I also believe, however, that generally speaking science still views our genetic systems in mechanical, deterministic, and reductionistic terms, and will continue to do so for a long time: So that evidence is being accumulated to support that overall view that at this time science has no need to seek for other, larger, and more unsettling frames of reference encompassing consciousness, intent, and genetics. Indeed, I seldom see consciousness mentioned in connection with genetics, except as its quality may relate to genetic “defects” like mental retardation, say.

(The Dominican Republic is an economically very poor country occupying the eastern portion of the island of Hispaniola in the West Indies. Yesterday Jane and I reread an article I’d filed last September, then forgotten about: In the area surrounding a certain village in the Dominican Republic, 38 girls have turned into boys at the onset of puberty. These remarkable physical changes stem from a genetic “defect” carried by a common ancestor who lived more than a century ago. The men have low sperm counts and may not be able to sire children in the normal manner, yet Jane and I think that this rare group event—the only one of its kind on record—fits in with Seth’s material about the millions of variations contained within our species’ vast genetic pool. For whatever mysterious reasons, then, our overall consciousness wants and needs this particular “genetic culture.” See the portion of the last session given as the opening of this chapter.

(Long pause.) I am not simply saying that genetic activity can be changed, for example, through something like a nuclear accident, but that highly beneficial alterations can also take place in genetic behavior, as in your terms the genetic structure not only prepares the species for any contingency, but also prepares it by triggering those characteristics and abilities that are needed by the species at any given time, and also by making allowances for such future developments (all quite forcefully).

Your genetic structure reacts to each thought that you have, to the state of your emotions, to your psychological climate. In your terms, it contains the physical history of the species in context with the probable future capabilities of the species. You choose your genetic structure so that it suits the challenges and capabilities of the species. You choose your genetic structure so that it suits the challenges and potentials that you have chosen. (Long pause.) It represents your physical reference point, your bodily framework. It is your personal physical property. It is a portion of physical matter that you have identified, filled out with your own identity. It is like a splendid ship, the body, that you have chosen ahead of time for a splendid challenging adventure—a ship that you have personally appointed that is equipped to serve as much as possible as a physical manifestation of your personhood.

[...] The ability to use language is also genetically built-in, through the precise orientation, again, with the physical triggering of the parents’ native language. Children learn such languages mentally long before they are physically capable of speaking them; but again, in genetically inspired dreams, children—or rather, infants—practice language. Before such infants hear their parents speak, however, they are in telepathic communication, and even in the fetus genetic dreams involve the coding and interpretation of language. [...]

(Long pause.) Whenever man believes that life is meaningless, whenever he feels that value fulfillment is impossible, or indeed nonexistent, then he undermines his genetic heritage. [...] Instead, these are genetic attributes, inspired and promoted by the inseparable unity of spirit in flesh. [...] It promotes feelings of despair that directly hamper genetic activity. [...]

In a way I hope to explain, then, the genetic system also reacts to those beliefs and events that are paramount in any given civilization. Events can trigger genetic activity—not simply through, say, chemical reactions, but through individual and mass beliefs about the safety or lack of it in the world at large.

There are also what I will call genetic dreams, which are inspired directly by genetic triggering. [...]

Here in Dreams Seth uses the uncertainty principle as an analogy (and an excellent one), meaning that as the positions and motions of elementary particles, say, cannot be simultaneously measured precisely, so our genetic qualities and their motions can not always be specifically determined. In Dreams he’s already said (in Session 909) that the human species has an “amazing interplay between genetic preciseness and genetic freedom,” and (in Session 910) that “your genetic structure reacts to each thought that you have, to the state of your emotions, to your psychological climate.” [...] Thus do we avoid genetic rigidity.

Your overreliance upon physical norms, and your distorted concepts concerning survival of the fittest, help exaggerate the existence of any genetic defects, of course. [...] But man is no robot, and each so-called genetic defect has an internal part to play in the entire picture of genetic reality. The principle of uncertainty must operate genetically, or you would have been locked into overspecializations as a species.²

(Pause.) There are states of consciousness, one within the other, and yet each connected, of course, so that genetic systems are really systems of consciousness. [...] Given the genetic makeup that you now have, your conscious intents and purposes act as the triggers that activate whatever genetic or reincarnational aspects that you need.

[...] Whatever man’s conscious beliefs, on a biological level his genetic structure is intimately related to the genetic structure of all other species.

[...] Next chapter (7): “Genetics and Reincarnation. Gifts and ‘Liabilities.’ The Vast Sweep of the Genetic and Reincarnational Scales. [...]

[...] The great facility and adaptability of the human species are dependent upon an amazing interplay between genetic preciseness and genetic freedom. [...]

