Attracting Abundance
- 109 -
The Law
Belief - XXI
Most of the biologists of earlier 20th century, specially up to the middle of 20th century were brought up under the stipulations that originated from Darwin, one of the greatest scientists of the 19th century. The 1859 book by Darwin - The Origin of Species - was the final word on the evolution of species. The Darwinian theory stipulated that the children inherit the traits from their parents. In essence, the hereditary factor determines the quality an individual's life.
The early decades of 20th century saw a quantum jump in the research into the human anatomy at a microscopic level. Development of powerful microscopes enabled the biologists to dismantle the human anatomy to molecular levels. In 1953, the structure of DNA was discovered. Long before that it was already found that every human cell has 46 chromosomes, half of which come from each of the parents. The discovery of the structure of DNA and the assumptions associated with it further consolidated the Darwinian concept of hereditary determination. Since half of the DNA blueprint comes from father and another half from the mother, it was obvious that the life of any individual will be determined by the characters of lives of mother and father. It was so obvious. The mechanism by which DNA drives the biological life became the subject of all research, text books and peripheral books.
In all ages, there has been a breed of people who have had reasons to go against the conventions accepted by the majority. This breed of people have shown extra-ordinary courage to do so, even at great personal cost. Had they not done so, earth would have remained a flat entity and one could have fallen off it after tipping over the edge and the sun would have continued to orbit around earth. A similar breed of biologist existed who challenged the Darwinian concept that the character of a person is determined by genes inherited from the parents. The overwhelming focus on the conventional genetic mechanism forced the work of the contrarian biologists to the background.
At first it was thought that the DNA was responsible for passing down the physical traits from parents to the child. This thinking was subsequently upgraded to include all behaviors and emotional traits. There are about 25,000 genes in a DNA which cover all facets of life. So, if parents live a life of conflict and depression, it means that their relevant genes are coded to ensure that behavior, and it also means the the child is destined to inherit similar traits and live a similar life. This, essentially, is a derivation from the conclusion that genes control life. This conclusion is believed by the majority of population, thanks to the early teaching given to the students by their text books, thanks to the peripheral literature available in the form of popular books and internet on genetics and thanks to more and more research work trying to establish the concept.
The publicity of contrarian research work, which showed direction towards an individual's control on his destiny, remained subdued as these were found to be blasphemous and therefore untouchable by the mass media resources like text books, seminars etc. they found some exposure in the internet at later years, but the credibility of their findings was also considered as suspect. The research publications on the contrarian view did not find much readership, due to the technical jargon associated with these publications, for that matter with any research publication. It is estimated that a research publication finds an average readership of seven persons only.
The "inheritance" concept was upheld by conventional biologists, who had an overwhelming majority in their favor, even after they understood the fact that genes can not act on their own and that genes get activated pursuant to some stimulus from their micro environment. This was a quicksand area for the followers of Darwinism. So, this was swept under the carpet.
It is to the credit to the contrarian scientists, that they persevered with their research work. With research after research, starting in mid seventies, they tried to establish that we not genetically driven but driven by our environment as the genes get activated by the environment and act differently to different stimulus from the environment. An individual, when he looks at the mirror or when others see him, appears to be a single entity. In reality, an individual is a package of cells, nothing else but cells - 50 trillions of them. Our cells have evolved a strategy for living in a commune, dividing themselves in working groups an assigning different work to different groups. It is this close co-ordination between the cells that gives the appearance that an individual functions like a single entity. An individual is therefore is a collective character of all cells. And therefore, as the cell acts as per environment so does the individual respond to the environment. It is the environment which controls the response of the individual and the character or quality of his life. Thanks to the persistence of the rebel biologists that epigenetics has become a major area of research now.
Note: Epigenetics is the study of molecular mechanism by which environment effects gene activity. Certain circumstances in life can cause genes to be silenced or expressed over time. In other words, they can be turned off (becoming dormant) or turned on (becoming active). What you eat, where you live, who you interact with, when you sleep, how you exercise, even aging – all of these can eventually cause chemical modifications around the genes that will turn those genes on or off over time.
If you consider DNA sequence as the text of an instruction manual that explains how to make a human body, epigenetics is as if someone has taken a pack of highlighters and use different colors to mark different parts of the text. For example someone might use a pink highlighter to mark the most important parts to be read, and a blue marker to mark those portions of the test which need no be read. There are different types of epigenetic marks, and each one tells the proteins in the cell to read that part of DNA in a particular way.
Even though every cell in the body has the same DNA sequence, the text has different patterns of highlighting in different types of cell - a liver cell doesn't follow the same parts of instruction manual as a brain cell. The important part is that the marks are not fixed as a DNA sequence: some of them can change throughout your lifetime, and in response to outside influence. Some can even be inherited.
