Our books are the culmination of years of research into scientific evidence on the nature of the mind.  Both books provide extensive references to underlying scientific research demonstrating that cells communicate via a language that science has yet to understand, and that cells demonstrate levels of cognition and agency that science has yet to explain.  The books draw the same conclusion - that cells have minds.

 

     The books are written for a scientifically oriented audience in conversational style that minimizes the use of scientific terminology that might obscure the arguments being made.  They are written from a scientific perspective but also from a metaphysically agnostic perspective to avoid metaphysical assumptions that too often inadvertently bias discussions in scientific literature. The biggest metaphysical assumption that pervades the vast majority of papers in neuroscience, biology, physics, and philosophy that discuss any aspect of consciousness is that the brain generates the conscious mind.  The authors accepted this premise as fact earlier in their lives, which is the default assumption made by most modern day scientists and philosophers.  But by taking an objective look at the scientific evidence to support this premise they independently concluded that no such evidence exists, hence they realized that the idea that the brain generates the mind is nothing more than a "metaphysical assumption" that lacks supporting evidence.  Once one comes to grip with this fact, anyone curious about the nature of consciousness will begin "searching for mind" in nature beyond the brain, which is why we chose these words as the name for this website.  The following summaries of our books make the case that the human mind is not produced by the brain, but instead appears to be a collective phenomenon produced by all of the cells of the human body.

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Executive Summary of The Secret Language of Cells by Dr. Jon Lieff

 

     Lieff's book dives deeply into the communications that occur between the cells of the human body.  The central premise of the book is that there is extensive scientific evidence that cells throughout the body conduct elaborate back-and-forth conversations that goes far beyond what simple chemistry should be able to accomplish — and that no one has identified where the direction for these conversations comes from.

     Cells use at least six distinct signaling methods simultaneously: secreted chemicals, sacs filled with genetic instructions, electric currents, electromagnetic waves, physical contact, and biological nanotubes. What is remarkable is that all life forms — humans, animals, plants, and microbes — use these same languages with the same molecular vocabulary, suggesting communication is more fundamental to life than any particular biological substrate.  Throughout the book Lieff discusses evidence of cells making what can only be described as decisions from multiple simultaneous inputs.  Gut lining cells determine which specific microbes are allowed to reside as residents and which must be expelled, conducting ongoing negotiations with immune cells, local neurons, and vast microbial populations simultaneously.  T cells travel into the fluid surrounding the brain, assess whether an infection is occurring, and adjust signals to either stimulate cognition or trigger the physiological sick response — a behavioral decision made without any nervous system directing it.  Cancer cells demonstrate arguably the most sophisticated cellular behavior documented in the book, manipulating surrounding immune cells, neurons, and blood vessel cells simultaneously to build protective environments and evade destruction. Lieff explicitly asks whether these conversations constitute intelligence and concludes the question cannot be answered because no serviceable definition of intelligence exists — but the implicit weight of the evidence throughout the book pushes toward a yes.

     The book also discusses the evidence that cells self-edit their own DNA in elaborate multistep processes, producing up to five hundred different proteins from a single DNA strand by cutting and reassembling messenger RNA pieces, and stay in communication with traveling immune cells without any obvious directional signal.  He concludes that how cells can show such advanced information transfer without a clear source of direction remains genuinely unexplained.

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     Lieff also presents evidence that viruses communicate with one another and demonstrate cognition and agency as they plan and execute coordinated attacks on the host organisms they invade.  The behaviors of viruses is even more striking than the behaviors of cells considering that viruses are generally not considered to be "alive" and consist of a single strand of DNA or RNA that may be wrapped in a thin membrane stolen from the cell membrane of the host cell that produced the virus.  This can be seen as evidence of a single molecule behaving as if it has a mind of its own.

    The book dives deeply into virus communication, showing that they use molecular signals that function essentially as a language.  Phage viruses produce a peptide signal called arbitrium (Latin for arbitration) that allows viral communities to collectively decide whether to kill a host bacterium or keep it alive as a productive resource. As more viruses enter a bacterium and the population of arbitrium signals rises, the community collectively slows its reproduction rate to avoid killing a productive host.  This is seen as coordinated decision-making at the molecular scale.

