of life. This idea is not anymore unreal than the Big Bang or Chaos as the starting point of the Universe (I. Prigogine would not claim that life started out of chaos).

The postulated concept of the biofield control system may bring biological evolution back into the realm of science. Considering the obvious role of the “mother”—the egg, the ants colony, etc. in the embryonic development (see development program above), one can assume that the mother’s BCS (its reproduction program) can cause changes in the biofield control system of the embryo and consequent simultaneous genetic changes in the embryo. This is what can explain not only the Lamarckian examples of the giraffe’s neck and the bird’s legs elongation but the whole evolutionary process. Back in 1954 biologist Curt Stern mentioned the possibility of the biofield participation in the mutagenesis and evolution.¹⁹ Thus, the proverbial question “What came first—the chicken or the egg?” remains open: the chicken’s mother might have been a pre-chicken with a transformed BCS.

The adaptation selection at the population level may play a more significant role in the intraspecies evolution. V. Geodakian suggested that the gene pool of the male part of a population has a broader distribution with respect to the sensitivity to environmental changes than that of the female part. Changes in the environment eliminate a part of the male population causing the shift of the population gene pool toward greater resistance to that environmental factor.²⁰

What might have occurred in biological evolution is that some global factor(s) periodically interfered with the biofield control systems of many living organisms changing the “mothers’” reproductive programs and these, in turn, substantially and simultaneously changed genomes of the prodigy organisms. Global forces that caused directed mutagenesis, for instance during the Cambrian period, most likely worked not at the chemical (genes) level. This is another reason to learn the physics of the BCS.

What is the Difference?

In 2003 my friend Dr. John Bockris asked me ‘What is the difference between my postulated Biofield control system and the morphogenic field suggested by Rupert Sheldrake?’ We met and briefly discussed this subject with Dr. Sheldrake in 2002 and here is the email exchange following Dr. Bockris’ request.

Dear Rupert:

As I remember, in our conversation (last year in Albuquerque) we found that the difference in our approaches lies in where the organism’s biological information is stored: in the Earth’s biosphere with the genome acting as a receiver (you) or in the individual genome (me).

I may be wrong in my perception. Why wouldn’t you clarify this?

Thank you,
Savva

Dear Savva,

Thanks for your email and for the copy of John Bockris¹s comments. I too agree about the importance of Driesch and discuss his work in some detail in my books in A New Science Of Life (1981) and The Presence of The Past (1988). I must have given quite the wrong impression in our conversation if I suggested to you that the organism’s biological information is stored in the earth¹s biosphere.  This is nothing like the proposal I make in my books or in any of my talks or articles on the subject. I propose the information depends on morphic resonance, a transmission across time and that is not ‘stored’ spatially. Memory is a relation in time, and storage is a concept that requires space, so I think that the very concept of memory storage is to model categories in a way that is very confusing.

I don’t propose the genome acts as a receiver, but rather the whole organism does and the genome has not particular privileged role in this. I also carefully avoid calling these fields bio fields, because as I argue in my books I think similar morphogenetic fields are at work in the formation of crystals and molecules. The biofield concept would imply a kind of vitalism, a new kind of field present only in living organisms. I am trying to casting my hypothesis in an organismic framework which is not vitalist, because I believe that these organising principles are at work in non-biological systems as well.

Best wishes,
Rupert Sheldrake

 

Dear John (copy to Rupert):

Here is Rupert Sheldrake’s response to my and your letters. I was not totally off the point: not the genome but the organism works as a receiver according to R.S. In my model it is not the genome (my incorrect wording in the letter) but the biofield of the organism—the general control system, the epiphenomenon of the genome—carries all the necessary information and operates life. I don’t think that crystallization is based on more than (short distance) electromagnetic forces, although complex organic molecules like DNA may be sensitive to what I call X-Interaction (the carrier of the BCS) It was very kind of Rupert to respond to my inquiry.

