Rupert Sheldrake

Rupert Sheldrake, PhD

Rupert is a biologist and the author of Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature, The Sense of Being Stared At and Other Aspects of the Extended Mind and many other books. He was Director of Studies in Cell Biology at Cambridge and was a Research Fellow of the Royal Society.

Rupert Sheldrake's website: www.sheldrake.org

Keynote: Memory and Morphic Resonance
Wednesday, April 2 - 9:00 - 10:15

According to the hypothesis of formative causation, all self-organizing systems, including crystals, organisms and societies are organized by morphic fields containing an inherent memory, given by a process called morphic resonance from previous similar systems. Nature is not governed by fixed laws but by habits.  By this process, all human beings draw upon a collective human memory, similar to Jung’s collective unconscious, and in turn contribute to it.  Even individual memory depends on morphic resonance rather than on physical memory traces stored within the brain. This radical hypothesis has many implications for our understanding of human and animal nature.  

Goal: To explore the idea that memories in people, animals and nature depend on morphic resonance, rather than on physical memory traces.  

Learning objectives:
● To realize that the idea of fixed laws of nature is only an assumption and may well be wrong,
● To recognize that we all draw upon a collective human memory, as suggested by Carl Jung, and
● To consider the possibility that memories may not be stored in the brain, and that loss of memory is not due to the loss of memory traces, but rather to the loss of the ability to tune in to memories by morphic resonance.

Workshop: Fields of the Mind: Experimental Research and Practical Intuition
Wednesday, April 2 - 10:45am to 12 noon

Our minds seem to extend far beyond our brains. Recent experimental results show that people can influence others at a distance just by looking at them, even when all normal sensory clues are eliminated. The mind reaches out to touch the focus of its attention.  Rupert suggests that this happens through mental fields.  Such fields are also involved in the projection of intentions, which can be detected telepathically at a distance, as shown in experiments with dogs that know when their owners are coming home, and on people's ability to anticipate who is about to call. Telepathy seems to be normal, rather than paranormal, and is widespread in the animal kingdom.

In this workshop, you will do simple experiments to explore how the fields of our minds extend beyond our bodies through attention and intention.  Rupert will also discuss how individual and collective memory depend on a kind of resonance - morphic resonance - with the past, and show how our minds link us to events that have not yet happened.  Intuition can be of great practical importance, and is rooted in our evolutionary history.

Goal: To explore how our minds seem to extend beyond our brain.

Learning objectives:

• To explore mental fields that extend beyond our bodies, such as projection of intentions, telepathy, collective memory and morphic resonance,

• How intuition can be of practical importance, and

• How intuition is rooted in our evolutionary history.