Preamble

The significance of scientific discovery, not just the discoveries themselves, is part of the rationale of this institute. How do they affect our beliefs and credos? Scientists do the deep research but what do their facts or purported facts tell people?

Rupert Sheldrake has given years to thinking about Morphic Resonance (MR). For those interested to know more detail than appears below, his book of that title, Morphic Resonance, gives chapter and verse. His views once were thought heretical by the science community but opinion is gathering that he is in the mainstream. If true or possibly true, how can MR affect our attitudes and beliefs, and so our lives?

By way of illustration of this question, the author of this review recently met a man who has over 900 children; he may have had many more but lost count presumably after the first hundred or so. He has made a lucrative career out of being a sperm donor. Let us suppose for a moment that his ambition was to spread his ‘seed’ as widely as possible so as to pass on his genetic inheritance to a wide selection of progeny. Leaving aside the questions of whether he has ‘good’ seed and is doing a worthwhile thing and also how far physical appearance, which no doubt does come in large degree from genes, affects character in a sense more profound than that of Central Casting which is liable to impress on us the idea that physical appearance affects people’s nature, is this sperm donor onto a winning wicket? Perhaps, after all, genes are not the conduit, as he believed, to pass on character…

Morphic Resonance in Mantras, Rituals and Festivals

Summary of a talk by Rupert Sheldrake for Alternatives on 19th October 2022 at St James’s Church, Piccadilly

Morphic Resonance (MR) is observable as a phenomenon rather than explained. There are theories about how it works and Sheldrake admits that most are speculative. David Bohm, for instance, thought that patterns work through a multi-dimensional universe. Most theories about all the Big Questions are speculative. Is the Big Bang theory demonstrable and, if so, were the evolutionary laws that govern everything all there from the start? Another now largely discredited theory is of a Cartesian view of the world. Do we exist in an inanimate universe in which only the Observable-By-Us exists? Have we come into it with consciousness unlike the rest of the universe? The crux question at the moment about MR is about whether or not it happens. Is it true?

MR basically works by tuning into frequencies.  It works over time rather than physical space and matter, as Wittgenstein among others predicted.  All living beings are rhythmic. There is a resonance across time. Patterns are laid down and then experienced in communication with people from the past as much as to our own personal past.  Ideas circulate in the collective unconscious.

If Morphic Resonance is a true picture of what is going on, all species, mankind included, have a collective memory. This idea has long been held in the East. There is much circumstantial evidence. Rats being ‘taught’ to perform certain tricks like navigating water mills were found to improve dramatically, becoming about ten times better at it. Rigorous experiments then showed that rats all round the world had improved at the same task to a like degree.

There is evidence for MR in analysis of vibrations: vibrations are observable in diverse spheres, crystallisation for instance, and frequencies.  There is also evidence in terms of probability that has been gathered by asking wide selections of people questions and their answers demonstrate a degree of consistency that goes beyond the norms of probability. 

Memories, it follows, are not stored in space but in time. The thinking in early work into for instance the genome assumed that genes were the key to character and identity; memory patterns on which we rely to make judgements are laid down in the brain and, also, that we perhaps could pass these altered genes down the generations.  If that was true where are the memory traces laid down in the brain?  One would expect to find some evidence of this and there is none.  When the brain dies, all memory traces should be wiped according to the old way of looking at things but it appears that there are traces of memory ‘left out’ over time that people pick up.  ‘Terminal Lucidity’ allowing sudden access even by Alzheimer’s Patients to memories previously ‘lost’ supports the idea that the brain can be compared to TV receptor equipment which can be faulty but is not the source of programmes.

Epigenetics including much work on twins – who would be particularly subject to MR – now shows that inherited characteristics exist; but is it because of MR rather than genetic in origin?

People connect with patterns especially when they are repeated. Similarity is a key. Rituals are essentially conservative and connect with the way people have done things before. The patterns we pick up are like habits that become ingrained. 

The performance of ie ritual connects people with the past of their tribe or sects.

MR is like living in a force field of vibration and frequency that must affect us.

Endpiece comments

There are several ways of assessing whether there is or may be anything in MR. Examples:

• It is said frequently that there is a ‘power in houses’ and that one can think loftier thoughts in a cathedral whose very stones have been impregnated by the devotional ideas of the generations who have prayed by them.
• It is also said albeit less commonly that a child is more like to resemble the man that a woman loves rather than the biologic.al father; if there is any truth in this observation, it may be a further illustration of MR.
• People these days set much store by the lore of karma. If ‘what goes around comes around’ then the argument might run that this is logical in a world where thoughts and influences are sent out by people and are reflected back to them. People who believe in karma tend to set themselves up as judges of their actions and arrogate to themselves as opposed to an ‘outside’ Source the penance or reward their actions reap just as prelates talk confidently of the Word of the Almighty, speaking in His name.