Ascensionism®

As you know, I do lots of study of various sources of knowledge . . . this from the perspective of being able to comparatively analyze "what is."

A current part of this endeavor is my participation is a course presented by one of my heroes, Rupert Sheldrake:

  The Rupert Sheldrake Course: Explore the Big Questions in Science

Yesterday, we did a live Q&A with Rupert.  I did get to ask a pertinent question . . . when the recording is available I'll post it.


Following now is the transcript of his Day Two Lecture on the course.  It is a Tour-de-Force on the development of our Western Civilization's development of cultural knowledge, belief-systems, operating paradigms and "scientific knowledge."

There is a video of this on Youtube, but the sound quality is SO BAD I had to instead read this transcript . . . .  being 4,800 words, it will take breaking into three part  . . . (you know the drill).

Session 2:
Is Nature Mechanical?
We explore: Animals are complex mechanisms, rather than living organisms. Even people are machines, “lumbering robots,” in Richard Dawkins' vivid phrase, with brains genetically programmed computers.
Questions for Materialists:

• Is the mechanistic worldview a testable scientific theory, or a metaphor?
• If it is a metaphor, why is the machine metaphor better in every respect than the organism metaphor? If it is a scientific theory, how could it be tested or refuted?
• Do you think that you yourself are nothing but a complex machine?
• Have you been programmed to believe in materialism?

Further Reading:
‘Is Nature Mechanical?’, Chapter 1 of The Science Delusion. Click here to access (https://rupertsheldrakecourse.com/s/Ch1The-Science-Delusion.pdf).
Transcript:
Since the 17th century, the sciences have been based on the assumption that nature is machine like or mechanical. By machine like and mechanical they mean that nature is made up of parts which work together mindlessly by following mechanical principles, pushing and pulling. Originally, the thinking was in terms of pushing and pulling of purely material objects and material forces, then this was extended in the 19th century to electrical forces. Much of the pushing is through direct contact, or pulling, like billiard balls hitting each other. But it can also be by gravitation, which acts at a distance as a force, an attractive force, or you can have pushing that's a pulling force, and it can be pushing forces from, for example, the north poles of magnets repel each other at a distance and there's pushing. So anyway, the idea was that nature is made up of mechanical forces, mechanical principles, and matter. And it's like a machine.
 
In the 17th century, the machine model that people liked most was astronomical clocks, clockwork models of the universe, where the moon and the planets moved on clockwork principles. Of course, the machine metaphors have continually been updated. It was the camera to explain the eye that was already known from the camera obscura, a pinhole in a dark room. Then there was the idea of hydraulic machines which the 17th century were very keen on. They had them in ornamental gardens where statues could be animated by water flows, and fountains and cascades were part of the decorative system. In the 19th century, there was the steam engine, in the 18th century water mills, and windmills. And then in the late 19th century, telegraphs and telephone systems, and now of course, computers. And the line is being blurred, because we now have people with, say cochlear implants in their middle ear, they have these electronic devices implanted in their brain. So people are becoming sort of hybrids between machines and organisms. Anyway, the machine model of life has been the foundational assumption of the whole of science since the 17th century, and has provided a whole range of metaphors, and also language. If you talk to somebody about something in science, they often say, what's the mechanism? And we talk freely about bioengineering, Factory Farming, genetic engineering, biotechnology, all of these are machine type languages and metaphors.
 
Well, why is it that scientists are so keen on this machine view of nature? And why is it so foundational? To see the reason for it you have to go back to the 17th century and look at what they were rebelling against. The scientific revolution of the 17th century was a revolution precisely because it rejected and overturned the previous view of nature. And the previous view of nature had been developed in a very sophisticated way in the Middle Ages, in the medieval monasteries, and universities of Europe. And the Roman church had established universities and all the great universities of medieval Europe were established by churches and governments, like Oxford and Cambridge, in Bologna, and Paris. And they taught a view of nature that was based on Greek philosophy, particularly Aristotle, and on the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, who was the leading theologian and philosopher in the Middle Ages.
 
What Aristotle taught, and what St. Thomas integrated into Christian philosophy and theology, was the idea that nature is alive, that we live in the living world, that Mother Earth, the stars and planets are living beings, that animals and plants are truly alive, they have souls. The very word animal comes from the Latin word anima, meaning soul. So animals are beings with souls, and plants had souls as well. For St. Thomas and for Aristotle, the soul is the form of the body. So an oak tree is shaped by a kind of invisible shaping influence: the soul of the oak. And the soul of the oak attracts the developing acorn and seedling towards the mature form of the tree. Souls work by attraction. And Aristotle thought the entire universe was motivated by attraction. God was the prime mover of the movements of the heavens, not by pushing them from behind, but by attracting them towards an ultimate state of perfection.
 
And so the idea was that there was souls in all living things. All living things were ensouled with souls to gave them their meaning, their purpose, their organization, their form, their intentions, their desires, their aversions. And animals and plants got their instincts from their souls. Humans, according to this point of view, had three levels of soul. First the vegetative soul, which shapes the body, and as the embryo grows, and as we grow into adults, and which maintains the health of the body, helps fight off disease, regenerate after damage, wounds can heal, the body can overcome illnesses and injuries through the regenerative power of the soul. Then, we have the animal soul, which is similar to that of animals, that gives us our instincts, our emotions. Our senses are very similar to those of animals, and that gives us our animal nature, including our appetites and desires. And then in addition, humans had what St. Thomas Aquinas called the intellectual soul, to do with the mind, with thought, reasoning, language. Animals didn't have that. But we shared the animal soul with all other animals, and vegetative soul with animals and plants, which gives rise to form.
 
