Genetics and Karma

Much of your destiny is written in your genes.

Genetic structure and the body

In the nucleus of each cell of your body you have a coil of DNA that contains the code to generate your body. Human DNA has 23 pair of chromosomes, each with a number of genes attached to them.

These genes are complex molecules that are mirror-image copied into RNA in a process known as transcription, then expressed as proteins in your body in a process known as translation. These proteins then perform different functions. Proteins are biological molecules - complex chemicals that perform different tasks in an organism.

The genes are templates to generate different proteins that perform all kinds of effects, such as regulating the amount of melanin that your skin produces, which gives you the color of your skin; turning the production of growth hormones on and off; directing the formation of your body in the womb; and instructing your body to degenerate and die.

By studying and manipulating genes scientists are able to determine which ones control which factors. For example, by modifying the action of the Ets1/2 gene in sea squirts, scientists direct the creature to develop a functional two-chambered heart, instead of a single chambered one [reference]. While many factors are controlled by a single gene, many more factors arise from the interaction of the immediate effects of a number of different genes.

Genes and Karma

Genes control to a large degree who and what you. Much of your life is a given from your genetic structure: your sex, your maximum height, your maximum intelligence, your build, your disposition. In terms of Vedic metaphysics, this is your both your karma and a product of your karma - a word that means both action and reaction, for the two are inseparable. The body is described as a machine, and the conscious living entity as a passenger in the Vedic literature: sarva-bhutani yantrarudhani mayaya - "The living entities are seated on a machine made of the material energy" (Bhagavad-gita 18.61)

The material nature produces a body with a certain fate (genetic structure), and you, the living entity, are associated with that particular machine on the basis of your previous desires and activities.

We can explain in material terms (genetics, economics, sociology, history) why a body is born in poverty in a war-torn and famine-struck area of Africa. However, the metaphysical question of "why was I born in New Zealand, and not in Africa?" can only be answered by understanding the transmigration of the soul.

Epigenetic factors and changing your karma in this life

In addition to genetics, there are epigenetic factors [wikipedia]. Epigenetic factors control the expression of genes. Genes can be suppressed or activated by internal biological factors external to the genes themselves. While our genes are a given from the moment of conception, epigenetic factors remain within the sphere of our conscious influence during our life.

Diet, exercise, even attitude, all affect epigenetic factors and influence our fate in this lifetime.

According to Vedic metaphysics, how we use the vehicle we are in now determines which vehicle we will be associated with in our next birth. How we use the vehicle we are in now also affects our experience of this vehicle while we are in it. Fatalism is not an inescapable consequence of understanding either genetics or karma.

The Sri Isopanisad explains the situation thus:

One may aspire to live for hundreds of years if he continuously goes on working in that way, for that sort of work will not bind him to the law of karma. There is no alternative to this way for man.

This verse (verse 2), which refers to a previous verse that I'll address in a moment, explains the ability of a certain type of activity to influence the fate of this body, this life.

Early in the development of the science of genetics many scientists polarized into camps, with one extreme being the "genetic determinists". These scientists felt that "genes were supreme", and that all physical and behavioral variations in living beings were due to them alone. Today it is widely recognized that non-genetic factors also influence both heredity, and gene expression.

Sri Isopanisad recommends a course of action that will influence the expression of your genes through the conscious and unconscious manipulation of epigenetic factors. This changes your karma in this life in a favorable fashion, as much as there is lee-way for free will and variation in your biological structure. This is the meaning of "aspir(ing) to live for hundreds of years".

How Karma determines the genetic structure of your next body

As well, it is recommending a course of action that will not bind to the law of karma. The law of karma is metaphysical in terms of the limits of current science, however it is not non-material. Material science may one day be able to detect and understand the underlying mechanisms of the transmigration of the conscious living entity from one body to another. However it is very, very subtle compared to the current limits of theory and perception.

