Subtle Energies and Uncharted Realms of the Mind
An Esalen Invitational Conference
July 2 - 7, 2000

Dead Molecules and the Live Organism: Learning About the Life Force
Roeland Van Wijk

Enthusiasm and Scientific Experiments

Van Wijk started his presentation by telling a story that illustrates one of the central themes of this conference: that human intentionality has a real influence on the material world. Van Wijk started his story by describing a phenomena he has seen several times, namely that successful experimental results cannot be replicated by other researchers. For example, Van Wijk described a highly regarded researcher named Benvenhiste who was very enthusiastic about his experiments that looked at how cells sustain themselves in high potency solutions. Van Wijk went to his laboratory to see Benvenhiste’s work for himself, where he noticed the enthusiasm of Benvenhiste’s research team and the fact that the results were published in Nature magazine.

Benvenhiste allowed skeptics into his lab to watch him repeat his results, but he could not reproduce them. Although his name was denigrated by most international scientific media because of this, he continued to do his own research and replicate positive results. Eventually, Van Wijk’s lab and a lab in London tried his experiment but also failed to repeat his original results. Van Wijk said that further research with other biological models and other primary researchers of the same kind was done with unconvincing results as well.

What conclusion can be drawn this? Van Wijk’s pointed out that all the follow-up research to high-dilution, original experiments was conducted by young, less experienced and unenthusiastic researchers who lacked positive attitudes. Thus, Van Wijk has come to the conclusion that the attitude of the experimenter must be included in how we view the outcome of an experiment. The emotional disposition and the mental intention of the experimenter clearly affects the material results.

Biology, The Life Force, and the Systems Approach

Van Wijk is interested in how biology can be linked to the life force. He pointed out that the life force is no longer an alternative subject in Holland. It is becoming more accepted into mainstream academic thinking, where as ten years ago it was a forbidden topic. Earlier in this century, Van Wijk noted that the life force was a part of biological thinking, but it disappeared when biology started to focus exclusively on molecules and try to fit its explanations of life into the categories of reductionistic physics.

Van Wijk believes we need to start to look at how parts in a system attune to one another. In cell biology the components of a cell are immersed within a salt water solution. While traditional biologists have focused exclusively on the molecules as if they were isolated, individual parts, Van Wijk is now looking at the properties of the whole system, and in particular the surrounding salt water. It is the water itself that allows the molecules to do their vibratory work. A group of cells forms a vibrating whole that is interconnected and maintains a maximum state of health through regulative loops that connect the parts to each other.

To illustrate this new biological perspective, Van Wijk asked what happens when a cell is not healthy? The entire system of the surrounding cells responds. The entire system maintains order and health through a self-recovery process. Because the parts of the system are attuned to one another, they facilitate the recovery process for each individual part. From this perspective, the goal of a healer is to assist in the self-healing process of the entire system.

Van Wijk noted that this new systems view of health and healing can be applied not only at the cellular level but at the human level too. Human cultures have associations just as cells do. There is a deeper pattern that underlies all living systems, which is the interconnectedness of parts in a whole system. Van Wijk believes the next step in the sciences will be to study how systems work at all the different levels. How can we study the interconnectedness at the level of cell biology, the level of the human energy system, and the level of human cultures? Van Wijk called for a new methodological approach to each of these areas that can adequately reveal the interconnectedness of parts in a system. In response, Henry Dryer noted that cancer cells are the violators of the systems approach that Van Wijk is describing. Cancer cells grow beyond their natural place in the order of the system. Garrett Yount cautioned that although there are fascinating parallels between the human and cellular levels, we need to be careful in drawing them too tightly. For example, at the human level when someone has died, we bury them and honor their life, while at the cellular level, a dead cell will immediately get canabalized by neighboring cells. In this respect, parallels are not always accurate.

In his conclusion, Van Wijk reiterated his belief that the intentions of the medical doctors, the patients, and the researchers must all be taken into account when conducting experiments. Perhaps, science in the future will have a way to measure the level of intentionality active in an experiment.