Now, this was a living world, it was basically a form of Christian animism. And in the medieval period, it was taken for granted that the Earth is alive, that Mother Earth is a living organism. And the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages, the Gothic cathedrals like Chartres, and Lincoln, express this vision. The columns are like trees, there's foliage bursting out everywhere. They're full of green men, these vegetation, vegetative spirits, faces made of oak leaves and other leaves. It was an animated, animistic world, like the animistic worldview found everywhere else in the world, all traditional cultures are animistic, shamanic cultures. And in Hinduism, of course, it's taken for granted that the world is alive, and they have many sacred animals and plants as well.
 
The mechanistic worldview was a radical split with that view of nature. It took the soul out of the whole of nature, withdrew the soul from the earth and the stars and the planets, they just became masses of inanimate material. Plants and animals became mere machines, mechanisms, with no soul, no spirit, no living principle, just living machines, machines that were complex enough to look as if they were truly alive. And human beings were the only thing left in the entire natural world that wasn't purely mechanical. The human body was a machine, like everything else in nature, but the rational mind of humans, the intellectual soul, as Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas called, it was different. It was not material, it was not really in time and space.
 
So this vision of a deanimated world was first codified by the French philosopher Rene Descartes. The vision came to him in 1619, as a kind of channeled vision of a mechanical universe. And he split the world into two. He took the soul out of all nature, all animals and plants, leaving the whole material world as nothing but inanimate matter working mechanically, like a machine. And the Spirit - he still acknowledged the existence of God and angels and the human mind, and he called that the realm of spirit as opposed to the realm of matter. The realm of spirit was not in space and time, it was immaterial, and it was not the realm of science. So he created a split which is still with us today. On the one hand, he split science from religion. Science got the whole of the universe, Religion got the human soul or mind, and angels and God and morality. But God was withdrawn from the whole of nature. It just became a mechanical system working automatically, the realm of science. He created a split between mind and body.
 

Part 2 . . .

 
The mind, or the spirit of humans, the rational mind, the intellect, was immaterial and somehow mysteriously interacted with the brain. He thought this happened in the pineal gland. The modern theory is very similar, except it shifted a couple of inches into the cerebral cortex. And so he created the split between mind and body. And he also created a split between humans and the rest of nature. We have God given spirits: we're akin to God and the angels, through the possession of spirit, an aspect of our lives. But our bodies, like the rest of the nature are inanimate, and mechanical. And animals are simply machines. Therefore, it's perfectly alright to have factory farming, and to vivisect animals. Descartes himself practiced vivisection on living dogs, to examine their hearts, which are like pumps. And he didn't give them anesthetics, he worked, he strapped them down and cut them open while he was still alive. And if they yelped in pain, he just dismissed that as no more showing that they had feelings, than the production of sound by a pipe organ, when you press down a note, it makes a noise. It's just a machine, the dog is just the machine and is not feeling pain, it's not having real emotions, it's just a mechanism. And that was the rationale for vivisection, and the treatment of animals as machines in factory farms, and has been ever since. Of course, there are now countervailing forces, insistence of legislation on animal welfare, and so on. But these have largely been forced upon the scientific world through political movements, rather than coming from the ideology itself.
 
This also led to a whole new view of theology. Before the 17th century revolution in science, God was in nature, everything in nature was suffused by God's presence. God was present everywhere. And nature was in God. So God was a living god of a living world. In trees, in planets and stars, in animals, there was a divine presence, an indwelling of God, in all things. And all things, all the forms of animals and plants, and of the heavens, reflected the formative influence of the divine mind. So God was eminent, as well as transcendent, within nature as well as beyond nature. But with the mechanistic worldview, a completely new image of God emerged. God was now totally transcendent, outside nature. And nature was a mechanical system going on automatically that just proceeded after God created the world in the first place, made the world machine and press the start button. The whole of nature was supposed to go on automatically. And God was outside it, interacting with human morality, and human minds, but not interacting with nature, because it just followed natural laws, which were mathematical principles in the divine mind. So it led to this idea of very, very remote God. And by the end of the 18th century, many philosophers, the philosophers of the Enlightenment like Voltaire, and people like Thomas Jefferson in the United States, had adopted a philosophy called Deism where the God they believed in didn't actually intervene in nature, or answer prayers, or do miracles, or have anything to do with the Christian religion or any religion. Instead, God was like a supreme engineer, mathematician and designer who designed the world machine in the first place, and started it off, leaving it to go automatically. It wasn't long before people started saying, well, let's just assume the universe is eternal, then you don't need to go to start it off. And that's what happened by the beginning of the 19th century, fueling a move among intellectuals from Taoism, this remote machine making God, to full blown atheism, no need for God at all, just to have laws of nature, matter and energy, everything just proceeding automatically in an eternal universe.
 
And so 19th century atheism, got rid of this remote machine making God, and most atheists today who are mechanistically inclined, which is the great majority of mechanistic materialists, don't believe in this kind of seemingly unnecessary external machine making God. Well, that's not the God that most religious believers believe in either. Because the God of traditional religion isn't, has never, been a remote figure outside the universe, but dwelling within the universe and underlying the entire created world and natural order.
 
