A Few Words on Lichens

Sometimes interesting things can be learned in unexpected places.  For example, most of you would say that we have very little in common with lichens.  In fact, some of you may not even know what a lichen is.

A lichen is an organism that grows on rocks, tree bark and in other places.  You are probably familiar with them as the scaly stuff that you see growing on rocks in a thin crust.  Lichens, however, are not a single organism.  They are two completely different organisms living in symbiosis, that is, a mutually beneficial and dependent relationship.  Gurdjieff called this process reciprocal feeding.  Biology recognizes this only in very special and specific instances.  In the Gurdjieff work, however, it is recognized as occurring always and everywhere.

One of the organisms is a fungus.  The other organism is always either an algae (which is a simple form of plant life) or a cyanobacteria (in other words, more or less, a very simple form of animal life.) These creatures have very little to do with each other, structurally and organically speaking.  Fungi come from a completely different kingdom than do plants, which again are in a different kingdom than bacteria.

The reason that the fungi exist in cooperation with the algae or cyanobacteria is because fungi cannot make their own food.  They have to feed on what is available in the environment.  On the other hand, both algae and cyanobacteria can manufacture food using photosynthesis, because they have chloroplasts, that is, unique cellular equipment that allow them to convert sunlight into energy. 

Their food is, in other words, light.  But algae and cyanobacteria don’t do well without a medium to grow in. 

So the two get together. They make the food that both they and the fungus needs, and the fungus provides a safe support in which they can both live.  The algae and the cyanobacteria are energy factories for the fungus.  Without each other, neither organism could inhabit the specific places they are found, for example, the surface of rocks.  Only working together to form a brand new kind of organism can they exist in the often hostile and extreme environments that they populate. Cooperation has allowed them to exploit ecological niches that other organisms cannot occupy.  That is to say, this cooperation has provided an opportunity.  Working together has allowed these two organisms to fulfill a possibility neither one had on its own.

Surprisingly enough, human beings have a similar arrangement within them that no one thinks about very much.  Inside every human cell -- and all animal cells -- are structures called mitochondria.  The mitochondria are the energy factories of our cells.  They manufacture the internal food that the cell needs to perform its functions, so they are very essential parts of the cell.  The interesting thing about mitochondria is that they have their own DNA.  This DNA exists distinct and separate from the DNA in our cell nucleus that has the instructions for cell growth.  All of the mitochondrial DNA in every animal is passed down only on the mother's side, because only the egg cell has mitochondria in it.

Among biologists, it is very strongly presumed that the first cells with nuclei did not have mitochondria.  The fact that mitochondria have their own DNA indicates that at one time they were not a part of the cells they are found in today.  They had their own existence separate from it.  In other words, the cells that we have today at one time, many hundreds of millions of years ago, found another kind of cell that could make energy for them, and established a symbiotic relationship with it.  They did exactly what the fungus and the algae and cyanobacteria are doing -- that is, one provided a place to live that was safe, and the other manufactured energy.  Eventually the two organisms became so completely dependent on each other that they are now for all intents and purposes a single organism, that is, an animal cell.  But what you are seeing here is in principle the same thing you see with lichens. 

So we learn that we share something remarkable in common with some of the most primitive and simplest organisms.  Everything is connected; everything feeds other things and is in turn fed.

The food that everything is ultimately feeding on is light.  This mysterious substance, so insubstantial that we do not even know whether to call it a wave or a particle, is what makes all life possible.  Somehow, the receiving and transmutation of light allows the existence and evolution of almost all organisms, from the most primitive to the very sophisticated higher life forms.  How something so intangible could result in the immense and complex web of life that we see around us on this planet is a question of staggering proportions.

Because light feeds everything that is alive, in one way or another in it actually penetrates all life.  Everything that lives contains light within it.  You might say that all organic life on earth consists of storage devices for light.  Light is received by organic life and processed, passed up the food chain in increasing concentrations. 

This miraculous process, the need for it, and even its very existence all remain unexplained.  Science can analyze the process and determine the mechanisms, but science itself is incapable of determining a motive.  The best it can do in this regard is point out that all processes in organic life take place in order to help ensure the reproduction of the organism, and that everything in this regard functions according to the law of evolution.  Why organisms reproduce, why greater organic complexities arise over time, and why there is a law of evolution at all, also remain largely unexplained.

Science is the most powerful tool man has to investigate his surroundings.  But even science reaches its logical limits.  When it does, we stand at the edge of the abyss and gaze off towards unseen horizons.  Science is a tool that searches for means; the soul is a tool that searches for motives.

Perhaps we, too, like our own cells, and the lichen-forming fungus, need to form a partnership with something that can provide us with the energy needed to take a step further into the unknown, and inhabit new places we have never seen before.