Best regards,
Savva

Paradoxical Observations May Lead to Discovery of the Physical Carrier of the Biofield Control System

All the four above-mentioned fundamental programs of life including the mind—the biofield control system as defined above—are apparent in all living organisms. They are transferred from one generation to another by genomes but they obviously cannot be carried out by chemical interactions with genes. The fundamental questions are: What is (or are) the physical carrier(s) of the biofield control system and, how fundamental programs of life are re-encoded on it from the genome?

There are publications attempting to reduce the biofield to electromagnetic interactions.^21,22 However, as postulated above, there must be one or more yet-unknown fundamental physical interaction(s), in addition to the strong, electromagnetic and gravitational forces currently recognized in physics, that is (or are) capable of communicating with all known fundamental physical interactions and with control subsystems of organisms. This or these physical interactions seem to simultaneously have properties of energy and information that, as Elsasser²³ stated, is broader than Shannon’s information.

In the 1950s to 1980s, theoretical physicist Walter M. Elsasser discussed a theory of the organism, proposing as the first law of biological theory the Law of duality.

“It tells us that as a matter of general experience the world of living and that of inanimate are separated by a no-man’s-land of irrationality.”

The physics of the organic world cannot be deduced from the currently known physical interactions. He also describes the paradox of memory without storage—“information stability without regard to the traditional contiguity of space-time-causality.” However, as Frederick Seitz writes in the introduction to Elsasser’s book,

Some properties of this (these) fundamental interaction(s) are manifested in biological nuclear reactions, some paradoxes of chemistry, extrasensory communication between living systems, etc.

Serious scientific observations presented in this monograph suggest ways for further exploring the physical basis of life.

Nuclear Forces are far From Being Fully Understood

Low temperature (meaning room temperature) nuclear reactions in living systems—the biotransmutation of elements—were introduced most explicitly by Louis C. Kervran in the 60’s²⁴. According to Kervran, the first scientific observation of this phenomenon was published in 1849 and since then many of such observations were related to agriculture. For instance, back in 1870’s-80’s Von Herzeele working with hydroponic cultures (without soil) found that “sulfate added to distilled water used for germination increases phosphorus contents in shoots (S³²– H¹ = P³¹); that adding different potassium salts leads to increase of calcium in seedlings (K³⁹ + H¹ = Ca⁴⁰) and so on. Other studies showed various possible nuclear reactions that through the activity of microorganisms may turn:

manganese into iron and backwards	Mn55 + H1 = Fe56
potassium into calcium	K39 + H1 = Ca40
sodium into magnesium	Na23 + H1 = Mg24
sodium into potassium	Na23 + O16 = K39
magnesium into calcium	Mg24 + O16 = Ca40
carbon into silicium	C12 + O16 = Si28
aluminum into potassium	Al27 + C12 = K39

and so on.

Kervran discusses the energy aspects of these nuclear reactions suggesting participation of some ‘specialized enzymes,’ but he definitely doesn’t claim that physics of these reactions is clear. Contemporary physics knows that a great energy—temperature—is needed to overcome electrical repellence of two positively-charged nuclei. Yet, not one experimental result had ever refuted Kervran’s and others’ results. In the Preface to the English edition of his book, Kervran writes:

According to Edmund Storm, very few studies were conducted on biological nuclear reactions.²⁵  One of them is the study at Moscow State University and Kiev State University of Ukraine presented in this book by Alla Kornilova and Vladimir Vysotsky. They observed nuclear synthesis of iron isotopes Fe⁵⁷ and Fe⁵⁴ in bacterial cultures growing in media deficient of iron (prevailing isotope in nature is Fe⁵⁶). This work fully supports the reality of biological nuclear reaction and suggests the necessity of further study into this phenomenon.

Chronologically the next paradoxical observation, though not strictly related to nuclear synthesis, came from China. During the 1980s, Chinese government funded a pioneering study by physicist, Professor Lu Zuyin that included an experiment showing the distant (more than 1000 km) effect of a psi-gifted operator, Yan Xin, on the rate of americium ²⁴⁷Am nuclear decay. The most explicit description of this experiment was published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration in 2002.²⁶

The 1989 publication by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann²⁷ initiated studies of low temperature nuclear reactions, mostly on palladium matrix. In spite of more than 3000 publications reviewed by Storm²⁵ this phenomenon is still ignored by the scientific establishment. Indeed, it is hard to explain within the current physical model how the strongest possible adsorption forces could overcome the repulsion of the only known Coulomb’s forces between nuclei. In our view, the observed inconsistent results might be explained, at least partially, by the effect of the experimenter’s BCS and its carrier(s)—through subconscious expectation.

