In a strict sense, the human body dies once every decade. Every cell reproduces, disappears, and is replaced with a specific frequency, depending on what type of cell it is (muscular, connective tissue, organ, nerve, and so on). However, as the cells that originally occupied our face, bones, or blood have been gone for hours, days, or years, our ever-renewing body, meanwhile, maintains a seat of consciousness.
So where does the consciousness reside? Is it immune to the cycle of life and death that our physical body experiences? What is life? And what determines death?
The answers to these types of questions are often found somewhere on the border between science and philosophy—yet the ability to determine when life begins, ends, and where it resides is an issue of unquestionable relevance for a scientific community intent on discovering the existence of living organisms in future space explorations. Insight into these matters might also better determine the exact point of death in hopes of bringing to fruition more advanced reanimation methods with biological organisms.
The Immortal Atom
According to modern biology, learning—consisting of a variety of environmental stimulations and the establishment of dendrite ramification throughout one’s whole life—develop in what is known as “neuron information storage.”
This kind of storage is fast, but it is not as efficient as genetic information. A genetic information package is instantly delivered generation after generation without the need for tedious verbal learning.
To put it another way, the blueprints of our bodies exist in our children by way of our genes. Hair color, body shape, plasmatic protein, or a particular constitution is preserved in packages of genetic information that carry throughout multiple generations.
Does this refer to a kind of immortality? Not at all. In the combination of gametes that precede fecundation, a large percentage of genes is lost in the process of zygote formation. Traits are carried on, but individuality passes with death.
Nevertheless, some scientists affirm that mind and body take separate pathways after the cycle of life is finalized. According to doctors Rene Severijnen and Ger Bongaerts—researchers at the University of Radboud Nijmegen’s medical center in the Netherlands—life exists at different levels. They note that while cells die relatively quickly, atoms are virtually immortal.
According to Bongaerts, the death of an atom signifies matter converting into energy—the same thing that happens upon detonation of a nuclear bomb. This is to say, that while a body is decomposing in the morgue (decay at the cellular level), the atomic nuclei are not degrading. Otherwise, we could say that upon death every body has the potential danger of a nuclear bomb.
Atomic activity does not end with death, so what happens to these atoms when a person dies?
If we examine the beliefs of ancient Oriental cultures, it was said that humans possess multiple bodies that exist at various layers. Given this understanding, we can see that while the body in the morgue decomposes, the cellular layer is disintegrating (the physical body). Meanwhile, the relatively miniscule atoms within these cells, existing in a dimension impervious to such decay, retain their original composition.
So these “bodies” made of particles smaller than cells that do not experience the decomposition we observe in the morgue, might well be the soul, mind, or post-human consciousness that we can intuit but which science remains unable to identify.
Their presence indicates that even after the death of a body, perhaps life hasn’t ended. As Dr. Severijnen observes, the ceasing in growth and metabolic activity at the time of the body’s death is only one side of the coin.
Tiny Life
According to some scientists, atoms remember—every emotion, every sensation, every extremely tiny experience. Although the idea of memory-bearing atoms might sound far-fetched, the discovery of intelligence at microscopic levels has opened the door to new debates regarding the origin of life.
For many years, science believed that cells lacked any individuality; they were thought to have acted along with the group like threads in a fabric. However, recent research by Professor Brian Ford, biologist and president of the Cambridge Society for the Application of Research, suggests otherwise.
His work reveals that individual cells are instead complete entities with intelligence that communicate and share information. In his view, the individual cell is a complete organism actually capable of decision-making.
Consider, then, if a cell’s stored capabilities never before described by scientists were to, as some scientists suggest, also carry over into the fine atomic structures. It may well offer a key to human immortality and the apparent illusion reflected in the state of death.