The mechanism of karma is the generation of subtle reactions to actions undertaken in a body. This occurs through imprinting samskaras, or mental impressions into the subtle body of the living entity. The role of the subtle body in karma is described in chapter 15 of Bhagavad-gita (15.8-9) thus:

The living entity in the material world carries his different conceptions of life from one body to another as the air carries aromas. Thus he takes one kind of body and again quits it to take another. Bg. 15.8

The existence of this "subtle body" would account for the phenomenon of past-life memories.

The living entity, thus taking another gross body, obtains a certain type of ear, eye, tongue, nose and sense of touch, which are grouped about the mind. He thus enjoys a particular set of sense objects. Bg. 15.9

Each body, from a single celled organism to a complex multi-cellular organism containing 100's of trillions of specialised cells, such as a human being, is constructed using genetic code to produce a certain set of senses. These senses then afford the conscious living entity associated with that body experience of the environment.

The type of body that the conscious living entity is associated with by the mechanisms of material nature is determined by the aggregate of desires that are accumulated in the subtle body during the lifetime of the previous body.

The movie "The Secret" gives some appreciation of the power of the mind to alter the course of destiny (it is a specific form of meditation). Bhagavad-gita, when read as a metaphysical text rather than a religious one, systematically describes the subtle mechanisms and their interactions.

Breaking the cycle of Action and Reaction (samsara)

This above mentioned verse from Sri Isopanisad not only describes how to favorably influence epigenetic factors, but also how to break the chain of action and reaction and achieve liberation from the closed system of the physical universe (known in Sanskrit as samsara).

This liberation is the goal of Buddhist philosophy and practice, and is also the ultimate goal of most religious practice.

Metaphysically, the Vedas describe that we are spiritual beings having a human (and some, if not most of the time non-human) experience. After "learning our lesson", or having had enough of the cycle of repeated birth and death in different machines of genetic expression, a living entity desires to leave the closed system of the universe.

In order to do that, the interaction of their consciousness and their actions in the body need to shift character in such a way that the cycle of karma, action and reaction, is broken.

The Sri Isopanisad gives a higher order pattern that encapsulates this consciousness and behaviour.

This is described in the previous verse, verse 1:

Everything animate or inanimate that is within the universe is controlled and owned by the Lord. One should therefore accept only those things necessary for himself, which are set aside as his quota, and one should not accept other things, knowing well to whom they belong.

This is a higher order pattern. Complex systems arise from the massive repeated interactions of simple principles. The resulting system is chaotic in its complexity. One technique used to reduce complexity down into a manageable system is the use of higher order narrative and pattern.

The Vedic understanding of the ontological nature of the universe

Metaphysically, the Vedas describe this world as the interaction of matter and consciousness. Matter forms the field of experience, including the bodies and the senses that are used to experience it, and the conscious living entities who use those bodies to experience the world and play in it.

Both matter and consciousness have the same origin, known in Sanskrit as Brahman.

Acknowledging the proprietorship of the Brahman over the matter and consciousness in this universe is the first step in a shift of metacognition. It changes the level of perception and awareness. Flowing through from this are changes in psychology and psychological and physical expression. The changes in epigenetic factors are concomitant and consequential factors.

Sociologically, this shift in consciousness, when enacted on a wide scale, takes all limited and opposed special interest groups out of the struggle for social and economic dominance.

The end result of the cultivation of this consciousness and interaction with the physical elements of this universe using this pattern is access to higher levels of metacognition and perception. In terms of the narrative, it leads to the reawakening of spiritual consciousness, or the dormant spiritual senses of the living entity, which are currently covered by the physical senses generated by the genetic code of the body. It does this by gradually "dissolving" the action of the subtle energy which associates the living entity with the machine of the physical body.

Conclusion

My point here is not to prove that this is true, but merely to lay out the Vedic metaphysical narrative, to demonstrate its relationship to modern genetics, and to show how the narrative is systematic, comprehensive, internally consistent, and interesting in its potential to add value to modern human experience.