NINE
THE EVOLUTION CONTROVERSY
A cell’s life is controlled by the physical and energetic environment and not by its genes. Genes are simply molecular blueprints used in the construction of cells, tissues, and organs.
BRUCE LIPTON, THE BIOLOGY OF BELIEF
Do you believe that the extraordinary qualities of water we have discussed (for example, in chapter 3) could have developed through a mechanical, accidental process? We have proposed a somewhat heretical hypothesis—that water is the creator and “stage manager” of life, a key player in the process of evolution. It might, therefore, be pertinent to look briefly at the current debate about evolution.
EVOLUTIONARY THEORIES
Darwin’s theory of evolution rests on the assumption that life has evolved through a series of biological changes brought about by a combination of random mutations and natural selection. Those species that are able to adapt most successfully to changing conditions in their environment will supersede those less successful; in other words, “survival of the fittest.”
No serious student of science will deny that the evolution of species is a verifiable natural process. However, the enormous publicity given the 2009 bicentenary of Darwin’s birth demonstrated that an ideology can be built around one man’s work, no matter how many researchers before and particularly after have followed similar paths of inquiry. It also shows the way in which a pioneer’s zealous followers can distort a theory, making of it almost holy writ.1
Over a long period, the Darwinians say, one species gradually evolved into another. Sea creatures adapted to being amphibians, which became reptiles; reptiles evolved into birds, which metamorphosed into mammals. This theory has been taught as if it were a law for well over a century (and still is), in spite of the fact that it has never been validated.
The difficulty is that the fossil record, which is the most accepted form of proof, has not revealed the transitional organisms, the intermediate forms between major groups. There exist, for example, an abundance of fossils of early primates, hominids, Neanderthals, and Homo sapiens, but no definitive link has been found between the ape and Man. The same problem appears with plants: no intermediate fossils have been found between primitive nonflowering plants and the sudden appearance of flowering plants. Many species seem to have just appeared, without apparent links to earlier species. This is a real conundrum—a mystery. Many scientists don’t like mysteries!
There is also a problem with the other cornerstone of Darwin’s theory, and it concerns genetic mutation. Geneticists have long accepted that mutations are usually mistakes that result from DNA failing to replicate correct information. Natural selection as a process for raising quality and effectiveness would need a mechanism much more reliable and predictable than genetic mutation based on chance.
There is some evidence that Charles Darwin was rather less dogmatic than many of his subsequent followers, particularly the neo-Darwinists. He was well aware of the shortcomings of his theory and described the origin of flowering plants as “an abominable mystery.” He observed, “The number of intermediate varieties that formerly existed on earth must be truly enormous. Why, then, is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps is the most obvious and gravest objection that can be urged against my theory.”2
Another problem for his theory is that it was proposed when the prevailing theory of geological change was uniformitarianism—that geological change is very slow, a theory that, due to Darwin’s influence, some scholars still doggedly embrace—which would allow for gradual mutation of species. However, most geologists now accept that the big changes happen cataclysmically (the catastrophism theory), bringing with them mass extinctions of species followed by the sudden appearance of something completely new, at a higher order of complexity.
The crux of the difficulty for evolutionary theory lies in the discovery of the enormous complexity of organic processes, and particularly in the intricately linked interdependencies of biodiversity. It is difficult to believe that this miracle of vibrant life working in complete synergy could have evolved in a random manner or by chance.
Nevertheless, Darwin’s theory of evolution is a pivotal part of the current scientific orthodoxy of reductionism, which sees Nature’s processes as mechanical, rather than organic. To this day, a scientist who challenges it risks his career.
It is evident that a natural process of evolution of species does take place. Outside scientific circles, there is little awareness about the problems associated with the Darwinian theory. Many have heard about the war between creationists and evolutionists as a replay of the battle between religion and science, which the Scopes trial brought into sharp focus nearly a century ago.*28
It may not be a coincidence that great advances in evolutionary complexity have coincided with great periods of Earth restlessness—the four principal mountain-building movements. New species suddenly appeared, without precedent. How this could have occurred is an enigma. You can take your pick from competing theories: happenstance, intelligent design, divine intervention, extraterrestrial genetic experiments, or purposeful evolution.
What I am proposing here is not creationism in disguise, but an initiative of the intelligence of Nature in her search for greater complexity, biodiversity, and “consciousness” in life-forms. With each burst of new life-forms, a stage higher than the last is attained in terms of finer energy or consciousness. I see this form of evolution as spontaneous steps emerging out of a catastrophic situation initiated by Earth herself in the process of her evolution—sweeping away the old forms, so that something more meaningful can develop. In chapter 12 we suggest that chaos is the prior requirement for a positive energy shift. We sometimes hear the term “divine chaos” used to describe our present uncertain times.
