So, only one e-mail so far about my most recent post. The other transition preparation I would like to suggest is that in addition to cultivating an open mind and curiosity, times of change also benefit from physical elasticity, especially of the nervous system (as opposed to the muscular system). Change can be vata deranging so it helps tremendously if the myelin sheaths are nicely coated and if there are no infections attacking the sheaths. Translated into practical terms, this means very high quality oils, including ghee, but black seed oil, poppy seed oil, almond oil, and pumpkin oil, are all better than margarine or olive oil. Taking immune herbs for infection and adrenal herbs to increase stamina will benefit those who are rattled at this time.

Image Credit: © Kts | Dreamstime

Now: the second rabbit hole has to do with DNA and to give this a context, I was concerned that radiation from nuclear tests, radiologic exams, Wi-Fi, and various disasters will continue to pose hazards for countless years to come. The biggest health impact, I thought, would be damage to DNA, and the theory driving me was that if exposed prior to or during pregnancy or impregnation, the mutations could be carried on indefinitely. In short, the exposures could change civilization as we know it. However, there are herb studies that refer to DNA repair; and this is very curious, almost questionable, when you consider how recently attention went onto DNA and how ancient herbal medicine literature is. It is almost like some authors could not wait to jump on a bandwagon.

The first problem that arises with DNA itself is that we are working basically with two strands so it is possible that what we consider natural and normal is what was left after catastrophic loss? I am not sure this interpretation is acceptable, but it is worth a moment of your time. In any event, at this time, we have two strands and each part of the strand is paired with a mate on the other strand. This may be normal or unique to this point in time or this planet.

The second matter had to do with my own experiments which led to the conclusion that certain features, such as my own blue eyes, are the result of a mutation. Found in that rabbit hole were prophecies concerning the extinction of my own particular genetic pool. Well, that might be partly on my shoulders since I have not in this incarnation contributed to the gene pool. I felt I did my job some thousands of years ago when my son took a number of wives. The long and the short of it is that I keep finding more and more of my great, great, great . . . grandchildren. After that, monastic incarnations have more or less precluded progeny.

Anyway, extinction events are not amusing so I better try to be more serious. At a distance, my mother and I could almost pass for twins. The rub was that when I was only 16, someone took her for the younger sibling. Hum? She always said that all differences in appearance are due to adaptation and I went with that story most of my life as I have zero evidence to support the idea that physical characteristics such as eye color or texture of the hair or anything else are related to our origins on another planet. Were that the case, I suspect there would be much more diversity — the other ten strands that some allege were lost — or some other explanation. In any event, if we repair DNA, there could be changes just as when we damage it, we see changes.

What is completely missing in DNA research is any proof that humans evolved from apes. I have no problems with chimps, but there are no skeletons or studies that suggest the one species evolved into the next. As I mentioned in a recent post, I do not really believe in the standard version of what we think is evolving. My view is that we are evolving the capacity to express who we already are. That means, most of us are walking around with a very incomplete understanding of who we are, myself included, so we are unfolding our potential or learning to actualize it. On another level, we are already perfected. Obviously, the vast majority of humanity are living proof of that the perfection is difficult to manifest, again, that includes yours truly.

Neanderthals

There are some interesting tangents in DNA research. For instance, one can pay a bit extra and find out if we have any Neanderthal DNA. Don't worry, if it is there, it is a really small percentage of the total. Another tangent involves the testing of fragments of the elongated skulls that archaeologists keep finding. For the moment, they are technically not included with Homo sapiens, which is an interesting factoid in case you have a passion for parlor games or crossword puzzles. The problem is that these sorts of details and the scientific categorizations tend to change rather often.

This documentary is well worth watching. It is articulate, beautiful, and tender and serves as a foundation for understanding the direction science is heading at this point in history.

I am wondering if others will find a couple of faux pas in the script? I did — rather, I think I did. I will tell you in a few days, but I don't want to spoil anything now. I will also save my comments on ice and if I forget to follow up, please nudge me.

The story told in the National Geographic documentary is fascinating, but I found what I believe to be three errors, the first and perhaps the most obvious is in logic. The second involves assumptions, and the third involves time frames. It may be appropriate to point out that National Geographic is or perhaps was partnered with one of the major ancestry testing companies. As a sort of entry level commentary, I would like to focus on the potentials and risks attending DNA investigations and their applications.

