Materialists love to KNOW FOR A FACT that memory is a purely physio-chemical experience created and retained by the grey matter in our heads. They love to do this despite that they actually have no method of proving that it is so. In fact, it seems that we head ever further down the much less comfortable, at-least-nearly-metaphysical route of determining that memory is, while perhaps still physical, holographically stored in DNA.An opening run-in with the concept came, for me, from Terence & Dennis McKenna’s work The Invisible Landscape, summarized here.
In the pithy, science-heavy, wide-ranging piece, the McKennas consider whether or not use of psychedelics might confer a transitory access to memory stored within our DNA itself. They posit that the harmines might oscillate at such a frequency that the DNA in our cells actually unzips, allows knowledge to flood through, and then rezips itself. This, they propose, could be why people have similar experiences, why some of those experiences seem to hail non-locally, and why veritable yet previously unknown information is often endowed upon the user. The theory is nearly untestable, though they do their best to not only present what evidence they can, but also to explain the mechanisms possibly at play, physio-chemically.
More grounded and safe is the studies done on planarian worms. Seemingly inexplicably, planarian worms keep memories even though they have nothing that could even resemble a brain, as far as humans are concerned. What they do have of a nervous system, however, is condensed within their heads. So, scientists removed the head tissue from planarian worms in an effort to see what might be retained while the worms themselves were essentially destroyed. What they found “cant’ be explained”.
The specific worms in question had previously been trained to tolerate light and open spaces, something that most planarian worms inherently shun. Though planarian worms regrow portions of their body when lost due to a high level of pluripotent stem cells in their bodies, when their brains are lost, they should regrow their new nervous systems from scratch; utterly reborn anew. However, these worms, upon regrowth, showed the acceptance of light and open spaces just as their previous incarnations had.To materialists, the results are meaningless outside of what I have described above. All they can say is that “more research must be done” in order to determine what the cause of the retention of memory is and where the memory is stored while the head is removed. However, to the open-minded who question the validity of the history of materialism, it is an easy leap to make to say that either the nervous system or some other mechanism is storing memory holographically, outside of the brain.
Even more provoking are the studies done on the descendents of Holocaust survivors. In this study, scientists studied 32 men and women kept in concentration camps in Germany during WWII. They also analyzed the participant’s children, specifically their likelihood of stress disorders. The children were more likely to develop stress disorders, especially when compared with the children of Jewish men and women living outside of Europe during the war. Additionally, the genetic markers of the children were different.The highlight of the study, as far as the scientists involved were concerned, was that epigenetic theory’s acceptance was furthered. Epigenetics propose that environmental factors can change not the genes of a person but the reading and encoding of genetics by their offspring. It is a sort of shortcut method of saying that one’s experiences in life can affect their children. The layman’s way of considering this might be to consider that a person’s emotions and experiences directly impact their children, even if they are unborn at the time of experience. However, when I look at the accumulated data shown here, it seems likely that memory is in fact stored in our DNA holographically and, while we perhaps cannot access it directly, on a conscious level, perhaps we are capable of accessing the data.
It is possible that we can access this information subconsciously and, perhaps more directly, while under the influence of psychadelic harmine compounds. The McKenna brothers explained the process fully in The Invisible Landscape 40 years ago…in their genius’ view, memory is fractal, holographic, in nature. The core of memory is stored in DNA, the one part of us that continues on throughout physical time, indefinitely. All of our ancestors, reaching back to the beginning of our species and likely beyond, could have stored their experience, their knowledge, their understanding, in such a way that we literally have it within us at all times, forever. And, concurrently, all of our accumulated experiences could be sent on to our own descendents, on into infinity.
Choose your experiences wisely, friends.