Sheldrake, Rupert

I almost changed the world today by PhotoGraham

Sheldrake, Rupert (1942 – )

Former Cambridge biochemist raised in a British Methodist family whose overall work attempts to integrate scientific and spiritual issues.

In Seven Experiments Which Could Change the World (1994) Sheldrake outlines low-cost experiments that he encourages readers to perform.

One experiment deals with ESP perception as a form of ‘looking.’ Sheldrake asks why we perceive somebody looking at us from behind or even at some distance (e.g. through a window).

Sheldrake suggests that some type of perception other than everyday eyesight is involved.

This idea is followed up in Dogs that Know When Their Owners are Coming Home, and Other Unexplained Powers of Animals (1999).

In keeping with this hypothesis, his subsequent book was called, The Sense of Being Stared At, And Other Aspects of the Extended Mind (2003).

Sheldrake has recently conducted controlled experiments on telephone and e-mail precognition. He found significant results suggesting that people knew when others were about to call them on the telephone, with a sample size of 63. A similar kind of precognition was also found with e-mail, with a sample size of 50.

Most recently his website asks: Have you thought of someone who then sends you a text message? offering a link for visitors to report their observations.

Sheldrake continues to publish books containing his interviews and dialogues with other notables in the New Age / Holistic Health circuit, along with replies to numerous critics who say he’s lost touch with recent theories in neurobiology and, indeed, abandoned science in favor of so-called magical thinking.

Not all scientists are at odds with his views, however. The late physicist David Bohm said Sheldrake’s ideas were in keeping with his own about an implicate and explicate order.

For more on Sheldrake’s theories, see Morphic resonance, Morphic fields and Morphogenetic Fields.

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» Kayzer (Wim)

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