The Cosmic Serpent (19 page)

After thinking about it at length, I came to understand that the coherence of biophotons depended not so much on the intensity of their output as on its regularity. In a coherent source of light, the quantity of photons emitted may vary, but the emission intervals remain constant.

DNA emits photons with such regularity that researchers compare the phenomenon to an “ultra-weak laser.” I could understand that much, but still could not see what it implied for my investigation. I turned to my scientific journalist friend, who explained it immediately: “A coherent source of light, like a laser, gives the sensation of bright colors, a luminescence, and an impression of holographic depth.”
²⁴

My friend's explanation provided me with an essential element. The detailed descriptions of ayahuasca-based hallucinatory experiences invariably mention bright color, and, according to the authors of the dimethyltryptamine study: “Subjects described the colors as brighter, more intense, and deeply saturated than those seen in normal awareness or dreams: ‘It was like the blue of a desert sky, but on another planet. The colors were 10 to 100 times more saturated.'”
²⁵

It was almost too good to be true. DNA's highly coherent photon emission accounted for the luminescence of hallucinatory images, as well as their three-dimensional, or holographic, aspect.

On the basis of this connection, I could now conceive of a neurological mechanism for my hypothesis. The molecules of nicotine or dimethyltryptamine, contained in tobacco or ayahuasca, activate their respective receptors, which set off a cascade of electrochemical reactions inside the neurons, leading to the stimulation of DNA and, more particularly, to its emission of visible waves, which shamans perceive as “hallucinations.”
²⁶

There, I thought, is the source of knowledge: DNA, living in water and emitting photons, like an aquatic dragon spitting fire.

 

IF MY HYPOTHESIS IS CORRECT, and if ayahuasqueros perceive DNA-emitted photons in their visions, it ought to be possible to find a link between these photons and consciousness. I started looking for it in the biophoton literature.

Researchers working in this new field mainly consider biophoton emission as a “cellular language” or a form of “nonsubstantial biocommunication between cells and organisms.” Over the last fifteen years, they have conducted enough reproducible experiments to believe that cells use these waves to direct their own internal reactions as well as to communicate among themselves, and even between organisms. For instance, photon emission provides a communication mechanism that could explain how billions of individual plankton organisms cooperate in swarms, behaving like “super-organisms.”
²⁷

Biophoton emission may fill certain gaps in the theories of orthodox biology, which center exclusively on molecules. Yet researchers in this new field of inquiry will have to work hard to convince the majority of their colleagues. As Mae-Wan Ho and Fritz-Albert Popp point out, many biologists find the idea that the cell is a solid-state system difficult to imagine, “as few of us have the requisite biophysical background to appreciate the implications.”
²⁸
But this did not help my search for a connection between DNA-emitted photons and consciousness. I did not find a publication dealing with this connection or, for that matter, with the subject of the influence of nicotine or dimethyltryptamine on biophoton emission.

So I decided to call Fritz-Albert Popp in his university laboratory in Germany. He was kind enough to spare his time to an unknown anthropologist conducting an obscure investigation. During the conversation, he confirmed a good number of my impressions. I ended up asking him whether he had considered the possibility of a connection between DNA's photon emission and consciousness. He replied: “Yes, consciousness could be the electromagnetic field constituted by the sum of these emissions. But, as you know, our understanding of the neurological basis of consciousness is still very limited.”
²⁹

 

ONE THING had struck me as I went over the biophoton literature. Almost all of the experiments conducted to measure biophotons involved the use of
quartz
. As early as 1923, Alexander Gurvich noticed that cells separated by a quartz screen mutually influenced each other's multiplication processes, which was not the case with a metal screen. He deduced that cells emit electromagnetic waves with which they communicate. It took more than half a century to develop a “photomultiplier” capable of measuring this ultra-weak radiation; the container of this device is also made of quartz.
³⁰

Quartz is a crystal, which means it has an extremely regular arrangement of atoms that vibrate at a very stable frequency. These characteristics make it an excellent receptor and emitter of electromagnetic waves, which is why quartz is abundantly used in radios, watches, and most electronic technologies.

Quartz crystals are also used in shamanism around the world. As Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff writes: “Quartz crystals, or translucent rock crystals, have played a major role in shamanic beliefs and practices at many times in history and in many parts of the world. They have frequently been found in prehistoric contexts; they are mentioned in many early sources; they were prominent in Old World alchemy, witchcraft, and magic, and they are still in use in many traditional societies. American Indian shamans and healers use rock crystals for curing, scrying, and many other purposes, and their ancient use in the Americas is known from archaeological reports.”
³¹

Amazonian shamans, in particular, consider that spirits can materialize and become visible in quartz crystals. Some sheripiári even feed tobacco juice to their stones daily.
³²

What if these spirits were none other than the biophotons emitted by all the cells of the world and were picked up, amplified, and transmitted by shamans' quartz crystals, Gurvich's quartz screens, and the quartz containers of biophoton researchers? This would mean that spirits are beings of pure light—as has always been claimed.

