Monthly Archives: March 2018

Genes R Us (Richard Dawkins revisited) 7th March 2018

Would you discuss how we relate to our genes? Are we our genes?

So let us start with the latter half of your question, “Are we our genes”?

Would you say that the physical body is a product of your genes in that the instruction manual for growing the body is contained within the genes?

Yes.

So, on that basis then, this construction manual has come from an amalgam of the product of two previous sets of genes? You are OK with that?

Yes.

So now you have a hybrid?

Yes.

Now go back and start looking at what you might call, the family tree and keep taking that back and back and back. Some have estimated, have they not, that if you traced it back as far as you could it all arises from a small handful of human beings. That is feasible of course. Now we go even further back and we say that once we were sea creatures that emerged from the sea onto the land. The rest is history. We don’t go back much before that in speculation do we apart from the fact that we could say “How did these sea creatures come to be”? If we have progressed as human beings through our various stages and then we go back to the sea, what was our progress there?

If you keep going back and back you are just following the same procedure as those mathematicians who have concluded that the whole thing is the result of a Big Bang?

Uh huh.

So where did the first protozoa come from, where did the first quark come from, where did the first lepton come from etc. etc.? On that basis we have to say that this was all the product of the Big Bang and the Big Bang came out of nothing as far as we know or it was a singularity, a point, an infinitely dense point to account for all the matter that has proceeded from it. We don’t say “perhaps we could create this as we go along” because that raises the question “where did it come from”?

Yet we now say that things appear and disappear into and out of the void. Well, if that is so then how come a little bit didn’t come out of the void in the first place and now a lot comes out of the void. So we go round in these circles of conjecture.

But coming back to the genes, we have a parallel here with thinkers throughout the millennia who have decided that this was God deciding to create something to experience, to see what he could do, and so we come back to the Garden of Eden. First there was only Adam, so, where do you want your starting point? Was there only one gene or more genes or other genes? Or did somebody say “it’s no good just having one colour, if I am going to paint something I need several colours” and so we have the colours of the light spectrum. Take that analogy and add it to everything else, the sound spectrum etc. etc. etc. All the waves in other words, and all the combinations of waves because if you want diversity you need to have different combinations.

Now we have discussed this matter of personality before and although we haven’t touched upon genetic traits you would say that genetic heritage could possibly be an influence on the resultant personality and if you then take the logical extension that the genes are conscious, because everything comes from consciousness, is a product of consciousness, then those consciousnesses are carrying memories. The genes obviously carry memories and patterns. We have spoken of patterns before and how when you think of something you imagine the pattern or the patterns instantly arise, of all the cheetahs as we have described in a previous example. When we referred to a manual what is a manual but a pattern, so you can think of all these things as one.

You have consciousnesses that wish to build a physical environment in order to experience the separateness and the uncertainty etc. Would you not think then that these genes are conscious?

Now you have your Richard Dawkins who wrote a book about “The Selfish Gene” which is all about survival, that the genes use us for survival. Wouldn’t it be easier to say that consciousness expresses itself through genes and uses genes to create new instruments to experience the physical? You will then be able to say “Survival, but that is only because you see it from the point of view of the life and death of the instrument”. In reality it is merely focusing through successive “build-outs” of different genetic combinations through which you can then experience the physical for as long as you like and why not?

Why would you just build one instrument to experience the physical? Wouldn’t it be easier to have some basically ready-made patterns? What about when we put together two sets of genes from man and woman, say? Now you talk about choosing your parents, have you considered that you are actually choosing the type of personality you wish to experience? The type of body, the type of personality, subject to environment, but you also choose the environment remember by choosing your parents. Put that aside and we will just look from the point of view of the genes.

You wish to experience a certain hybrid of something, so you look at this person and that person and what they have. Perhaps they are already married, perhaps they are not. You just survey what is out there, what the patterns are. You can see the patterns remember. You can’t see them here, but now of course you can take the genetic profile of each one and we daresay that your geneticists can, by looking at the sets of genes, make a prediction as to the result of certain combinations although they may not know which ones may predominate in the end run but they can outline the probabilities. Which is why you are now seeing the results of genetic modifications of various living instruments, plants and animals and increasingly the human, if you step in at an early stage.

