Hyperdimensional Bio-Telemetrics - Rupert Sheldrake - Morphic Resonance Part III Society, Spirit & Ritual.pdf - SHELDRAKE Rupert - insideyourdream13

Society, Spirit & Ritual: Morphic Resonance and the Collective Unconscious

Part III

Rupert Sheldrake

Psychological Perspectives 1987

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This is the third in our series of essays by Rupert Sheldrake on the implications of his

hypothesis of Formative Causation for the psychology of C. G. Jung. The intense

controversy this hypothesis generated with the publication of his first book, A New

Science of Life (1981), has stimulated a number of international competitions for

evaluating his ideas via experimental investigations. The results of these

experimental tests are reported in his new book, The Presence of the Past (1988)

wherein he writes:

In this book, which is less technical in style, I place the hypothesis of

formative causation in its broad historical, philosophical, and scientific

contexts, summarize its main chemical and biological implications, and

explore its consequences in the realms of psychology, society, and culture. I

show how it points towards a new and radically evolutionary understanding of

ourselves and the world we live in, an understanding which I believe is in

harmony with the modern idea that all nature is evolutionary.

The hypothesis of formative causation proposes that memory is inherent in nature.

In doing so, it conflicts with a number of orthodox scientific theories. These theories

grew up in the context of the pre-evolutionary cosmology, predominant until the

1960s, in which both nature and the laws of nature were believed to be eternal.

Throughout this book, I contrast the interpretations provided by the hypothesis of

formative causation with the conventional scientific interpretations, and show how

these approaches can be test ed against each other by a wide variety of

experiments. Sheldrake begins this essay with an interesting insight regarding the

evolution of Jung's and Freud's conceptions of the unconscious out of the previous

world view of Soul. He then explores a number of provocative ideas about "mind

extended in time and space" that give us fresh perspectives on power, prayer, and

consciousness.

We've all been brought up with the 17th century Cartesian view that our minds are

located inside our brains. In this view, our minds are completely portable and can be

carried around wherever we go, packaged as they are inside our skulls. Our minds,

therefore, are essentially private entities associated with the physiology of each of

our nervous tissues. This idea of the contracted mind, a mind which is not only

rooted in the brain but actually located in the brain, is an idea that is so pervasive in

our culture that most of us acquire it at an early age. It is not just a philosophical

theory (although, of course, it is that); it is an integral part of the materialistic view

of reality.

SOUL, MIND, AND CONSCIOUSNESS

Our understanding of the concepts of mind and soul is actually a question of how we

define the word consciousness. I prefer to view the attribute of consciousness as

being restricted to human beings and, perhaps, some of the higher order of animals

in whic h one could say there was some kind of self consciousness. Much of the

behavior which we consider to be mentally organized, however, actually arises out of

unconscious processes. Riding bicycles with great skill, for example, does not involve

conscious memory; it does not involve conscious thought. Bike riding utilizes a body

memory that involves a great deal of unconscious action and doing. We acquire

many complex skills on an unconscious level skiing, swimming, piano playing, and so

on.

Such learning is notoriously difficult to describe in words because it does not involve

conscious thought in the normal pattern of thought as a directed intellectual activity.

A more useful concept that is difficult for us to use nowadays because its meaning is

obscure to most people is the concept of the soul. In Aristotle's system, animals and

plants had their own kind of soul, as did nature as a whole. This was the animistic

view: the idea that there was an "anima" or soul in all living things. (Inanimate

matter did not have a soul.) The very word animal, of course, comes from the word

anima, meaning soul: animals are beings with soul. Actually, prior to the 17th

century, it was believed that all of nature, and the earth as a whole, had a soul; the

planets all had a soul. But the concept of soul was banished by 17th century

mechanistic science.

The older view of soul is, I think, a better concept than that of consciousness. The

word closest to it in modern usage is mind. The modern usage of mind, however, is

almost identical with the word consciousness; mind incorrectly implies

consciousness. We then have to use the term, unconscious mind, as Jung and Freud

did. This usage has appeared to be a contradiction in terms to the academic world,

so they have tended to reject it (and Jung's and Freud's conceptions of it, as well).

The concept of soul, however, does not necessarily imply consciousness. The

vegetative soul, which is the kind of soul that organizes the embryo and the growth

of plants, was not viewed as functioning on a conscious level. When we grow as

embryos, we don't have any memory of the process. We don't consciously think out,

"the heart comes here, and I know I'll develop a limb out there, teeth here," and so

forth. These things just seem to happen in a way that is tacit, implicit, or

unconscious but yet soul like in the way they are organized.

Until the time of Descartes, three levels of soul were conceived. The vegetative soul

contained the form of the body and governed embryology and growth; all animals

and plants were viewed as having it. Then there was the animal soul, which

concerned movement, behavior, instincts, and so on; all animals as well as humans

were seen as having this level soul. Over and above the vegetative and animal soul

in human beings was the rational soul, which was experienced as the more

intellectual, conscious mind.

