7

Extraterrestrial DNA

In this chapter we shall be considering some of the further implications of the theory of transcendental evolution. As we have seen, the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution is unfinished: it explains only the evolutionary development of organic bodies in the local biosphere of planet Earth. The theory of transcendental evolution, however, presents the whole picture, and it tells us that the process is continuing at an even higher level, beyond the confines of the physical brain of man, into scales of existence that ultimately encompass the whole universe. Before I try to explain how such a mechanism might work, however, we need first to get back to basics, to the fundamental components of the material world.

In previous chapters, we noted that the ancient Greeks had some rather unusual ideas concerning the nature of matter. They believed that all material things are “psychic”—alive—and that they are influenced in some fundamental way by music. Today we find that modern scientists have proved them right on both counts. They have discovered mindlike qualities in the electron and “organic” traits in plasmas, and they have identified eightfold musical symmetries in the two major physical scales of the microworld: the atomic and the chromodynamic. Then, of course, we have light, the eightfold symmetry of the white ray, with its curious twin photons that can simultaneously “feel” what the other is feeling, even if they are light years apart.

Further, we have seen that similar hermetic symmetries are also evident in the biomolecular world, with its sixty-four codon combinations and twenty-two evolutionary amino-acid signals. This means, therefore, that the whole of the microworld, from wave/particles to biomolecules, conforms very closely to the Greek view, which is that the entire universe is built, scale superimposed upon scale, of crystallized, ever-vibrant music.

We thus have three fundamental harmonies in evidence in the microworld: the chromodynamic, the atomic, and the (bio)molecular. Underlying all of these scales, of course, is the all-pervading harmony demonstrated by the “twin photon” phenomenon, the “actions at a distance” called by Roger Penrose “nonlocal quantum correlations.” The whole universe is perpetually in motion and all wave/particles are continuously interacting and separating, which means that the nonlocal aspect of quantum systems is a general characteristic of nature. Clearly this represents, in the physical world, a harmony of the highest possible order. It is one thing to say that the universe is a harmonious entity because it is constructed entirely upon the eightfold chromodynamic and atomic matrices, but nonlocality suggests that there exists a far deeper interconnecting harmony underlying all physical phenomena, where everything is resonating at the very same subquantum frequency, everything is “in tune” with every other thing.

We now come to another very ancient idea, which again seems to have first surfaced in the time of the early Greeks: the notion that the whole universe is itself a living, sentient being.

The Greeks had a name for this creature, this universe. They called it the Zoon (pronounced “zohon”), the modern dictionary definition of which is “morphological individual, the total product of a fertilized ovum.” Of course, the originators of this particular concept might not have defined it in such a precise way, but it seems obvious that they believed that the universe was an animal, living, hence the notion of zoology, the study of the living, of which Richard Dawkins himself is a professor. So the Greeks, I believe, regarded the cosmos as having somehow been conceived and then born, that it subsequently grew and is still growing, and that all systems within it, from the Earth and the planets to the sun and the stars beyond, are vital components in the living body of the whole.

As we know, the Greeks also believed, like the Egyptians before them, that the universe exists and operates according to musical principles, that is according to the fundamental laws described by the Hermetic Code. And the Hermetic Code, as we have seen, is identical in structure to the genetic code. This means that the universe, according to these traditions, is, in effect, an immense, multidimensional complex of evolving genes, that is, it is a biological entity. Let us note here that there is no ambiguity whatsoever in this ancient worldview. These people stated, in very clear and precise scientific (that is, musical) terms, that the Zoon is a zoon, so we may safely assume that they meant what they said.

Now this may seem like a tall order, asking us to believe that we exist in the living body of some mighty beast, some “god” of potentially infinite size. But then, not too long ago ideas about the hermetic symmetries involved in the creation of life, of “psychic” matter and of “universal music” would almost certainly have been regarded by scientists as being simply the fanciful products of primitives’ dreams. And yet, ultimately, time has proved the ancients to be fundamentally correct in these particular aspects of their worldview; music is indeed everywhere, both inside and outside us, or “above” and “below,” and the basic components of matter continually resonate and even communicate, being by no means truly inert or “lifeless.”

