The Miracle That Is Us
Question: How many cells does it take to create a human brain?
Answer: One
One cell, in nine short months, creates the brain, and as a bonus, the whole functioning body to go with it. Human development is not just some marvel of a hypothetical “nature,” and not the product of “natural selection” that accidentally tumbled uphill into progressively more complex and sophisticated modes of consciousness.
We are each walking and talking miracles. We live in a living breathing organic miracle machine. We are not that organic mobile machine — it houses us. It is real, but we are more real.
If you didn’t know better, and I told you that your brain, nervous system, and body, with all its tissues and bones and organs, grew out of just one single cell — that the cell had all the information contained within it to create your entire body, all of its connections, every cell of your skin, every cell of your heart that beats automatically without your intervention, your lungs that breath instinctively, your eyes that see the world out there and send the necessary information to your brain to interpret what is being seen — all of that and more, was bound up tightly and magnificently in a microscopic single cell that contained, within itself, all the information required to produce your magnificent brain and body; if I told you that — and if you hadn’t already settled in the banal conclusion that the human body is normal and ordinary — let’s face it, you would say “impossible!”
Yet it is possible, and it happens over and over and over again, usually flawlessly to produce members of our species, now in the billions, and every other specie on the planet.
That one cell was minded to produce your body. It had imbedded within itself its own “mechanical” consciousness that could produce that organic journey from cell to fully formed body, autonomously, in a mere nine months. Autonomously! No one outside of it played a role in the production, in the drama of that creation.
And it, and it alone, produced all of the trillions of self-functioning, mechanically conscious cells in every sector of your body — that do their work, know what is to be done, and do it — without any supervision from you or any one else. Each cell is endowed with a consciousness, forever engaged for the benefit of a community of cells — the skin, blood, heart, lung, brain, bone, tissue, eyes, organs — that enable your more complex consciousness.
Your coordination, your sensual enjoyment of life, your deep reflections, your theoretical musings, your hurt feelings, your rage, your feelings of sadness, your ability to look to future possibilities or regret past mistakes, your enjoyment of friends and family, your ability to give your heart to another, to commit yourself to a cause greater than yourself, your acknowledgment and attachment to a mother or father, your ability to interpret strange markings on paper as intelligible language, your ability to choose evil or good, to recognize humor and wit and irony, to feel depressed or joyful, happy or sad, lonely or connected, to recognize order versus chaos, to enjoy theater sports, entertainment, or work; to recognize goodness and beauty, to enjoy poetry and literature, to feel sexually emboldened, to be conscious of being conscious — all were made possible by that one, single, original cell.
The journey from that one cell to the birth of a living breathing human form occurs in a mere nine months. The cell contains all the needed instructions to divide into multiple cells; to continue to divide and differentiate, forming the original rough outlines of future tissues and organs; to form the basic structures of the body and major organs; to develop the neural tube; to form the heart and enable it to beat; to form limb buds for future arms and legs; develop and refine functioning organs and systems; to grow the brain’s complexity with neural connections, to form different regions of the brain specializing in various functions — sensory perception, motor control, language, emotions; to differentiate the brain into the forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain; to form the cerebral cortex, accommodating complex neural networks; to mature the nervous system and develop its functioning sensory organs — eyes, ears, nose, and skin; to mature the lungs for breathing in an oxygen-rich world.
After just nine months, the baby is fully formed and ready to emerge, to breathe and function in the world on its own; the newborn enters the world capable of processing vast amounts of information and learning from the environment.
All from one cell.
From whence came that cell? In just nine months a single cell transforms into a sentient being capable of experiencing the full richness of consciousness. From whence comes that full consciousness? From whence comes the unique person who abides in that body and engages that brain? From whence comes a consciousness of being conscious? From whence comes the spirit — the elan vital that guides the purposeful growth and development of each person? From whence comes the soul — the apparent child of person and spirit? All, like the operative intelligence of that single cell, a mystery.
Yet, the billion-year story of organic life that enabled that single cell, and with it, our lives, was surely initiated for a purpose. We human persons who now inhabit that organic human form arrived for a purpose, and the wisdom as old as the ancient trees on the Mount of Olives persistently whispers: Our purpose continues beyond our temporal embodied estate.
J G Johnston is the author of The Way — The Religion of Jesus Before Christianity and The Call Within — Navigating Life With Inner Guidance
