I have revised and rewritten my hastily written comments on Sayer Ji’s essay which I linked yesterday to this post. Sorry to have dumped that entire 60+ essay on you—it was a “real trip” for sure, in the 60s sense of the word!
It relates in interesting ways to what I call “Genesia,” or better, Palingenesia (see Matthew 19:28ff). I use it as the name of my personal Blog: genesia.org, which you are welcome to visit, subscribe to, and share. I need to post there more, but there is a lot from the past.
I have sensed and wondered about the opening subject of this essay for decades, knowing in both head and heart that reductionism, for either consciousness, or the so-called “physical” forces, did not even come close to any explanatory understanding of the process of DNA workings. I have said often, “There is no coding in nature, “ but then knowing that this complex, amazing, unfathomable physical “architecture” is not all that is going on—at least viewed from a mechanistic viewpoint. Yet not wanting to leap to some “oh, something mysterious then happens,” as if it is external. Genesis 1 stuff—and in the Hebrew the poem is quite sublime. Read it in my Transparent English Version, it is stunning:
And ELOHIM said, “Let the land sprout the sprout, a plant seeding seed, a fruit tree making fruit, according to its type, its seed, within it, upon the land.” And it was thus. And the land made the sprout go out, a plant seeding seed according to its type, and a tree making fruit, its seed, within it, according to its type.
“And the land made the sprout go out…” Not some bolt from the blue or external force. Mysterious for sure, but very much in and of our world. And that is the wonder of it all.
Below is a 14 page PDF excerpt of the opening section of Sayer Ji’s 61 page (!) Substack essay titled “The Forest in the Acorn,” that directly discusses the phenomenon of the “seed” so common in biblical texts and especially in the teaching of Jesus.
Ji’s full essay includes discussions of Rudolf Steiner and his Atlantean civilizations ideas, cosmic seeding, aether, and much more, that is considered by most as controversial/fringe science, along with some of Sayer’s idea on diet, health, etc. So when I earlier posted the link to the entire essay, I left the impression that I might share some of these ideas.
My interest in this post is in the excerpt below, and its beautiful illustrations, particularly, the observations about DNA as a kind of blueprint—but also a “transceiver” of sorts, in reacting with its environment.
Many years ago David Bohm came to our University of Notre Dame campus for a visiting appointment and I got to know him a bit and we corresponded over the years. His 1980 book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order had just been published. I had read Arthur Koestler’s Ghost in the Machine, in the late 60s, and his Janus: A Summing Up had come out in 1978 and I remember staying up all night reading it from cover to cover. And Rupert Sheldrake’s A New Science of Life was published in 1981, to whom Sayer Ji refers in his extended essay. Even though Sheldrake’s work is often compared with older notions of collective memory, archetypes, and vitalism, his formulation of “morphic fields” is distinct from each of those traditions, also far as I understand it. And yes, I have tried to read Whitehead’s Process and Reality, in the light of Sheldrake’s more empirical approach.
These are all things I want to return to, along with the complete works of Jonathan Z. Smith and A.D. Nock, in my “retirement.”
Enjoy the Excerpt:
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