The Dhārmika Gene

In the beginning, there was nothing.

A great explosion ripped across this nothingness. In an unimaginably fleeting moment of time, space mushroomed out. Combinations of quarks and bosons permuted themselves into protons, neutrons and electrons. Time was still an infant, but in its infancy arose rules to govern interactions between these newborn entities. Nuclear forces strong and weak, to bind together particles infinitesimally small. Gravitation at large, to keep in bondage these particles when they combined into bodies hefty. Physics was born.

Time settled into position, an arrow that would forever hence point in one direction. This was change. It was motion. Things could now come into and ripple out of being. The protons, electrons and neutrons bonded into things that would eons later be distinguished as oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and whatnot. These group into larger compounds and unimaginably large Energy Generators, or stars. Chemistry arrived in earnest. High on the power that gravitation gave to them, the Generators trapped rocks into orbit around themselves, and spiraled around dense cores to create galaxies. And they provided Time with a companion- Light. This companion was ridiculously fast, even Time could not keep up. The inflation continued, the Big Bang still banging.

And everything wanted in on the action. Those rocks trapped in stellar-orbit considered joining the fray. They spewed lava onto their surfaces, clouded methane and other gases in their atmospheres, even crashed into each other at times in the excitement of it all. Chemical soups contained in them were thrashed here and there, molecules that hitherto knew a limited set of permutations found creative new ways to dance together. Their dance created new chemistries, and at least one among infinite such rocks emerged a whole new entity. Wrapped in membrane, frothing with soup, it was able to self-replicate- something even those gargantuan Energy Generators hadn’t figured out how to do. A self-replicating frenzy was unleashed, membranes splitting into membranes one after the other such that soon enough the entire soup was populated by the replicators. And thus came into being Biology. The Big Bang now banged with Life. At least on one rock. Earth, we call it.

Time continued its futile chase of Light, forever progressing along on its uni-directional arrow. How long? We delay that question, for the notions of year, million, billion- these awaited their formulators. Chemistry, Physics and Biology converged on Earth, all excited by the developments unleashed by the Replicators. New ways of replication were innovated. By what/whom? We don’t ask that, they just were. The universe enjoyed this frenzy of innovation, deriving from it a testing ground for one of its most special Laws of Nature- Selection. The Energy Generators, the plasma clouds, the galaxies and nebulae- they could be selected too. But they were slow and non-creative, following prescribed paths with nary an innovation to be found. Sure, there were spectacular supernovae and such, time to time. But they yielded anti-climactic white dwarves or implacably mysterious black holes- the universe got little from that. These replicating membranes on the one rock at least though, ah they were interesting. They made quick work of the arrow of Time, and soon those chemical soups had converted themselves into creepies and crawlies- lifeforms proper. The universe smiled, and settled in to observe what would emerge from this convergence of Time, Selection and the Laws of Nature.

The creepies and crawlies were even more innovative than their membranous predecessors. They branched into countless streams, each a Selective Avenue for the universe to pick from. Some branches were relegated back to nothingness (wherever that was). Others received the beatitude of Time to continue innovating. Branch upon branch, generation by generation, they came to mimic, in their own way, the gargantuan being of the Energy Generators. They deservingly received a commensurate name- Dinosaurs- to evoke the largeness of their being. But the universe is a fickle steward, and it caters to its own whims. It had seen enough of what this rock called Earth was up to, and decided that something new, something different was called for. A deathbringer of a rock it sent hurling at Earth, and came a day when the dinosaurs looked to the skies for the last time.

Once again this poor rock spewed lava out the chutes on its surface. Once again clouds of gas surrounded it with darkness. Life came to understand the finality of its being- Death. And like Time was forever fated to chase its companion, Light, life was forever to be followed by Death. It froze innovation in many branches of life, some membranous self-replicators decided it was best to forever nest in the craters of chemical vents than to emerge innovatively on the surface. Others learnt from the fate of the dinosaurs and concluded the futility of such trajectories. That would have been the end of it all, but a tiny shrew decided to be obstinate. Bring it, bang it, said the shrew, but I shall march on.

