The Book of Secrets - Deepak Chopra [9]
Science has no idea why metamorphosis evolved. It is almost impossible to imagine that insects hit on it by chance—the chemical complexity of turning into a butterfly is incredible; thousands of steps are all minutely interconnected. (It’s as if you dropped off a bicycle at the shop to be repaired, and when you came back the parts had become a Gulfstream jet.)
But we do have some idea about how this delicate chain of events is linked. Two hormones, one called juvenile hormone, the other ecdysone, regulate the process, which looks to the naked eye like a caterpillar dissolving into soup. These two hormones make sure that the cells moving from larva to butterfly know where they are going and how they are to change. Some cells are told to die; others digest themselves, while still others turn into eyes, antennae, and wings. This implies a fragile (and miraculous) rhythm that must remain in precise balance between creation and destruction. That rhythm, it turns out, depends on day length, which in turn depends on the earth’s rotation around the sun. Therefore, a cosmic rhythm has been intimately connected to the birth of butterflies for millions of years.
Science concentrates on the molecules, but this is a striking example of intelligence at work, using molecules as a vehicle for its own intent. The intent in this case was to create a new creature without wasting old ingredients. (And if there is only one reality, we can’t say, as science does, that day length causes the pupa’s hormones to begin the metamorphosis into a butterfly. Day length and hormones come from the same creative source, weaving one reality. That source uses cosmic rhythms or molecules as it sees fit. Day length doesn’t cause hormones to change any more than hormones cause the day to change—both are tied to a hidden intelligence that creates both at once. In a dream or a painting, a boy may hit a baseball, but his bat doesn’t cause the ball to fly through the air. The whole dream or painting fits together seamlessly.)
Here is another example: Two chemicals called actin and myosin evolved eons ago to allow the muscles in insect wings to contract and relax. Thus, insects learned to fly. When one of these paired molecules is absent, wings will grow but they cannot flap and are therefore useless. Today, the same two proteins are responsible for the beating of the human heart, and when one is absent, the person’s heartbeat is inefficient and weak, ultimately leading to heart failure.
Again, science marvels at the way molecules adapt over millions of years, but isn’t there a deeper intent? In our hearts, we feel the impulse to fly, to break free of boundaries. Isn’t that the same impulse nature expressed when insects began to take flight? The prolactin that generates milk in a mother’s breast is unchanged from the prolactin that sends salmon upstream to breed, enabling them to cross from saltwater to fresh. The insulin in a cow is exactly the same as the insulin in an amoeba; both serve to metabolize carbohydrates, even though a cow is millions of times more complex than an amoeba. To believe in one reality that is totally interconnected isn’t mystical at all, it turns out.
How, then, did the belief in one reality fall apart? There was another alternative, which also put each person at the center of his or her own world. But instead of being included, one feels alone and isolated, driven by personal desire rather than a shared life force or communion through the soul. This is the choice we call ego, although it has been called by other names, such as the pursuit of pleasure, the bondage of karma, and (if we resort to a religious vocabulary) banishment from paradise. So thoroughly does it permeate our culture, following your ego doesn’t feel like a choice anymore. We’ve all been carefully trained since childhood in the ways of I, me, and mine. Competition teaches us