[...] At microscopic levels, in fact, no one fits any norm, and there is no way to predict with complete certainty the development of any genetic element. You can make group predictions, and overall make certain judgments, but other elements are involved, so that any particular genetic element cannot be pinned down in terms of its development. [...]

GENETICS AND
REINCARNATION.

The body is equipped to perform far better, in a variety of ways, than you give it credit for, however—but the fact remains that the genetic structure focuses volition. The genetic apparatus and the chromosomal messages actually contain far more information than is ever used. That genetic information can, for example, be put together in an infinite number of ways. (Long pause.) The species cares for itself in the event of any possible circumstance, so that the genetic messages also carry an endless number of triggers that will change genetic combinations if this becomes necessary.

The conditions of existence are largely determined by genetic structure. Free will must then of course function in accordance with genetic integrity. Genetic structure makes possible physical organisms through which life is to be experienced, and to a large extent that structure must determine the kind of action possible in the world, and the way or ways in which volition can be effectively expressed.

—with great technical facility, regardless of family background, genetically speaking, and again, the reincarnational bank of characteristics accounts for such events. That inner reincarnational psychic structure is also responsible for triggering certain genetic messages while ignoring others, or for triggering certain combinations of genetic messages. [...]

Beyond that, however, genetic messages are coded in such a way that there is a constant give-and-take between those messages and the present experience of any given individual. That is, no genetic event is inevitable.

In actuality all of the seemingly erratic genetic variances that often crop up in human development are vital to the elasticity of the entire genetic system.

It would not be beneficial, for example, to try to “breed out” those seemingly unfortunate, divergent genetic traits. [...]

There is hardly any danger of that possibility, however, since it would be nearly impossible to perform such a task even with the most developed of technologies — and indeed, the very attempt to do so might well immediately trigger a response on the part of the whole genetic system, so that new divergences appeared with even greater frequency, as compensation.

There are individuals who do choose ahead of time — in one lifetime or another — to accept such a divergent genetic heritage for their own reasons — often to experience life from one of its most unique aspects, and sometimes in order to encourage the growth of other abilities that might not otherwise occur.

[...] I’m sure that our wonder at the vast organization of nature will continue to grow as our scientists plunge ever deeper into the complexities of genetic research. [...] Just how much real freedom do we have, if all is programmed by our genetic heritage? [...] In addition, now we also have many newer questions about inherited genetic equality and/or inequality!)

GENETIC HERITAGE AND
REINCARNATIONAL PREDILECTIONS

He did pick up our next chapter heading (six): “Genetic Heritage and Reincarnational Predilections,” and I am trying to give him this other material at different levels. [...]

[...] All of this is connected with the genetic information that any individual receives from the biological bank that belongs to the species at large, and from the inner reincarnational bank.¹ We will see that Ruburt receives the information that he needs at the necessary levels, so that the material can be verbalized. [...]

The same curious mixture of nonpredictable and predictable activity operates in genetic patterning also, in which the genetic systems are largely set up to achieve the retention of specific characteristics, and yet can also demonstrate behavior that seems (underlined) to be genetically unfaithful, distorted, or to introduce alterations that might appear to be travesties upon genetic integrity.

Those odd genetic happenings, however, as I have tried to explain, often provide a resiliency and a widening of probabilities that are most necessary for overall genetic balance. Dream actions can indeed—and often do—affect genetic alterations, acting as triggers for altered cellular action. [...]

[...] Such a creature could not be the puppet of a genetic engineering accidentally manufactured in a universe that was itself meaningless. [...]

[...] Then this afternoon she picked up from Seth that in a new chapter he’d explain how physical deformities are, among other things, manifestations of the great range of abilities encompassed within our species’ genetic pool, and that we retain such flexibility in case wide changes are ever needed. She added that our genetic requirements are also linked to our reincarnational patterns. [...]

[...]

[...]

[...]

(Just before she took a nap this noon, Jane received a letter from a man who explained that he’d married a woman with genetic deformities of her hands. [...]

[...] Therefore, dreams will be considered throughout the book in various capacities as they are related through genetics, reincarnation, culture, and private life. [...]

There are diseases that people believe are inherited, carried from one generation to another by a faulty genetic communication. Obviously, many people with, for example, a genetic heritage of arthritis do not come down with the disease themselves, while others indeed are so afflicted. [...]

[...] They can even — and often do — change genetic messages.

[...] Actually, the belief itself may have changed a healthy genetic message into an unhealthy one. [...]

[...] The genetic patterns for any given species reside, of course, primarily in that species’ genetic bank—but that genetic bank does not exist in isolation, but [is] invisibly connected with the genetic makeup of each other species (all very intently).

