Up to ten percent of respondents in the United Kingdom report having experienced what Cambridge Ph.D., Rupert Sheldrake, characterizes as "mystical experiences," though few are loathe to admit it. One respondent remarked that just as 'sex' was taboo in the Victorian Age, nowadays 'mysticism' is taboo as there is now an implicit fear that if one reports having undergone a mystical experience one might be thought of as "mad."
Sheldrake obtained a scholarship to study Natural Sciences at Clare College, Cambridge. He specialized in biochemistry, graduated with double-first-class honours, and won the University Botany Prize. He was awarded a Frank Knox fellowship to study philosophy and history at Harvard University, at around the time Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) was published, which he writes informed his view on the extent to which the mechanistic theory of life is just a paradigm. He returned to Cambridge, where he obtained his Ph.D. in biochemistry.
Sheldrake is, perhaps, most well-renowned for his work on morphogenetic fields and his theory of "morphic resonance," as well as for his online experiments on the sense of "telepathy" that morphic resonance gives to animals as well as humans. (Some of his most famous, puzzling, and implausible research results are published in his recent book, "Dogs Who Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home.")
In the following three-part audio podcast from Youtube (linked below), Sheldrake discusses and explains morphic resonance; while, in the attached video, Sheldrake talks to EnlightenNext founder, and editor-in-chief, Andrew Cohen, about the the significance that his research results and theories may hold for a better understanding of the evolution of consciousness and - possibly - for the evolution of the universe itself.
"The Extended Mind," part 1 of 3:
"The Extended Mind," part 2 of 3:
"The Extended Mind," part 3 of 3:
The "Sheldrake-Cohen Dialogue:"
In September 2005, Sheldrake received the Perrott-Warrick Scholarship for psychical research and parapsychology, which is administered by Trinity College, Cambridge. As a result, he is the current Director of the Perrot-Warrick Project, as well as the Academic Director for the Holistic Thinking program at The Graduate Institute Bethany, in Connecticut, U.S.A.
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ReplyDeleteSo great you posted the AC & RS clip on here, I helped promote and organise all three of their rivetting dialogues!!!
Rupert is one off a radical and a visionary he is so matter of fact and yet compelling erudite a true genius in fact!
"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." - Carl Sagan US astronomer & popularizer of astronomy (1934 - 1996).
ReplyDeleteIt was said that Dr. Sagan was not interested in being a Beliver, but he wanted to Know. A Gnostic is a Knower and Agnostic is someone who does not know, but perhaps wants to. I think his quote is about the intelligent life from beyond the Earth. God is also considered to be intelligent life from beyond the Earth. However, many know about
evidence that is existing.
William James gave the prestigious Gifford Lectures at St. Andrew's College Scotland in the early years of the last century. He turned his lecture notes into his famous work, "The Varieties of Religious Experience."
ReplyDeleteWhen Carl Sagan gave the Gifford's in the latter part of the last century, he called his lectures "The Varieties of Scientific Experience."
The seeming conversion of the hard sciences, social sciences and humanities (as represented by physics, psychology and metaphysics/theology) points not so much to a difference in ontologies, as it does to the lack of a shared vocabulary to describe the ame and similar phenomena.