     Multiple types of viruses can understand each other's signals across species, much as different bacterial communities communicate in biofilms.  Viruses cooperate and compete strategically: when competing viruses are present they kill host cells faster to deny resources to rivals; when alone they kill host cells slowly to maximize their own production window.  A form of apparent altruism has been observed in which one group of viruses sacrifices itself attacking bacterial CRISPR defense systems, producing molecules that allow surviving viral community members to succeed.  HIV, with only nine genes and nineteen proteins, evades the full armory of the human immune system by hijacking, hiding, and strategically timing its behavior within host cells — including entering a dormant state for years before reactivating.  Herpes virus commandeers the cell's own motor proteins, travels up and down axons from skin to brain, tricks the heavily guarded cell nucleus, and hibernates for years before reversing the journey when conditions are favorable.  The behavioral sophistication of single nucleic acid molecules with as few as seven genes performing strategic, context-sensitive, apparently goal-directed behavior is precisely the kind of evidence that makes the possibility of cellular scale mind difficult to dismiss since it provides provocative evidence for mind potentially existing at the molecular scale.

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     The book's final chapter directly raises the possibility of molecular scale mind and hints that a future sequel would be focused on the scientific evidence of mind at this scale.  The chapter focuses on the Mammalian Target of Rapamycin (mTor) as the molecule whose behaviors are the most difficult to explain using existing scientific theories.  mTOR is a single enzyme molecule that simultaneously monitors conditions across multiple organelles — receiving signals about available amino acids, lipids, oxygen, ATP levels, protein production rates, and structural scaffolding — and responds by coordinating global cell functions including growth, division, DNA repair, immune response, and metabolic cycling. It works in close cooperation with lysosomes, sitting directly on their outer membranes for real-time collaboration on cellular recycling. It directs the construction of axon and dendrite scaffolding in neurons in response to learning. It regulates stem cell behavior, tissue repair, and the brain's sleep, appetite, and circadian rhythms. And it does all of this simultaneously, as a single molecule.

   Lieff speculates on whether mTOR may constitute a molecule that can converse like cells and organelles and concludes that more research is required to confirm or refute this speculation.  The axon transport chapter strengthens the molecular mind implication further: every cargo type traveling along a neuron's axon has its own unique transport machinery, motors, and adaptor molecules; cargo is tagged for delivery to exact destinations up to three feet away; and when opposing motor proteins compete for direction, something determines which motor wins — and notes that this is not currently understood.

 

    In his conclusion Lieff asks the deepest question the book raises: could information transfer be a fundamental aspect of physical nature?  He notes that information transfers occur at six orders of magnitude from molecules to human societies, and that at every level — including the molecular — the source of direction for these information flows remains unidentified.  He explicitly leaves this as an open question, one that he intended to explore further in a sequel to The Secret Language of Cells.

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Executive Summary of Cellular Mind by Michael Rowen

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    The book opens with a foundational observation: despite centuries of research, no human brain region or neuronal process has been identified that produces human conscious experience, and no scientific theory exists that explains how we think, feel, remember, or experience life.  The book go on to argue that the "brain-generated mind hypothesis" remains an unproven assumption — a widely held metaphysical belief rather than a scientifically supported conclusion.  Cellular Mind Theory (CMT) is presented as an alternative that rests on three pillars: cognition, agency, and electromagnetic combination. 

 

     On cognition, the book discusses a number of Michael Levin's experiments at Tufts University that demonstrate that electromagnetic fields applied to specific regions of planarian worms during regeneration can cause them to grow two heads or head from other worms species that diverged millions of years ago.  These head structures were sustained through subsequent regeneration cycles despite having no changes in their DNA , clear evidence that body shape is encoded in a cellular memory system other than DNA, raising significant questions about the role of DNA in evolution.  Other experiments involved scrambling facial feature of tadpole embryos that were corrected by the tadpole cells throughout embryo development, and electromagnetically inducing eyes on tadpole embryos which the developing cells connected to the spinal cord and passed vision tests once the tadpole matured.   Still other experiments created novel biological lifeforms such as Xenobots, which are literally frog skin cells removed from their embryonic context.  Xenobots spontaneously reorganized into novel body forms, developed radar-like environmental sensing systems, navigated mazes, repaired damage, and invented two novel reproduction methods.  None of these behaviors can they be explained by any known cellular process or evolution theory (or any scientific theory more broadly) given that Xenobots were formed by cells that had the evolutionary history and genome of a frog.   The conclusion is that all cells demonstrate cognitive skills that are extremely difficult if not impossible to explain under existing scientific paradigms.