So now these ancient thinkers once again reach forward through thousands of years of time to confront us with another strange idea, one that has never, as far as I am aware, been seriously considered either by alternative theorists or orthodox historians. This is the proposition that the whole universe is a living organism, quite literally, a biological entity.

I must admit that when I was initially confronted with this rather strange idea of a living universe I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. It was difficult to see how the greater components of the cosmos—such as all-consuming black holes, exploding supernovae, collapsing clouds of interstellar dust and all the other cataclysmic events taking place out there—could ever be construed as life. On the face of things, the proposition seemed absurd, or so I at first thought. But at the back of my mind I harbored a sneaking suspicion that these ancient people, who were so knowledgeable in other respects concerning the nature of reality, were not just simply fantasizing about their “living god,” but had some basis for their belief.

So I began to investigate, to search for evidence of this. It seemed at first an impossible task. After all, if the universe is a sentient being, where is its “head,” its “heart,” and all the other organic components necessary for a body to exist? Answer: nowhere to be seen. Nevertheless I kept looking, scouring books on cosmology, astronomy, and astrophysics and the like. I learned quite a lot about the cosmos that was to stand me in good stead for what was to follow, but there were no obvious clues in the writings of modern scientists as to the possible nature of the creature I was searching for.

But then, after long deliberating and vacantly scratching my head, I suddenly experienced one of those familiar “eureka” moments when, out of the blue, a new perspective dawned in my mind. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the answer—or at least, a major clue on its trail—came not from the modern scientist but from Hermes himself.

The clue lies in the now familiar saying of Thoth/Hermes, “As above, so below.” What this undoubtedly means is that the world above—the greater cosmos—is fundamentally the same as the world below, the world of man. Obviously the scales are vastly different, but, according to Hermes, their inherent structure is based on the same hermetic blueprint. And remember, the Hermetic Code and the genetic code are also identical in every way, so we can see quite clearly that, in respect to the world of man and the world of the cell, the hermetic dictum just quoted is directly and exactly applicable. The genetic code operates in the microcosm, the world of cells, and the Hermetic Code operates in the mesocosm, the world of man. And each of them, of course, shares a common purpose, which is to facilitate the processes of creation, of evolution.

Now DNA is quite clearly the prime mover in the biomolecular world. It is DNA that employs the genetic code to manufacture amino acids, which other organic components then assemble into proteins. The purpose of proteins in the biomolecular world is clear; they engineer all the complex chemical processes that build a living body. So what happens when the human mind employs the Hermetic Code? Does it, as I have already suggested, produce the metaphysical equivalent of amino acids? Possibly. At least it produces ideas, thoughts, and concepts, which are born of our conscious ability to emote, sense, and perceive.

So on to the obvious question: are these concepts integral parts of a much bigger evolutionary process that takes place somewhere “out there”? That is, if the genetic code describes an organic process, is not the Hermetic Code similarly describing an organic process, but one that operates on a much greater and more rarefied scale? If this is the case—and I am, of course, proposing that it could be—then there would probably be in existence other, greater, organic components out there in the macrocosm that could somehow assemble these metaphysical “amino acids” (thoughts, concepts, and so forth) into the conceptual equivalent of protein chains. As I said moments ago, the purpose of proteins in the biomolecular world is to engineer all the complex chemical processes that are necessary to build a living body.

As the reader will by now have realized, what is being implied here is that the human mind is a form of “double helix,” a chromosome in the nucleus of a living cell in the body of a much greater being. And then, further, possibly the “mind” of this greater being is also but a single-cell nucleus in a being on an even greater scale . . . and so on, but not, as we shall see, ad infinitum.

