For this lesson I thought it appropriate to delve deeper into some the subjects brought forth in the preceding lessons.

We have said that self is not just the ego or the soul, but it is all of us. It is body, mind, and soul. So let us explore the consciousness of the body at a cellular level to understand the unity of self within. Too, while pondering this, remember the adage, “As above, so below.”

The body is created to act. It is pragmatically practical, and above all it wants to explore, experience and to communicate. Communication implies a social nature. The body has within it inherently everything necessary for its own defense and maintenance. The cells of the body will tease the baby to speak, to crawl and walk, and to seek companions. Through sub conscious communication the child's cells are made aware of its physical environment, the temperature, air pressure, weather conditions, food supplies—and the body reacts to all of these conditions, making necessary adjustments with great rapidity. At these cellular levels the world exists with a kind of social inter-change, in which all others know the birth and death of cells, and in which the death of a skin cell and a brain cell are of equal importance. At this level of activity our thoughts, feelings, and intents, however private, form part of the inner environment of communication. This is why worrisome, stressful thinking can cause so much harm to the health and welfare of the cells of our bodies. This inner environment is as important and vital to the bodies' well being as is the physical one.

If one portion of your body is injured, then other portions feel the effects of the injury. Know also that when the harmony of an area of the body is disturbed by injury or disease there are emergency measures taken by the cells locally, and aid is sent out from other portions of the body to the afflicted parts.

The physical disruption, while it may appear to be a disaster in the area of the disease is a part of the body's defense system, taken to insure the whole balance and harmony of the body. Illness represents an overall body defense system operating on different levels of intent. We can also state that disease is a method used by the cells of the body to strengthen its “immune” system, or its “front line” against germs and virus`.

The body is in a state of constant change, making changes far too fast for our consciousness to follow, adjusting hormonal levels, sustaining balances between all of its systems; not only in relationship to itself—the body—but to an environment that is also in constant change. At biological levels the body often produces "preventive medicine," or "inoculations," by seeking new or foreign substances in its environment; it assimilates such products in small doses, coming down with an "illness" which, if left alone without any medical treatment would soon vanish as the body utilized what it could of "a seeming invader."

The person might feel indisposed, but in such ways the body assimilates and uses properties that would otherwise be called alien ones. It immunizes itself through such methods. The body, however, exists in a relationship with the mind, and the mind produces an inner environment of concepts. The cells that compose the body do not try to make sense of the intellectual world. They rely upon self’s interpretation of the existence of threats of a non-biological nature. Therefore, they depend upon our assessment, and if that assessment is careless or wrong, the body’s cells suffer the consequence.

Let us explore deeper into the atomic make up of the cells of the body. Your sense perception, physically speaking, is a result of behavior on the part of organs that seem to have no reality outside of their relationship with self. Those organs are themselves composed of atoms and molecules with their own consciousnesses. They have, then, their own states of sensation and cognition. They work for you, allowing you to perceive physical reality.

Our arms and legs certainly seem to be permanent appendages, and so do our eyes, skin, noses and tongues. In fact, every part of our body seems to be permanent and solid. Actually though, the physical matter of the body and its organs are not solid and they are changing constantly without our awareness. While your body appears quite dependable, solid, and steady, you are not aware of the constant conscious interchanges that occur between it and the physical environment. It does not concern us that the physical substance of our bodies is made up of completely different atoms and molecules than it was composed of a few weeks, months or years ago. Surrounding the consciousness of the electrons making up the atoms are tiny particles of matter...it is the "prima material" of the Alchemists. This material perishes, or dies and is continuously replaced by new forms created by the consciousness of the electron.

We perceive our bodies as solid. Again, the very senses that make such a deduction are the result of the behavior of electrons coming together to form atoms and the atoms coming together to form the molecules and so on. This entire coming together is the operation of the laws of attraction, repulsion, cohesion and adhesion. The organs are formed by filling a blueprint or pattern of flesh. All other objects that we perceive are formed in their own way and in the same fashion.

The physical world that we recognize is made up of invisible patterns. These patterns are "plastic," in that while they exist, their final form is a matter of probabilities directed by consciousness.
Our receptor senses perceive these patterns in their own ways…by vibrations thru sight, sound, touch, smell and taste. The patterns themselves can be "activated" in innumerable ways, but always by consciousness.

Our receptors determines what form that something will take, however. The mass world rises up before our eyes, but our eyes are part of that mass world. We cannot see our thoughts, so we do not realize that they too have shape and form, even as, say, clouds do. There are currents of thought as there are currents of air, and the mental patterns of men's feelings and thoughts rise up like flames from a fire, or steam from hot water, to form the clouds that are the group unconscious mind.

All elements of the interior invisible environment work together, and they form the patterns of feelings that are exteriorized as subjective intellectual and emotional states.

The exercise for the coming week will be to ponder this lesson in the larger picture of the mystical adages: AS ABOVE, SO BELOW, or the MICROCOSM MIRRORS THE MACROCOSM.

Can you relate and “imagine” the consciousness of the cells and their relationship to each other with the Group Consciousness of Humanity and with Absolute Being?

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