Any outside stimulus that can be detected by the body has the potential to cause epigenetic modification.
How does such a change in understanding the impact of genetic determination effect us? In one sentence, the effect is huge. The contrarian understanding that we are controlled by the environment, which is being backed up be cutting edge research, puts the steering wheel of our destiny squarely in our hands. Because our environment is a sum total of our beliefs.
In the following posts, we will look into the reasons for arriving at the concept of environmental determination, which to a large extent is influenced by the beliefs that we hold, of the character of our lives. I will be drawing reference from a good number of research papers but will try to explain the research conclusions in simple form. I am also hopeful that my preceding dozen and half posts on cellular biology would have made you broadly conversant with the cells.
Namaste
Till we meet again
Prabir
At first it was thought that the DNA was responsible for passing down the physical traits from parents to the child. This thinking was subsequently upgraded to include all behaviors and emotional traits. There are about 25,000 genes in a DNA which cover all facets of life. So, if parents live a life of conflict and depression, it means that their relevant genes are coded to ensure that behavior, and it also means the the child is destined to inherit similar traits and live a similar life. This, essentially, is a derivation from the conclusion that genes control life. This conclusion is believed by the majority of population, thanks to the early teaching given to the students by their text books, thanks to the peripheral literature available in the form of popular books and internet on genetics and thanks to more and more research work trying to establish the concept.
The publicity of contrarian research work, which showed direction towards an individual's control on his destiny, remained subdued as these were found to be blasphemous and therefore untouchable by the mass media resources like text books, seminars etc. they found some exposure in the internet at later years, but the credibility of their findings was also considered as suspect. The research publications on the contrarian view did not find much readership, due to the technical jargon associated with these publications, for that matter with any research publication. It is estimated that a research publication finds an average readership of seven persons only.
The "inheritance" concept was upheld by conventional biologists, who had an overwhelming majority in their favor, even after they understood the fact that genes can not act on their own and that genes get activated pursuant to some stimulus from their micro environment. This was a quicksand area for the followers of Darwinism. So, this was swept under the carpet.
It is to the credit to the contrarian scientists, that they persevered with their research work. With research after research, starting in mid seventies, they tried to establish that we not genetically driven but driven by our environment as the genes get activated by the environment and act differently to different stimulus from the environment. An individual, when he looks at the mirror or when others see him, appears to be a single entity. In reality, an individual is a package of cells, nothing else but cells - 50 trillions of them. Our cells have evolved a strategy for living in a commune, dividing themselves in working groups an assigning different work to different groups. It is this close co-ordination between the cells that gives the appearance that an individual functions like a single entity. An individual is therefore is a collective character of all cells. And therefore, as the cell acts as per environment so does the individual respond to the environment. It is the environment which controls the response of the individual and the character or quality of his life. Thanks to the persistence of the rebel biologists that epigenetics has become a major area of research now.
Note: Epigenetics is the study of molecular mechanism by which environment effects gene activity. Certain circumstances in life can cause genes to be silenced or expressed over time. In other words, they can be turned off (becoming dormant) or turned on (becoming active). What you eat, where you live, who you interact with, when you sleep, how you exercise, even aging – all of these can eventually cause chemical modifications around the genes that will turn those genes on or off over time.
If you consider DNA sequence as the text of an instruction manual that explains how to make a human body, epigenetics is as if someone has taken a pack of highlighters and use different colors to mark different parts of the text. For example someone might use a pink highlighter to mark the most important parts to be read, and a blue marker to mark those portions of the test which need no be read. There are different types of epigenetic marks, and each one tells the proteins in the cell to read that part of DNA in a particular way.
Even though every cell in the body has the same DNA sequence, the text has different patterns of highlighting in different types of cell - a liver cell doesn't follow the same parts of instruction manual as a brain cell. The important part is that the marks are not fixed as a DNA sequence: some of them can change throughout your lifetime, and in response to outside influence. Some can even be inherited.
Any outside stimulus that can be detected by the body has the potential to cause epigenetic modification.
How does such a change in understanding the impact of genetic determination effect us? In one sentence, the effect is huge. The contrarian understanding that we are controlled by the environment, which is being backed up be cutting edge research, puts the steering wheel of our destiny squarely in our hands. Because our environment is a sum total of our beliefs.
In the following posts, we will look into the reasons for arriving at the concept of environmental determination, which to a large extent is influenced by the beliefs that we hold, of the character of our lives. I will be drawing reference from a good number of research papers but will try to explain the research conclusions in simple form. I am also hopeful that my preceding dozen and half posts on cellular biology would have made you broadly conversant with the cells.
Namaste
Till we meet again
Prabir
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