That was enough for the universe, and it sent no more rocks Earth’s way. The shrew got to follow a path of its own innovation, sculpted by the Selective Forces of course. A long distance downstream on the arrow of Time, the universe looked at Earth once again and saw the Children of the Shrew writ large- mammals. As the dark clouds of asteroid collision dissipated and a new harmony descended upon Earth, Biology gave birth to Sentience. The universe nodded in approval.

And like their membranous ancestors of old, the Sentient Children of the Shrew liked to coalesce. They grouped into families and communities, the innovation of one compounded to the evolution of many. Shrew to canines, equines, felines, and something the universe likely did not suspect anything special of yet- Apes. Sure, they were fun to watch- swinging comically among the tree branches, leaping melodramatically on sudden sightings of anything resembling serpents. But they also drew concern, for in them emerged new patterns never seen before. Yes, death was a companion to life, but among apes it acquired vicious new traits. Wilfull genocide, rape, slaughter, thievery, deception. The universe’s Selective Being-ness was called into full concentration. What to make of these creatures that seemed to be taking life and death into their own hands? What to do with these forces of darkness it had not calculated for- slaughter and death by Intelligent Children of the Shrew? Selection worked hard, very hard, and managed to shape Sentience into something just a little bit more.

In the long march of Time, forever in chase of Light, through the lifeless mists of Chemistry and Physics, across the indiscriminate being of Biology, emerged the Ape that Walks. Sapience. The universe had invented for itself a Mirror. On one rock at least.

Whatever had previously existed in the Children of the Shrew was compounded in the Ape that Walks. There was kindness and altruism before, and in the Ape that Walks there could be supreme compassion. There was indiscriminate violence always, life killing life to propagate itself. But the Ape that Walks could be murderous, it could remorselessly treat another as if the other was cretin. Life had always been innovative, but these Walking Monkeys were creative on a whole new level. The gibberish-sounds of their predecessors evolved into complex language. The aphid farms that even ants could create were superseded by vast fields given to organized agriculture. The Walking Ape could make servants of other life forms. For the first time ever, life domesticated and exploited life. The universe continued to observe, though it knew not whether to laugh or weep. These particular Children of the Shrew were now its Problem Child.

The Walking Apes’ new faculties allowed them to transmit information across the generations. The membranous self-replicators of old only passed information one generation downstream, and even the Shrew rarely encountered its grandchild. But the Walking Apes, empowered with the storage properties of memory and language, could communicate a long distance downstream of Time. The universe continued to Select, but these Apes often took selection into their own hands. They fought viciously and amorally among themselves, waging wars that would coalesce into buried myth among their successors. They whittled down their branches, almost as if they intuited the Competition that Selection enforces. Eventually only one branch was left surviving. The Fittest. Homo Sapien, it called itself. You and I are descendants of this Intelligent, Vicious Problem Child. That descent of memory and information we possess? It is called Culture. It has allowed us to look back into the arrow of Time, taking at least our minds opposite to its direction such that we can tell the whole story.

And whatever else we are, we are amazing storytellers. Chemistry, electrons, physics, biology, history, culture- these are all yarns we have woven to make sense of what the hell is really going on. And the primary story, one we have visited thus far, we call it the Standard Model of Reality. We consider ourselves very intelligent for it, for it has allowed us to create poison-emitting chimneys to scale-up production, water-polluting drains to massify consumption and debt-inducing medical treatments to salvage lifespans reduced by the smog and malnutrition. And we possess the obstinacy of our shrew ancestor, after all. Our intelligence has allowed us to discern the universe, we have found stories even the universe never considered would be found. So we describe ourselves through the atomised comprehensions of our sapient mind. That first emergence of space out of nothingness- we call it the Big Bang. The mushrooming that still continues- Inflation, of course.

