title: Human development II: we need an integrated theory for matter, life and consciousness to understand life and healing.
abstract: For almost a decade, we have experimented with supporting the philosophical development of severely ill patients to induce recovery and spontaneous healing. Recently, we have observed a new pattern of extremely rapid, spontaneous healing that apparently can facilitate even the spontaneous remission of cancer and the spontaneous recovery of mental diseases like schizophrenia and borderline schizophrenia. Our working hypothesis is that the accelerated healing is a function of the patient's brain-mind and body-mind coming closer together due to the development of what we call "deep" cosmology. To understand and describe what happens at a biological level, we have suggested naming the process adult human metamorphosis, a possibility that is opened by the human genome showing full generic equipment for metamorphosis. To understand the mechanistic details in the complicated interaction between consciousness and biology, we need an adequate theory for biological information. In a series of papers, we propose what we call "holistic biology for holistic medicine". We suggest that a relatively simple model based on interacting wholenesses instead of isolated parts can shed a new light on a number of difficult issues that we need to explain and understand in biology and medicine in order to understand and use metamorphosis in the holistic medical clinic. We aim to give a holistic theoretical interpretation of biological phenomena at large, morphogenesis, evolution, immune system regulation (self-nonself discrimination), brain function, consciousness, and health in particular. We start at the most fundamental problem: what is biological information at the subcellular, cellular, and supracellular levels if we presume that it is the same phenomenon on all levels (using Occam's razor), and how can this be described scientifically? The problems we address are all connected to the information flow in the functioning, living organism: function of the brain and consciousness, the regulations of the immune system and cell growth, the dynamics of health and disease. We suggest that life utilizes an unseen fine structure of the physical energy of the universe at a subparticular or quantum level to give information-directed self-organization; we give a first sketch of a possible fractal structure of the energy able to both contain and communicate biological information and carry individual and collective consciousness. Finally, thorough our analysis, we put up a model for adult human metamorphosis.
authors.affiliation: Quality of Life Research Center, Teglgårdstraede 4-8, DK-1452 Copenhagen K, Denmark. ventegodt@livskvalitet.org
authors.forename: Søren
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ventegodt
authors.forename: Tyge Dahl
authors.initials: TD
authors.lastname: Hermansen
authors.forename: Maj Lyck
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Nielsen
authors.forename: Birgitte
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Clausen
authors.forename: Joav
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Merrick
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003243:Consciousness; D006694:Holistic Health; D006803:Human Development; D006801:Humans; D019369:Life; D008954:Models, Biological