The effect of the experimenter’s expectation on results of experiments is a separate but a very important topic. Mice in a not blinded experiment behaved as the experimenter expected them to until the experimenter was blinded—i.e., didn’t know what to expect. I called this Speransky’s Effect (blinding the experimenter is still not required in experiments on animals).²⁸ Many pharmaceuticals are known to work for years on huge populations while the medical community believed in their efficacy and then stopped working. J. Solfvin, reviewing paradoxical observations beyond placebo effect, refers to a review by H. Benson and D. McCallie on this subject published in New England Journal of Medicine.²⁹ The role of the experimenter expectancy in electron diffraction experiments is well known, but I don’t know of any study aimed at revealing a possible experimenter’s effect on simple physical systems. The history of science knows cases of suicides of decent scientists when results they observed and reported were not reproduced by other doubting experimenters.³⁰

In 1992, John Bockris, then Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Texas A&M University, undertook in his laboratory to reproduce the typical alchemic reaction—obtaining gold from a mixture of element compounds including lead.**** He recalls events of that time in his recent letter that is attached to this article (Appendix 1). A well-measurable amount of gold (up to 500 ppm) was found in three of four runs when the “Messrs”—the “alchemists” who initiated the test—where around but not allowed to enter the laboratory and no gold was found in 11 runs conducted a few months later when they were not informed about the continuation of the experiment. Bockris in his letter describes the psychological environment of the rerun series because this was the only difference in the conditions of the experiment.

It is difficult to distinguish the information and energy aspects of the unknown physical interaction(s) in the above described observations. The effects of some nuclear forces, other than those we currently know, were clearly observed and these seem to demonstrate the energy aspect.

Can Chemistry be Reduced to Electrical and Stochastic Thermal Interactions?

The current chemistry knows only thermal and electric interactions, and those are insufficient to comprehend the emergence of life on our planet, or elsewhere. As John Bockris wrote in his book,¹³ complex organic molecules that might have emerged by chance under any imaginable conditions must have been destroyed by thermophysical processes in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics. I would say it is if there are no other (as yet unknown) forces reducing free energy of complex organic molecules. These forces may be associated with the physical carrier(s) of the biofield control system.

It is possible that such non-electromagnetic interactions manifest themselves in the field of solubility. Just for instance, in my dissertation in the 1960s,³¹ I studied solubility and thermodynamic properties of water solutions in non-polar organic liquid dichlorodifluoromethane (CCl₂F₂). Solubility of water in CCl₂F₂  increases with increasing temperature from 3 ppm mass at 0^oC to 80 ppm at 25^oC. This means that each molecule of water at 0^oC is surrounded by a sphere of ~50,000 molecules of CCl₂F₂ since IR spectra show strictly monomolecular distribution of water. With increasing temperature, the outer layers of the spheres yield to chaotic thermal movement as a function of kT (k –Boltzman constant), the radius of spheres decreases allowing additional smaller solvates built around additional molecules of water to enter the solution. Thus, solubility increases and at 25^oC each solvate sphere contains only ~1900 molecules of CCl₂F₂. Each molecule of water is bound to the immediate surrounding layer of the solvate very slightly (the shift of the adsorption picks of the O-H vibration frequencies in the IR spectra of solution is minimal compared to those in gaseous phase), yet the water-CCl₂F₂ interaction is very strong and electromagnetic forces hardly can explain it (at that time I didn’t think much about this paradox). What is the nature of those forces if they are not electromagnetic?

Organization of hydrophobic clusters in living cells is broadly discussed in biochemical studies. It cannot be excluded that such clusters, based on non-polar bonds, are built around individual water molecules as in the solution described above.