Let us continue on the theme that, yes, you could say easily “I am my genes” because the consciousness that is in the genes starts the build, it has the original idea and then it attracts more and more other consciousnesses into the gestalt as the body grows and the experiences become greater, more diverse and more intense. Consciousnesses join for the experience at these particular points and so you could easily say that a baby in the womb attracts X consciousnesses but if we consider a teenager who is experiencing the full exuberance of that time of life then you might expect a greater amount of consciousnesses to be attracted. The same goes when you have a family and there is the intense love for the children, the love for the partner and the different experiences that come with adulthood. The gestalt will wax and wane throughout the lifetime.

Now as we have given the nod to the concept of reincarnation, yes reincarnation, well it isn’t really reincarnation as such is it and yet on the other hand it is. It is merely focusing from one instrument into another. That is all it is. If you take a look for example, we have covered this ground before as well, that if you are intensely allied to the physical and you rather resent the fact that the majority has decided to end the life of the instrument, a decision you heartily disagree with, you want to stay here, but suddenly you find yourself not here, not focused, because you can’t focus into this instrument anymore. Now you need to find another instrument to focus through. If you are still focused on the stage, say, you are so intensely focused and angry etc. that you refuse to countenance what is happening and can’t be convinced that you are no longer in the physical then you may focus into another instrument in the vain hope that, we won’t say to carry on with your life, but to experience what you still want to experience. For some that will be trying, in today’s terms, to bring closure to their experience in one fashion or another.

What we are talking about here is actually what you would term survival. Survival of interest, survival of interest in the physical environment. As the last couple of posts have intimated you can focus through other family eyes, if you want to stay within the family, family soap, shall we say, know what is going on there and keep involved in it. You can focus into another area of the same location or environment or belief system where you can join with another who has equivalent beliefs to those you had if you wish to carry on with that experience. There is every reason to be involved in the physical if you find it interesting enough and you will find a way to be involved simply by choosing another focus, another focus, another focus.

You can understand why the belief in the doctrine of reincarnation and the Karmic wheel arose. Some simply wanted to experience the physical over and over and over again and if they had the belief that is all they could experience then that is what happens. They merely focus straight back into another instrument. In most cases they do this willingly but there are few who feel themselves compelled to and there are those that find themselves momentarily displaced and another focus comes along and so they focus straight into it. As we have described before in other posts once you focus into one then the other one is completely obliterated simply because in order to operate within the physical you cannot have two streams of data coming in. You can only have the one stream of data to react to.

So, back again to your original question, yes, you can easily say that “I am the consciousness behind my genes”.

One can then move into an area that is rather contentious in this day and age and then job backwards but of course if you keep jobbing backwards you will arrive at the single point of the Big Bang and the single consciousness won’t you? Unless you think it is an infinitely dense consciousness just as the Big Bang theory supposes a one dimensional point of infinitely dense matter. So do we have a very dense consciousness and is it singular? Once you get into this area of speculation you have to say that space existed but matter didn’t because how did the universe expand if there was nothing there to expand into? One has to presume that there was something there to expand into.

So what do you say about consciousness? That consciousness was just a dense singularity sitting there which decided to create? And what have you got? You have got the old story of God haven’t you? Sitting there minding his own business, getting bored and deciding “I’ll split myself into God zillion pieces and let them all do their own thing and see what they come up with. Maybe I’ll get so involved in it that I’ll forget that I even exist”. You can take your pick, can’t you? You could say that there could be a truism in all of it. You could start from the position that there is this mass of consciousness which is totally beyond our understanding if we decide as we currently think that there is no time and no space. Do not think that we are an awful lot wiser than you are. We do know that it is all in the imagination and in our imagination we create space and as we have said before we cannot get outside ourselves any more than you can. We only see what is reflected back to us, what we see, in what you would call, our imagination, the thoughts that float by. We simply cannot get to a point where we can observe ourselves observing.

Have we given you some idea of the part genes play in the production of the physical environment?

I think so, thank you.

As you are aware, genes are present in everything that you see. You may not feel that genes are present in grains of sand, but then you didn’t discover genes until the last century or so, so what will you discover within the grain of sand? You will certainly discover the same miniature forces going into and out of existence as there is with anything else and you may then say, ”Well that’s probably the consciousness bit, each one of these” and of course that is where we get quantum entanglement and the universal interconnection. From there we just go around in a circular argument because even though we understand it all you come back to the fact that you are having this experience and it is a product of all this and does it really matter where it comes from?