So let us now follow this lead as we were probably intended to and turn our attention skyward, toward the heavens. If Thoth/Hermes is right, one would expect there to be signs of this “extraterrestrial” life up there in the macrocosm—massive, cosmic, organic structures, not unlike the structure of our chromosomes. And what do we find up there in the greater cosmos? Significantly, there are spirals and helices, literally everywhere, in all potential solar systems, in all galaxies. In the case of our own solar system, we see the planets encircling the sun, but as the entire system is perpetually moving at great velocity through space, the path traced by each planet is, in fact, a spiral. Similarly, most galaxies are spiral galaxies, which is meaningful in itself, but even so-called elliptical and irregular galaxies all revolve around a galactic center—maybe a black hole—and all of them are hurtling across the universe at tremendous speeds, so the trajectory traced through space-time by every star is a true spiral, a helix. Furthermore, we ourselves, as we sit, walk, or even sleep on the surface of the Earth, are actually tracing spirals through space: the whole planet spins like a top as it moves ever onward.

It is true, of course, that DNA is a double-helix structure, but in the biomolecular world there are many single-helix structures—viruses, bacteria, and so forth—composed of single strands of DNA’s close cousin, RNA. Moreover, when we think we see a single spiral out there in space, we are not necessarily taking in the whole picture. That is, there may be “invisible” helices that we also need to identify. In a typical galaxy, for example, scientists have discovered that the visible spiral arms, composed of stars—of light—are enveloped by an accompanying magnetic field that actually spirals around each of the arms. Again, in the solar system there are several planets, each one spiraling along its respective trajectory, but if you consider the combined paths of any two of them in relation to one another, the result, quite clearly, would be a double-helix configuration. The point is, it is the helix itself, whether single, double, or even multiple, which appears to be the basic design for all evolutionary phenomena, above and below.

Is it not highly significant, therefore, that the Egyptians and the Greeks, in whose belief systems the firmament above was so important, should have a principal god of wisdom whose symbol was a magic wand known as the caduceus, featuring a double helix in the form of two entwined serpents surmounted with wings? Clearly this symbol, like the Great Pyramid, which is aligned so precisely with key stars in the Duat (sky), is inducing us to look heavenward. The same can be said of the serpent/thunderbolt symbols of Viracocha and the plumed serpent of Quetzalcoatl, of which the most impressive depiction of all is the effect at the spring and autumn equinoxes of the sun’s light undulating like a serpent up the northern staircase of the Temple of Kukulkan at Chichén Itzá, Mexico.

After I had identified these “serpents in the sky” it seemed to me that the most logical thing to do would be to be to try to follow their trail and see where it might lead. This was, after all, the route taken by Osiris and Thoth, and all of the other principal “civilizers” of the ancient world.

The fact that Sirius and Zeta Orionis, the two most important stars in Egyptian cosmology, are targeted by the southern shafts of the two principal chambers of the Great Pyramid suggests that the pyramid itself provides a vital link between worlds above and below. The name of the Great Pyramid—“The Lights”—suggests further that light is the cosmic intermediary, the interface between man and god, the earth and the stars. And light itself, as we have noted, is a musical phenomenon: the most resonant octave in existence. Therefore music is the key. But then music is a hermetic phenomenon, and the Hermetic Code describes exactly how the genetic code operates, and how organisms grow.

What I believe is implied here is that we, in our quest to discover the secrets of the universe, have literally to evolve our way to the stars, to grow so as to be able to touch the firmament merely by holding out our hands. The kind of “growth” we are talking about here, of course, is the evolution of the mind, an “alchemical” process of development that leads ultimately to a condition of optimum psychological harmony and an awareness of the nonlocal realm of heaven, the timeless plane of light. Here, Osiris/Orion is everyone’s immediate neighbor.

So let’s now try to envisage how this spiritual growth might develop. By this I mean the process by which consciousness can eventually tune in to the nonlocal dimension, or to the metaphysical frequencies characteristic of light quanta.