[...] The genetic cues are not triggered on the proposition, obviously, that a species exists alone on the planet, but also in response to genetic sequences that operate in all of the species combined. The genetic system, again, is not closed nearly as much as supposed. [...]

[...] I have told you that in actuality, now, no genetic knowledge is gone from the earth. [...] It is retained in latent form within a kind of backup system, so that in terms of probabilities each species carries within its own genetic patterns the blueprints and specializations of each other’s genetic sequence.

There are dreams of different import, some triggered genetically, that serve as sparks for particular kinds of behavior—dreams, in other words, that literally span the centuries in that regard, coiled latently in the very chromosomes; and no level of consciousness is without some kind of participation in dream states. [...]

(Pace slower.) They not only have a reality in the psyche, however, but they are imbedded in genetically codified data by the inner self — a genetic memory of past psychic events — transposed into the genetic memory of the very cells that compose the body.

Each inner self, adopting a new body, imposes upon it and upon its entire genetic makeup, memory of the past physical forms in which it has been involved. [...] The physical pattern of the present body, therefore, is a genetic memory of the self’s past physical forms, and of their strengths and weaknesses. [...]

[...] Some schools of thought, then, have it that only the genetically superior should be allowed to reproduce, and there are scientists who believe that all defects can be eradicated through judicious genetic planning.

1. Seth certainly touched upon a question that’s loaded with ethical and legal dilemmas; many of these have grown out of recent scientific advances in genetics. Some moral philosophers, medical geneticists, physicians, lawyers, and religious leaders believe that those who carry genes for serious genetic diseases do not have the right to reproduce. [...] Questions abound involving amniocentesis (examination of the fluid in the womb to detect genetic defects in the fetus); therapeutic abortion; artificial insemination; reproduction by in vitro fertilization; embryo transfer (surrogate motherhood); the responsibilities of the legal, medical and religious communities; whether mentally retarded, genetically defective people should receive life-prolonging medical treatment, and so forth. Years are expected to pass before our legal system alone catches up with the scientific progress in genetics—but, ironically, continuing advances in the field are bound to complicate even further the whole series of questions.

Did those “genetically inferior,” for example, have the right to reproduce?¹ Illness was thought to come like a storm, the result of physical forces against which the individual had little recourse. [...]

[...] In fact, such fashions are not only genetically possible, but genetically probable—a matter I will discuss later in the book. [...]

[...] There are endless varieties, however—each subjectively and genetically possible, and many, of course, that you have not yet developed as a species.

[...] Such private decisions affect the genetic heritage of the species. Your intent is all-important — for you can alter your own genetic messages³ within certain limits. [...]

At deep levels the cells are always working with probabilities, and comparing probable actions and developments in the light of genetic information. [...]

Well, one may ask, if a so-called negative quality like depression has a genetic foundation, what about the genetics for a positive attribute like joy—or, even, something like reincarnation? (I haven’t come across anything in the media yet about either one of those.) If reincarnational and genetic systems are intermixed, then it could be said that even a person’s decision to ignore his or her reincarnational heritage was in itself genetically based—and it could be fun to explore the contradictory ramifications of such a state. [...] While amusing myself I’m simplifying to a great degree: If traces of one’s “successive” lives are genetically embedded, sorting them out would be an enormous task.

I also know that in a couple of chapters for Dreams itself Seth referred to the genetic factors involving reincarnation. He said that basically both our genetic structure and our reincarnational history are systems of consciousness, that they’re “intermixed.” [...]

[...] Not only that, sociobiologists are advancing their very controversial ideas that much of human behavior has an ultimate genetic basis, which in turn influences cultural change, and so on.

[...] But if we think of our genetic endowment as first being a system of consciousness as our reincarnational history is, we can see how the two nonphysical systems could be intermixed, as Seth put it, with one influencing the other. [...]

[...] There is, then, a way of introducing “new”‘ genetic information to a so-called damaged cell in the present.⁶ This involves the manipulation of consciousness, basically, and not that of gadgets, as well as a time-reversal principle. [...] The body on its own performs this service often, when it automatically rights certain conditions, even though they were genetically imprinted. [...]

[...] This applies genetically in personal terms. [...]

6. Session 654, in Chapter 14 of Personal Reality, contains information on the changing cellular memory, genetic codes, and neuronal patterns. [...]

It is vital for the proper workings of genetic systems. [...]

[...] (Emphatically:) These new cults and groups, however—these new cults and groups, therefore—therefore—are following the paths of genetic wisdom, opening up new areas of speculation and belief. [...]

[...] Through doing so, I hope to give a truer picture of your own dimension, and to continue our discussion about the gifts and seeming defects that are genetically inspired.