Evolution needs an agent to apply the evolutionary imperative to the natural order. This agent has to be water, because only water has the sensitivity; can produce the templates, forms, and patterns; and can convey consciousness to organisms (see chapter 14).
Most natural history films aired on television give the impression that competition between species is the engine of evolution. However, if natural systems are perceived organically, then it soon becomes apparent that cooperation between species is more of the norm than competition. Lynn Margulis, biologist and cofounder of the Gaia hypothesis, insists that the survival of any environmentally interdependent organism shows that cooperation or symbiosis is far more important for evolution than is competition. This is more of a “quantum” idea than a reductionist one.
THE GENETIC CHALLENGE TO NEO-DARWINISM
Jean Baptiste de Lamarck (1744–1829) anticipated Charles Darwin’s (1809–1882) theory of natural selection by fifty years. Darwin accepted Lamarck’s belief that acquired characteristics could be inherited, but modern neo-Darwinists refuse to acknowledge any Larmarckian influence, insisting that natural selection is completely random in Nature.
In a curious way, scientific and religious fundamentalism have much in common.3 After James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded their Nobel prize for solving the mechanism of DNA, Crick issued a “central dogma” of molecular biology, which stated that organisms are hardwired in their genetic structure and that the environment and life experiences have little effect on the gene.
This is closely related to the neo-Darwinian theory that claims natural selection favors the strong genes of the powerful by making them more prolific, while the weak genes of the dispossessed are weeded out. These claims, which support the status quo and the rich, carry more than a hint of eugenics.
Toward the end of his life Darwin had reservations, which his followers seem to be unwilling to acknowledge, about the genes and DNA within the cells controlling our biology. He acknowledged, “When I wrote the Origin, and for some years afterwards, I could find little good evidence of the direct action of the environment; now there is a large body of evidence.”4
EPIGENETICS
The conventional concept of genetic theory—genetic determinism—holds that all characteristics are passed down by one’s genes and that we cannot pass on any influences experienced in our lifetime. That has now been challenged by the discipline of epigenetics (outside genetics), which argues that environmental influences are more important than genes. The argument is known as “nature versus nurture.”
Biochemistry and medicine have been more or less untouched by the revolution of the past one hundred years, which has transformed the physicist’s worldview from reductionism to one of interconnections. Western medicine, still dominated by deterministic principles, treats symptoms as if they are unrelated to other parts of the organism.
Pioneers of the new biology have recognized the extraordinary damage inflicted on the long-term health of the general population as a direct result of these misunderstandings, and particularly the growth of iatrogenic illnesses (inadvertently caused by physicians), which were reported in 2001 as the biggest single source of death in the United States.5 It is time for an organically based system of treatment, which would save many lives and enormous costs.*29
The real causes of illness are social and environmental, and there is an urgent need to correct the mistaken dogma that our genes control our biology. The mainstream model in which genes determine health and well-being is incorrect. Rather, a person’s thoughts and attitude, and particularly early upbringing, primarily determine health.
At about the time the Human Genome Project was making headlines in the 1980s, a group of scientists initiated the new field of epigenetics, which has profoundly changed our understanding of how life is controlled. It is the science of the way in which environmental signals select, modify, and regulate gene activity. In the 1990s, epigenetic research established that the DNA blueprints transmitted by our genes are not fixed at birth. The genes are constantly being modified by external influences (quality of nutrition, pollutants, social rituals, sexual cues) and by our inner environment (emotions, biochemical and mental processes, sense of the spiritual, and so on, even in the womb) without affecting the basic blueprint.
The most controversial finding was that our beliefs affect our genes, and therefore, our health. We all grow up with scripts or teachings about survival. In a nurturing environment these can be good and helpful, but a dysfunctional family life can produce damaging scripts. We are all, usually as children, subjected to criticism in our upbringing and education, which generates self-limiting messages that may damage our prospects and our health. The hope is that at some point we may be motivated to reject our false beliefs and reclaim our real potential.
There is a therapy known as Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) that works on the principle that a disruption of the body’s energy system caused by trauma or negative emotions can be corrected by tapping with the fingertips on specific acupuncture points, with appropriate visualization. Many of these points are on water meridians, which is relevant to our theme, because water is the medium of memory and association.
EFT practitioners believe they are communicating with cellular intelligence on a holistic level, rather than in the more limited mental mode. It has long been recognized that the body records every experience, storing memories in the morphic fields, not the brain. With the advent of epigenetics it is now clear that the cells have an overall intelligence and wisdom that can be accessed through the water meridian.
The help of a practitioner is advised for deeper questions, but EFT is a technique that can be self-administered and used in an immediate situation, such as difficulty getting to sleep, or getting over a block about learning a new language. It can also be effective for conditions that may not seem to have an emotional trigger, such as arteriosclerosis. It has implications for radical understanding of the individual human dilemma that most therapies don’t easily reach.6 We can change our lives through having a positive attitude and thoughts.