DNA IS ALSO A CRYSTAL, as molecular biologist Maxim Frank-Kamenetskii explains: “The base pairs in it are arranged as in a crystal. This is, however, a linear, one-dimensional crystal, with each base pair flanked by only two neighbors. The DNA crystal is aperiodic, since the sequence of base pairs is as irregular as the sequence of letters in a coherent printed text.... Thus, it came as no surprise that the one-dimensional DNA crystal, a crystal of an entirely new type, had very much intrigued physicists.”
³³

The four DNA bases are hexagonal (like quartz crystals), but they each have a slightly different shape.
³⁴
As they stack up on top of each other, forming the rungs of the twisted ladder, they line up in the order dictated by the genetic text. Therefore, the DNA double helix has a slightly irregular, or aperiodic, structure. However, this is not the case for the repeat sequences that make up a full third of the genome, such as ACACACACACACAC. In these sequences, DNA becomes a regular arrangement of atoms, a
periodic
crystal—which could, by analogy with quartz, pick up as many photons as it emits. The variation in the length of the repeat sequences (some of which contain up to 300 bases) would help pick up different frequencies and could thereby constitute a possible and new function for a part of “junk” DNA.
³⁵

I suggest this because my hypothesis requires a receptor as much as an emitter. For the moment, the reception of biophotons has not been studied.
³⁶

Even DNA's emission of photons remains mysterious, and no one has been able to establish its mechanism directly. Naked DNA, extracted from the cell's nucleus, emits photons so weakly as to escape measurement.
³⁷

Despite these uncertainties, I wish to develop my hypothesis further by proposing the following idea: What if DNA, stimulated by nicotine or dimethyltryptamine, activates not only its
emission
of photons (which inundate our consciousness in the form of hallucinations), but also its
capacity to pick up
the photons emitted by the global network of DNA-based life? This would mean that the biosphere itself, which can be considered “as a more or less fully interlinked unit,”
³⁸
is the source of the images.

BIOLOGY'S BLIND SPOT

I began my investigation with the enigma of “plant communication.” I went on to accept the idea that hallucinations could be a source of verifiable information. And I ended up with a hypothesis suggesting that a human mind can communicate in defocalized consciousness with the global network of DNA-based life. All this contradicts principles of Western knowledge.

Nevertheless, my hypothesis is testable. A test would consist of seeing whether institutionally respected biologists could find biomolecular information in the hallucinatory world of ayahuasqueros. However, this hypothesis is currently not receivable by institutional biology, because it impinges on the discipline's presuppositions.

Biology has a blind spot of historical origin.

 

MY HYPOTHESIS SUGGESTS that what scientists call DNA corresponds to the animate essences that shamans say communicate with them and animate all life forms. Modern biology, however, is founded on the notion that nature is not animated by an intelligence and therefore cannot communicate.

This presupposition comes from the materialist tradition established by the naturalists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In those days, it took courage to question the explanations about life afforded by a literal reading of the Bible. By adopting a scientific method based on direct observation and the classification of species, Linnaeus, Lamarck, Darwin, and Wallace audaciously concluded that the different species had evolved over time—and had not been created in fixed form six thousand years previously in the Garden of Eden.

Wallace and Darwin simultaneously proposed a material mechanism to explain the evolution of species. According to their theory of natural selection, organisms presented slight variations from one generation to the next, which were either retained or eliminated in the struggle for survival. This idea rested on a circular argument: Those who survive are the most able to survive. But it seemed to explain both the variation of species and the astonishing perfection of the natural world, as it retained only the improvements. Above all, it took God out of the picture and enabled biologists to study nature without having to worry about a divine plan within.

For almost a century, the theory of natural selection was contested. Vitalists, like Bergson, rejected its stubborn materialism, pointing out that it lacked a mechanism to explain the origin of the variations. It wasn't until the 1950s and the discovery of the role of DNA that the theory of natural selection became generally accepted among scientists. The DNA molecule seemed to demonstrate the materiality of heredity and to provide the missing mechanism. As DNA is self-duplicating and transmits its information to proteins, biologists concluded that information could not flow back from proteins to DNA; therefore, genetic variation could only come from
errors
in the duplication process. Francis Crick termed this the “central dogma” of the young discipline called molecular biology. “Chance is the only true source of novelty,” he wrote.
¹

The discovery of DNA's role and the formulation in molecular terms of the theory of natural selection gave a new impetus to materialist philosophy. It became possible to contend on a scientific basis that life was a purely material phenomenon. Francis Crick wrote: “The ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is to explain
all
biology in terms of physics and chemistry” (original italics). François Jacob, another Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist, wrote: “The processes which occur in living beings at the microscopic level of molecules are in no way different from those analyzed by physics and chemistry in inert systems.”
²

The materialist approach in molecular biology went from strength to strength—but it rested on the unprovable presupposition that chance is the only source of novelty in nature, and that nature is devoid of any goal, intention, or consciousness. Jacques Monod, also a Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist, expressed this idea clearly in his famous essay
Chance and necessity:
“The cornerstone of the scientific method is the postulate that nature is objective. In other words, the
systematic
denial that ‘true' knowledge can be reached by interpreting phenomena in terms of final causes—that is to say, of ‘purpose'. ... This pure postulate is impossible to demonstrate, for it is obviously impossible to imagine an experiment proving the
nonexistence
anywhere in nature of a purpose, or a pursued end. But the postulate of objectivity is consubstantial with science, and has guided the whole of its prodigious development for three centuries. It is impossible to escape it, even provisionally or in a limited area, without departing from the domain of science itself”
³
(original italics).