Navigating Consciousness with Rupert Sheldrake

The Scientific and Medical Network (SMN) is a worldwide professional community and membership organisation for open-minded, rigorous and evidence-based enquiry into themes bridging science, spirituality and consciousness. It promotes a cultural shift in our understanding of reality and human experience beyond the limits imposed by exclusively materialist and reductionist approaches. 2023 is the Network's 50th Golden Jubilee.

https://scientificandmedical.net/

Hollyhock, 2008

Andrew Weil, MD, is a world-renowned pioneer in the field of integrative medicine, an approach to health care which encompasses body, mind, and spirit. Rupert and Andrew had a series of conversations over eight years at Hollyhock, on Cortes Island, BC, Canada. In this talk they discuss Rupert's stabbing in Santa Fe, epigenetics, the broken US healthcare system, fasting, laughter yoga, Dr Weil as a brand, and many other topics still relevant today.

Hollyhock, 2011

Andrew Weil, MD, is a world-renowned pioneer in the field of integrative medicine, an approach to health care which encompasses body, mind, and spirit. Rupert and Andrew had a series of conversations over eight years at Hollyhock, on Cortes Island, BC, Canada. In this talk they discuss the rise in gluten sensitivity and autism, amongst a variety of medical mysteries.

 

Part of an online course on potential scientific breakthroughs:
https://www.sheldrake.org/online-courses

In this talk Rupert discusses new ways in which the hypothesis of morphic resonance can be tested, including with holistic quantum systems like Bose-Einstein condensates, with new materials like high-temperature superconductors, through experiments on cellular adaptation to toxins and heat stress, in experiments on learning in non-human animals, including nematode worms and fruit flies, and with popular online puzzles like Wordle.

The implications of these tests, if successful, would be very far reaching, and could lead to new understandings of physical phenomena like the melting points of crystals, which would depend on influences from previous similar crystals, rather than on timeless laws. In biology, morphic resonance from past organisms would play an essential role in heredity, in addition to genes and epigenetic modifications of gene expression. In humans, collective memory would facilitate learning and problem-solving, and morphic resonance would underlie what the psychologist Jung called ‘the collective unconscious’.


_References_

Mind, Memory, and Archetype: Morphic Resonance and the Collective Unconscious
https://sheldrake.org/memory

Rat Learning and Morphic Resonance
https://sheldrake.org/rats

The Flynn effect
https://james-flynn.net/

The Sound of a Hidden Order
https://www.nature.com/articles/498041a

A reprogrammable mechanical metamaterial with stable memory
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03123-5

Evidence for unconventional superconductivity in twisted trilayer graphene
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04715-z

Antiferromagnetic half-skyrmions and bimerons at room temperature
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03219-6

Conditioned aversion
https://dictionary.apa.org/conditioned-aversion

An Experimental Test of the Hypothesis of Formative Causation
https://sheldrake.org/rose

Steven Rose's 'A hypothesis disconfirmed' refuted by Rupert
https://sheldrake.org/rose-refuted

The Hill Effect as a Test for Morphic Resonance
https://sheldrake.org/essays/the-hill-effect-as-a-test-for-morphic-resonance

Are disincarnate and non-human entities mental projections or non-physical, autonomous entities? What can we learn from them? Their variety and persistence in human history. Early modern science and angelic communication. The shamanic model. The aversion to the irrational in Christianity and science. The need to analyze the entities' messages. A mathematical model of body, soul and spirit. Entities as inhabitants of the spiritual domain of the logos. The evolution of their multifarious representations. The dogma of purgatory. Contacting these entities through dreams and psychedelics. The deepest layers of the faery tradition. Metaphors of light? Entities as artificers and their use of language. Is the world soul behind these entities? Corn circles. The call to prepare language for these encounters. Experiential contact with the celestial sphere. The humanist illusion of self-sufficiency, leading to societal possession. Mammon. A celestial battle on earth? Redirecting attention to the positive forms. The ultimate partnership - reconnecting the Gaian and celestial spheres to the human spirit. Where could the new alchemical kingdom be?

From the book:
Chaos, Creativity and Cosmic Consciousness first published as Trialogues at the Edge of the West, Chapter 6. 
https://sheldrake.org/books-by-rupert-sheldrake/chaos-creativity-and-cosmic-consciousness


0:00Terence
12:40Ralph
18:17Terence
20:55Ralph
23:20Terence
26:05Ralph
30:41Terence
31:22Rupert
35:10Terence
39:54Rupert
... 

