Introduction

Activating

DNA! The abbreviation has an electrifying effect. It conjures a procession of images across the mind’s eye, bearing impressions that range from a twisted ladder to a golden spiral. I am struck by the beauty of the mandala revealed by a full cross-section view of DNA, though I cannot capture it in words. Its structure animates Pythagorean orbits, vibrant shapes longing to be “heard,” and the power to dovetail emotional connection and engagement with the exciting and inspiring building blocks of life that make up our mind and body. The initialism of DNA itself shares a gematria (which will be covered throughout the book) with the classical Greek* term for “magic,” μάγια (magia), which means “enchantment,” “charm,” and “wizardry.” You carry this wealthy estate, fortune, and wisdom.

While the global pharmaceutical market pinnacled at 1.6 trillion US dollars in 2023, the absence of the deliberate participation with one’s own biochemical unique nature leads to the demise of mindful evolution. I would cite lack of know-how as a cause. Evolution is a divine art. The potential moving from one aspect to another is felt as it is in music, where one melody can be transposed from one key to another.*

The book currently resting within your grasp is not a science text, nor is it written as such. It is meant to act as a vibrant guidebook, charting out a dynamic pathway toward the elevation of your consciousness and spiritual being. DNA is beyond a static blueprint. It specifically captures the macrocosm that the microcosm models. This macromolecule, the key to our destiny, has intrinsic value apart from any conventional or esoteric interpretation we make of it.

It is accurate—and more than merely accurate—to say we do have a deep influence on our condition when we focus our will and desire on our cellular being. Perhaps, instead of asking what our genes can do for us, ask how we may honor DNA.

THE STORY OF THE DOUBLE HELIX DISCOVERY

Nearly seventy two years ago, on April 25, 1953, Nature published three consecutive articles communicating the works of James Watson and Francis Crick, followed by Maurice Wilkins, succeeded by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling. James Watson and Francis Crick assumed pioneering titles for the double helical model’s debut. However, there is a rather confronting, pertinent question to ask in this moment in history and psychological perspective. Who is the actual face behind the groundbreaking conclusion that the DNA molecule exists in the form of a three-dimensional double helix? And, why is the recollecting and remembering of this historical segment in solving a biological riddle critical to reassembling our orientation with the most crucial landmark for humanity, our DNA?

Around the same time Rosalind Franklin arranged for a three-year research fellowship in John Randall’s lab accompanying Maurice Wilkins at King’s College London, James Watson attended a talk in Italy and learned about Wilkins and X-ray diffraction data for DNA. His interest in DNA was piqued: “Suddenly I was excited about chemistry. . . . I began to wonder whether it would be possible for me to join Wilkins in working on DNA.”1 Watson recruited Francis Crick, whom he met at the University of Cambridge working in the Cavendish Laboratory.

In the beginning of 1951, Rosalind Franklin’s discovery of the properties of DNA (using a DNA sample of a calf ’s thymus) were not only profound, they were also higher in data quality than Wilkins’s. At the time, Franklin was assigned as an assistant to Wilkins, who was pioneering work in DNA. As a consequence of a lack of communication about their respective roles from John Randall, the director of the biophysics unit, the DNA problem was reassigned to Franklin as her sole responsibility while Wilkins went away on vacation. This caused a clash of personalities within their working relationship.

In her X-ray diffraction imagery, Franklin discovered DNA could exist in two forms, wet and crystalline. To delegate research assignments and responsibilities, Randall apportioned their work on DNA. Franklin chose the wet DNA and Wilkins stuck to the crystalline form. The crystalline DNA was less rich in information than the wet, long and thin DNA fiber.

At a lecture that was attended by Watson at King’s, Franklin proposed that the results of her research suggested a helical structure (which must be very closely packed) containing 2, 3, or 4 co-axial nucleic acid chains per helical unit and having the phosphate groups near the outside. 2 This was sixteen months before Watson and Crick published their description of DNA based on Franklin’s X-ray diffraction photos.

While it became clear that the crystalline DNA is a helix, Franklin was unconvinced that the wet form was helical. With her assistant, Raymond Gosling, she produced the world’s best X-ray images of any substance to date. Franklin then went on to reconcile her conflicting data that both DNA forms are helical. In 1953, she wrote three manuscripts, two were on the crystalline form of DNA (A-DNA), and one was on the wet form (B-DNA). Her manuscript on A-DNA was received by Acta Crystallographica on March 6, 1953, a day before Crick and Watson completed their model on the wet form.

As a scientist who worked on the same subject in another laboratory, Watson visited King’s to inform Wilkins and Franklin before Linus Pauling and Robert Corey discovered the mistakes in the preprint of his proposal for the structure of DNA—a scheme of a triple helix—and outrace them. During his visit, Watson had his infamous altercation with Franklin. He upset Franklin by saying she didn’t understand how to interpret her own data. Watson retreated to Wilkins, who showed Franklin’s X-ray photos to Watson out of sympathy.3 Following an unauthorized, nonconsensual use of her unpublished crystallographic calculations, Watson and Crick developed the double helix model of DNA. Nature published their model in April 1953 with only a footnote acknowledging “We have also been stimulated by a knowledge of the general nature of the unpublished experimental results and ideas of Dr. M. H. F, Wilkins, Dr. R. E. Franklin and their co-workers at King’s College, London.”4 Neither James Watson nor Francis Crick mentioned her contributions during their Nobel Prize acceptance speeches, though Wilkins did. In Watson’s book The Double Helix, he admitted “Rosy, of course, did not directly give us her data. For that matter, no one at King’s realized they were in our hands.”

After completing their model, Watson and Crick offered Wilkins to be a co-author of their paper. He declined it, as he realized that he had no part in the construction of their model. The original contributor, Franklin, wasn’t nominated for a Nobel Prize, yet her work led to Francis Crick, James Watson, and Maurice Wilkins being awarded one in 1962. Franklin’s own rewards were few. A young life of brilliant and continual productivity came to an end in 1958 at the age of thirty-seven. The structure of the DNA model was not even fully accepted during her lifetime. Posthumously, this book carries the flame that inspired her work.

I wonder how the advancement of the double helix structure would have proceeded if she had lived longer. Of course, Franklin wasn’t the only contributor to the discovery. Johann Friedrich Miescher, Albrecht Kossel, Gregor Mendel, Alfred Hershey, Martha Chase, Erwin Chargaff, Michael Creeth, Linus Pauling, and Phoebus Levene are among a number of giants who dedicated their lives to excavating DNA. However, would Rosalind’s relentless curiosity entice her to explore the unseen spects of the genetic molecule? The double helix is just the beginning of our path to biological enlightenment.

In this book, I am going to take you on a journey. It is the sort of journey in which the very small becomes large and reveals universes within it. Within these universes, sounds, colors, and shapes turn into one another in synesthesia. But we cannot explore these phenomena overtly. I am going to approach space-time through sound, DNA strands, liquid water crystals, animal and angel guides, lucid dreams, and ancestral grief. Each is a proto-cell, a model system, and a world. I am going to string these droplets together by their vibrations and convert their elements into pathways to each other. Through these tools, we will explore the reality of our 12-stranded DNA.

Deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA, is the biochemistry of our genes. The word gene invokes different worlds of contemporary culture: politics, biotechnology, medicine, lifestyle. The DNA meme has become a timeless icon, symbol, and force by itself. It tells us many different stories, ones that are true, ones that are probable, ones that depend on specific conditions, and ones that are unreliable. As a power and a prop, DNA leaves us with ambiguity, tautology, and obscurity.