“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Any role that consciousness might play in such biochemical processes isn’t considered, of course, nor is there any sort of mystical comprehension of what we’re up to as creatures. No matter how beautifully man works out a hypothesis or theory, he still does so without any thought of consciousness coming first. Through the habitual (and perhaps unwitting) use of naïve realism, he projects his own basic creativity outside of himself or any of his parts. He also projects upon cellular components like genes and DNA¹⁴ learned concepts of “protection” and “selfishness”: DNA is said to care only about its own survival and “knowledge,” and not whether its host is man, plant, or animal. Only man would think to burden such pervasive parts of his own being, and those of other entities, with such negative concepts! Jane and I don’t believe the allegations — in its own terms, how could the very stuff controlling inheritance not care about the nature of what it created? I’m only half joking (is there a gene for humor?) when I protest that DNA, for example, doesn’t deserve to be regarded in such a fashion, no matter how much we push it around through recombinant techniques.¹⁵

(I’m projecting my own ideas here, but I think that in all of its complexity DNA has motives for its physical existence [as mediated through Seth’s CU’s, or units of consciousness] that considerably enlarge upon its assigned function as the “master molecule” of life as we know it. Deoxyribonucleic acid may exist within its host, whether man, plant, or animal — or bacteria or virus — in cooperative altruistic ventures with its carrier that are quite beside purely survival ones. Some of those goals, such as the exploration of concepts like the moment point [see Note 11], or probabilities [and reincarnation¹⁶], really defy our ordinary conscious perception. In terms we can more easily grasp, social relationships within and between species may be explored, starting at that biochemical level and working “upward.” Basically, then, an overall genetics of cooperation becomes a truer long-run concept than the postulated deadly struggle for survival of the fittest, whether between man and molecules, say, or among members of the same species. Once again we have consciousness seeking to know itself in as many ways as possible, while being aware all of the time, in those terms, of the forthcoming “death” of its medium of expression, DNA, and of DNA’s host, or “physical machine.”

(As far as I can discover, science pays very little attention to any philosophical questions about why we’re here, even while most definitely telling us what’s true or not true. And while postulating that life is basically meaningless or goal-less [DNA doesn’t care what its host looks like, for instance], science fights awfully hard to convince everyone that it’s right — thus attaching the most rigid kind of meaning or direction to its professional views! [If I were very cynical, I’d add here that to Jane and me it often seems that science wants only what science believes.] At the same time, in mathematical and biological detail much too complicated to go into here, the author of many a scientific work in favor of evolution has ended up by undermining, unwittingly, I’m sure, the very themes he so devoutly believes in. I’ve hinted at some of those paradoxes in certain notes [mainly 5 through 8] for this appendix.