Friday, September 5, 2014

A Conversation with Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D.

A Conversation with Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D.:Visionary Biologist and Author, to Deliver 35th Anniversary Mind & Supermind Lecture at the New Vic, Sept. 8

On September 8th, SBCC Center for Lifelong Learning (CLL) welcomes visionary English biologist and author Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D. for the 35th Anniversary of the CLL’s Mind & Supermind lecture series. Sheldrake is known for his theory of “morphic resonance” and is named among “The 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People in 2014” by Watkins Books, London. The lecture will take place Monday, September 8th at 7:30 p.m. at The New Vic Theatre. Limited tickets are also available for a VIP Meet and Greet.

Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D. is a biologist and author of more than 80 papers in scientific journals and 11 books, including, Science Set Free. He was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge University, a Research Fellow of the Royal Society, and from 2005-10 was Director of the Perrott–Warrick Project, funded from Trinity College, Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and a visiting professor at the Graduate Institute in Connecticut. He lives in London.

Sheldrake’s theories are sometimes controversial, as demonstrated in the discussion of his TEDx talk. One theory posits that people can influence others at a distance just by looking at them, even when all normal sensory clues are eliminated.

The SBCC Center for Lifelong Learning caught up with Sheldrake this week during his Central Coast tour.

SBCC Center for Lifelong Learning (CLL): Are you a scientist? A biologist? A parapsychologist?
Rupert Sheldrake: I am a scientist, and more specifically a biologist. I started my research career working on the development of plants and the ageing of cells, then I worked in an international agricultural research institute in India on crop physiology. In 1981 I published my hypothesis of formative causation in my first book, A New Science of Life, principally about the causes of form in living organisms, based on my hypothesis of morphic resonance and memory in nature. I have been doing research on morphic resonance ever since.
As part of this research, I became interested in the bonds between members of social groups and realized that the morphic field of the social group could lead to telepathic connections between members of the group. I then investigated telepathy in animals, starting from this biological perspective, and later investigated telepathy and other unexplained powers of humans, particularly telepathy between mothers and babies and telepathy in connection with telephone calls. I have also researched the sense of being stared at, which I think is a normal biological phenomenon that probably evolved in connection with predator-prey relations. Prey animals that could tell when a hungry predator was looking at them would stand a better chance of escaping than ones that couldn't.
Some of these areas of research overlap with parapsychology, but I am a biologist not a parapsychologist. Unlike parapsychologists I do not start from laboratory studies, but from biological phenomena and from natural history.
CLL:  Do you have evidence for your hypotheses?
Sheldrake: Yes. For the hypothesis for morphic resonance, several other scientists and I have tested it in the realms of human and animal behavior over the last 30 years. This evidence is summarized in the third edition of my book A New Science of Life (2009), called Morphic Resonance in the US, and I propose 10 new tests in the Appendix to this book. In addition, there is a great deal of circumstantial evidence from experiments with crystals, cell cultures, fruit flies, rats and humans which I summarize in The Presence of the Past (1988; new edition 2011).
For my hypotheses about the extended mind and telepathy, much evidence is summarized in my papers on these subjects, and in my books Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home and The Sense of Being Stared At.
CLL: What are “morphic fields”? How do they fit into your hypothesis of formative causation?
Sheldrake: The hypothesis of formative causation states that the forms of self-organizing systems are shaped by morphic fields. Morphic fields organize atoms, molecules, crystals, organelles, cells, tissues, organs, organisms, societies, ecosystems, planetary systems, solar systems, galaxies. In other words, they organize systems at all levels of complexity, and are the basis for the wholeness that we observe in nature, which is more than the sum of the parts.
According to the hypothesis of formative causation, morphic fields also contain an inherent memory given by the process of morphic resonance, whereby each kind of thing has a collective memory. For example, crystals of a given kind are influenced by all past crystals of that kind, date palms by past date palms, giraffes by past giraffes, etc. In the human realm this is similar to Jung's theory of the collective unconscious.
In the realm of developmental biology the morphic fields that shape the growing organisms are called morphogenetic fields; in social organization they can be called social fields; and in the organization of mental activity they can be called mental fields. But all these kinds of fields are particular kinds of morphic fields, and all are shaped and stabilized by morphic resonance. For a fuller description of the hypothesis of formative causation see my books A New Science of Life, which is quite brief and somewhat technical, or my book The Presence of the Past which is longer, but less technical, and more complete.
CLL:  What do you enjoy about your work?

Sheldrake: I can work freely and follow up any leads I find interesting because I work independently. I have been exploring unexplained areas of animal and human behavior, such as the feeling of being stared at from behind, which most people brush aside. I have done over 20,000 simple trials that suggest this is indeed a very real phenomenon.
CLL: Why do you think it is that people seem to be able to sense when someone is staring at them?

Sheldrake: This depends on the way in which perception works. I suggest that when we are looking at somebody or something the image we form is not located inside our brain but projected out to the place where it seems to be. In other words, our mind reaches out to touch what we are looking at. This means that we can affect what we are looking at. So if we look at somebody from behind, and they do not know we are there, they can feel this unseen gaze if they're in a sufficiently receptive state. A fuller discussion of this phenomenon is given in my book The Sense of Being Stared At.

CLL: How can pet owners, students, and other interested people get involved in your research?

Sheldrake: In the participate section of my website there are several online experiments which I invite anyone who is interested to try.


Join visionary biologist, morphic resonance researcher and author, Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D., as he discusses research on the extended mind and social media, Monday, September 8, 2014 from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at the New Vic Theatre, Main Theatre, 33 W. Victoria, Santa Barbara, CA, 93101. There will be a VIP reception from 6:30 to 7:15 p.m. The reception includes reserved seating for the lecture, and the chance to meet Sheldrake while enjoying wine and refreshments. General admission for the lecture is $10; VIP reception admission is $50. Lecture registration http://bit.ly/1qlZ5I7; VIP Meet and Greet registration http://bit.ly/1tyyJUi. For more information, contact infoCLL@sbcc.edu

No comments:

Post a Comment