This descending octave meditation also starts with affirming the totality of what it means to be you—this human being, including the physical, emotional, and mental components and your spiritual essence. Include in this affirmation all the relations that define your individual existence and your beingness in your family, your community, the place where you live, the work that you do, the society to which you belong, and the spiritual value systems that give meaning to your life.
Standard evolutionary biology regards the human physical body as an animal belonging to the primate species homo sapiens in the kingdom animalia. Independent scientists, including Darwin’s contemporary Alfred Russell Wallace, Julian Huxley, Konrad Lorenz, and John Allen, have proposed that humans constitute an entire new kingdom, because they are no longer limited to local ecosystems like other animal species, have radiated planet-wide, and created thousands of different cultures and languages. Our evolutionary ancestry is reflected in the threefold layering of brain structures (reptilian brainstem, mammalian limbic system, and humanoid neocortex). Through our human form we are connected with all humans, and through our animal body form with all mammals, especially closely with primates.
The two-legged, two-armed body of homo sapiens contains these ten major organ systems, bound within the skin: skeletal, muscular, digestive-intestinal, respiratory, circulatory, excretory-detoxifying, immune-defensive, endocrine-hormonal, sexual-reproductive, and nervous-cerebral. They function in effortless coordination more or less totally without our conscious participation. We can, however, support their functioning through intentional yogic and self-healing practices. Multiple perception, coordination, and communication functions are carried out in the three branches of the autonomic/vegetative nervous systems (sympathetic, parasympathetic, and enteric); the three evolutionary layers of brain structure and function; and the dual partnership of left and right cerebral hemispheres. Our perceptual awareness can “descend” to the level of organ structure and function, especially when we are in pain or sickness, but this level ordinarily represents the boundary of ordinary subjective awareness.
Each human body contains between 10 and 50 trillion cells. As cells die, new ones are formed according to the ordering principles from the organ system to which they belong. From the work of Lynn Margulis we now know that living cells incorporate and organize themselves from precellular molecular structures by endosymbiosis within a membrane boundary. The nucleus of every cell in our body contains the DNA and RNA molecules encoding the species and individual genetic blueprints of our bodies and the organs within them (Margulis and Schwartz, 1982; Margulis, 1988).
At the elemental molecular level, the boundaries between organic life and inorganic matter, between inside and outside of our bodies and skins, disappear, and everything is connected. While modern science has identified over 100 different elements, the most common elements of living matter are hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen. Subjectively perceived in deeper states of awareness, the molecular web appears geometric, with straight lines connecting points of light, while the cellular web appears fibrous, like a spider’s web or a network of nerve fibers.
When this level of matter is perceived and recognized in electron microscopes, clairvoyant visions, or heightened states of consciousness, it appears as glittering beads of light surrounded by clusters and clouds of waving lines of light.
We may retrace our steps back up through the holarchies to our present human individuality—or we may simply open our eyes and and recognize the here-and-now presence of our cosmic beingness.