Dogra Magra (17/47)

by Hisashi Yumeno

Cells are tiny particles, one-trillionth the size of our bodies, that exist within us. They are so small that they cannot be seen with an ordinary microscope, so many scientists have thought that their complexity and capabilities would also be about one-trillionth of our overall capabilities. In other words, the conventional wisdom until now was that cells are extremely simple and powerless. Therefore, although the mysterious life, reproduction, and genetic capabilities of cells were discovered one after another, surprising scientists, research was still limited to the scope of microscopes and chemical analysis, and understanding of the essence of cells had not progressed. Such research was even considered to be a blasphemy against materialistic science.

However, this is a misunderstanding based on very unreasonable preconceptions, resulting from scholars, trapped by modern materialistic science, inferring the content and capabilities of cells from their shape and size, and thinking, "it's probably about this much." The fact that the mystery of life and the inexplicability of dreams remain major enigmas in the scientific community stems from research with such a narrow perspective. If we observe the entire universe from a more liberal viewpoint and consider this problem in light of actual phenomena, we should realize that cells contain greater and more profound content than can be measured in a microscope or chemical laboratory. Those who adhere to materialistic scientific research methods must confront facts that they cannot deny, even if they try to.

First and foremost, what must be mentioned is the cell's ability to create a human being. A single cell residing in the womb divides and grows, tracing the evolutionary path of its ancestors. It forms itself, unfailingly following the sequence of fish, lizard, ape, and human. Moreover, it aims to be a slightly more evolved being by combining the good points and strengths of both parents. While the positions of the ears, eyes, nose, and mouth are common to all, individual characteristics are subtly combined. The memory, judgment, desire for improvement, conscience, and even artistic sensibility of each individual cell—their depth is immeasurable.

Furthermore, the large collective of cells that is humanity comes into contact with, understands, and resonates with all phenomena in the universe, forming large groups such as nations and societies, and building human culture. How vast is the scope of this creative power? This seemingly omniscient and omnipotent power can be considered a manifestation of the spiritual power of the very first single cell. The vast culture of modern humanity is, in the end, nothing more than the spiritual power contained within these minute cells reflected on Earth.

Thus, a human being is a collection of cells with magnificent content, whose spiritual power is unified through the brain. That is why the knowledge, emotions, and will expressed by humans should be far more wonderful than those of individual cells, but in reality, the opposite phenomenon is occurring. Even historical sages and great figures are powerless before the spiritual power of cells, and must prostrate themselves like stars before the sun. In other words, there is an astonishing phenomenon where the ability of a unified collection of cells in human form is less than one ten-trillionth of the power of individual cells. This is thought to be because the evolution of the brain, which unifies the spiritual power of cells, is not yet sufficient, and thus the power of the cells is not fully expressed.

At the same time, considering that the single cell, the first seed of life to appear on Earth, possessed infinite spiritual power from its very first moment and has evolved through various processes into the most capable human beings, it is possible that these contradictions and inconvenient phenomena are appearing because current humans are still incomplete beings in the midst of evolution. This is a very important research topic that cannot be solved overnight, so I will only touch upon it briefly here.

And once the relationship between the human body and mind and the spiritual power of cells has been clarified, the explanation of the true nature of "dreams" becomes very easy.

Every cell is a being with a consciousness equal to or greater than our individual lives. That is why modern medicine has proven that as long as cells are performing some function, they absorb nutrients, grow, divide, multiply, get tired, age, and eventually decompose and disappear. And each of these cells is conscious of the suffering and joy they feel while working, just like us, or even more so. It is as if a nation, in the process of its rise and fall, creates countless works of art.

What succinctly demonstrates this fact is the dreams we see.

A dream is a state in which, while the entire body is asleep, some cells within the body are stimulated, awaken, and become active. The consciousness of these awakened cells is reflected in the brain, and we call this a "dream."

