This series was recorded in March, 2022, as a live event on Zoom; now offered as a course here with a live Q&A in November, 2023, as well as 12 PDFs of chapters from Rupert's books.
Embark on an illuminating journey through Rupert Sheldrake's groundbreaking hypothesis of morphic resonance in this 8-part video series, his deepest dive yet on the topic. Rupert proposes that memory is inherent in nature and evolves through habits, rather than fixed laws, working from the past to the present and into the future. In this seminar, he will outline the scientific basis of his hypothesis and explain how it impacts biological inheritance, personal and collective memory, instincts, and the development of both living and non-living self-organizing systems, from crystals to societies.
Learn how morphic resonance fosters a fresh perspective on rituals, mantras, festivals, and pilgrimages. Uncover its role in family constellation therapy and its impact on learning. See how our own lives, like the evolutionary process itself, depend on an interplay between habits and creativity. Join Rupert on this enlightening journey as he unravels the enigma of morphic resonance, a theory that could forever change the way we perceive reality.
There will be a live online Q&A session for participants in this course in November 2023. Participants will be notified of the details nearer the time.
Most of Rupert Sheldrake’s talks and dialogues are freely available on his Youtube channel and Navigating Consciousness Podcast, and he receives no income from advertisements. Your subscription greatly helps us with the cost of production.
Supporting evidence for MR includes:
- Crystal formation: Similar crystal structures form more quickly over time, suggesting an influence from previous formations.
- Melting points of crystals of new compounds go up, as morphic resonance from previous crystals of the same kind give more stability.
- Inherited behaviour in animals: Observations of rapid behaviour adoption across separated groups, like the blue tit's milk bottle opening.
- Learning in rats: Rats of the same breed learn to escape from a maze faster in subsequent generations, even when isolated from previous generations.
- Synchronized behaviour in flocks and schools: Animals moving in harmony without apparent communication, which could be explained by a shared morphic field.
- The persistent failure to find material memory traces in brains. Instead, memory may depend on morphic resonance.
- Improvements in human performance over time, like the rise in average IQ test scores, called the Flynn effect.
- People find it easier, on average, to solve crosswords or word puzzles like Wordle after many other people have laredy done them.
- Evolutionary repeats and parallelisms, like similar animal types in marsupials and placental mammals.
- Independent discoveries and parallel inventions in widely separated parts of the world.
- Memory transfer in organ transplant recipients: Reports of recipients experiencing memories or preferences of donors, implying morphic resonance.
- Recurrent patterns in families generation after generation suggesting the action of morphic resonance in family fields.
Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, is a biologist and author of more than a hundred technical papers and nine books, including The Science Delusion (called Science Set Free in the US). He was among the top 100 global thought leaders for 2013, as ranked by Switzerland's leading think tank, the Duttweiler Institute. He studied at Cambridge and Harvard Universities. As a fellow of Clare College, Cambridge University, he was Director of Studies in Cell Biology, and was also a research fellow of the Royal Society. He worked at the University of Malaya on tropical ferns, and in Hyderabad, India, as Principal Plant Physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). In India, he also lived for two years in the ashram of Fr Bede Griffiths in Tamil Nadu. From 2005-2010, he was Director of the Perrott-Warrick Project for the study of unexplained human and animal abilities, funded from Trinity College, Cambridge. He is currently a fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California and of Schumacher College in Dartington, England. He lives in London and is married to Jill Purce, with whom he has two sons, Merlin, a mycologist and author of the bestselling book Entangled Life, and Cosmo, a musician.