Does it matter where the thoughts come from? No. At the end of the day all that matters is “I feel good, this is interesting”, it’s nice to know some of this stuff. And do I feel secure in that my conscious experience will carry on? Yes. Will I still fear dying? Probably, because that is part of the physical experience. Will I be able to approach my end with equanimity?”

Well, you will find out when the time comes, won’t you? But if you can keep all this information in mind and you have that firm belief that everybody is going to be there to meet you and there is going to be a great reunion then at the last moment you might say “I’m ready” as is evinced by many of those at the point of dying.

So, enjoy.

Thank you.

Understanding the Process of Ageing and Illness. The Path to Acceptance. Part II 24th February 2018

We would like to ask the majority exactly what is happening with David please.

The trouble is that I have got to think on the basis that there is no “me” and that whatever I say is the majority speaking regardless of what I consider to be “me” saying it. Just to open my mouth and let the words come out and not thinking “am I saying this?” because the words that are spoken are the product of the opinion of the majority of the participants. So when it comes to listening to what I have been saying lately then you have got to think that the majority at the moment is ambivalent as regards interest in the day-to-day activities that are currently being engaged in.         

There are, you might say, transition periods in every life where certain elements lose interest in those activities and the idea of certain things are found not to attract as many followers, shall we say, as previously, but the instrument is still fully functioning as you might say a character in a soap is fully functioning although you might be running out of playlines  for the character in the soap and you need some more playlines to be written. The alternative is to write the character out of the soap. So what happens in the main is that new plots are devised and so in the case of the instrument new activities are found. You have recently engaged in two new activities so that you can see that there is somewhat of a reformulation, a repositioning going on. But in between this loss of interest in certain aspects and gaining of interest in other aspects there is a concurrent waning and gaining of intensity, you might say, and so it may not happen in a nicely smooth manner as there is somewhat of a disturbance as you can well imagine. Sometimes the intensity lessens before the new interests gain enough adherence to get some intensity back in again.

Add to this the necessary rehabilitation, you might say, as regards the new way the instrument has to function, the convalescence necessary to get used to the new pattern of feelings, the psychological aspect which tends to be overlooked. The fact that you are now in a position where you need a machine to keep the instrument functioning which makes you realise, albeit you don’t discuss or address the situation, that without that machine you would be in a much reduced state of existence as to previously and you would therefore be rather …

Incapacitated.

As well as being aware of the fact that you are most definitely on a downhill slope. The thing about the pacemaker is that it has enabled you to do things that you were not previously able to do due to making sure that enough oxygen gets to the appropriate part of the mechanics, shall we say, to enable you to move at a pace that you were not able to move at previously.

But that doesn’t repair the underlying psychological damage. You still realise that you are merely extending the inevitable. Your intimations of mortality have been given quite a boost, shall we say, and you are now aware of the fact that although you will now carry on quite well that you may need to change your behaviour somewhat. Not expect to be an all energy, all singing, all dancing instrument. As we intimated before you will be able to lead a comfortable life and maybe you need to address this fact as to what exactly you will conceive to be a comfortable life. That may not be the Jack-in-the-box that you have previously been used to. You have to be able to follow what we called the path to acceptance.

You can be around, you can enjoy certain things but you mustn’t constantly bemoan the fact that you no longer feel to be a ball of energy. You can do this, you can do that, you can do the other pursuant to the knowledge that you can no longer be that young person in an old body. The old body doesn’t want to act, the energy needed to propel it about its business is not so readily available. It is not just the heart, there are many other aspects as well. You have many more organs, many more glands, many more other suppliers of the necessary energy precursors that are no longer working to the capacity they used to. You simply have to get used to the idea that life has got to be lived at a slower pace and actually enjoy it.

As you look at the fact that you now get up and read the news on the internet think what your parents used to do. They used to get up fetch the morning paper and sit down and read it leisurely over breakfast, yes?

Yes.