We have seen how, in the microcosm, the most powerful transmitter of intelligent data is the DNA double helix, which codes for complex biochemical processes with such precision that it can create the brain of a human being. In the microworld, this evolutionary music played by DNA represents a harmony of the highest possible order.

The human brain, the ultimate product of DNA’s evolutionary development, is more than just a biological organ like a heart or a liver. It possesses self-awareness and can perform a whole range of extra-biological or metaphysical functions—intellectual, speculative, intuitive, or whatever. This is to say, the human brain, like the double helix from which it originates, can generate transcendental influences. Through literature, artifacts, buildings, and so on, it can transmit “biometaphysical” signals to spheres far removed from the physical body in which it exists. Thus the designers of the Great Pyramid, for example, or the I Ching, or the authors of the Christian Scriptures, the Koran, or the Upanishads, living in the remote past in distant parts of the world, are still speaking to you now through these and many other contemporary commentaries. These works are, in effect, transcendental phenomena, metaphysical genes, coded to synthesize—in the mind of the human being—higher, more complex, modes of cognition.

As we can see, both the DNA double helix and the human brain function in strikingly similar ways. In the concluding chapter of The Infinite Harmony I suggested that the conscious/subconscious aspects of the human brain, with its right and left hemispheres, could be regarded as the metaphysical equivalent of the acid/alkaline aspects of the DNA strand, with its “right” and “left” nucleotide chains. Both work with the same hermetic/genetic blueprint, with its four “bases,” its sixty-four possibilities and its twenty-two transcendental or evolutionary “signals.” Thus the music being played in the microcosmic processes of evolution is being echoed, note for note, in the mesocosmic scale above, in which the human mind is the principal player. So the ancient dictum “As above, so below” means, quite literally, that the only difference between the DNA double helix below—the chromosome—and the fully functioning human brain above is simply one of scale. Both work with exactly the same numbers and combinations of forces and components, but the components themselves are graded accordingly, the bases used by DNA presumably being of a less rarefied form of resonance than the “bases” from which higher frequencies of consciousness are developed.

So what exactly are these “bases” from which consciousness is created? In the Hermetic Code they are symbolized by the four base notes—the four Dos—of the triple octave, which correspond to the four base pebbles of the Pythagorean Tetrad discussed in the last chapter. Now these bases, like the free-floating chemical bases in the living cell, would theoretically be everywhere, all around us, waiting to be scooped up by the double helix of the mind, combined into more resonant units, and finally passed on for future synthesis at a higher level of development. These bases, I would suggest, come to us in the form of our impressions, namely our sensations, emotions, and perceptions, the trinity, or triple octave, within us all. There is a fourth, of course, a crucial, transcendental base, the product of the harmonious interaction of the first three, which, if fully developed, manifests in the form of our concepts, our conceptions.

We have here, I think, the origin of the much misunderstood Christian notion of the “immaculate conception.” Jesus’s teachings, for example, in being psychologically harmonious, were immaculately conceived, born of a conscious, highly developed mind. We know they are immaculate because, just like the equally resilient concepts of, say, Pythagoras, the Buddha, or Muhammad, they have ultimately harmonized with the evolving psyches of billions of individuals.

You could, of course, argue, as Dawkins might, that these world-wide religious and philosophical movements have evolved purely by chance and that they have played on the inherent weaknesses of desperate human beings wishing to escape the tedium and pain of Darwinian existence by clinging on to vague, unfounded promises of an afterlife in Paradise. Doubtless the element of escapism is a contributory factor in the development of many self-help cultures, past and present, but the fact that the world’s major religious movements are all based on the principles of “esoteric music” embodied in the Hermetic Code strongly suggests that accident really has very little to do with it. Just think for a moment: What are the chances of your ideas, or those of Darwin, Einstein, or Dawkins (or your own modern hero or heroine), entering and attuning with the minds and hearts of whole races of people?

