The Biology of Belief - Bruce H. Lipton [85]
In your search for a better donor, however, you will not find a perfect 100 percent match. So far scientists have never found two individuals who are biologically the same. However, it is theoretically possible to create universal donor tissues when you remove the cells’ self-receptors, though scientists have yet to carry out such an experiment. In such an experiment, the cells would lose their identity. These self-receptor-less cells would not be rejected. While scientists have focused on the nature of these immune-related receptors, it is important to note that it is not the protein receptors but what activates the receptors that give individuals their identity. Each cell’s unique set of identify receptors are located on the membrane’s outer surface, where they act as “antennas,” downloading complementary environmental signals. These identity receptors read a signal of “self,” which does not exist within the cell but comes to it from the external environmental.
Consider the human body a television set. You are the image on the screen. But your image did not come from inside the television. Your identity is an environmental broadcast that was received via an antenna. One day you turn on the TV and the picture tube has blown out. Your first reaction would be, “Oh, #*$?!! The television is dead.” But did the image die along with the television set? To answer that question you get another television set, plug it in, turn it on, and tune it to the station you were watching before the picture tube blew out. This exercise will demonstrate that the broadcast image is still on the air, even though your first television “died.” The death of the television as the receiver in no way killed the identity broadcast that comes from the environment.
In this analogy, the physical television is the equivalent of the cell. The TV’s antenna, which downloads the broadcast, represents our full set of identifying receptors and the broadcast represents an environmental signal. Because of our preoccupation with the material Newtonian world, we might at first assume that the cell’s protein receptors are the “self.” That would be the equivalent of believing that the TV’s antenna is the source of the broadcast. The cell’s receptors are not the source of its identity but the vehicle by which the “self” is downloaded from the environment.
When I fully understood this relationship I realized that my identity, my “self,” exists in the environment whether my body is here or not. Just as in the TV analogy, if my body dies and in the future a new individual (biological “television set”) is born who has the same exact set of identity receptors, that new individual will be downloading “me.” I will once again be present in the world. When my physical body dies, the broadcast is still present. My identity is a complex signature contained within the vast information that collectively comprises the environment.
Supporting evidence for my belief that an individual’s broadcast is still present even after death comes from transplant patients who report that along with their new organs come behavioral and psychological changes. One conservative, health-conscious New Englander, Claire Sylvia, was astonished when she developed a taste for beer, chicken nuggets, and motorcycles after her heart-lung transplant. Sylvia talked to the donor’s family and found she had the heart of an eighteen-year-old motorcycle enthusiast who loved chicken nuggets and beer. In her book called A Change of Heart, Sylvia outlines her personal transformational experiences, as well as similar experiences of other patients in her transplant support group. (Sylvia and Novak 1997) Paul P. Pearsall presents a number of other such stories in his book, The Heart’s Code: Tapping the Wisdom and Power of Our Heart Energy.