This view of nature as mechanical, and God or the mind of nature as completely remote, and only to do with mathematical laws and reason, provoked a reaction in the late 18th century, called the Romantic movement. And what the Romantic poets and artists were saying was that nature was truly alive. Nature was not just a mechanical machine, it wasn't just a matter of mathematical laws, created by a disembodied mind. There was true life in nature. Emotions in humans were part of their real life, they weren't just sort of annoying distractions caused by mechanisms inside the body. And these emotions included the sense of awe, and the sense of beauty. And the Romantic poets, and the romantic artists recovered a sense of living nature. And that was one of their principal messages. Nature is alive, not just mechanical, and they've had an enduring effect on Western culture.
 
We've inherited both traditions, mechanical, mechanistic materialism, and the romantic tradition, which sees nature as alive. And most people actually believe in both. From nine to five, on Mondays to Fridays, most people go along with the mechanistic worldview, the materialist worldview, because this is what underlies our government, our educational system, the conduct of commerce and business. That's what's the underlying philosophy of our working world. And that's what children are educated into, in science education all over the world. It's the same kind of science, the same materialist worldview that's being taught in India, China, South America, Africa, as well as Europe. The same worldview is taught everywhere. But after work, when people go home, and they start playing with their dogs and doing their garden, playing with their children, when they go on holidays, weekends, and on holiday in the summer holidays and other holidays, and in their retirement fantasies. Most people actually believe that nature is alive. And so I think we live in a kind of split culture. Most people want to make lots of money, exploiting nature, treating it as mechanistic, because if they can make enough money, then they can buy a house in the country and get away from it all in their rural retreat, or in a house to which they plan to retire, when they finish making money by exploiting nature by working in their regular job. And so we've created a tremendous split in our culture. And that's why the great cities of the Western world are clogged with traffic on Friday evenings, as millions of people tried to get back to nature in a car.
 
In the late 18th century, the beginning of the 19th century, this Romantic movement also affected the sciences themselves, particularly the view of the Earth and biology. One person who was very influenced by it was Erasmus Darwin, who was a doctor in the Midlands in England, he was also the grandfather of Charles Darwin. And Erasmus Darwin had one of the first theories of evolution. He thought of nature as alive. And instead of thinking of a remote, mechanical, mathematical God as creating all the animals and plants, he had the idea that nature herself could bring them forth, and that they came forth in a series of developments, which we now call evolution. So Darwin, Charles Darwin, was not the first to think of evolution. His own grandfather was one of the first to think of it. And in France, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck came up with a similar idea of evolution. Through the life of nature and the life of organisms themselves, living nature was creative.
 
And so creation hadn't all happened at the beginning, when God was supposed to have created a mechanical machine-like universe, instead, nature had had the power to be creative herself. In the 1850s, this gave rise to the theory of evolution we call Darwinian evolution, first proposed by Charles Darwin, and also by Alfred Russel Wallace, who independently came up with the idea of evolution by natural selection. And Darwin thought that this enabled what would otherwise be a rather suspiciously romantic view of life, to be made more, accommodated into, a mechanical materialist world. And this was welcomed by materialists because it enabled life to be explained without invoking God as a creator, by what they saw as purely mechanical forces, organisms adapting mechanically to their environment, and inheritance working mechanically as well.
 
But there was always a countervailing force within biology in the philosophy called vitalism. From the 17th century onwards, people opposed the idea that plants and animals were merely machines, and had the idea that life involved more than just mechanical forces. It involved a vital spirit, some vital principle, a vital force, organizing principle, which was not found in organic nature. And vitalism underwent a remarkable revival at the end of the 19th century, largely through the French philosopher, Henri Bergson, and also through the German embryologist Hans Driesch. And both of them put forward a sophisticated modern form of vitalism. Driesch tried to revive Aristotle's idea of the soul as an organizing principle, giving form and pattern to molecules and other constituents of living things as they developed. But vitalism was treated as the deadliest of heracies by mechanistic biologists, who were materialists. And it was basically stamped out as a heresy. And by the end of the First World War, by about 1918 to 1920, the mechanistic theory of life became completely dominant within biology. Vitalism had been discarded from rational thought, and biology textbooks from then on until today, treat vitalism as if it were a strange, superstitious aberration of reason that's being confined to the dustbin of history.
 
A new development occurred in the 1920s with the development of the organic view of nature. The philosopher who most persuasively advanced this view was Alfred North Whitehead. I shall talk more about him in subsequent episodes. And he put forward the idea that nature is actually a much more like an organism than the machine. The universe is more like an organism than a machine. Living organisms are more like organisms that machines, that should be fairly obvious. And that even atoms and molecules were more like organisms than machines. Quantum Theory revealed that atoms were not made up of little billiard ball-like particles of matter, but rather vibrating patterns of energetic activity. The fields of the atoms, the quantum fields, gave them form, and the energy gave them activity. And they're all vibrating waves of activity. Vibrating structures of activity. Matter was not stuff that just endured through time, but a process. And so even in the chemical realm, the atoms and molecules and crystals could be seen as sort of miniature organisms. And he pointed out that nature is organized in a series of levels.
 

Part 3 . . .
 
