Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal: Science: life, death, and a ‘third state’

Thursday, November 7, 2024

Science: life, death, and a ‘third state’

Scientists discover a ‘third state’ between life and death

From bon vivant to living corpse and in between?

Scientists have discovered a "third state" between life and death that is neither alive nor quite dead. Not alive, not dead? There is a third state.

It sounds spooky, but it’s the future of medicine. More specifically, this "third state" is when the cells of an organism adopt new functions even after "death."

Based on Tibetan Book of Dead
In Vajrayana Buddhism, there is an "intermediate" state between life and rebirth during the time we call "death." But beings, from their perspective, do not die. They go on. They are alive then, seeming to die, they continue. Thereafter, during a period said to be 40 days, they are reborn. Of course, looked at more closely, they are alive the whole time. At the instant of passing on from this state, one reappears elsewhere in the very next moment. Leaving one state is called "death" by others in that state, but for the being undergoing the change, things did not end. Support for life in that state was cut off and, therefore, the being reappeared elsewhere. The scary thing, then, is not that we will pass away. It is that we will be reborn without certainty of where and how. It has much to do with the last conscious moment conditioning the next, which determines the rebirth. For beings who have won the first stage of enlightenment, many bad rebirth destinations have been eliminated. One cannot be reborn in a state below the human plane. But all other beings can be reborn in those unfortunate destinations, in worlds of profound suffering like the animal realm and lower. In the meantime, between lives, beings are living with a more subtle body in the angelic (deva) or ghost (peta) realm for the transition to another life in accordance with one's store of karma (past deeds of all kinds). The Bardo Thodol or "Tibetan Book of the Dead" is for the hearing of a Vajrayana Buddhist during the transition between lives to guide one to a successful rebirth.

Peaceful and wrathful Bardo beings

Or in other words, the cells are functioning, but the being is dead. And this spooky phenomenon is revolutionizing synthetic biology as, usually, death is considered to be irreversible.

But with this new discovery by science of a "third state," different cells from a range of organisms can be repurposed into biological "robots." But what can they do?

The science

In a review published in the journal Physiology, researchers are contemplating the implications of taking cells from organisms (dead or alive) and turning them into biological robots that have new functions.

For example, researchers have managed to successfully create tiny "robots" from human cells which could be used to heal wounds, regenerate tissue, and treat diseases. These are known as anthrobots.

In another instance, researchers from Tufts University in Massachusetts have also created xenobots from the cells of already dead frogs. The cells, despite coming from a dead organism, can self-replicate and perform simple tasks. More