The memory of biologically-active substances initially dissolved in water and then diluted to 10^-60 mol, as in homeopathy, or to 10^-12–10^-22 mol, as in experiments of the Institute of Biochemical Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences (see article by E. Burlakova et al. in this monograph), definitely cannot be explained by the ‘structural memory of water’ which is too short, ~50 fsec as was recently determined.³² Then, what carries this memory in water? Clearly, the carrier is not of an electric or electromagnetic nature.

Living organisms are presumed to resist thermal and chemical destruction by degrading external energy—food, solar radiation, etc. They are called “thermodynamically open systems” since their low entropy is presumed to be compensated by the increase of the entropy of the extended thermodynamic system. We associate the Biofield Control System that carries fundamental programs of life strictly with living organisms. But before organic molecules became living organisms—that is, before they acquired a mechanism of degrading external energy—what kept and keeps them intact? What keeps viruses intact? They do not have any mechanism of metabolism, a self-reproduction program, or programmed death. Moreover, unless the dead cell is artificially or naturally, chemically or by freezing mummified, the cellular organelles and complex organic molecules like DNA and proteins are decomposed by cellular BCS’ program of death. The conserving forces no longer protect them from chemical and thermophysical destruction.

The above-mentioned paradoxical manifestations observed in chemistry and biochemistry most likely reflect properties of the physical carrier(s) of the biofield control system, particularly its energy-carrying component.

Communications Between Living Systems

Communications between living beings beyond known sensory perceptions were observed abundantly. Famous English physicists and psychologists including J. J. Tompson, Sir William Crookes and other founded in 1880’s the Society for Psychical Research and recorded observations that later gave birth to parapsychology and psychotronics.³³ Yet, using humans as recipients of this kind of information/energy communication will not lead to solving the core problem of defining the physical nature of the carrier(s) of this communication. Human organism is too complex to control and reproduce all factors affecting the outcome of such experiments. It seems logical to use as objects of such experiments the simplest organisms. This would allow scientists to register reactions at biochemical and biophysical levels by means currently available. Also, if humans are used as inductors of the communication in question, it is necessary to keep in mind that what is called psi ability is broadly variable in the population with respect to its quality and intensity, as is any talent—Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, DaVinci and Roden, Shakespeare and Pushkin are very rare genii.

Biologist Beverly Rubik and physicist Elizabeth Rauscher conducted the first known to me such a study in 1978-1982. ^{34, 35} They used a very talented psi healer Olga Worrell to see her effect on bacteria Salmonella typhimurium (ST1) poisoned by an antibiotic. Bacteria in control showed much lesser viability and motility than cultures treated by (BCS of) Olga Warrell. The rate of growth was determined by measuring the optical density of cultures at 620 nm. Using the analytical arsenal of today’s biochemistry, one can expect to see very fine biochemical changes occurring in bacteria under the influence of psi-gifted individuals.

Russian Microbiologist, Konstantin Chernoshchekov employed capable healers to observe mutations of enterobacteria. Although a proper genetic analysis was not available to his group, they found by means of standard microbiological identification that bacteria that were transformed from harmful to neutral maintained their identity and reproduced.³⁶ Chernoshchekov also observed the increased rate of mutations in bacteria associated with geomagnetic perturbations, though the nature of this global factor is not magnetic.³⁷

The recent study of biochemist, Juliann Kiang, at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington, DC, showed effect of human operators on human T-cells in vitro. Selected operators by their intent increased Ca²⁺ concentration in intracellular solutions by 25%. The detailed methodology is presented in her article published in this book. Also, she reviewed numerous reports of studies on distant biological communications conducted in different countries and at different levels of scientific scrutiny.