This idea was taken much further by the philosopher and writer, Arthur Koestler. And there's a picture he drew showing this pattern in which nature is organized. And what it shows is that nature is organized in a series of levels. The smallest circles in this diagram could be subatomic particles, and the next level could be atoms, the next level molecules, the next level crystals. Or it could be organelles, in cells, in tissues, in organs, in organisms, in societies. Of organisms, like flocks of birds, in ecosystems, in planets, in solar systems, in galaxies, and so on. That everywhere you look in nature, there are levels of organization where the whole is more than the sum of the parts. You can't understand the whole by looking at the parts in isolation. You can't understand the properties of water by studying the properties of hydrogen and oxygen by themselves. You can't understand the properties of a chimpanzee by studying chimpanzee fibroblasts and muscle cells in tissue culture. You can't understand the solar system by just considering a planet. Or a galaxy just by considering a star. The Galaxy has a pattern of organization which is not just present in individual solar systems. So this holarchichal, or nested hierarchical way of organizing nature, is present at every level. At every level, the whole is like an organism that contains parts that are like organs within the organism.
 
This is a very different way of looking at nature, from the reductive mechanistic way of thinking, which tries to explain all of nature in terms of parts, and tries to reduce everything to the smallest mechanical parts. In biology, the smallest parts and molecules. So under mechanistic materialism, the most prestigious and important area of biology is molecular biology, because that's where you can reduce life to the smallest bits, molecules. But when you do that, of course, a lot of the interest of biology just disappears - the beauty of the rose, the smell of the rose, the homing behavior of a pigeon, the migratory patterns of a cuckoo - all these disappear in a kind of biology, where what you do is kill organisms, grind them up, and then isolate their molecules in test tubes and study genes and proteins and other molecules in isolation. Then, if you try and put these back together in mathematical models, as in systems biology, if you try and build up from the bottom, you get what's called a combinatorial explosion. The number of possible combinations becomes more and more and more, until it's intractable. Instead, the holistic view, or the organismic view, shows nature is organized in a top down method, as well as a bottom up method, at each level the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Our organs, the liver, the kidney, the spleen, etc. depend on the whole organism for their well being. And our whole organisms depend on the fact that we're part of larger social organisms, families, societies, cultures. None of us could survive for very long on our own. We all depend on the ecosystem of the earth. And that depends on the Sun and the planets and the whole solar system and the galaxy. At every level there's a wholeness that's more than the sum of the parts.
 
And then, in our new cosmology, since 1966, we've had the Big Bang cosmology where the universe begins very, very small, less than the size of a head of a pin, billions of degrees centigrade. And since then, it's been expanding and cooling down, more forms and structures have appeared within it ever since. The universe itself is now much more like an organism. This is nothing like a mechanical clock. Mechanical clocks don't start small and grow and form new structures within them as they grow, but growing plants do and growing embryos do. It's like a giant growing organism, the whole universe and the planets, the solar systems, are like organisms.
 
And so if we ask the question with which I started, "is nature mechanical?" "Is everything machine like?" The answer is no. Everything's much more organism-like. And when you think about it, the machine metaphor is only a metaphor. It's not a proven fact. You can't do an experiment to prove that a dog is a machine. You can't even prove that the dog's heart is nothing but a pump. The heart changes its activity. It has all sorts of other functions besides pumping blood, and the brain is not just a computer. These attempts to reduce organisms to mechanical metaphors are at best limited. The metaphors can help in certain ways - the eye is a bit like a camera, the heart is a bit like a pump - but they're not the ultimate explanation or the whole truth.
 
At the end of each of the chapters of my book, The Science Delusion, I have a series of questions for materialists. And I'll finish by mentioning these questions. The reason I put forward these questions is so that you can take this further by discussing it with your friends. If you have friends or family members who are materialists, who believe in the religion of science, or who simply taken it for granted without questioning it or thinking about it, because that's what they've been taught - and most people reasonably enough believe what they've been taught by authoritative figures in schools and universities - there are questions you can ask, which are real questions.
 
The first one, "is the mechanistic worldview, a testable scientific theory, or a metaphor?" Well, I've argued, it's a metaphor, you couldn't actually test that a galaxy is a machine, or is purely mechanistic, or is purely mindless, or without any other organizing principles. And most mechanistic believers just aren't aware that it is nothing but a metaphor. Metaphors can be useful, but they're not right or wrong. They can have their uses, but they always have their limitations.
 
The second question is, "if it is a metaphor, why is the machine metaphor better in every respect than the organism metaphor? If it is a scientific theory, how could it be tested or refuted?" So this takes further this questioning of the machine theory as a metaphor.
 
And then the third question, "do you think that you yourself are nothing but a complex machine?" If someone's a consistent mechanistic materialist, they should believe that they themselves are nothing but a machine, and also that their thoughts are nothing but mechanical processes going on in their brains, that they have no free will. Yet, most people who are mechanistic materialists are actually rather inconsistent when you push them. It turns out they think the rest of the universe is mechanical. But they're an exception to the rest. And so are their friends and family, and possibly all other humans, possibly even dogs if they like dogs, ar maybe other animals to horses, cats parrots. But they ought to believe that they're nothing but a complex machine. And if they don't, they're already doubting the theory they claim to believe in.
 