     On agency, CMT makes a pointed observation that modern evolutionary theory leaves entirely unaddressed: why do all organisms, from single cell microbes to humans, relentlessly strive to survive as individuals, as collections of individuals, and as species?  No genes encoding any form of survival behavior have been found, and no physical or chemical process has been identified that causes living matter to relentlessly pursue survival while nonliving matter never does. The book discusses three distinct levels of survival agency — individual, collective, and species — all of which are demonstrated by all types of cells and none of which can be explained by natural selection filtering random DNA mutations occurring during cellular reproduction.  The example of mammalian reproduction sharpens this argument because pregnancy clearly impairs the individual survival odds of mammalian mothers, yet highly complex reproduction methods evolved universally across the mammal kingdom nevertheless.  This fact directly contradicts the survival of the fittest logic that underpins modern evolution theory, which by definition can only apply to mutations that enhance an "individual" organism's survival odds, and does apply to mutations that enhance survival at the "species" level while impairing individual survival odds.  That the survival imperative is evident at the species level across all lifeforms is ignored by modern evolution theory.  Single cell parasites such as toxoplasma and horsehair worms are profiled because their reproduction method requires them to be eaten by larger organisms, sometimes multiple larger organisms in the food chain, where they ultimately become active and manipulate the nervous systems of the larger organism from the inside to cause the organism to sacrifice itself to facilitate the parasite's own reproduction process.  Evidence of single cell organisms demonstrating strategic, multi-step, goal-directed behaviors that involve hijacking complex nervous systems in order to reproduce lies far beyond existing biology and evolution theory.

     On electromagnetic combination, the book argues that cells combine their individual minds into multicellular minds through the electromagnetic fields that permeates and connects all cells in multicellular organisms, called biofields by the researchers who study them.  CMT notes that the electromagnetic force combines and powers all forms of matter from subatomic particles to humans and facilitates every chemical reaction and biological process, all of which is driven by the electromagnetic attraction between the electrons and protons contained inside every matter structure.  The electromagnetic force enables ATP's energy storage and release cycles, carries all sensory signals through nervous systems, and generates the brain waves that neuroscientists use to study consciousness.  The book's central premise is that the electromagnetic force is not merely involved in biology — it is the foundational force of all biological processes without exception.  This makes the electromagnetic field the only physically grounded candidate for a substrate through which individual cellular minds could combine to form multicellular organism minds.  A solution to the combination problem explaining the physics of how cellular minds can electromagnetically combine is provided.

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     The brain is framed as the organ developed by the cells of complex multicellular organisms to both comprehend and navigate the external world in order to ensure the continued survival of the individual multicellular organism.  The cerebral cortex is dedicated to sensory system processing thus its primary focus is on comprehending the external world.  The cerebellum is dedicated to balance and motor control of the muscular system thus its primary focus is on navigating the external world.  These two brain regions contain 98% of the brains neurons and neuroscientists have not found any evidence or location in either brain region that could be dedicated to producing human consciousness.  The remaining 2% of neurons in the brain are located in a series of smaller brain regions dedicated to regulating hormone levels, fight or flight responses, and other functions that assist in the survival imperative of the multicellular organism.

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     The book's most ambitious chapters apply the CMT hypothesis to unresolved mysteries in neuroscience, evolutionary biology, philosophy, and the nature of life itself.  On neuroscience, CMT argues that if mind exists in all cells throughout the body and not exclusively in the brain, decades of anomalous neuroscience evidence suddenly becomes coherent.  The book covers diverse topics including color perception, split-brain and Libet experiments, the placebo effect, the unusual mental skills of conjoined twins, and even near death experience (NDE).  The premise that the human mind is a collective cellular phenomenon facilitated by electromagnetic combination is the common thread running through these topics while providing coherent explanations for each phenomenon. 

 

     Any proposed scientific theory must make at least one testable prediction to be taken seriously, thus the book includes a testable prediction.  The scientific study of lucid dreaming is discussed and leads to a testable prediction and experimental design that can used to test CMT.  While the experimental apparatus is still beyond the current resolution of our most advanced electromagnetic imaging equipment, the steady progression of higher resolution scientific instruments suggests the prediction should be testable in the not-too-distant future. 