For example, if someone falls asleep with indigestion, only the stomach cells remain awake, working hard. They complain, "Oh, this is painful. What will become of us? Why are we the only ones suffering like this?" The suffering and complaints of these stomach cells are reflected in the brain, and in the dream, the protagonist is unjustly imprisoned, bound by heavy chains, and forced into harsh labor. Or, the image of their house collapsing in an unavoidable earthquake, and them struggling in agony, appears. As the work of digestion gradually becomes easier, the feelings in the dream also change, and they begin to worship the sunrise on a mountaintop or ski down a magnificent slope.

Also, if one closes their eyes before sleeping, thinking, "I want to see her," only that thought remains, and the overwhelming desire to see her manifests in the dream. Her figure is symbolized as beautiful flowers, birds, or landscapes, smiling before him, but various obstacles arise when he tries to approach her. Ancient cataclysms suddenly appear, and the high mountains and cliffs where his ancestors lived appear before his eyes. He recalls the feelings his grandfather had when he fell into destitution and became a beggar, or the scene of his father swimming across a great river. He also becomes a monkey, crossing mountains, or a fish, diving into the sea, and just when he thinks he has finally obtained her, the initial painful feeling disappears, and the dream ends.

Also, thanks to bedwetting, one might dream of an ancient great flood. Thanks to a stuffy nose, one might be made to dream again of the suffering of almost drowning in childhood. In this way, any cell in the hands, feet, internal organs, or even a part of the skin that receives some stimulation and awakens while the whole body is asleep, dreams a dream corresponding to that stimulation. In other words, it draws scenes and sights that match the feelings of the cells at that time, from memories inherited from ancestors and from one's own past memories, and freely combines and depicts them.

If those feelings are irrational or perverted, and suitable materials cannot be found, they are supplemented and filled in through imagination. Symbolizing the fear and anxiety expressed by cells within the human body with tools that writhe like earthworms or snakes, or depicting a large tree dripping with fresh blood or flowers blooming in flames to represent pain, is the same as humans who do not know the true nature of mystery imagining angels with wings.

This is the exact opposite of how our moods change during waking hours depending on our surroundings; in dreams, our moods take precedence and shift first. The scenes and situations that match that mood then change to follow the mood's shifts, so no matter how outlandish or inconsistent they may be, we do not feel any contradiction or unnaturalness. Rather, it is natural to experience a more natural, profound, and poignant sensation than in reality.

In other words, a dream can be called a unique art form of the cells, which combines memories, hallucinations, and associations of images and objects that symbolize moods and emotions understandable only by the cells, the protagonists of that dream, without logic or coherence, to depict the shifts in mood with extreme vividness.

The true nature of dreams is the reflection of the cells' own consciousness in the brain, accompanying their development, division, and proliferation, as already explained. Next, let's clarify why the time felt in dreams does not match actual time. Ordinary people believe that the time indicated by clocks or the sun is true time, leading to a great illusion and confusion in scientific judgment. Resolving this question should lead to immediate understanding.

According to modern medicine, a normal person's calm breathing is about eighteen times per minute, and their pulse is about seventy times per minute, and a minute is defined based on this. Sixty times that is an hour, twenty-four times that is a day, and three hundred sixty times that is a year. Furthermore, since that year corresponds to the time it takes for the Earth to orbit the sun once, the time shown by a reliable clock is the same one hour for everyone. However, this is merely artificial time and differs from the true nature of time. In reality, when individuals use the same length of artificial time, astonishing differences emerge.

For example, even an hour measured by the same clock feels astonishingly different in length when reading an interesting novel compared to an hour spent idly waiting for a train at a station. It's like how a foot measured by a ruler doesn't appear the same length to everyone. Similarly, comparing a minute spent holding one's breath underwater to a minute spent chatting, the former feels unbearably long, while the latter feels like an instant... This must be the truth.

