Earth, DNA and Humanity Part 3: Cultural and Epigenetic Landscape

Ecological Balance

Earth, unlike a star, is not radiant and sending off energy. It is receiving energy from the sun, but is not loosing it at the same rate. For instance, Earth is receiving about 100,000 tons of stardust daily. The physical imports are as yet greater than exports; the Earth is a collecting or concentrating center.

                  At the surface of the Earth, in the topsoil, the ecological balance becomes operative.  The vegetation’s chlorophyll inhibits the sun’s radiation instead of allowing it to be reflectively broadcasted to the universe.

                Insects, worms and mammals, further inhibit the sun-inhibited energy, impounded in vegetation, and both botanical and zoological life forms are gradually pressured into the growing earth crust and finally are concentrated into coal and oil rather than being broadcast off to the universe in all directions. This ecological balance is fascinating when viewed chemically. All biological systems continually sort and rearrange atoms in methodical molecular structures. To ensure performance, each species is genetically and environmentally programmed. Each sorts and re-associates atoms as its genes cope with and alter the environment, which in turn alters the specific behavior.

                All the stardust, cosmic rays, and other radiation randomly dispersed into the universe by the stars are methodically being converted by the biological activity around the earth’s whole surface (in the sea and on land) into progressively more orderly organic chemical structures. Thus, biological life on earth is anti-entropy. Earth is acting as an “anti-entropic center,” possibly like all the planets inhabited with life.              

               

Cultural and Epigenetic Landscape

Speaking of humans: “And God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the eart and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and every living thing that moves upon the earth’” (Genesis 1:28)

Cultural landscape refers to the mosaic lifestyle of a people, their art, their prevailing beliefs and customs, and the products of their action and the conditioning element of further action. This will include their beliefs in terms of religion and politics, the institutions such as legal and governmental, and the technology or skills, tools and equipment used. In recent decades, it has been accepted that the cultural landscape is also conditioned by the physical landscape, which also varies in space and time.

 Archeologists excavated ancient cities located in deserts, but when these cities were built, no arid climate prevailed there. In Roman times, farmlands near North Africa’s Mediterranean coast produce large quantities of farm produce from fields amply watered by rain and irrigation. Those Roman aqueducts now lie in ruins and the fields are abandoned.

 Professor C. H. Waddington, geneticist of the University of Edinburgh, identified a phenomenon he has named “epigenetic landscape.” According to him, in the epigenetic landscape, man and other life alter the landscape; the trees grow where there had only been pasture; the cattle can no longer graze where once they had done so. Life alters the landscape and the landscape alters life in an evolutionary way. The plants and trees create the oxygen and killing plants and trees through pollution and logging reduces oxygen and creates an imbalanced proliferation of carbon dioxide. The inanimate winds and waters alter the land and vise-versa. (R. Buckminster Fuller, Utopia or Oblivion: The Prospects for Humanity, p. 43-44)

 Neither the individual species of life nor the physical components of the inanimate chemistry of the environment nor the whole landscape ever return exactly to their previous conditions. Entropy and evolution are inherent. The inanimate physical complexes become increasingly and superficially random while the biological phenomena regenerate with increasing orderliness of species and subspecies, regularities.

Prospect: Word Made Flesh

 Amongst the species on earth, man has consciously participated in the fundamental alteration of their over-all, lifetime ecological sweep-out patterning. Whereas other species have to migrate to warmer locations during the ice ages, the human species, by using the brain-sorter, developed dwelling and clothing, made of animal skin, to keep warm. Whereas animals have to seek out water source and vegetation, humans learned to build dams and irrigation systems as well as agricultural production. Humans continually rearrange the environment so that they may eat, be clean, move about and communicate in more orderly and swifter ways. 

           Scientists have simulated the origin of life and DNA coding, but not of the human being. The Book of Genesis and the Gospel of John may offer clues to human origin and destiny. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the light was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1: 1-5)

John espoused a cause behind the physical universe from deeper realms, which may be construed as pre-empting, yet promoting the “Big Bang” theory of creation. Scientists acknowledged a quantum realm, a world beyond the physical, composed of the force particles (without mass) or virtual particles that existed and flowed both within and beyond time and space. Scientists also do not deny the deeper world of emotions, mental thought and the will, attached to biological life.

Mystics across all religions have various descriptions of the inner realms. The Jews, Christians and Muslims called it “many dimensions” or the “seven heavens.” Theosophists described seven planes of existence and seven rays (forces). Cabbalists and Sufis described twelve planes, clustered in three dimensions of the human being - the personality, the soul and the spirit worlds.

The mystics adhere to hylozoism, a theory expounded by Mme Blavatski in The Secret Doctrine. Hylozoism (Hylo from Greek, “matter” and zoism, “study”) maintains that everything is alive. The lesser consciousness lives and has being in the greater consciousness: atoms to cells, cells to the body, the body to humanity, humanity to nature, nature to earth, earth to the solar system, and so on. (Baker, Douglas, The Seven Rays, Key to the Mysteries, 1977)

“The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. He was in the world and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people receive him not. But to all who receive him, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, neither of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth…glory of the only Son from the Father” (John 1: 9-14).

Towards increasing capacities for light absorption, crystals (minerals) formed the pre-life stage; the plant kingdom, then the animal kingdom followed. Having a physical body, humanity is affected by physical laws. However, it also manifests being-ness beyond time and space. Thus, while it experiences itself as a separate and fragmented species, in essence, it may be a single unified consciousness guided by the Light or “mystical body” of Christ.

Humanity’s destiny is to awaken to a deeper essence. It is the bridge between Essence and Matter; it is life as it relates to earth, eternity as it relates to time, and essence as it relates to physical space. The human being is the “Word made flesh.”