THE COSMIC SERPENT

Jeremy Narby

¾ The indigenous people of Western Amazonia say that their remarkable botanical knowledge comes directly from the plants themselves – a shaman, by drinking an hallucinogenic brew, can converse with the “animate essences”, or spirits which are present in all living beings and which are sources of verifiable information that has stunning correspondences with molecular biology.

¾ Both shaman and molecular biologists agree that there is a hidden unity under the surface of life’s diversity; both associate this unity with the double helix shape (or two entwined serpents, a twisted ladder, a spiral staircase, two vines). In shamanic traditions around the world, it is said that knowledge is acquired by reaching, in one’s visions, the axis mundi – the axis of the world – shaped in these entwined configurations. These are also the symbols which biologists use to describe the shape of the DNA molecule. Ironically, from a rational point of view, it is by definition impossible for hallucinations to be the source of true knowledge, and to consider them as such is the very definition of psychosis.

¾ The serpent symbol has been found in shamanism all over the world. It is connected to the double helix of DNA inside virtually all living beings. The living world is inherently coded and symbolic. We are made of living language.

¾ There is an intelligence - a capacity to make choices - operating inside every cell of our body, down to the level of individual proteins and enzymes. DNA is itself a kind of “text” that functions through a coding system called the “genetic code”, which is strikingly similar to the codes used by human beings. Some enzymes edit the RNA transcript of the DNA text and add new letters to it. Any error made during this editing can be fatal to the entire organism, so these enzymes are consistently making correct choices. If they don’t, something goes wrong, leading to cancers and other diseases. Cells send one another signals, in the form of proteins and molecules. These signals mean: divide, or don’t divide; move, or don’t move; kill yourself, or stay alive. Any one cell is listening to hundreds of signals at the same time, and has to integrate them and decide what to do.

¾ DNA is minded and conscious. It is the living language substance of life, and it lives inside all the cells of all life forms on Earth. As your eyes scan these words, there are two meters of DNA in every single cell in your eyeballs, winding and unwinding like a snake. The whole essence of the DNA double helix is that it is both single and double: it can only duplicate itself thanks to its doubleness, and this twinning is the basis of life. At the beginning of our life, we are one cell, and then the DNA in this cell duplicates itself, and we gradually unfold into beings of 100,000 billion cells, each containing an exact copy of the original genetic message, which is twinned each time a cell divides.

¾ Our own bodies are so complex that we are still a long way from really understanding how they work. True knowledge may only appear to be hiding simply because we are not yet equipped to handle it.

¾ The indigenous people are not liars, they really do talk to spirits, and the spirits are inside us; they are the spirits of life, the same spirits science has labeled inanimate chemical created by chance.

Keith and Marnie Elliott’s “REMEDY” Site

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