Tatiana Zagranichnaia, a Russian biochemist currently at the University of Chicago, worked with human embryonic kidney cells using standard experimental methodology. She compared the longevity of these cells in regular water and in water treated by a healer with the intent of increasing the cell vitality. Cellular cultures on pre-treated water lived almost twice as long as those on regular water in control.³⁸

Finally, Cleve Backster’s article in this book describes in detail only two experiments of many conducted by him during the last ~40 years.³⁹ In the first series, shrimps at the moment of being thrown into boiling water (by an automated device—to exclude any human effect) induced spikes of electrical potential in plants located meters in distance from them. Electrodes of high-resistance potentiometers were attached to the leaves of these plants. Another experiment showed existence of distant communication between white blood cells extracted from a human donor and the donor. Extracted and concentrated cells in a test tube produced a spike of electrical potential at moments when donors went through emotional excitements.

Alternative Physical Models

Inadequacy of the current physical paradigm in describing life and life-related phenomena has been mentioned by many great physicists, including Albert Einstein, Niles Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger and David Bohm. All experimental studies presented in this book can be reproduced and broadened if we want to understand the physical basis of life and the biological evolution.

Presented in the third part of this book are articles by distinguished physicists suggesting new theoretical approaches to broaden the paradigm.

John O’M Bockris (Molecular Green Technology, USA) discusses the accumulated incoherencies of contemporary physical concepts and their inability to explain the emergence and maintenance of life. He calls for the broadening of the paradigm to include the actions of Consciousness.

William A. Tiller (Stanford University, USA) presents an 11-dimensional model with two four-dimensional conjugated space-time realms and three higher dimensions. His experiments lead him to suggest that human intent may engage the reciprocal four-dimensional space-time that transforms space (particularly in a laboratory) causing changes in physical processes. At one of the annual meetings of the Society for Scientific Exploration Dr. Norman Don showed a video clip that he filmed in Brazil. The healer “conditioned” the space where treatments were performed so that patients without any individual pre-treatment or anesthetics felt no pain while their bodies were “tortured.” ⁴⁰ Also, effect of the biologically active substances diluted to 10^-120, as in J. Benveniste’s work, demonstrated memory that seems associated with the space in which solutions were prepared.⁴¹

Hal Puthoff (USA) in his short article, “Physics and Metaphysics as Co-emergent Phenomena,” presents the history of his search for an adequate physical model. He believes that the physical vacuum may hold answers to puzzles of life by carrying both memory and information. .

Nina Sotina (Moscow State University, Russia) discusses paradoxical observations indicating that human intent interacts at a distance with living and inanimate objects at the quantum mechanical level. She suggests a model of superfluid vacuum with structures that may carry memory and energy. She also presents results of telekinetic experiments conducted in Russia indicating that the interaction between human operators and objects occur at the quantum mechanical level.

James Beichler (USA) proposes a five-dimensional physical model that incorporates the Kaluza-Einstein model of the 1920’s and D. Bohm’s concept of hidden variables. His model incorporates a broad spectrum of phenomena from quantum particles entanglement to life and so-called paranormal manifestations.

One way or another, an alternative physical model must be “crazy” enough to reflect the tremendous complexity of the real world.

Conclusion

The cost of health care, particularly in the United States, is skyrocketing and there is no political power to stop it. The process will continue, leading to a crisis if biomedical science and pharmacology holds on to the current theoretical and methodological basis—compensating for wrong or missing signals of a deregulated or aging organism. This approach has proven to be viable in many cases such as diabetes, saving millions of lives. However, the deeper into the organizational levels of the organism it goes—organs, tissues, cells—the more inadequate and unpredictable become reactions of the organism. Anticoagulants used by cardiologists may kill patients by inducing brain hemorrhages; anti-cancerous drugs kill by destroying the immune system, etc. The growing rate of adverse effects and mortality associated with the current medico-pharmacological practices are reported in the Journal of American Medical Association.⁴² An increasing number of newly developed drugs will not pass safety tests and the society will be pressed to pay for this.