We point to things and name them, very happy for the intelligence of doing so. Stars, Planets, Nebulae, Galaxies. A proton shifts from here to there, and we call it Oxygen and Hydrogen. We love to name, we love to point- monkey see, monkey point, monkey name. And in seeking the story of our own origins we eventually arrived at a simple code, hidden within the membranes of our ancestral self-replicators- who still live within us and who we call Cells. Within these cells we found a language of reality, and of course we gave to that a name too- Genetics. We found a lot of our questions answered by this language, or at least we thought we did. And what we didn’t understand we relegated as “junk DNA” or “dark matter.” It confirmed to us that what we had discerned about Life and Selection was very close to the truth- to “Reality.” And one day, a very smart ape among us decided to write a detailed story. Quite clever of him, that he named the story The Selfish Gene. Why selfish, you might ask? Well, his narrative is underpinned by the reduction of all of life processes to a simple truth- the gene looks out for itself, even in kinship, even in altruism, especially in competition.

But the real story was not in his title, but his narrative. For he intuited that reality is made, at fundamental level, of Ideas. Of Memes. The story is on the surface in the language of genetics, but beneath that is the language of Memetics. So it’s not so much the story but the metastory that matters. And the Standard Model of Reality is but one metastory among many. The Selfish Gene, one narrative among many. The Ape that Walks is defined most fundamentally by its metastories. The metastories that descend to it from Culture create its present, and those it bequeaths on create the future. They create the design of human life, and we are here to consider a different metastory. So we retrace our steps to the beginning, to that Bang that was Big. And we start afresh:

The Dhārmika Gene

There was no beginning. There was no end. There just was. Is-ness. We know it as Sat/सत् . Everything was already contained within, like all information on how to spread, how to inflate, how to bind, was already present in the womb that birthed the Bang. Like the seed that knows what kind of tree to become. Like the adult male who knows to begin balding at around the same age his father did. Thus we call it the Golden Womb- gold being a qualia of superlation. Hiraṇyagarbha. Where did this Hiraṇyagarbha reside? What was above it? What was below it? The Ṛgveda concedes that we do not know. It isn’t just Science that admits to the insurmountable gap of causal knowledge.

Sat was Existence-with-Equilibrium. There were no disturbances in it. No perturbations. It just was. Then, and we say this with awareness of the deficiencies of language- before Time, came into being ‘Ṛ/ऋ.’ A great ṛṣi among us, named Pāṇini, described Ṛ as ‘gatau’ and ‘gatiprāpaṇa,’ - motion and the attainment of motion. It is perhaps no coincidence that within the sound “whirring” is hidden the sound ‘Ṛ.’ Now this ṛṣi, Pāṇini, like many among his peers and predecessors, was well aware of the Ape that Walks’ inclination to point and name, so he realized the profound importance of word and sound to the metastory.

His was the striving not just to bring story as close to “Reality” as possible, but to bring word and sound themselves as close to “what they described” as possible. Ontological onomatopoeia as a linguistic imperative.

So he formulated simple rules of language and pronunciation. What we call the Big Bang and Everything Thereafter, by his rules was simply- Ṛta. Which means Ṛ + kta, or Motion/Motion Attainment has Been Done. Ours, the world not of Existence-with-Equilibrium but the world of Being-in-Change/Motion, or Reality, is Ṛta. And the Big Ṛta is just the start of it, for it is followed by a long chain of spins, cycles, movements, coming-intos and going-out-ofs. It is the world not Sat. It is the world writ. Ṛta. A lot happens in this world, beginning of course with creation. When creation is done, we commensurately call it Kṛ + kta, or Kṛta. And the first creation, the preceding creation, the one that instituted the Laws of Nature, is thus Pra-Kṛti. Word and sound, as close to Reality as possible.