 

     CMT also provides straightforward solutions to the binding problem and the unity of conscious experience.  Electromagnetic theory requires that the cellular photon emissions from cells throughout the human body to seamlessly combine to form a single, higher power, integrated, and unified electromagnetic field that surrounds and pervades the body of every multicellular organism, including humans.  Scientists have detected these emissions from cells but are a long from decoding their informational content.  These cellular emissions are similar to the synapses of the brain and nervous which are captured by electroencephalograms (EEGs) and are used by doctors, neuroscientists, and consciousness researchers as diagnostic tools.  The cellular emissions that form biofields around the human body are 10 million times lower power than synapses, thus have evaded discovery until recently once electromagnetic imaging technology achieved sufficient resolution to directly detect them.     

     On evolution, the book presents its most direct empirical challenge to modern evolutionary theory.  Another of Michael Levin's experiments involved planarian worms exposed to barium chloride, a chemical that literally dissolved their heads.  Somehow these worms evolved barium chloride-resistant heads within five weeks across multiple specimens, with corresponding edits to their genomes.  The probability of nine coordinated beneficial mutations occurring by random chance within this timeframe is basically zero. CMT argues this provides direct evidence that mutations are not random but are driven by cellular cognition and survival agency — the cells recognized they would die with a head, experimented with possible structural solutions, found one that works, and encoded it in its DNA for future generations.  The book positions "cell-driven evolution" as the Ockham's Razor replacement for random DNA mutations filtered by natural selection.

     The conclusion frames CMT as a partial theory because it does not claim to resolve the hard problem of consciousness nor speculate on neither the source of nature of mind at the cellular scale.  It simply posits that cells are the lowest level at which mind demonstrably appears in matter, and electromagnetic field combination as the mechanism through which those minds scale into human consciousness.  The closing promise is practical: learning to communicate with cells in their native electromagnetic language holds the prospect of curing disease, reversing birth defects, and growing replacement organs — technologies that do not require resolving the deepest metaphysical mysteries, but simply accepting that cells have minds worth communicating with.

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Synergy Between Our Books

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     The Secret Language of Cells and Cellular Mind arrive at the same destination from different directions — one empirical, one theoretical — and together they form a mutually reinforcing case that mind is not a product of the brain but a fundamental property of life at the cellular scale.

    Jon spent eight years documenting, from the mainstream scientific literature, that cells throughout the body conduct elaborate conversations using at least six distinct signaling systems simultaneously, make decisions from multiple inputs without any identifiable central director, and demonstrate behaviors — strategic, adaptive, goal-directed, and coordinated — that no current theory of physics or chemistry can explain from first principles. He stops short of concluding cells have minds, noting that no serviceable definition of intelligence exists that would allow the question to be answered. But the implicit weight of his evidence points unmistakably in that direction.

     Mike's book picks up precisely where Jon's leaves off.  Taking the unexplained coordination and goal-directed behavior Lieff documents as his starting point, he argues that the only hypothesis consistent with the full body of anomalous biological evidence is that cells have minds — defined as entities demonstrating cognition, agency, and survival drive that cannot be explained by known science.  He extends this into a theoretical framework: that electromagnetic fields, already the foundational force of all biological processes, provide the physical substrate through which individual cellular minds combine to form the minds of multicellular organisms, including the human mind.

     Together our books make three arguments that reinforce each other powerfully.  First, cells demonstrate behaviors — communication, problem solving, strategic parasitism, embryonic self-repair, novel body construction, directed mutation, and more — that require cognition and agency as explanatory premises regardless of what one believes about whether cells have minds.  Second, the source of direction for these behaviors remains genuinely unidentified by mainstream science at every scale from molecules to organisms, leaving a real explanatory gap that the cellular mind hypothesis fills more parsimoniously than any alternative.  Third, the electromagnetic force that powers all cellular processes is the same force that generates the fields neuroscientists measure when studying human consciousness — literally every instrument used by neuroscientists to study the brain and mind are electromagnetic instruments (EEGs, MEGs, MRIs, fMRIs, PET, CAT, etc.) that detect the electromagnetic footprints and/or interactions of the mind and brain.  The newest and highest resolution of these electromagnetic instruments are now able to detect the Ultraweak Photon Emissions (UPE) from non-neural cells, the emissions that combine to form the integrated and unified biofield that surrounds and pervades each of our bodies.  This suggests continuity rather than a sharp boundary between cellular scale and human scale mind.  What makes the books particularly valuable together is their complementarity: The Secret Language of Cells provides the extensive empirical grounding that makes Cellular Mind's theoretical framework credible, while Cellular Mind provides the theoretical structure that gives the evidence discussed in The Secret Language of Cells its full explanatory weight.