Since I made that wild and ambiguous claim that there was going to be some breakthrough in the science world that would change the way we look at everything, I have been waiting to receive a beacon from NPR or where ever that will blow my mind away. Lucy, that is a pretty amazing find and the video is awesome!
As you may or may not know, I am getting married in 1 day less than a month. I am so excited about the event and my partner, with whom I am about to celebrate my life. The Very Reverend Jorge’ has been so amazing in this process, meeting with us as a true friend, mediator, and relationship councilor. No only is he preparing a beautiful ceremony with us, but he has brought some really important questions to the surface about what our hearts believe, which has allowed her and me (that’s the King’s English believe it or not) to take a step back and really discuss areas of our lives that we have chosen to stuff in a dark corner of our selves. What came out of this, has been an unexpected closeness and a window, if not a door opened, into the emotions of the other person. I feel that I know myself better and my future wife a lot better because of our spiritual catalyst, Jorge’.

In the mean time, the last several weeks have been weeks of sincere enlightenment for me. I have been bombarded with interesting theories, as if I have been given an invisible syllabus to follow from some metaphysical course. I have accepted my determination to understand our existence not only on Earth but also the existence within ourselves and because of this simple pledge to myself, I have been given signs from every direction that this is worth pursuing. The thing is, I don’t intend to be a part of the answer, just a part of the mystery.

The Course all started when I was finally able to procure a copy of The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge. This book is a gem for a student of Anthropology and Biology, both of which I studied extensively in school. Among the amazing conclusions Narby draws that indicate human knowledge was initially attained by cultures entering altered states of consciousness and allowing information to be passed from the one material that binds all life on earth: DNA. This explains how indigenous cultures have been able to survive thousands of years creating complex chemical concoctions from their environment. It also gives examples of how this method of attaining knowledge has transcended cultures across the globe until very recent time.

DNA is a single molecule with a double helix structure; it is two complementary versions of the same “text” wrapped around each other; this allows it to unwind and make copies of itself: twins! This twinning mechanism is at the heart of life since it began. Without it, one cell could not become two, and life would not exist. And, from one generation to the next, the DNA text can also be modified, so it allows both constancy and transformation. This means that beings can be the same and not the same. One of the mysteries is what drives the changes in the DNA text in evolution. DNA has apparently been around for billions of years in its current form in virtually all forms of life. The old theory—random accumulation of errors combined with natural selection—does not fully explain the data currently generated by genome sequencing. The question is wide open.
People spend hours each day thinking non-rationally. Our emotional brain treats all the information we receive before our neo-cortex does. Scientists are forever making discoveries as they daydream, take a bath, go for a run, lay in bed, and so on.
Both shamans and molecular biologists agree that there is a hidden unity under the surface of life’s diversity; both associate this unity with the double helix shape (or two entwined serpents, a twisted ladder, a spiral staircase, two vines wrapped around each other); both consider that one must deal with this level of reality in order to heal. One can fill a book with correspondences between shamanism and molecular biology.
I think we should attend to the words we use. “Consciousness” carries different baggage than “intelligence.” Many would define human consciousness as different from, say, animal consciousness, because humans are conscious of being conscious. But how do we know that dolphins don’t think about being dolphins? I do not know whether there is a “consciousness” inside our cells; for now, the question seems out of reach; we have a hard enough time understanding our own consciousness—though we use it most of the time. I propose the concept of “intelligence” to describe what proteins and cells do, simply because it makes the data more comprehensible. This concept will require at least a decade or two for biologists to consider and test. Then, we might be able to move along and consider the idea of a “cellular consciousness.”

The other point Narby makes, is how both biology and anthropology have reached a fuzzy point in their development where both are afraid and abstain from experimenting with intangible metaphysics. He states that this is where science ends and until we can get off our anthro-centric high horse and sit down with the few of these people that have not been absorbed into the material world, listen to what they have to say as face-value (as opposed to interpretation), we will begin to understand what these cultures have been trying to explain to us since the science of anthropology was developed a few hundred years ago.

More to come next week.