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 which 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 mechanical, 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,
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 that the person
being looked at in each trial is randomly determined. Imagine a
typical television audience of millions of viewers. Now, what if the
subjects could distinguish when they were being looked at by other
people over television. There one would have a massive, large-scale
demonstration of extended mind in a way that could be conclusive.
This format, too, could be extended. You could have people looking
at subjects in the Soviet Union via satellite linkups; one could
elaborate this pattern indefinitely. What happens to actresses and
actors, to prominent political figures, when they are looked at by
millions of people? Are they affected by being in people’s minds?
Large-scale experiments to test hypotheses could do more to bring
about a paradigm shift than any amount of lecturing about the
limitations of the mechanistic theory. Our perceptual fields may
reach far beyond our physical brains; when we look at the stars, our
minds may literally reach to the stars. There may be almost no limit
on how far this process can extend.
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