And the final question is, "have you been programmed to believe in materialism?" Because if you believe you're nothing to machine, then your belief in materialism isn't something that can be true or false if you have no ability to choose it freely among alternatives, but instead, you only believe it because your main brain makes you do so.
 
So a consistent materialist would have to believe that they themselves have been programmed by their education and upbringing to believe in materialism. And there's nothing in that that proves materialism is true, it just proves they've been programmed to believe it. And again, most materialists don't really want to agree with that question. They want to make an exception for themselves.
 
But I think these questions reveal that this materialist worldview is literally incredible. Even though people pretend to believe it or pretend to go along with it, they can only do so if they make an exception for themselves, and indeed for their belief system.
 
So, in answer to the first question, "is nature mechanical?" The answer is well, this is just a metaphor. And there are better metaphors for many aspects of nature. Nature and living organisms are more like living organisms than machines. And there's nothing that compels us to believe in this worldview, except for the force of historical habit. And this was adopted in the first place as a rejection of a worldview of the world as alive and of there being mind in nature. But this old view animism or panpsychism is now coming back in full force as I will discuss in the next episode.

Attached is the video wherein I asked Rupert my famous question:  "What is resonating and morphing?" (M&

I must tell you, in the context of all else I have read and heard from him, I was disappointed to hear him resort back to the physical universe to explain his answer . . .

From memory, I am the second questioner . . . so you don't have long to wait for my section . . . what follows you can safely skip as other questioners are so "off the wall" subject illiterate as to be a tragedy.

Link to our DropBox, zipped file:  https://www.dropbox.com/s/qbkqjw8fo8xriej/1st%20Live%20Q%26A%201%20with%20Rupert%2C%206%20July%202023%20%E2%80%94%20Rupert%20Sheldrake%20T.zip?dl=0

Rog

Your question begins at 13:50
Good question and good follow up quesion, Roger.

Your wording in the follow up question was excellent, as usual.

Rupert seemed genuinely interested in your material.

Christian

OK, as I continue on with the weekly additions to Rupert's course, I see stuff that I believe will interest and help you all.

This lecture I am now linking is out of sequence as I've just listened to it and it is still on my computer screen; so here it is!!! (M&

What I will next do is do a new post that will list all of the to-date sessions for those interested . . . though this one I consider important . . . in fact, it might be a good exercise for each of you to do a little post articulating what it is that you consider (or actually know) is behind how come there is inheritance. [hat]
Session 7: Is all biological inheritance material? The Big Questions in Science: Rupert Sheldrake (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ePIT6zmnJk)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ePIT6zmnJk

Regarding inheritance...

there is some fascinating phenomena going on in regards new varieties of veggies and fruits. 
There once was a guy in Styria, Austria, who dreamed of Punkins who would have seeds without the annoying shell.
This was his vision and after many many years he bred a variety that actually does exactly what he envisioned.
So the vision and intention is definitely a part and major influence.

In Syberia, Russia, there is/was a program where wild foxes were domesticated and tamed. After many generations the foxes were more tame (but still far away of being of the character of dogs) but what was stunning was how much their physical appearance changed. You could say they were in a higher mood level just by observing their physical characteristics. Here the environment and perception of danger were a factor -- less danger over generations calmed the breed down.

Christian

Hmmm, this you wrote, Christian: "less danger over generations calmed the breed down," I found very insightful.

It figures. In humans we see that folks who have been abused tend to either involuntarily replicate abuse on other or otherwise are super reactive with defensive hostility towards their environment . . . living in Manhattan is a great example of this!

Thank you, Roger.
And yes, I see that.
Humans evolve best in a safe space and environment. People with a lot of abuse on their case (or who grew up in criminal environments or even members of a gang) tend to live in the conviction that the environment is always against their best interests which keeps them cautious and super sensitive or on high alert. Processes like the Friendliness process ("Find someone, something or somewhere...") can do wonders here, of course if you get them to run the process. Interesting is also that for humans the mere "perception" (which can be filtered and untrue) will trigger these responses, as though the threat is real and imminent.

Christian

 
Advaya link to Rupert’s Course Content
Might not work for you guys whose computer does not have the cookie to show you bought it.
https://rupertsheldrakecourse.com/course-content-and-recordings (https://rupertsheldrakecourse.com/course-content-and-recordings)
 
Session 1: Introduction—The Big Questions in Science
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV4MNq9ILNw&t=7s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV4MNq9ILNw&t=7s)
 
 
Rupert Sheldrake: The Big Questions in Science
Session 2: Is nature mechanical?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBdS_drEOuI (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBdS_drEOuI)
 
 
Rupert Sheldrake: The Big Questions in Science
Session 3: Are the Laws of Nature Fixed?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdBtB41rBuI (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdBtB41rBuI)
 
 
Session 4: Is the total amount of matter and energy always the same?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvmXpCk_zGs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvmXpCk_zGs)
 
 
Rupert Sheldrake: The Big Questions in Science
Session 5: Is Matter Unconscious?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj_2z81F9Sw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj_2z81F9Sw)
 
 
Session 6: Is Nature Purposeless?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4z5cEIrrdM (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4z5cEIrrdM)
 
 
Session7: Is All Biological Inheritance Material?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ePIT6zmnJk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ePIT6zmnJk)
 
 
 

Lesson 8 of Rupert's course is particularly insightful . . .

The only missing thing is an articulated definition of what actually is "the mind."  How did it come into being, what is its construct and function.