Epigenetics has created a profound shift in thinking about the human predicament. The old biology sees the human individual as a victim limited by a specific genetic situation. The new biology emphasizes self-empowerment and optimizing innate gifts, validating principles of the human potential movement of the 1970s.
THE CELLS
Single-celled organisms appeared six hundred million years after Earth’s formation. Two and three-quarter billion years later they evolved into multicellular organisms that would eventually contain up to trillions in number.
The cell is an intelligent entity that can survive on its own. Researcher Bruce Lipton claims that cells show intention and purpose when they actively seek environments that support their survival and avoid hostile ones.*30 They are capable of learning through these environmental experiences and of creating an antibody blueprint for a specific virus (for example, measles). They pass on their environmental experience to their offspring, who retain the genetic “memory” of its antibody protein developed to cope with an invading virus.
Cell biology is an excellent example of the holistic principle of fractals, one of the principal techniques for evolutionary advance. A fractal is a design or pattern repeating itself at different magnitudes. The “primitive” single-cell organism was the template for the evolution of highly complex evolved organisms of trillions of cells, only there is specialization of function to optimize efficiency and survival.
The more that cells are in touch with their environment, the better the organism’s chances of survival. Epigenetics shows that genes are the physical (biochemical) memory of an organism’s learned experience. In the new biology, evolution becomes survival of the fittest group, not the individual (cooperation, not competition). While DNA is the blueprint of a person’s potentialities (perhaps analogous to a birth chart?), the genes are the material the organism has to work with, which are modified by experience (see box).
Your Birth Chart and Your DNA Are Only Blueprints
The comparison of DNA with a birth chart is apposite. Many (for instance, the tabloid newspapers) regard your sun sign (and other aspects of your chart) deterministically, as “old biology” does the DNA. To the serious astrologer, however, the birth chart is a blueprint that can be transcended, in the same way that epigenetics shows how the genetic templates of DNA can be transcended.
Although humans are made up of trillions of cells, there is no function in our bodies that is not already expressed in a single cell; each cell has the functional equivalent of nervous, digestive, respiratory, excretory, endocrine, muscle, skeletal, circulatory, skin, reproductive, and even immune systems.
Epigenetics recognizes two mechanisms by which organisms pass on hereditary information: nature (through the genes) and nurture (epigenetic). If you focus only on blueprints (the old biology), environment seems totally irrelevant.
Old Biology versus New Biology
Old Biology
New Biology
The cell membrane (one-millionth of a millimeter thick and discovered in the 1950s with the electron microscope), a three-layered skin holding cytoplasm together, is the cell’s “brain” (with a function similar to that of a silicone chip with its memory—“a liquid crystal semiconductor with gates and channels”). The nucleus is not the cell’s brain (old biology).
Embedded in the hydrophobic middle layer are receptors (IMPs, or integral membrane proteins)—the equivalent of sensory nerves—that monitor specific external and internal signals; and effectors—the equivalent of action-generating motor nerves—that resonate to specific vibrational frequencies or by shape and electric charge locking on to a histamine molecule, for example. As on a modern computer, IMPs are programmable from outside; they are effectively a biocomputer.
I believe this is a similar water signal mechanism to that of Cleve Backster’s biocommunication experiments. Mae-Wan Ho points out that this is because of the innate coherence of the organism, both within and without, which makes it responsive to everything around it.7
It’s not the quality of the human genetic makeup but the experience of the whole organism that can then be passed on to successive generations, usually selective within the same sex. In another epigenetics study, groundbreaking research at the Institute of Child Health, University College, London, demonstrated how young boys’ experiences could affect not only their own health in later life but also the health of their sons and grandsons.8
INTELLIGENT DESIGN OR PURPOSEFUL EVOLUTION?
The biblical creationists’ simplistic belief in the origins of life discourages credibility. The intelligent design theory, a trend in American Christian education with creationist roots, claims that life somehow assembled itself out of organic molecules.
Another theory, which has yet to be elaborated upon, is that knowledge of edible grains was somehow passed from an earlier, developed-but-forgotten civilization. A more recent theory, the interventionist theory, insists that life-forms were introduced by extraterrestrial civilizations; needless to say, this theory has no orthodox support.