Descartes contended that there was no such thing as vegetative or animal souls. All

animals and plants were dead, inanimate machines. The body itself was viewed as

nothing more than a machine. It did not have an animal soul governing unconscious

instincts and patterns. Those processes were entirely mechanical in nature. The only

kind of soul human beings had, on the other hand, was the rational, conscious soul:

"I think; therefore I am." Thinking thus became the very model of conscious activity

or mental activity, and in this way, Descartes restricted the concept of soul or spirit

to the conscious, thinking, rational portion of the mind, which reached its highest

pinnacle in the proofs of mathematics. Descartes' perspective left us with the idea

that the only kind of consciousness worthy of the name was "rational consciousness"

especially mathematical, scientific consciousness. In a sense, Descartes created the

problem of the unconscious, for within 50 years of his work, people started saying,

"Wait a minute, there's more to us than just this conscious mind, because there are

things that influence us that we are not conscious of." Thus the idea of the

unconscious mind, which we generally regard as having been invented by Freud, was

actually invented again and again and again after Descartes. By defining the mind as

solely the conscious part and defining everything else as dead or mechanic al,

Descartes created a kind of void that demanded the reinvention of the idea of the

unconscious side of the mind (which everyone before Descartes had simply taken for

granted in the soul concept). (There is an excellent book on this subject by L.L.

Whyte called The Unconscious before Freud, published by Julian Friedman, London,

1979.)

The problem we are encountering now is that, having eliminated the concept of soul

in the 17th century, we are left with concepts such as mind which are not really

adequate for what we mean. If we want to get closest to what people meant by soul

in the past, the modern concept of field is the most accurate approximation. Prior to

Isaac Newton's elucidation of the laws of gravity, gravitational phenomena were

explained in terms of the anima mundi, the soul of the world or universe. The soul of

the world supposedly coordinated the movements of the planets and stars and did al!

the things that gravitation did for Newton. Now from Einstein, we have the idea of

space time gravitational fields that organize the universe. In this concept of fields

one can see aspects of the anima mundi (soul) as being of the universe. Souls were

invisible, nonmaterial, organizing principles. Fields, especially morphic fields, are

invisible, nonmaterial, organizing principles that do most of the things that souls

were believed to do.

MIND EXTENDED IN TIME AND SPACE

In Jean Piaget's book, The Child's Conception of the World, he describes how by the

age of about ten or eleven, children learn what he calls the "correct view" that

thoughts, images, and dreams are invisible "things" located inside the brain. Before

that age they have the "incorrect view" (as do so-called primitive people) that

thoughts, images, and dreams happen outside the brain.

The Cartesian view of the mind as being located in the brain is so pervasive that all

of us are inclined to speak of our minds and brains as if they were interchangeable,

synonymous: "It's in my brain," rather than "it's in my mind." In the 20's and 30's,

various philosophers and psychologists, particularly Koffka, Uhler, and Wertheimer of

the Gestalt school challenged this view.

I want to argue that our minds are extended in several senses. In previous articles,

we discussed how our minds are extended in both space and time with other people's

minds, and with the group mind or cultural mind by way of their connection to the

collective unconscious. Insofar as we tune into archetypal fields or patterns which

other people have had, which other social groups have had, and which our own

social group has had in the past, our minds are much broader than the "things"

inside our brains. They extend out into the past and into social groupings to which

we are linked, either by ancestry or by cultural transmissions. Thus, our minds are

extended in time, and 't believe they are also extended in space.

Throughout this article, I want to make a simple point that is a very radical

departure from traditional theory. The traditional theory of perception is that light

rays reflected from objects travel through electromagnetic fields, are focused by the

lens of the retina, and thereby produce an image on the retina. This triggers off

electrical changes in the receptor cells of the retina leading to nerve impulses going

up the optic nerve into the cerebral cortex. An image of an object somehow springs

into being inside my cerebral cortex, and something or someone inside sees it. A

"little man in my brain" somehow sees this image in the cerebral cortex and falsely

imagines that the image is "out there," when, in fact, it is "in here."

Personally, I find this explanation extremely implausible. In my experience, my

image of an object is right where it seems to be: outside of me. If I look out the

window, my perceptual field is not inside me but outside me. That is, the objects are

indeed outside me, and my perception of them is also outside me. I'm suggesting

that in our perceptual experience, the perceptual fields extend all around us. While,

as the traditional view holds, there is an inward flow of light impulses which

eventually lead up to the brain, I also experience an outward projection of the

images from my mind. The images are projected out, t and in normal perception, the

projection out and the flow in coincide, so that I see an image of an object where the

object really is located.