Significantly, in the microworld of the cell, “immaculate conceptions,” or macromutations, are the very life-blood of creation. All evolutionary advancements, all transcendental developments, are “immaculately” created: amino acids, protein molecules, eyes, legs, wings, brains. So of course Jesus was immaculately conceived. But then so was African Eve, Tyrannosaurus rex, and, paradoxically, the AIDS virus. Life is like that.

So if the human brain is a form of chromosome, a metaphysical double helix, then presumably it is also an integral component—a “cell nucleus”—in the greater body of an infinitely more complex, macrocosmic “organism,” a creature that, one assumes, is formed from the collective evolutionary consciousness of the entire human race.

As a matter of fact, a scenario not dissimilar to this was put forward in the early 1950s by the American writer Rodney Collin in his book The Theory of Celestial Influence. I have quoted at length from this unique work elsewhere. Collin was a close associate of Ouspensky, and he spent several years compiling this scientific interpretation of Gurdjieff’s original ideas. The book has not yet received the worldwide acceptance long overdue to it, but I believe the time will come when the writings of all three of these highly innovative thinkers will be recognized as great achievements.

In the final chapter of his book, entitled “Man in Eternity,” Collin tries to imagine the form and structure of the greater “body” of the human race. Everyone, he says, creates an invisible thread of converging energies as he or she lives along their own particular line of time, each thread being unique to a human being. If one imagines, across the centuries, billions upon billions of these threads, crossing and interlacing with one another, varying in “color” and intensity according to the kind of life lived, then there emerges a figure so intricate that it is, in fact, a solid, the “solid of humanity”:

Of this solid we can even have a certain vague apprehension. It will be, as it were, a sort of solid tapestry, composed of billions of threads, which in spite of their inconceivably elaborate weaving, appear all to lie in the same direction which is eternity. We can even suppose each of these threads to have a different nature or color, according to the level of energy which dominates its totality of lives. And we might find that in large areas or periods of humanity, a certain nature or color dominates the whole design—the red of purely physical existence, the yellow of intellectual activity, or the green of moving skill and sensation. Remembering the existence of men with conscious souls, and with conscious spirits, we shall also suppose threads of different materiality which stand out from the fabric in a quite exceptional way, which impart life to the rest, and about which the whole design of the solid body is formed. For those threads are threads only in our metaphor. In fact they are alive and their total mass is alive. They are the cells and capillaries and nerves of a body, the Adam Kadmon of The Kabala, Mankind.¹

Adam Kadmon has appeared elsewhere in ancient mythology. He is the titan Atlas of the Greeks, who, remember, believed that the human race could change the world if it could harmonize itself into an overall coherent state of homonoia. And if the earlier-discussed evidence for psychokinesis is accepted, together with the recognized power of “group consciousness,” by which a fully grown individual can be lifted with very little physical effort, then we can say that the kind of “resonances” obtained in such an orchestrated process of thought are real, they must have some sort of substance. According to the theory of transcendental evolution, this substance, the living stuff of consciousness, is created in precisely the same way as are all other manifestations of life, that is hermetically, genetically. Thus evolutionary consciousness itself is quite literally composed of metaphysical signals, or “notes,” which have been copied from “genes” housed in the electrochemical structure of other mesocosmic “helices,” other human brains.

The characteristic spiral form of DNA has been photographed in its totality through a process known as X-ray diffraction. It is clearly a double helix, and all DNA molecules in every living plant or animal are structured in exactly the same way. This DNA does not suddenly appear fully formed: it develops in a linear fashion over a given period of time. As the parent DNA ladder “unzips” at one end prior to cell division, and free-floating bases link up with the open ends of the split rungs, two identical chromosomes are formed.²

It might be argued that the description “double helix” cannot reasonably be applied to the two hemispheres of the brain, which look more like three-dimensional segments of some weird exotic fruit than the structural features of a chromosome. But of course, like DNA, we must assume that this metaphysical “chromosome” does not appear read-ymade, but requires a given period of time to develop its overall form, and that this unfolds in a linear fashion. Time is the line and the period in question is a lifetime. And what exactly happens during the lifetime of an individual brain? Remember that the two hemispheres have a physical existence on the surface of a planet that is spinning endlessly on its axis as it soars through space. Therefore, each hemisphere is in fact tracing a spiral, a helix, through space and time. Taken together the overall configuration is, of course, a double helix.