Following the Big Ṛta, reality was given to mushrooming. To spreading, inflating, pouring forth. This is known in Pāṇini’s language as bṛh or bṛṃḥ. The inflated space, the egg that pours out, is thus Bramhāṇda. Brahmāṇḍa breathes, it heaves out then back in, or as is more popularly known- it big bangs and it big crunches. This breathing of reality into and out of being is a perennial nature of Existence. Sat blooms out into Ṛta before Ṛta deceases under entropy back into Sat. What is the unchanging Sat becomes a discernible Ṛta due to the existence of Time, or Kāla. This is why Pāṇini defined Kāla as an upadeśa. Time is our way of pointing at anything at all. It gives a method of instruction to what would otherwise be an indiscernible, infinite, Everything-ness. Pāṇini’s Uncertainty Principle. You can either Exist-in-Equilibrium, or you can point to a moment in time. Never both. This is why even in the modern metastory we are told that to ask “what existed before the Big Bang” is a nonsensical question. Time allows the monkey to point, to name. Upadeśa. As Plato said- “time is the moving image of eternity,” or as Einstein declared- “the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” In Pāṇini’s world, they thus called this entire interplay Māyā. The Stubbornly Persistent Illusion.

But Time only gives one part of the story, of course. Even Einstein did have to talk about the “c,” did he not? There are no illusions in pure darkness, even the tiniest of shadow that flickers comes due to Time’s companion. Light. It is the second great constituent of Ṛta. Jyoti. Prakāśa. Which in turn allows monkey see to begin with. Dṛṣṭi is supreme to Pāṇini’s world. To see is to comprehend. Sight is Divine. The greatest divinator a daṛṣṭā, or ṛṣi- one who tears through the fabric of illusion to see Sat for itself. One who can cut through Māyā and Kāla. Such beings, inordinately rare among us now, gave long and deep thought to the nature of Ṛta, their “scientific curiosities” no less than that of our greatest scientists today. They peered deep into Brahmāṇda, further even than Light had reached, and in that ocean of darkness they found the universe within. It gave birth to a defining insight.

yathā piṇḍe tathā brahmāṇḍe. yatha brahmāṇḍe tathā piṇḍe।
As in the microcosm so in the macrocosm, and vice versa।।

The rest, as they say, is metastory. As the universe breathes, so do its constituents. In and out, in and out. They had a simple sound for it, those ancient ones- an/अन्. To be made up of breathing, to be constituted with this heaving in and heaving out, is the state of Prāṇa - filled (prā) with an. Prāṇa is the nature of Existence and Being. And that which breathes on its own is called ātma + an, or ātman. What does the universe do? It also breathes. It is the breathing that expands, that inflates, that pours out. Or bṛṃḥ + an- brahman. Now even the modern metastory tells us- the universe does this entirely on its own. Thus brahman is ātman, and ātman is brahman. As in the microcosm, so in…..you get the drift.

Or there is another possibility, though Pāṇini’s rules do not suggest it. Monkey do as its mind intends, or as is mann kī. Man, Mind, Intentionality. It is the Prime Mover behind the breathing. The universe outside is the universe within, an entire brahmāṇḍ within Mind that is but the Mind-at-Large. It is Mind that expands, that inflates, that pours out. Or bṛṃḥ + man…..Brahman just the same. And it is Mind that descends into matter, or at + man, ātman just the same. Is this why Pāṇini defined at as bandhana, or bondage? The gravitation of Mind? Perhaps not, but it certainly shows us why his compatriots liked to say- “the truth is one, the wise know it by many ways.” They liked to point to things and name them, just as we do, but they were not boxed in by what they pointed to.

And since the microcosm is a reflection of the macrocosm, and vice versa, whatever is instantiated at large also instantiates in the local. Since Time is change, or motion, it is also Death, or the going out of existence. Only the unchanging, or Sat, is eternal. Destruction and death are writ large in Ṛta. Dhvamsana, Pāṇini called it. Or disintegration, as is the fate of things under centrifugal force for example. Like the amorphous splatter of blobs that thrashes outwards from the spinning wheel, in the hands of an amateur potter. It necessarily accompanies motion, or gatau, or Ṛta. To exist then is to flow in-step with the Great Whirring. To be in rhythm with Ṛta. Those who strive to be in this rhythm, who strive to flow in-step with the motion of Ṛta, by the grammatical rules of Pāṇini, are called Ārya. But to this civilization they yielded the grammar not of sound alone but being itself. It is by Ārya conduct, by Ārya behavior, by Ārya society, that we can stave off dhvamsana.