Let's go a step further and consider the existence of the deceased. If the deceased, even after death, feels the flow of time in a state of insensibility, then one second and one hundred million years should feel the same length. Feeling this way is the true sensation after death, and one hundred million years are contained within one second, and at the same time, the length of the universe's lifespan can also be felt within one second. The essence of this infinite time flowing through the infinite universe is nothing other than being in an extreme illusion, standing still and also rushing forward within infinite truth.

True time is completely different from the artificial time usually conceived. Rather, it flows continuously, independent of the movements of the sun, Earth, and other celestial bodies, or the hands of a clock, with infinite elasticity simultaneously for the respective senses of immeasurable and boundless life.

Next, if we compare the length of life of existing life forms on Earth, from plants that live for hundreds of years and large animals that live for over a hundred years, to microorganisms that are born and die in a matter of minutes or seconds, there is a tendency for smaller forms to have shorter lifespans. The same applies to cells; if we average the long and short lifespans among the various cells in the human body, the difference is comparable to that between the lifespan of a nation and an individual's lifespan, relative to the length of human life as a whole. However, the subjectively felt length of a lifetime for these long or short-lived cells is the same, regardless of whether the period from birth to death is one minute or one hundred years in artificial time. The actual felt length of time is the same length of a lifetime for all. To not understand this principle and try to resign oneself to the pitifulness of a baby born in the morning and dying in the evening by comparing it to the life of an insect also born in the morning and dying of old age at dusk, is a foolish, unnatural, and irrational argument. Ultimately, it is merely a tragicomedy arising from confusing inflexible artificial time with infinitely flexible natural time.

All of nature, all living beings, thus occupy infinitely flexible natural time for their preferred length, and breathe, grow, reproduce, and age and die within that length as their lifetime. Similarly, no matter how short the lifespan of the cells that make up the human body may be when measured by artificial time, the natural time they possess must be infinite. Therefore, if those cells were to use infinite memory and time to rapidly "dream," there would be no difficulty in depicting events of fifty or a hundred years in an instant, in a single second. The "Handan Dream Pillow Story," an old Chinese legend transmitted to Japan, states that Lu Sheng spent fifty years in a dream, and that this actually occurred during the time it took to cook a pot of millet rice; there is nothing strange about this.

From the above, it can be understood how immense and infinite the spiritual power of a single cell is, and especially how deep and immeasurable its "cellular memory" is. By recognizing the significant role of "cellular memory" in simultaneously forming the human mind and body, I believe that the questions regarding why a fetus becomes what it is, that is, the existence of "fetal dreams," will largely be resolved.

While in the mother's womb, the fetus is completely cut off from external sensations, existing in a state akin to deep sleep. During this time, all the cells of the fetus actively divide, multiply, and evolve, aspiring "towards humanity, towards humanity," repeating ancestral memories and successively reflecting the scenes of those times into the fetal consciousness. And because the fetus is completely shielded from external stimuli by the mother's womb and nurtured in great tranquility, there is no need to think about anything else. It only needs to single-mindedly maintain the dream of "towards humanity, towards humanity." Therefore, the content of that dream also progresses extremely smoothly, accurately, and with intricate changes. This point differs from the free and uninhibited dreams of adults.

It can be said that what creates the fetus is the fetus's own dream. And what governs that dream is "cellular memory." For this reason, the evolutionary path that all fetuses repeat within the mother's body and the time it takes are common. Since current humanity has evolved from a common ancestor, the length of cellular memory, or "fetal dreams," is shared.

Furthermore, it is not at all surprising that "fetal dreams" spanning hundreds of millions or even billions of years can be experienced within a mere ten months, considering the spiritual power of cells mentioned earlier. The relatively short gestation period of animals with lower evolutionary stages is because their evolutionary memories are simpler. Therefore, lower microorganisms that have undergone no evolution since primitive times have no "fetal dreams" at all. The reason they instantly divide and reproduce in the exact form of their ancestors should also be easily understood here.