My observation as I interface with the "scientific community" is that they routinely. constantly have failed to define or explain precisely the terms they are using to discuss the natural phenomena we are experiencing and engaged in.

Rupert here also drops the ball on this one . . . though in his case I can forgive him as he is really limiting himself to discussing the known and unknown aspects of this subject and not endeavoring to reveal new material.

Here is an extract from part of the book I am writing addressing this failure to define the terms used to discuss this subject.

The research conducted by my team and myself has revealed that the “LIFE-FORCE PRESENCE,” of which you are an element, was initially an all-causing without limit Presence.  But due to conceiving of wrong answers to solve what it did not want to experience, it took itself through a series of erroneous solutions to eventually arrive here, in disunity, trapped as individual parts within the physical universe, and for some individuals, believing they are physical matter not spiritual.
 
MIND:  The mind is an accumulation of recorded past impacts and experiences along with solutions envisioned to predict and control the future to the benefit of the Spirit.  The mind is composed of formed spiritual Life-Force (parts of you).  The mind is composed of either projected and located spiritually telepathically projected imagery, or scarring as a result of un-experienceable impacts.
 
The mind appears to have causal capacity only because you, the spiritual presence as source of all, have created in the mind content on automatic response to solve outside stimulus.  But then, typical of our wrong answer solutions, we abandoned awareness of the truth of that creation.
 
Our great Spiritual error was to conceive of the solution that the mind could and should be at cause over us spiritually and determine conditions of existence and behavior for us.
 
BODY:  The physical force-field organism used by the Spirit to position itself and orient the physical universe forces and particles to the Spiritual Presence.  The body can be affected by both positive and negative aberrant involuntarily replicated Life-Forces as is stored in the MIND. The body is also affected by Spiritual intent and emanations.
 
The PHYSICAL UNIVERSE:  the physical universe is the “reality” formed as a result of fusing agreements on telepathically projected imagery and concepts as sourced by Spiritual Life-Force Presences.  In essence it is formed Spiritual Life-Force projections, placed and held in position by agreement.
 
Academic science has no definition of what energy actually is composed of: that is, what is the stuff of it.  For those literate in spiritual matters it can be observed that the most primal form of energy is projected and directed spiritual Life-Force as applied between spiritual Beings in the spiritual realm.  Energy in the physical universe is a later similar residual complement of and expression of our spiritually emanated Life-Force.

As mentioned, I am saving all of Rupert's course material/lectures for you.  Here is #8.
 
Session 8: Are minds confined to brains?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-DrWY_gZNg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-DrWY_gZNg)
 
I will later create a single document containing all of these course sections.

Good one from Rupert, thank you for sharing.

Interesting that he brought up the Galvanic Skin Response (meter). 


Christian

Good one from Rupert, thank you for sharing.

Interesting that he brought up the Galvanic Skin Response (meter).


Christian

Yes, I note and find it interesting that in all his public utterings he seems to not be revealing what he might really be thinking, believing or seeing, but instead sticks to addressing and questioning the known and agreed propositions of science and philosophy.
This is, of course, understandable for this course he is presenting . . . . but, this appears to be Rupert's thing in all he does on public lines.
Rog

Yes, I noticed in the one video you shared where you asked him a question and the follow up question, that he is actually genuinely interested in the matter of "causal agency" but he does not want to entertain it too much in a public setting.

Actually it's somewhat wise on his part. He is already pushing the envelope to a level where it gets uncomfortable for the Scientific Priesthood. Pushing any more could and probably would invite dire consequences his way. Smart. I think he figured that he can accomplish more and reach more people doing it this way.

But yeah, to be honest I would love to see a video where he tells all, including his speculations that go far beyond any scientific consensus.

As a personal sidenote, while I dislike the britisch accent, I actually enjoy listening to him. He has a calm and pleasant presence about him.

Best regards,
Christian

Session #9 and #10 of Rupert's Course
 
Session 9: Are memories stored as material traces?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhaHwpsEVxs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhaHwpsEVxs)
 
Session 10: Are psychic phenomena illusory?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ5YkIZONR8 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ5YkIZONR8)
 
 

 


If you are “up for it,” that is, if you choose to do as I have just done; I recommend reading this extract of a scientific dissertation addressing the mechanics of physical existence.

😊

It has been quite interesting to me to experience the many simple ways I get colossal case gain breakthroughs. Actually, it’s quite pleasantly surprising.

