Helena P. BLAVATSKY repeatedly states that every atom and every cell has its own kind of consciousness. In an article entitled Kosmic Mind she writes,

“Every atom, like the monad of Leibnitz, is a little universe in itself; and that every organ and cell in the human body is endowed with a brain of its own, with memory, therefore, experience and discriminative powers. The idea of Universal Life composed of individual atomic lives is one of the oldest esoteric teachings of esoteric philosophy, and the very modern hypothesis of modern science, that of crystalline life, is the first ray from the ancient luminary of knowledge that has reached our scholars” (CW XII:134).

Possibly the crux of this matter, from a theosophical viewpoint, lies in a statement by Blavatsky that every cell contains a MONAD and that monads reflect their own universe (SD I:632).

Gottfried de PURUCKER elaborates on the foregoing statement, writing, “In each cell there is a central pr€nic nucleus which is the life-germ of a life-atom, and all the rest of the cell is merely the carpentry of the cell builded around it by the forces flowing forth from the heart of this life-atom. The modern cytologists see only the house, and do not discern the mystical dweller within, or the life-atom . . . the life-atom works though the two tiny dots or sparks in the centrosome which fall apart at the beginning of cell division and its energies stream out from these two tiny dots, and each tiny dot, as it were, is already the beginning of a new cell” (Studies in Occult Philosophy, p. 444).

P.S.H.