DNA and a possible Solution

I borrowed this article from http://vivenzia.blogspot.com/.

It makes interesting reading...

One of the most unforgettable books I've ever read has been Michael Harner's new-age classic, The Way of the Shaman. Published originally in 1968, a history professor introduced me to the book in a class called "The History of Ideas: 1500-present." The professor wove an awfully engaging narrative throughout the semester, bounding back and forth between Descartes and Russian mystics, between Einstein and Native American shamanism, etc. Back then, I was laced-up in atheistic skepticism. Now I'm... something else.

But unlike most of my other assigned reading (mostly academic "theory"), what I read in Harner's book didn't seep out of my consciousness almost-immediately. The major elements of Harner's book are 1) a trip to South America as an anthropologist, 2) a hallucination-session with a Shaman who told Harner, "if you want to understand us, you must drink this ayahuasca," and 3) some serious reflection about what it all meant.

Harner's book begins with a 10-page account of the visions he saw in the hallucinogenic state, including the clear picture of a giant crocodile-like reptile with water gushing out of his mouth. Incidentally, after reporting this part of the vision to some missionaries in a nearby village, he discovered that he had effectively hallucinated a significant portion of the book of Revelation which(!) he had never read (he had been raised without religion). You want to read a good excerpt? Good, here's some:


Now I was virtually certain I was about to die. As I tried to accept my fate, an even lower portion of my brain began to transmit more visions and information. I was "told" that this new material was being presented to me because I was dying and therefore "safe" to receive these revelations. These were secrets reserved for the dying and the dead, I was informed. I could only very dimly perceive the givers of these thoughts: giant reptilian creatures reposing sluggishly at the depths of the back of my brain, where it met the top of the spinal column. I could only vaguely see them in what seemed to be gloomy, dark depths.

Then they projected a visual scene in front of me. First they showed me the planet Earth as it was eons ago, before there was any life on it. I saw an ocean, barren land, and a bright blue sky. Then black specks dropped from the sky by the hundreds and landed in front of me on the barren landscape. I could see that the "specks" were actually large, shiny, black creatures with stubby pterodactyl-like wings and huge whale-like bodies. Their heads were not visible to me. They flopped down, utterly exhausted from their trip, resting for eons. They explained to me in a kind of thought language that they were fleeing from something out in space. They had come to the planet Earth to escape their enemy.


But that's not all; Harner goes on to describe how it was revealed to him that the dragon-like creatures were thus inside of all forms of life, including man. THEN Harner puts in a footnote: "In retrospect one could say that they were almost like DNA, although at that time, 1961, I knew nothing of DNA." I know, I know: Riiiiiiight.

But the story doesn't stop there. In 1998 Jeremy Narby published a book called The Cosmic Serpent, which tells of his own stories living with natives living in the Amazon rain forest. Narby picks up where Harner's suggestive footnote left off--his argument is that those black specks that looked something like reptiles created life as we know it to hide from their space-enemy. Again: DNA is hiding in "life" to escape some alien enemy. And, Narby argues, this is how we explain the knowledge of the village Shamans which is otherwise inexplicable. For example, scientists are at a loss to account for the Indian knowledge of a certain kind of anaesthetic called "curare." To make curare, "it is necessary to combine several plants and boil them for seventy-two hours, while avoiding the fragrant but mortal vapors emitted by the broth. The final product is a paste that is inactive unless injected under the skin. If swallowed, it has no effect." So if you're skeptical, try to account for that kind of knowledge; "the scientists" are at a loss--

For the record, Harner was basically ostracized because the academy didn't like his research into the irrational. Narby's argument, that plants can literally communicate with us through these visionary experiences--well, we'll see how his career goes. Ayahuasca has been illegal as a Schedule 1 drug under the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, so you can't try any of this in America.