So now instead of getting up and immediately dashing to make breakfast, there is no need to do that except on the days that you are going out. There is no need to have breakfast at seven if you get up at 6.30 and you haven’t got to go anywhere, in fact you are doing yourself a disservice. You are starting the engine up far too early, you are not giving it any rest and then you expect to keep going the rest of the day whereas you maybe ease into the day then get the breakfast, enjoy it slowly and then contemplate what to do for the rest of the day.

You have got other people around you who do not even get up until 9.30 or 10.00 and they are not all going to bed until 2am either. They are taking life at a different pace, everybody takes life at a different pace. You have chosen to take life at a far greater pace than most and now the time isn’t appropriate. You are within the last, let us say, 15% of your lifetime. Now if you applied that to any other mechanism that you know of would you expect it to be going at the same rate as it would do in the first 15% of its lifetime?

No.

No, you would say it has had wear and tear and what would you say as regards ideas and interests? Have people got the same interests at your age as they had at 20? Few and far between. Mostly they have moved on. If they have been doing it for a long time they have had so much experience of it that there is no longer anything that is new and exciting. There is a certain satisfaction, a certain amount of enjoyment. Where is your enjoyment in the singing and dancing coming from? You are going to singing and dancing that are products of your youth, most of your songs that you sing and dance to come from what era? They don’t come from this era. Do you get excited about them? No! They are comfortable. They are like old..

Gloves.

Gloves, cardigans, things that you put on, much loved items of comfort, well worn, that you’re used to. They’re not new things. You might find some interest in learning a new dance, but it is danced to the old music and the old steps, it is a variation on a theme. If you wish to enjoy that variation and find excitement from it then so be it, if you don’t and you recognise it for what it is and it doesn’t enthuse you then don’t worry that it doesn’t enthuse you. You simply see it in a different fashion.

If other things are of interest then take them up. Temporarily you’re finding yourself not inclined to travel, but when you do maybe go to somewhere new or that you haven’t visited for a long time because even if you may not be quite as comfortable as going back to the places you have previously been going to, there will be that element of surprise as to how things may have changed or remembering a scene you had forgotten. There may be new restaurants, new buildings, a golf course you haven’t played for 10 years, an element of rediscovery. It will be more of an interest to go to somewhere different.

There is more than one reason to do that and then maybe you will find you ease more because you will be doing something you have done many times before. It will be familiar, it will be something you will have to get ready for so you have to use energy and that alone will stimulate various aspects. Meanwhile just realise that you are going through a transition.  Transition periods are never easy. When you move to a new area how many times is it new and exciting and how many times is it  ”I miss the old”? So you have the elements of transition there. The element of “I wish I was back where we came from but on the other hand I know this was the right thing to do”.

Now apply that to your transition. Except for the fact that instead of choosing the transition, which of course you have done from another angle, you are now going to experience the transition you have chosen to experience. So perhaps take more of the observer status out of this, step back and see what it is that is happening to you. Remember that every word that is being spoken at the moment is the product of all those who are undergoing this experience at the moment. So simply by doing this everybody is receiving a counselling session to clear their mind and to understand what it is they are currently undergoing. Do you see?

Yes.

Now you can apply this to saying this is the teachers coming in or you can say that there are some of those who are part of the majority who have spoken up and others are listening because the discussion is going on. Meanwhile we are saying well let’s listen to the discussion because when we all have to focus on the production of the spoken word then we all have to listen as well. Whereas if we just let thoughts flash between us then we don’t get the confluence. Can you understand that?

Yes.

Because you cannot see clearly. In other words the voting hasn’t occurred, it is still the babel of the houses of parliament and until you vote you don’t know what it is the policy is going to be. You don’t fully understand the situation either. Until the debate has occurred, the debate is a precursor to the vote, then minds cannot be cleared. All the time the talk is going on in the parliamentary bars and lounges nobody is quite aware of the whole picture but when you get into the chamber and get to hear both sides of the argument gradually this clears the mind of the non-essential and the bones of the matter begin to become apparent. It is only then that you can decide whether you are going to vote for or against this motion, because now you understand.

By doing what we are doing right at this moment the majority is starting to understand and we can only hope now that when they go back into the lounges and the bars, shall we say for the purposes of allegory, then they will conclude that “Yes, we have just got to sit back and wait for the dust to settle”, shall we say, or the emulsion to separate. Yes?

Yes.

And all will become clear over the passage of time.