When we're looking at an individual Human Design, the thing that allows us to be able to discover the Type and the Authority is what's called Definition. Definition is that connection that exists when Gates at either end of a Channel are activated, and in that moment you have a wiring that takes place, a hard wiring that takes place that is consistent and reliable. It's referred to in Human Design as a life force, the Channel. The Channel is derived from the Sephiroth of the Kabbalah. It is a very, very ancient medium for the movement of energy and the juxtaposition that changes its value. If you have a Gate at one end and a Gate at the other end, what happens when they meet in the flow of that Channel becomes something entirely new. This is this juxtaposition that is truly the life force.

Think about the inanimate object. The inanimate object has a single Gate as a potential. It is not alive, and that the moment that we come to life, we come to the Design of the single cell. Every single cell has a Design. It is endowed with a Design Crystal, and that Design is rooted in the first Definition that we see in the Design of Forms. That Definition exists through the 15 and the 5, this Channel of Rhythm, this Channel of Being in the Flow. What you will see is the universal Channel of life on this plane, it is there for all forms. And the 15/5, this Channel of patterns in different frequencies and rhythms is the very diversity of our cellular life. Yet the cell, having this Defined Channel as its matrix—that is, the potential of the Definition of a Channel—brings life into the world.

It's something to think about. When you think about your own Design and those Gates that you have that are hanging there, that are not part of a Definition, they are in a sense inanimate. They are waiting for the spark, they're waiting for the other side. They're waiting for the life force to emerge, which is greater than the sum of its parts—and at the moment that we get to life, we get to the potential of interconnectivity. It is perhaps one of the most beautiful things about the way in which nature operates and the way in which nature is interconnected.

Because in the Design of plants, we have the potential of the 15/5 and then we have a hanging gate, and that hanging gate is Gate 3. In other words, every cell is open to mutation. The Channel 3/60 is the Channel of Mutation, and it is the way in which the cell is influenced by the world around it, and the way in which every individual cell can be influenced by the aura of another individual. It is something to grasp about the nature of the wheel, the mandala, when you think about the 60th gate sitting there at the top of the wheel in Capricorn, that every time the Sun, the Earth, the Moon, the planets, the Nodes, move through. Every single cell of every living thing on this planet is impacted. Every cell in your body, every cell in the world around you, because they are all open to this potential of mutation. In this interconnectivity, the dominant form on this plane, the biological form, the genetic biological form, that what we all have in common is this cellular life force. Its vast diversity and its ongoing openness to mutation, it is what makes this planet so deeply diverse. It is what permits a species like human to be able to arise so quickly in evolutionary time scales; so quickly because of the vast mutative potential that is inherent in every cell.

Learn more about the Design of Forms in the Architecture of Life series.

Ra Uru Hu was the Human Design System’s founder and messenger. Ra dedicated 25 years of his life to the development and teaching of the System around the world until he passed away in 2011.