The profound and subtle nature of such facts—the "memory of cells" and other spiritual powers of cells—and how they influence and govern the destiny of all living descendants, has been expounded for thousands of years in various scriptures originating from Egyptian monotheism. The religions that exist around the world today are the superstitious remnants of rituals and expedient means that adorned these scientific considerations and taught them to uncivilized peoples. Therefore, it should be particularly noted that the existence of this "fetal dream" is by no means a new theory.

So, what exactly would be the content of these "fetal dreams" that remain outside our memory? Considering what has been discussed so far, some speculation is possible, but for reference, I believe my own speculation must be as follows:

Among the ancestral evolutionary dreams that human fetuses experience in their mother's womb, the most common must be nightmares. This is because humans, as animals, in the course of their evolution to this day, possess none of the natural means of defense or attack, such as the strength of a cow, the sharp claws of a tiger, the wings of a bird, the camouflage of a fish, the venom of an insect, or the shell of a mollusk. Compared to other animals, humans have a much weaker, harmless, non-venomous, and featureless body, yet they have exposed it to all kinds of fierce struggles for survival, battled terrifying natural disasters, and finally evolved into the higher animals they are today. In that process, they must have experienced an incomparable amount of pain from the struggle for survival and persecution from natural selection compared to other animals. The memories of those hardships and sufferings must be immeasurable, to the point where it would have been difficult to breathe.

Among these, the fetus slowly grows, vividly dreaming, one by one, of the profound memories spanning hundreds of millions and tens of millions of years of its ancestors, who belong to the same species as its own past, and feeling them as if they were of the same length as reality. This struggle is incomparable to the short and shallow struggles that parents experience in this world.

A single cell, as a microorganism, the ancestor of all living things, attached itself to a corner of the inner wall of the uterus. At that moment, it began to dream of floating in lukewarm water with its fellow microorganisms hundreds of millions of years ago in the Azoic Era. An infinite number of microorganisms, with transparent bodies, absorbed and reflected the light of the sky, sometimes emitting seven-colored rainbows or scattering golden and silver light, swimming freely.

At that moment, it felt the joy and beauty of life. However, a sudden small change in the water attacked it as unbearable pain. Witnessing its companions dying one after another, it tried to escape, but was bound by the pain enveloping its entire body and could not move. The suffering was unbearable, and just when it thought it had passed, the primeval sun approached like a raging fire, and the pale moonlight permeated like ice.

Scattered by the wind, beaten by the rain, in unimaginable terror and agony, it forgot life and death and continued to be tossed about. "Please, I want to become a sturdier form. I want a body that can withstand both cold and heat," it desperately wished. Perhaps that wish was granted, as the cell gradually divided and eventually evolved into the form of a fish, an ancestor of humans. The form equipped with skin and scales to ward off heat and cold, fins and a tail to swim, eyes and a mouth, and nerves to judge, was an astonishing advancement.

“This is perfect. There’s no creature as clever as me,” he thought as he strolled along the water’s edge. But suddenly, a giant octopus, thousands of times larger than his body, approached, spreading its arms as if to cover the sky. “Help!” he cried, fleeing into a forest of seaweed and holding his breath. Just as he thought he was safe and tried to lift his head, the pincers of a sea scorpion, tens of times larger than the previous octopus, loomed before his nose.

“Another disaster!” he exclaimed, turning to flee, when a cloud-like trilobite covered him from behind. From the side, an anemone flashed its poisonous spear. He barely escaped with his life and burrowed under a small pebble, trembling uncontrollably. “At this rate, I can’t live in peace yet,” he thought. His evolved companions protected themselves from danger by encasing themselves in hard shells or only extending their limbs from between rocks, but he hated enduring in these dark waters by doing such things.

“I want to get to land quickly. I want a body that can freely leap and bound in that light, bright air,” he prayed earnestly. His wish was granted, and he was able to crawl onto land, taking the form of a small, three-eyed lizard.