So the human brain is an evolving double helix developing in time, at one end of which lies conception, at the other, death. All that happens between, all our experiences in life, both conscious and sub-conscious, define the particular “color,” or quality, of each evolving mesocosmic “chromosome.” The most successful or the most resonant of the “genes” in these chromosomes, like, say, the “bright,” enduring ideas and concepts of those such as the Buddha, Christ, or Muhammad, are those that are replicated most, in succeeding generations, by other metaphysical chromosomes, other human brains.

The DNA structure of living cells has two sides to it, two chains made up of sugar, phosphate, and nitrogenous bases, each side being a mirror image of the other. The two chains are held together by the bases: adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine. Adenine always links up with thymine, and guanine always joins with cytosine. Similarly the human brain, as we have seen, also has two sides to it, the conscious processes of the left hemisphere and the subconscious processes of the right. As with DNA, these different aspects of the two hemispheres are inextricably linked to one another by “bases,” by our experiences in life, born of our sensations, emotions, perceptions, and conceptions.

This, then, forms the core of the ancients’ view of mankind’s evolution. Consciousness is an organic phenomenon, it develops according to the dictates of the Hermetic Code, and its natural inclination is to grow upward and outward, toward the stellar scale of existence, the nonlocal plane of light. So as consciousness evolves, the whole of the human race, like the pyramid builders of the ancient world, will be working together in states of ever-increasing harmony to build, in a higher dimension, a vastly more complex, macrocosmic structure. Theoretically such an entity would either possess, or would be evolving, a “brain” of its own, an immense “solar” helix that, in terms of scale and complexity, would be as far removed from the individual mesocosmic double helix—the human brain—as the mesocosmic double helix is from microcosmic DNA. If this is true, then we should expect to find the main components of this helical structure in the cosmos above.

We already have a clue as to the manner in which this awesome, extraterrestrial life form might evolve. This arises from a suggestion I made previously, which is that the creative processes in the metaphysical world of the human mind involve some kind of interplay between light and consciousness. This is to say that these two complementary yet quite distinct phenomena are the main components of conception/ creation, opposite sides, as it were, of the same metaphysical coin.

Excluding starlight, the source of all light in our solar system is the sun. And the source of all consciousness, as we know it, is the Earth. Thus we see that this macrocosmic structure, exactly like its micro- and mesocosmic counterparts, has two fundamental aspects to it.

In the case of the DNA molecule, its two main characteristics are its acidic and its alkaline properties. Its function is to take in data in the form of individual chemical bases, which it then transmutes “up” into the more resonant RNA components, finally transmitting them back out into the cytoplasm, the liquid membrane of the cell, for future synthesis. Similarly the human brain, with its conscious and subconscious characteristics, also takes in data—impressions, perceptions, and so forth—that it then transmutes into a kind of metaphysical “light,” subsequently radiated out into the world in the form of ideas, concepts, and the like.

So, with regard to the double helix in the sky, we might say that the sun is its “acidic,” or conscious aspect, and that life on planet Earth is the manifestation of its “alkaline” or subconscious aspect. Presumably the celestial double helix too would take in data of some kind, which it would then transmute up and radiate out, but exactly what form this might take is perhaps a question that only Adam Kadmon him-self could answer. However, we can speculate. If there are macrocosmic “bases” up there, they must be pretty big, and the biggest components of the solar system are the other planets and asteroids, all of which radiate some kind of magnetic influence out into the greater system.

