Just some stuff about me.
In their visions, shamans take their consciousness down to the molecular level and gain access to information related to DNA, which they call “animate essences” or “spirits.” This is where they see double helixes, twisted ladders, and chromosome shapes. This is how shamanic cultures have known for millennia that the vital principle is the same for all living beings and is shaped like two entwined serpents (or a vine, a rope, a ladder …). DNA is the source of their astonishing botanical and medicinal knowledge, which can be attained only in defocalized and “nonrational” states of consciousness, though its results are empirically verifiable. The myths of these cultures are filled with biological imagery. And the shamans’ metaphoric explanations correspond quite precisely to the descriptions that biologists are starting to provide.
The molecules of nicotine or dimethyltryptamine, contained in tobacco or ayahuasca, activate their respective receptors, which set off a cascade of electrochemical reactions inside the neurons, leading to the stimulation of DNA and, more particularly, to its emission of visible waves, which shamans perceive as “hallucinations.”
Even DNA’s emission of photons remains mysterious, and no one has been able to establish its mechanism directly. Naked DNA, extracted from the cell’s nucleus, emits photons so weakly as to escape measurement.
Despite these uncertainties, I wish to develop my hypothesis further by proposing the following idea: What if DNA, stimulated by nicotine or dimethyltryptamine, activates not only its emission of photons (which inundate our consciousness in the form of hallucinations), but also its capacity to pick up the photons emitted by the global network of DNA-based life? This would mean that the biosphere itself, which can be considered “as a more or less fully interlinked unit,” is the source of the images.
the DNA double helix has a slightly irregular, or aperiodic, structure. However, this is not the case for the repeat sequences that make up a full third of the genome, such as ACACACACACACAC. In these sequences, DNA becomes a regular arrangement of atoms, a periodic crystal—which could, by analogy with quartz, pick up as many photons as it emits. The variation in the length of the repeat sequences (some of which contain up to 300 bases) would help pick up different frequencies and could thereby constitute a possible and new function for a part of “junk” DNA.
ACCORDING TO MY HYPOTHESIS, shamans take their consciousness down to the molecular level and gain access to biomolecular information. But what actually goes on in the brain/mind of an ayahuasquero when this occurs? What is the nature of a shaman’s communication with the animate essences of nature?