The attached pdf is an extracted section of a much larger document that actually addressed the issue of the current knowledge and arguments regarding cosmology, the universe and its content of galaxies and the why/what/how of its existence and expansion . . . titled: Is the Age of Big Bang Cosmology and ‘the Science of Scarcity’ Finally Coming to an End? (https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__substack.com_redirect_2_eyJlIjoiaHR0cHM6Ly9tYXR0aGV3ZWhyZXQuc3Vic3RhY2suY29tL3AvaXMtdGhlLWFnZS1vZi1iaWctYmFuZy1jb3Ntb2xvZ3k-5FdG9rZW49ZXlKMWMyVnlYMmxrSWpveE1EZzVNemN4TWl3aWNHOXpkRjlwWkNJNk56RTNORFF4TlRjc0ltbGhkQ0k2TVRZMk1qSTROams1TXl3aVpYaHdJam94TmpZME9EYzRPVGt6TENKcGMzTWlPaUp3ZFdJdE1qWXdNRFExSWl3aWMzVmlJam9pY0c5emRDMXlaV0ZqZEdsdmJpSjkuTWh1dElOaEFkU05yTmdwWlVnUUlBa0E3ZE93RExYZXVtM2VJV1hWOHQ1cyIsInAiOjcxNzQ0MTU3LCJzIjoyNjAwNDUsImYiOmZhbHNlLCJ1IjoxMDg5MzcxMiwiaWF0IjoxNjYyMjg2OTkzLCJleHAiOjE2NjQ4Nzg5OTMsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0wIiwic3ViIjoibGluay1yZWRpcmVjdCJ9.tJPG2ufctlCnTiCqzZ5lkxr6qlE3FQeXUMxLCFyHB3I-3F&d=DwMFAA&c=euGZstcaTDllvimEN8b7jXrwqOf-v5A_CdpgnVfiiMM&r=S7Tg2fpZWf5kY9FehVfYDYTEzBDpc9BUmkjHQSD-0A0&m=mGRLwLFjRlxDUvY6Akc9oXscZCdXGH5Xp3Lza6ZNQ6g&s=QFxc5Mru5f6SyIL3ByfKL_YhQQ4VRNdRiqFlXud4ekg&e=)

The author is Matthew Ehret of the  Rising Tide Foundation  and was Originally published on The Strategic Culture Foundation (https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__substack.com_redirect_12d5f871-2D506f-2D43e2-2D99d1-2Df475ca823442-3Fr-3D6hhn4&d=DwMFAA&c=euGZstcaTDllvimEN8b7jXrwqOf-v5A_CdpgnVfiiMM&r=S7Tg2fpZWf5kY9FehVfYDYTEzBDpc9BUmkjHQSD-0A0&m=mGRLwLFjRlxDUvY6Akc9oXscZCdXGH5Xp3Lza6ZNQ6g&s=o8ftSorbOwq_TnLoE24T0AwKzTGvghg3-YSpOyk56ZQ&e=)

I have spared you the hours of reading, and given you the part wherein I blew my “Zorch.”

It was in looking at and for the “why” and “how come” that I ascended to an awareness of an experience of my true infinite size, presence and game playing activity.

What I experienced was my Presence and existence as a determining, co-empowering source of the energized “blue-print” vision of Life’s progress within the Physical Universe we have created.

That is, I expanded UP to having all of the existence of the Physical Universe game within me . . . and with me actively, actually, co-empowering the determining of the “things to be” for the Life Form of existence we have determined and chosen.

And this also gave me the experience, again, of the truth that "all of the universes are within you" . . . I was aware of the parade of our descent down from our perfection in "the Heavens," through each of the universal "domains of spiritual existence" but, luckily, was focused on the item above of our Physical Universe handling rather than being spread through the mess that has brought us down to where we are.

And, in my case, from that expanded position and viewpoint, I saw a physical universe and the historically developed condition our Life-Form existence within it as a comparative DOT within my Presence and awareness.

Rog

 
Session 11: Is mechanistic medicine the only kind that really works?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgFEYvLj5YU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgFEYvLj5YU)
 

This is the final video by Rupert of the actual course.  Next week will be the final live questions session with Rupert . . . I am pondering my question possibilities (M&

Session 12: Conclusion to the Big Questions in Science

Scientific Futures:
Where is all This Leading?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw6Hcy_1Xwg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw6Hcy_1Xwg)

Nice conclusion of the series and a positive vision for the future of science (or sciences, as Rupert put it).

It is also my view that the scientific research benefits greatly from an inclusive (integral) and holistic approach.
Much can be learned from other cultures and Rupert is right that much of it has been overlooked and neglected for centuries by the traditional western science community. 

Christian

Yes.  This series by Rupert has truly brought it home to me what a disaster the Church of Rome has been to civilization on Planet Earth.

But that is true of any religion that waged Jihad on others or their beliefs or findings that resulted from honest search for truth and knowledge.

The Church of Rome's war on the seekers of nature's truths in the 16th and 17th centuries caused the "Natural Philosophers" of the day to have to exclude research into the true nature we human Beings and our Spiritual Nature. It got to the point that in "The Enlightenment" of the 17th and 18th centuries, scientists and philosophers eschewed any reference to or investigation of the truths of our spiritual existence. And in France it led to a complete moving away from the power of the Church.

As noted in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "The energy created and expressed by the intellectual foment of Enlightenment thinkers contributes to the growing wave of social unrest in France in the eighteenth century. The social unrest comes to a head in the violent political upheaval which sweeps away the traditionally and hierarchically structured ancien régime (the monarchy, the privileges of the nobility, the political power of the Catholic Church). The French revolutionaries meant to establish in place of the ancien régime a new reason-based order instituting the Enlightenment ideals of liberty and equality."


And so we see the idiocy of the Popes' wars on truth by their attempts to enforce dogma and false beliefs has only brought about the decline of the Church's power.

But worse has been the introduction of the aberrated propositions and thinking of "scientism" that resulted from Rome's Jihad that is today as destructive to civilization as was the Jihads carried out by the Popes against honest search for truth.

It is so silly, even my hero Rupert does not (in public at least) refer directly to our spiritual existence and presence in terms of our powers and capacities, but defines "its" presence in physical universe terms!