Easier said than done, though. For in reality death casts a cold and amoral shadow. Whether we impugn mind or only breathing to ātman, individual and collective conduct is hardly noble on its own. Entropic deterioration is the norm, and so a bull that once had four legs struggles eventually to stand on the one remaining, as the eons pass in our metastory. Stars turn to dust, nobility gives way to corruption, life succumbs to death, Śiva dances for sure after Brahmā has his day. It is easy, in such a world, to be the simple animal, or jīva, or living being. Maybe we arrive here after billions of years of natural selection, or maybe we were once accompanied by Dānavas, Piśācas, Devas, Kiṃpuruṣas and more, or maybe something in between. But bow to Cosmic Entropy we must, all the same. Breathe in, breathe out, is this all that we must do then?

No, not in this metastory. Selfish yes, the gene. Selfish yes, the man. Selfish yes, life itself in its struggle against dhvamsana. But what good is the Homo Sapien, if it attains nothing higher than did that old, obstinate Shrew that outlasted the dinosaurs? This in fact was the query of Pāṇini’s compatriots. This their striving. This the ideal for the Ārya to attain. If ātman was the descent of mind, then surely human must be the ascent of mind. Yathā piṇḍe tathā brahmāṇḍe, so while one metastory dreams of spreading to the stars while it destroys its own rock, this metastory points us to the light within. Enter a less-than-selfish gene.

Enter you, with all the capacity for reflection and introspection that Selection has endowed you with. Enter you, smarter than your fellow apes, victorious over other humans that once shared this planet with you, possessed of intelligence that can perceive the entire metastory and more. You, who can reach into the past and future alike, Time suddenly the mistress of your thoughts. You, who beginning with the primal days of campfire now has Agni himself in control, Light willed by your inner dṛṣṭi. You, who not only weaves languages of sound but has discerned the very language of life and named it DNA. Who knows that jīva lives by gene, who as a Being of Mind understands best, the consequence of a world made true by Memetics. What memes will you pass on, oh Problem Child of the Mind?

It is this ascent, this assumption of regency, of noble Intent, that underpins our metastory. Not the selfish altruism of the membranous replicators that compose us. Put aside ṛṣi Pāṇini for a moment and notice the emergent elegance- kṛ + man, or Karman. Bṛh + man, or Brahman. Man, or Mind, is at the core of it all. It is as Terence McKenna would say- “it is Mind at the Beginning, and Mind at the end.” And of all things that breathe on their own, it is us where Mind descends with such sapience that it can turn on itself and witness its own reflection in the mirror. The chemist Lee Cronin defines life as “the universe forming a memory for itself.” Capable of memory ourselves, it is hard not to notice- life is lived in the forward, but memory is engaged in the backwards. So if Cronin is right, then McKenna HAS to be. Memory is accumulative, and it accumulates inside of Mind. In our metastory, thus is Brahman itself Minded. This is the Intelligence whose design we see writ large.

It matters little whether one imagines Mind as Man-in-Sky or Blind-Watchmaker. That may be the focus of desert and oasis metastories. But ours is the metastory of river and forest- of flow and rhythm. Of Harmony. That is our quest.

And if harmonious the existence, it preserves itself. It continues to flow, like a river. This metastory, passed from campfire to campfire, generation upon generation, is the metastory of resilience. It possesses the obstinacy of that old Shrew. It possesses the capability to outlast, like the Shrew did over the Saurus. Even in the whirring, even amid the dhvamsana, it can abide. It can stay tethered. It can survive. Tethering, or as Pāṇini might have said- dhāraṇa, emerging from the root sound of dhṛ, or ava-dhvamsana. The resilience to hold, to suffer, to be. What pursues this resilience with all the intent of Mind, individual or collective, you might now be able to guess- is dhṛ + man, or Dharman. Yes, not entirely as Pāṇini would have put it, but it still points us to that most distinct fundamental that makes this Ape that Walks unique above all that preceded it. Ours is not the surrender to a selfish gene, it is the ascent towards the Dhārmika gene. What memes would rule us today, what tomorrow may yet come, if the Standard Metastory of Reality was composed not by the Selfish Gene, but by the Dhārmika?