DNA Repair

The most obvious benefits would be health related. The ability to manipulate or repair damaged genes would herald a new era in medicine. The flip side is what we see with genetically modified food and the tendency to obscure the bigger picture so as to profit. In theory, and it is just a theory, one could take a gene that is associated with tolerance for cold. We could splice that into plants and people and prevent or possibly even cure frostbite. At this time, splicing DNA into strands exactly where one wants the DNA spliced is occasionally achieved in medicine but very rarely occurs with plants. This is why it is referred to as genetic roulette, and it is very dangerous.

We are here today because our ancestors navigated the risks of their worlds by adaptation. We have lots of factors to consider besides climate. There have been many epidemics, the most famous being the Black Death or Plague, but syphilis was also fatal at one time as are some viruses. If you are alive today, your ancestors passed down to you certain defenses against potential extinction events.

Genetic information can also be misused. We can look at all the attempts to find something unique that is translated into superior. For example, one used IQ tests that correlated to ethnicities, but we have to keep in mind who writes the questions on the test and what the answers mean. For instance, we may find that the tests are biased in favor of mathematical or linguistic prowess and there could be races — but more likely educational systems — that excel in the particular areas used to make assessments, but if the authors of the tests think that mathematical ability is more important than intuition, they are testing for math skills, not IQ, since the supposition is that the only smarts that are important are those that are rated so and this in itself may be culturally biased or totally idiosyncratic. When I was in India, I had to try to design a culture-free IQ test. I could, for example, replace a car with an ox cart and replace a flat tire with with a broken wheel or lame ox, but the reality was that I could not make anyone take the test because the culture supported working in groups, and the children cried when we asked them to answer the questions individually. The results were also meaningless for other reasons, such as we never knew the ages of the children. When we asked parents for the age, they got the sequences of the births correct but all we knew was that it was raining hard or dry when the baby was born. In short, we did not know if the child was eight or ten years old.

That example is given just to show why the effort to find some superiority in the genes is already a bias. Well, if you want to be a little funny, you can take a Crocodile Dundee and put him in New York City or take a New Yorker and put him in the outback or Amazon jungle and see just how smart the individual feels when the environment is completely foreign.

We have already seen enormous ethnic crises, not just the Holocaust but all sorts of "ethnic cleansing" in the Balkans and no doubt also in other areas, and this goes back thousands of years so we need to be careful of how data is used. The Western world is looking for Adam, but was Adam the first human or merely the alleged first of a particular lineage. Academia posits that Adam had to have been a real individual and that Eden must have been a real place so the search begins in Africa or the Middle East. Logically, it goes without saying that Adam could not have appeared out of nowhere. In my Sophia Millenotte mode, I felt that a spaceship crashed with 18 people on board. They established their uniqueness and contributed eventually to a mixed genetic pool, but I don't see any possibility for an original man to appear out of nowhere. Making Eve from Adam's left rib seems like an allusion to early Lemuria when one could clone a human from one's own ectoplasm which would have oozed from the splenic region. Atlanteans did not use this method of procreation so that helps somewhat to explain Eve, but not Adam. We also do not hear much about Lilith, but Adam was supposedly married to her before Eve so she preexisted . . . if we want to take a literal approach to the Biblical account and not suggest that Lilith was a phantom of the imagination of nighttime fantasies.

What I am saying is that eugenics can be interesting but also dangerous so we need to be careful of the downside. I agree with the National Geographic emphasis on brotherhood. I should add sisterhood, but nearly all the quests for a single ancestor are based on the "Y" chromosome since it is passed down without change, but obviously only to males. Let me give a tiny example from the litter of puppies born in Ecuador. All the males were white and the females were totally different. One was nearly all black and the other had spots like a Swiss cow. So, this means papa's "Y" chromosome was not passing along pigment and all his sons would be white and all the grandsons of the male pups would also be white, but the granddaughters could be any which color since they would not be affected at all by the "Y" chromosome. This makes genealogy relatively simple on the male side but very much more complicated on the female side since they are getting an "X" chromosome with a lot of potential for selectivity.

This discussion needs to continue so I will let you watch the film and then give my spin on what I believe might constitute a truer history of origins.

Blessings,

Ingrid

Copyyright by Ingrid Naiman 2017

Design by Damien Francoeur