This ditty just sprung to mind as I began to ponder on what question I might pose to Rupert in tomorrow's live session . . . (M&

Rog

I agree with you on all points, Roger.

This ditty just sprung to mind as I began to ponder on what question I might pose to Rupert in tomorrow's live session . . . (M&

 :D

One of the things that I find interesting is that he (Rupert) says he believs planets and stars (like the sun) have counsciousness. This view is shared by Rudolf Steiner.

In my view, everything has some sort of counsciousness, even if a miniscule quantum. After all it was brought into existence by the envisioning of spiritual presences.

I would aks Rupert: "Besides doing prayer, meditation and breathing techniques, have you ever been processed directly as a spiritual presence?" "No? May I offer you a spiritual presence processing session then?"
 [hat]  

Christian

Here we have the final Q&A session with Rupert responding to questions asked by we attendees.

My question is rather pointed (M&

You can spend the time viewing the whole 1.5 hours . . . but you might find it boring as it is regular human types asking questions that really only address or try to solve their individual hang-ups . . . .

My question is the last question before Rupert moved into his wrap-up and to invite us all to his next course (which I will not be attending, as it is not of interest to me)

Here is the link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ph8mq97m3b9xrl2/Rupert%20%20Live%20Questions%209-21-22.zip?dl=0

My question is asked at the 1 hour 17 min. mark

Rog

 
I collided with this treasure while doing my usual early morning search for knowledge and wisdom.
 
What delight! It is 30 years ago that this was featured on the BBC.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KonRvVqLdfs&t=1357s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KonRvVqLdfs&t=1357s)

Rupert Sheldrake, the most Heretical Scientist of our time: BBC Special (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KonRvVqLdfs&t=1357s)
 
10,972 views Aug 31, 2022 When A New Science of Life was first published in June 1981, it received many favourable reviews and reactions, particularly in the Guardian and New Scientist.
 
These positive responses infuriated the late Sir John Maddox, editor of the journal Nature. He published an editorial denouncing this book in September 1981, entitled A Book for Burning?. In this highly polemical attack he sought to excommunicate Rupert from the world of institutional science and to brand the hypothesis of morphic resonance as heresy.
 
In 1993, BBC television produced this film about Rupert's work and this controversy.
 
About the controversy https://www.sheldrake.org/reactions/m... (https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqa2xVVnZsQnBxTVFoQl85TUdTZmxaLXB0SnRyQXxBQ3Jtc0tub3lTUzlhTDBJOVViaW96a1V1blVWUjJyc3QxZ0R5WFpIWEhNWnc0YVlOVEVOTmFNaHpiWmR3WFBzZTA0bWlSLUpfQXhQSjVCRERRVWVuelQyUmpOOVlSOGZnUXFXYkFRNUJfWktQbGNuU1hKZTd4aw&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sheldrake.org%2Freactions%2Fmorphic-resonance-heretical-or-visionary&v=KonRvVqLdfs) The Book A New Science of Life / Morphic Resonance https://www.sheldrake.org/ansol (https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqa3laUEhzSkxIQVR1MzhxMy01YktiRHNLREhfZ3xBQ3Jtc0trWmF6U1Exd1dUVktOMkxsS1JfQ3VKSENDYXJ2cDA5cDVZbkdETVlyUS1EMjJJSmJNR0F4VnRNekdKR05qZ2c1NC1FWmlGdWxmT0J2X0hHVEtnLW9KSS1tTmh3bTV2SzNQUXRpb0JDNnhjQXlyUFdRZw&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sheldrake.org%2Fansol&v=KonRvVqLdfs)
 
Dr Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance. At Cambridge University he worked in developmental biology as a Fellow of Clare College. He was Principal Plant Physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics and From 2005 to 2010 was Director of the Perrott-Warrick project, Cambridge.
 
Roger
 

 
 
This below was my very first introduction to Rupert.
 
This states the date of this program was 1993 . . . I do feel it was a little earlier based on my memory of where I was living when I saw it.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVUtt1SHX4E

A Glorious Accident (2 of 7) Rupert Sheldrake: Revolution or wrong track? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVUtt1SHX4E)
 
In the Dutch television show A Glorious Accident (1993) six scientists talk about their visions on their work and the world. Journalist Wim Kayzer asks them: how far did you come in your understanding of our thoughts an actions? What did science really bring us at the end of the 20th century: knowledge or also understanding? An interview with the British writer and biologist Rubert Shledrake. He studied cell biology, but alter focused more on parapsychology. He wrote about the morphic field, telepathy, psychic theories and the possibility of life on other planets. Order the dvd-box of A Glorious Accident here: http://winkel.vpro.nl/een-schitterend... (https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqazc2d3BhZGhaT2lSLUc2OVRsOWZUa2RUSnZGd3xBQ3Jtc0tsRlBFZ2tfTEdLSm42ZGtFTmFhZzhIcUZUcEdQRlJBVnZXa0FfbGZyczRWV3JRU1hWdnJLLW1PWjdBVGFCSGZJVUdvYkRaaXJ1dXBzc251QmlXTVJubHRJSEFVSkU2QXJ4V2Z6MFdrQVRZM0l3Y3JYcw&q=http%3A%2F%2Fwinkel.vpro.nl%2Feen-schitterend-ongeluk%2F&v=fVUtt1SHX4E)
 
Rog