1995, Esalen Institute

The idea of an attractor for the entire cosmic evolutionary process. The role of the attractor in chaos dynamics. Motivation and attraction. The value of spoken language. Mathematical modelling. The relationship between mathematical models with chaotic behaviour and the chaos in life. Idolatry and models becoming reality. The feminine aspect of creativity.

Related Book
Chaos, Creativity and Cosmic Consciousness
https://sheldrake.org/books-by-rupert-sheldrake/chaos-creativity-and-cosmic-consciousness

1995, Esalen Institute

The chaos revolution, chaotic attractors and indeterminism in nature. The emergence of form from the field of chaos. The formative process in cooling. Is the mathematical realm of the world soul in co-evolution with ordinary reality? The potential of mathematics to aid us in our own evolution by extending our language for dealing with complex systems. Visual intuitions and the Butterfly Effect.

Related Book
Chaos, Creativity and Cosmic Consciousness
https://sheldrake.org/books-by-rupert-sheldrake/chaos-creativity-and-cosmic-consciousness

The second of a series of six talks on potential scientific breakthroughs:
https://www.sheldrake.org/online-courses

Rupert proposed a new hypothesis of cellular rejuvenation in an article in Nature in 1974, and in 2023 published a review article entitled ‘Cellular Senescence, Rejuvenation and Potential Immortality’ in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, summarising results of recent research, which support his hypothesis. In this talk he gives an overview of this hypothesis, which applies to cells of all kinds, including bacteria and yeasts as well as plants and animals, and he shows how it sheds new light on the nature of stem cells. 

In mammals, embryonic stem cells have a special property that enables them to divide indefinitely without senescing and Rupert suggests that cancerous transformations involve the hijacking of this embryonic stem cell system. He suggests ways in which this hypothesis could be tested, and shows how it could lead to new approaches in cancer therapy – by blocking the rejuvenative system that cancers have acquired. If this system were inhibited, then cancer cells might senesce like most other somatic cells and become less virulent. 



References
____
Sheldrake, R. (1974). The ageing, growth and death of cells. Nature, 250, 381-385.
https://www.sheldrake.org/ageing
____
Sheldrake, R. (2022) Cellular Senescence Rejuvenation and Potential Immortality. Proceeding of the Royal Society B, 289, 20212434
https://www.sheldrake.org/immortality
____
Nine open questions suggested by the cellular rejuvenation hypothesis, and ways of answering them empirically (Supplementary to the above paper in Proc. Royal Soc. B)
https://rs.figshare.com/ndownloader/files/34255402

Despite decades of research, no one knows how birds navigate to destinations hundreds of miles away. Rupert suggests that there is a field-mediated sense of direction through which they are attracted towards their goals. This is the first of a series of six talks on potential breakthroughs in the sciences released as an online course here:
https://www.sheldrake.org/online-courses

Related book:
Seven Experiments That Could Change the World
https://www.sheldrake.org/books-by-rupert-sheldrake/seven-experiments-that-could-change-the-world


References
____
Satellite Tracking of Wandering Albatrosses
Jouventin,P. and Weimerskirsch, H. 1990. Nature 343, 745-748.
____
Perdeck, Albert C.
Two Types of Orientation in Migrating Starlings, Sturnus yulgaris L., and Chaffinches, Fringilla coelebs L., as Revealed by Displacement Experiments. Ardea, 55(1–2) : 1-2.
____
Netherlands Ornithologists' Union
https://doi.org/10.5253/arde.v1i2.p1
____
Magnetic Fields 1750-1980 
Bloxham, J. and Gubbins, D. 1985. The secular variation of tye earth’s magnetic field. Nature 317, 778-781.
____
World War 1 Pigeon Loft Photos
public domain
____
Mobile Loft Experiment at Coldham hall, Suffolk, 1989
With Robbie Robson of Bury St. Edmunds Racing Pigeon Club
Photo by: Jill Purce
____
Dutch Navel Pigeon Experiment
HNLMS Tydeman
June, 1995
Filmed by: Louis van Gasteren, Gregor Meerman and Jacqueline van Vugt

 

1998, UC Santa Cruz

The fractal idea of history, and millenia as the plateaus of history. These bifurcation periods as opportunities to influence the creation of the future. What kind of future or change are we trying to create? The need for the enhancement and spread of clarity. Psychic pets and their role in breaking the spell of rationalism. Psychedelics, the World Wide Web and psychic pets as forms of boundary dissolution. The need for change in the educational system. The problem of the rejection of mathematics. 

Related Book
Chaos, Creativity and Cosmic Consciousness
https://sheldrake.org/books-by-rupert-sheldrake/chaos-creativity-and-cosmic-consciousness