In hallucinatory types of perception, I can see images whether they are there, in

fact, or not. Consider "psychic blindness": people can be hypnotized so that they no

longer see objects which are actually in their view. In such a case of "psychic

blindness," the inward flow is present but not the outward projection. More normally,

the movement out and the movement in coincide with each other as part of a

coordinated process, creating a perceptual field that embraces both the observer and

the object.

This idea of the extended mind is a matter of common belief in ancient and

traditional societies. If this concept were true, it would mean that we could influence

things or people just by looking at them. In India, for example, it is believed that a

person who either looks on a holy man, or is himself looked on by the holy man,

receives a great blessing. In many parts of the world, including India, Greece, and

the Middle East, it is believed that if you look upon something with the eye of envy -

the "evil eye" - you therefore blight it. People in many cultures still take great

precautions against this so-called evil eye. In India, it is considered to be extremely

unlucky for a childless woman to admire a baby who belongs to another woman

(whereas in our society, this is merely good manners). This is because she is

assumed to be envious of the baby. Once a childless woman breaks this taboo,

rituals must be performed (such as making a circle of salt around the baby and

reciting various mantras) to exorcise the harmful influence.

When new buildings go up in India, scarecrows are fixed on the buildings; similarly,

when there is a good crop of wheat or rice, scarecrows are placed in the field. These

scarecrows are not intended to "scare away crows" literally, but rather to attract the

evil eye of people who might otherwise blight the crop by looking upon it with envy.

The scarecrows act as "lightning conductors" because anything with a human figure

attracts the eye. The Indian people also put out round pots with huge white spots

stuck on sticks; the eyes are drawn to the pots because the white spots took like

eyes. For similar reasons, people throughout the Middle East wear talismans which

contain eyes; in Egypt, the eye of Horus serves a similar function. All this is done to

protect against the evil eye.

If we do affect things or people by looking at them, then can people perceive when

they are being looked at, even when they cannot actually see some one looking at

them. In both realms of fictional literature and real-life experience, many people

claim to have had the experience of knowing they were being watched and then

turning round and seeing someone staring at them. As undergraduates at

Cambridge, some of us had read a Rosicrucian advertisement about the power of the

mind. It said something about, "Try this simple experiment: look at the back of

someone's neck and see if they will turn round after a few minutes." During boring

lectures we acted as suggested, and it often worked; we found that we could fix our

attention on the back of someone's neck and after a minute or two, the person often

looked uncomfortable and turned round.

Although there is a great deal of anecdotal evidence that people sense when they are

being watched, there is almost no scientific investigation of this phenomenon. The

entire world literature on the subject that I've been able to find consists of three

papers: one written in 4896, the next one in 1910, and a final paper in 1953. Two of

the papers show positive effects, although they were both done on very small

subject populations.

I've done some simple preliminary experiments over the last few months in

workshops. The way we conducted the experiment was very simple. Four people

volunteered and sat at one end of the room, with their backs turned toward the

audience. We put each person's name on his or her back by way of identifying them.

Then, in a series of trials, I would hold up cards in a random sequence containing the

name of the person the audience was to watch. For example, if I had selected "Tom,"

I would hold up a card reading, "Trial 1, Tom," and everyone in the audience would

stare at the back of Tom's neck for fifteen seconds. At the end of each trial, all four

subjects would write down whether or not they thought they were being looked at

during that time period. At the end of the series of trials, we compared when the

volunteers thought they were being looked at, with whether or not they really were

being observed.

My results so far indicate that people vary tremendously in their degree of sensitivity

to being watched. In one workshop I conducted in Amsterdam, there was a woman

who was 100 percent accurate; she knew each time she was being watched. She was

the best subject I've encountered. When I asked if she knew why she had done so

well, she said that as a child she used to play this game with her brothers and

sisters. They practiced and she got very good at it; she had volunteered because she

was sure she'd still be able to do it, even though she hadn't done it for 20 or 30

years.

A friend of mine has been conducting this experiment in one-on-one trials with

friends and colleagues. In over 600 trials ping 65 - 70% of the time, which is

statistically significant. indicate that there is an outgoing influence from the eyes or

from the mind; perhaps mental influence does extend beyond the boundaries of the

physical body. It has been suggested that this might be a telepathic rather than a

visual influence. There is a simple method of checking that out. In some trials, the

people doing the looking could turn around so that they are facing away from the

volunteers and just think about the designated volunteer rather than look at him or

her. If there was greater effect when the volunteers were actually being looked at

than when they were being thought about, then one could be type was functioning.

A variation of this experiment is to examine the effect of distance on the perception

of the subjects. Have the person being looked at located at a considerable distance

from those looking at him (binoculars could be used) and then see if the effect still

works. If it does, then set up trials using video or closed circuit television. Imagine

an experiment in which there were four people in a studio (or even in different

studios), with cameras running continuously, and a randomized switching device so

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