Significantly, the ancient Greek pantheon of the gods, Zeus and his celestial family, was closely associated with the sun and the planets, each of which was regarded as being imbued with life. They also referred frequently to the “music of the spheres,” believing that the whole solar system is a hermetic creation. And hermetic, of course, is genetic, organic.

It so happens that this “music of the spheres” is not simply folk-lore, but fact. Rodney Collin noted that the major and minor conjunctions of the planets all “beat out” certain rhythms that can be numerically defined in a regular sequence of harmonic intervals developing in time. When he subsequently made a comparative table of these conjunctions, he discovered that the figures obtained, taken as vibrations, represent the relative values of the fundamental notes of the major scale.

As he says, the periodicity of a planet’s magnetic influence follows the time necessary for it to return to the same relative position of closest proximity to Earth. Collin takes as the point of departure of each planetary cycle the moment when the sun, the Earth, and the given planet are in a straight line. The cycle of that planet is thus the time that elapses before such a conjunction occurs again; it is the “interval” between the recurring moment when the three magnetic forces of sun, Earth, and the given planet act together in the same way.

Mercury and Venus repeat their maximum magnetic effect every eight years, the asteroids every nine, Jupiter twelve, Mars fifteen, and Saturn thirty. When these various rhythms are superimposed one sees an interesting sequence of harmonic intervals, each stage of which is marked by the major conjunctions of one or more planets. Every twenty-four years Jupiter completes two full cycles, Venus and Mercury, three each. The next significant stage occurs every twenty-seven years, at which the asteroids complete three full cycles. Every thirty years Mars completes two cycles and Saturn one. Every thirty-two years, Venus and Mercury each complete four cycles. Every thirty-six years, Jupiter runs through three cycles and the asteroids complete four. The next stage is forty years, during which Venus and Mercury each run through five cycles. Every forty-five years Mars completes three cycles and the asteroids five. Finally, every forty-eight years, Jupiter completes four cycles and Venus and Mercury each complete six full cycles. This sequence is constant, repeating itself endlessly.

We thus have a table of the numbers of years, beginning at 24, rising up through 27, 30, 36, 40, 45—and ending on 48, exactly double the value of the number we began with. This is significant, for not only does this series of numbers conform to the relative values of the notes of a major scale, exactly like an octave of music, it also expresses the ratio 1:2. Collin concludes: “And we are reminded of old stories that this same musical scale, ascribed by legend to the Pythagoreans, was invented by a special school of astronomers and physicists, to echo the music of the spheres.”

When we tried to envisage the “double helix” formed from the two hemispheres of the human brain as they interact along the line of time, we noted that the true form of the whole evolving phenomenon spans the life of the individual, from conception to death. The “double helix” of the solar system exists in an even greater dimension, and so in terms of size and duration of existence must be as far removed from the mesocosmic scale of the human brain as the human brain is from the microcosmic scale of the individual cell’s chromosomes. Consequently we must try to view the basic chromosomal structure of the “solar being” in relation to the cycles of the planets, and in particular of Earth. We might say, therefore, that this macrocosmic “chromosome” started to develop when Homo sapiens sapiens first began thinking in simple concepts and that it will continue until such time as consciousness on Earth ceases to exist. It is about one hundred thousand years or so since the Neanderthal or early Cro-Magnon first started mining for red ochre in southern Africa, not long after the beginning of the last ice age. It is believed that the ochre was for ritual rather than practical purposes, suggesting that the evolution of “consciousness” was well under way by then. So the solar being of mankind is at least a hundred millennia old.

Over this expanse of time, the helical patterns traced by the components of the solar system as it spins like a giant Catherine wheel through space form an immensely long and complex figure. Collin describes this four-dimensional structure in his own unique style:

The planetary paths, drawn out into manifold spirals of various tensions and diameters, have now become a series of iridescent sheaths veiling the white-hot thread of the sun, each shimmering with its own characteristic color and sheen, the whole meshed throughout by a gossamer-fine web woven from the eccentric paths of innumerable asteroids and comets, glowing with some sense of living warmth and ringing with an incredibly subtle and harmonious music.³

Collin did not identify this structure as a “chromosome” as such, but the reference made to its living warmth was certainly intended to be taken literally. As he says a little further on, “the solar-system is, in some way incomprehensible to us, a living body.”

