Welcome to Cellular Mind

Mind, or consciousness, has not been explained by any current scientific theory. By default, the current assumption is that mind is manufactured by the brain, like a computer running a program. A large number of scientists deny that most creatures with brains have conscious minds, with the exception of humans and perhaps a select group of animals that have large brains. Very few would extend consciousness to creatures with small brains like birds, reptiles, and insects, although there is substantial evidence to do so. When I wrote my book The Secret Language of Cells five years ago, it was quite radical to extend the list of creatures with mind to include individual cells. The purpose of my book was to present incontrovertible evidence that cells do indeed lead complex conscious lives, communicating with other cells using a highly complex language that science is just beginning to acknowledge. In recent years there has been an increasing amount of scientific research demonstrating volition in many life forms, including single cells. This has led to a steady increase in the number of scientists who believe that cells have cognition, some of them highly respected leaders in their fields. The evidence that cells have minds is becoming increasingly hard to deny and is causing many to rethink the paradigms of life, mind, and evolution. This shift will have significant implications for the fundamentals of biology, including neuroscience. Yet despite the accumulating evidence and shift in the views of some scientists, there is still very strong academic pressure to maintain the view that consciousness is generated by brains. This is one reason why this book is so valuable. I met Mike Rowen in 2024 when he reached out to me to discuss my book. He mentioned his theory on cellular minds and sent me an early version of this book. Mike has a background in electrical engineering, physics, and business. While his career pursuits were in business and technology, his lifelong hobby was keeping up with developments in quantum theory, brain research, and consciousness studies. Once he retired, he spent a few years investigating how individual cellular minds might be able to combine to form the human mind, which culminated in this book. With fresh eyes that are unencumbered by dogma and bias, Mike is able to clearly analyze the current state of consciousness research, both as it refers to brains and to cells. He concludes, as I do, that cells have minds, and that cells electromagnetically combine their minds to form multicellular organism minds, including the human mind. As in the literary folktale The Emperor’s New Clothes, he rightly finds that science has no idea what mind is nor where it is in nature, that consciousness science has no clothes. He is able to cut through current paradigm biases and make compelling and concise arguments that are supported by evidence and theory. I particularly like his chapter on neuroscience mysteries and its discussion of the brain, where he gives multiple carefully reasoned arguments as to why the mind is not created by networks of brain circuits. He explores a wide variety of problems with the idea that brains generate the mind, an unproven hypothesis that is very popular among scientists and philosophers. But if mind exists in all cells, biological tissues, and organs, then our human mind operates as a society of trillions of conscious cells throughout our bodies, not as a neuronal connectome computer. This is akin to our human society that operates with billions of conscious humans throughout the world. While most scientists will probably not agree with all of his many arguments, some are extremely convincing and provide evidence that directly refutes the widely held assumption that the brain produces the mind. Most scientists also don’t appear to recognize the relationship of the mind to electromagnetic fields and their relation to the intelligence of all the cells of the body. This is likely due to long-standing biological dogma that vitalism has been debunked, which resulted in electricity and magnetism being banned from biological explanations. This absurd view of ignoring electricity and magnetism has, in fact, been overturned by the rapid march of research into electrical, magnetic, photonic, and ultrasound stimulation of living tissues, cells, and brains. Despite all of this research, electromagnetic views are still considered fringe among biologists. Another area of sublime clarity is Rowen’s view that electromagnetic forces not only bind atoms and molecules together, but they are essential to the entirety of chemistry and biology, literally allowing cells and multicellular creatures to exist and powering the processes of life at all scales. Mike cuts through the current convoluted views on what consciousness is in nature, to the obvious, but until recently banished, view that mind is also related to electromagnetic forces. New discoveries of high resolution imaging, resulting in actual observations of the lifestyle of cells, made my book possible five years ago. More recent advances are going deeper into the cell and providing detailed views of the lifestyles of the macromolecules, droplets, and even atoms that enable the processes of life inside cells. The incredible complexity and sophistication of the subcellular world is astounding and is rendering the current scientific views of life and mind obsolete. An entirely new scientific paradigm arises from these two often overlooked facts – that each cell is individually conscious, and that the electromagnetic field is the substrate that enables mind and matter to combine at all scales of life. My hope is that this valuable book will help continue to move this inevitable paradigm shift forward. Jon Lieff, MD Neuroscientist and author of The Secret Language of Cells 12/21/2024