The Immune System, Atman and Brahman

Siddhartha Mukherjee is an excellent writer. I’ve loved both of his earlier books, and the latest one, The Song of the Cell, is just as great as the others. The immune system, as we know, fights and kills invaders. But that raises a new question: how does the body which cells are the “self” v/s which ones are the “other”?

 

Before he answers that question, Mukherjee gets into Hindu philosophy. Why?! What’s the connection?! Technically, there’s no connection. But if you’re as great a writer as Mukherjee, well then…

 

Western philosophy, he says, differentiates the body from the soul, us from them. Whereas Vedic philosophy does the opposite, he writes:

“(It) welcomed the erasure of the individual self and its fusion with the universal… The self was an ideal fusion of atman and Brahman.”

And adds:

“The phrase ‘Tat Twam Asi’ – ‘That you are’ – permeates the Upanishads and is an expression of the boundless self that permeates not just a single body but also the cosmos. You, the self, the Upanishads proclaim, is permeated and penetrated by That, the universal.”

 

The immune system, obviously, does differentiate between the “self” and the “other”. Or as he asks tongue in cheek:

“Why else would a sponge go to such lengths to limits its fusion with another sponge to form a blissfully boundless cosmic Brahman sponge?”

 

I’ll end this blog here so it stays pure and philosophical. (If you want the answer to the question as to how the immune system differentiates which cells are the self and which cells are the outsider/invader, wait for the next blog).