Linked to the catastrophism position—and perhaps the most interesting—is the theory of continuous creation, which is in direct opposition to the now generally accepted big bang theory; it satisfies religious groups that believe in a single primordial act of creation by God. This new theory is proposed by physicist Paul LaViolette, who believes that the purpose of the relatively rare cosmic event of the galactic superwave caused by massive explosions at the galactic core (see below) is to create matter from the etheric flux that invisibly pervades the entire universe.9
The last occurrence of such explosions may have been about fifteen thousand years ago. The Vostock ice cores in Antarctica show a peak of cosmic radiation and a sharp increase in temperature at that time. LaViolette claims that this actual event could account for the classical Greek writer Ovid’s description of a scorched earth phenomenon as well as for some eighty different indigenous societies’ flood myths.
Why don’t the more realistic theories of evolution get attention? Probably because the emotional polarization between the two extremes of neo-Darwinism and creationism creates a din that drowns out more moderate concepts. The way people hold to one point of view or another is both unscientific and irrational. There is much evidence for evolution, and the possibility of a creation plan is also difficult to completely discount. What is so wrong about being openminded and allowing room for both? Taking a dogmatic position does not help to reveal the truth.
The concept of an etheric substratum from which matter is created, which originated in Hindu metaphysics, has attracted considerable scientific credence over the years. It was more recently revived by the late physicist David Bohm, who saw the universe as part of something far vaster, ineffable, and essentially conscious.
My proposal holds a similar view of consciousness at all levels of life, but seen at the earth rather than the cosmic level, as a mechanism of intelligent Nature searching for greater complexity, biodiversity, and consciousness in life-forms. The quantum, or etheric, field may be seen as the ground of consciousness, with water as the vehicle for transmission and communication.
The evidence shows that, with each burst of new life-forms, a stage higher than the last was attained in terms of complexity and biodiversity. The great evolutionary advances always seemed to follow cataclysms of some kind I see this form of evolution as spontaneous steps emerging out of a catastrophic situation initiated by Earth herself in the process of her evolution, a theory quite dissimilar to any of those described above. We might call it “purposeful evolution.”
CONSCIOUSNESS, MEANING, AND COHERENCE
Some may object to the concept of consciousness being introduced into evolutionary theory, but I believe it’s as reasonable as part of the increased complexity and interconnectedness that evolution presents—consciousness defined as “a level of perception of relatedness on a hierarchical scale.” It is the companion of spiritual meaning favored by those who take the wider worldview. Some of the scientific pioneers, such as Albert Einstein, Sir James Jeans, or Carl Gustav Jung, espoused a spiritual worldview.
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho equates the idea of organic coherence with the notion of consciousness.
Quantum coherent organisms invariably become entangled with one another. A quantum world is a world of universal mutual entanglement, the prerequisite for universal love and ethics. Because we are all entangled, and each being is implicit in every other, the best way to benefit oneself is to benefit the other. That’s why we can really love our neighbour as ourselves. It is heartfelt and sincere. We are ethical and care about our neighbours and all of creation, because they are literally as dear to us as our own self.10
A TELEOLOGICAL DISCUSSION
In recent years there has been a rapprochement between esoteric theories of the evolution of life and some more holistic scientific ideas. Quantum physics entertains the possibility of unifying concepts, going so far as to suggest a sense of purpose in evolution. Earth has been empowered with a level of intelligence through creation myths and Eastern esotericism, and this has been mirrored by contemporary scientists, such as James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis. Their Gaia hypothesis (1979) holds that the biosphere is a self-regulating entity that keeps the environment constant and comfortable for living organisms. (As a geochemist, Lovelock’s principal concern was the constitution and homoeostasis of the atmosphere, rather than the origin and evolution of life itself.)11
Taking the self-regulating concept of Earth a step further brings up the theory of our planet as an intelligent organism on its own evolutionary path, with Nature’s evolution as a dependent part of the system. At this point there enters a spiritual dimension. In esoteric and spiritual traditions, Nature is called “the mirror of the divine,” which could also be identified as a level of being of a more evolved Earth, manifesting complexities of life-forms in response to Earth’s own evolution. The evolutionary imperative of Nature in these traditions seems to be toward greater complexity and biodiversity and toward higher levels of purpose.
WATER AND EVOLUTION
We have seen how evolution and biodiversity are dependent on water and how water’s complexity changes with the demand of evolutionary blueprints. In the previous chapter we saw that water is responsible for driving climate change. It is clear that future prospects for life on this planet will depend on water. We would do well to try to communicate with water’s consciousness, for this might give us clues about our options for the future.
We have, up to this point, been reviewing the role of water as it is generally understood by mainstream science. In the next chapter we’ll consider the contribution that Viktor Schauberger, a pioneer of the science of Nature, has made in opening up science to a more holistic view of how Nature works, for in part 2 we shall be discussing new insights about water as the source of life.
The majority believes that everything hard to comprehend must be very profound. This is incorrect. What is hard to understand is what is immature, unclear, and often false. The highest wisdom is simple and passes through the brain directly into the heart.
VIKTOR SCHAUBERGER