The Greeks, as we have seen, shared much the same view, but they also believed that this immense, musically structured entity is a conscious being with a mind of its own. Presumably this would be a mind that, like ours, takes in external data—impressions of some kind— and out of them constructs the macrocosmic equivalent of concepts. Clearly the possible nature of such data is incomprehensible to us. If the body of the solar being is constructed from metaphysical “amino acids,” that is from our concepts coupled with light, then the “mind” of the entity would inevitably function with much higher, more rarefied energies, perhaps operating at velocities far greater than the speed of light. According to Special Relativity, of course, nothing can travel faster than light. Physicists have in the past tried to overcome this limitation by dreaming up a new kind of particle, a “tachyon,” a hypothetical entity, existing in a higher dimension, that travels back-ward in time at speeds greater than the velocity of light, but never below it. Theoretically the tachyon cannot exist, but even if it did, we might never know it, because any particles moving (backward in time) at such a phenomenal speed could never be detected by any known scientific means.

At any rate, if the solar “mind” is a reality, then there must be some form of energy sustaining it. And if light is the limiting factor in the mesocosm, then perhaps the limiting factor in the greater scale above is in some way directly related to it.

As it turns out, in the Hermetic Code we have a clue to the possible relationship between these two scales. The key number is 64, the number of amino-acid templates in a living cell, the number of hexagrams in the I Ching. Sixty-four is the square of the constant number 8—8 being the symbol of the octave, the fundamental component of pi, and the basic matrix of all creative processes.

Remember also that this number was closely associated with the Great Pyramid, which was itself closely associated not only with the phenomenon of light but also with the stars, with the stellar scale above. It seems to me very unlikely that the symbolism involved in the whole pyramid phenomenon should be accidental or arbitrary. The details are too precise for that. We have the Great Pyramid itself, “The Lights,” designed and constructed by the followers of the god of wisdom, one in a pantheon of eight gods, whose symbol was two entwined plumed serpents, and whose “Magic Square” embodies all the numbers from 1 to 64. Surely we are being told here that the key to transcendental evolution is the square of the constant, that the sacred metamorphosis from man to god described in the pyramid ritual represents the squaring of one’s possibilities. Possibly this is why the ancient names for the Great Pyramid are in the plural: Khuti, “The Lights,” in Egyptian and Urim middin; “Lights-measures” in Chaldee and Hebrew.

So, while modern science denies the possibility of superluminal (faster-than-light) motion, the ancients’ description of cosmic events strongly suggests that, in one way or another, it is an attainable reality. Of course the limitations imposed by Special Relativity refer to matter as we know it, the smallest components of which are sub-atomic or virtual wave/particles. However, the scale of materiality need not necessarily end with the wave/particle. Readers may recall that the physicist David Bohm’s research led him to conclude that consciousness itself is a form of matter. But if consciousness is a form of materiality, it is clearly one of an entirely different order than the kind we can detect or measure, and so may not be bound by the normal laws of physics.

Now there are, in fact, phenomena in existence, such as correlated photons, for example, the nonlocal connectedness of which produces in the observer the illusion that something passing between them is “moving” at speeds far greater even than the square of the constant velocity. We shall return to this question of nonlocal communication later, as I believe it may provide a mechanism by which information can be transferred across the entire universe, from one macrocosmic “organism” to another, in less time than it takes to blink.

For the moment, however, we can tentatively hold on to this idea: the value of the square of the speed of light may be the diffusion speed of the interactive “resonances” of the solar mind.

Now we must move on—always upward, of course—and continue the incredible journey first made by the serpent gods of wisdom.