
The term "junk DNA" has never sat right with me. Even way back when I considered myself to be a hard-headed materialist I felt that it seemed too inefficient to have the majority of our genetic code to be useless junk. I always believed it all came about through mutations selected by a favorable environment with old genetic information eventually becoming redundant, dromant and unused...
But then I stumbled upon that term "junk DNA" again after an eye-opening psychedelic experience and I had to laugh at it because it seemed so absurd in light of my immediate experience with people and my direct environment(al feedback). Now what could a psychedelic experience have to do with junk DNA? It was a primer to rethink it all which I would like to share here.
You see, on a good psychedelic experience - especially with other people on similar states in a high-input environment like a psychedelic dancefloor - there are certain notions that lose a lot of weight while others that have never gotten much attention outright beg to be noticed. One of the latter is the sense that everything fits perfectly, ALWAYS. Nothing is ever out of place and every little aspect, individual, behavior, color, action, impression and expression is always the manifested "result" of everything there is, crystalized to that specific point in space and time, to be witnessed by somebody - me in that case.
Even things I normally considered to be random, artificial or wrong had the same quality. It was perfect. Including all the things we normally consider "wrong" or out of place.
If I were to give you an analogy, a symbol that can help relay that sense, it would be like looking at a giant, mysterious, incomprehensible machine that has infinitely many moving parts - all interlocking into this one amazing mechanism where even the slightest absence of one tiny part would make the whole thing stop working. You can see certain parts changing at times, then other parts change but due to the nature of the machine the thing readjusts itself with ease and in an instance - almost as if this change of one of its part at a concrete moment during operation was part of the whole design to begin with. There was no redundance to speak of, rather everything was integral to the whole which reflected all the parts. Kinda like a symphony consisting of all the individual voices that play their part, only changing keys all the time and still producing a song that is amazing.
It's really a spiritual observation that begs to be interpreted and matter really matters little in this view, as anything you can see and feel, know and sense is energy in one form or another: The caring human being looking you in the eye as well as the piece of plastic lying on the ground we normally disregard as mere "stuff".
I vow to say there were moments on these states where everything made perfect sense and all the common ego judgments of parts were lovingly overwritten (or rather: demasked and made transparent) into what felt like an ancient recognition of the core of the totality.
Psychonauts can certainly relate to this notion, but it is based on firsthand experience, not on hear-say.
I feel biology is really "just" a representation of information in the field, a manifestation of the underlying energetic currents that make up the whole of existence, splitting itself into separately recognizable "parts" that really are no parts at all. If you are curious what I mean by this you may want to read up on "Questioning the Concept of Causality | Go On, Pick Your Favorite Reason"...
And so we get to DNA. What does this have to do with DNA and what about all that "useless junk DNA" we allegedly carry around with us as part of our ancient biological history? Is it really all just leftovers of code that was once essential? I don't presume to know of course, but I do want to explore this a bit further in part 2 with how I see it currently.
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