The problem is that there is no adequate concept of the organism’s control system, its structure and the nature of its physical carrier. Further progress of the biomedical science requires a revision of the current scientific paradigm so that it would include the physical basis of life, mind and life-related phenomena. Systems Biology is one of the recently-emerged advanced fields of studies. It is aimed at putting in order the immense volume of biochemical experimental results. G. Stolovitzky and A. Califano, who represent the state of the art in this field, clearly understand the impossibility of accomplishing the task within the framework of the current paradigm. In the Update of the NYAS they write:

“If there is an epistemologist out there studying how the paradigms are changing, she may report in 20 or 30 years that the dream of finding the equivalent to Newton’s physical laws within biology was misguided. She might conclude that the search for universal principles, which served physics so well, was not the right approach to unravel the design principles that govern the networks of intracellular and multicellular events.” ⁴³

Indeed, studying the bricks and building blocks cannot lead to the understanding of architecture and aesthetics of the edifice of life. Moreover, recently published studies indicate that the basic premise of genetics (gene-mRNA-protein) is crumbling.^{44, 45} How far can biology go without inquiring into the hierarchical control system of life?

A growing number of scientists, research laboratories, and institutions throughout the world are already working on this subject. Credible scientific publications, including those published in this book, suggest that the operation of the organism cannot be reduced to chemical interactions since contemporary chemistry knows only electric and thermodynamic forces; that the biological nuclear synthesis presented by Louis Kervran in 1960-80’s is not a myth; that the non-structural memory of water manifests itself at organism, cell, and enzyme levels; that human intent and/or expectation may cause bacterial mutations or affect cellular equilibrium, etc.

One of the practical recommendations that follow from our approach is that studies on the effect of new drugs on animals must be blinded to the researcher.

We hope that this book will lay the ground work for an international scientific symposium with the objective of forming an international scientific consortium on advanced biophysics. No immediate gratification may be expected but there are no other ways to solve existing problems.

References

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Appendix

E-letter from Dr. John Bockris of April 2006

“…[W]e found tritium and published it in 1989, the same year as that in when Fleischman and Pons published their initial paper. The reference to our paper is Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, 270, 451, 1989.

Having found that very elementary particles, the lightest atom known, hydrogen and its isotopes could be involved in nuclear processes at room temperatures in solution, we proceeded further to ask ourselves whether such transmutational (and really: Alchemical!) reactions could occur with elements of high atomic weight. Of course, it is tempting to choose the synthesis of gold and that is what we did. Here, a relatively unqualified electronics technician enters the story for it was he who came to us saying that he knew a method whereby a nuclear reaction could be carried out with high atomic weight members. The essence of this was to cause a chemical explosion to occur, in the presence of, say, lead or tin, and examine the antecedent material after it had been subject to the explosion, and particularly after a three-day pause.

We did this using two mature post-doctoral fellows, both in their 40’s, one an experienced nuclear physicist, Dr. Lin, and one an experienced material scientist, Dr. Bhardwaj. The first experiment we did was a failure. In the next three experiments (along with a multiple analysis by various analytical organizations, each reaction takes about three weeks to come to the final answer) we found three, consecutively, which gave rise to convincingly high numbers of gold atoms, up to 500 ppm within the mixture. We also found much smaller amounts in the order of 10 ppm of other noble metals. It seemed that this was a complete success and vindicated entirely the hypothesis that higher atomic weight materials could undergo nuclear transformation in a beaker.

Now, Lin and Bhardwaj had been borrowed from other projects—we are talking about the summer of 1992—and they had to hurry back to pick up the projects in which they had been originally employed, and get on with the other work. Therefore, we did not try to resume the work on transmutation for about three months. Lin and I then went on Christmas Vacation and Bhardwaj tried to replicate the work that we had done during the summer. He made 11 experiments and could not find gold at all. The only anomalous act that he observed was that in one of the experiments the radioactive beta emission was found, completely anomalous, of course.

There may be two reason for Dr. Bhardwaj’s failure. On the one hand he had begun to hate Mr. Champion and his backer, Telander. Bhardwaj is a devout Muslim and he could not stand the womanizing and drinking of Messrs, Telander, and Champion. He began to hate them and he could not bring in his mind to think that such people could be associated with the discovery which is mind-boggling. Another reason, a more scientific one, is that Bhardwaj’s shortened experiment, which he looked only for gold, did not wait for the necessary three-day pause, and may have initiated the process.”