Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal - The Scientist Researching Morphic Field | Rupert Sheldrake

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Starting point is 00:00:38 Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash theories all lowercase go to Shopify.com slash theories to upgrade your selling today that's Shopify.com slash theories and of course from the point of view of conventional science that's a tremendously heretical thought and I think our minds are field-like and extend far beyond our brains and can have effects beyond our brains. Rupert Sheldrake, why don't we begin by exploring one or two of your most unconventional perspectives that are underpinned by rigorous empirical validation. And we can discuss why these remain non-mainstream despite, at least on the surface, having some robust scientific support.

Starting point is 00:01:32 And also we will get into the evidence for them as well. Morphic resonance, which is the idea of memory in nature, inherent in all nature, and every species having a collective memory, and our own memories not being inside our brains. That's one. The extended mind is another, that our minds extend far beyond our brains, extend out into the world around us. And do so right now, in every act of vision, whenever we see something, I think the images are where they seem to be, outside our heads. And I test that by investigating the phenomenon of the sense of being stared at,

Starting point is 00:02:23 when people can tell when they're being looked at from behind and turn around and someone is looking at them, which is scientifically known as scompesthesia. And I suppose the third area is telepathy, which is the influence of people's feelings, emotions or needs on other people at a distance. And this also works with animals. So people's dogs and cats often pick up their intentions, as well as other people they're close to. So those are the three main areas in which I research, which are all of them sort of rather beyond the normal boundaries of science of a sort of textbook academic science. When you say that the mind is extended, in cognitive science they have an extended cognition.

Starting point is 00:03:17 Are you making a distinction between cognition and mind and if so, what is that? cognition and mind and if so what is that? Well, extended cognition, are you thinking of the work of someone like Evan Thompson or David Chalmers or they have the idea of a kind of extended mind, that a smartphone is part of our extension of our mind or a blind man with a stick feeling his way, that's kind of extension of the mind. Is that the kind of thing you mean? Right. There's four E's of cognitive science. There's the embodied, inactive, there's extended and embedded. So embodied is quite obvious. We're not just our brains. We're also in our bodies or cognition at least. There's also inactive cognition, which is the role of active interaction with the environment

Starting point is 00:04:10 to aid your learning. So for instance, you ride a bike, it's an inactive process. There's balance, there's movement, there's feedback loops, and those are integrated in. And then there's extended, which is what you've referred to. And then there is embedded, that we're embedded in an environment and our cognition is also there. Yes.

Starting point is 00:04:30 Well, there are various people who think that our minds extend beyond our brains that we're embedded or inactive. So Ava Noe, for example, has a theory that our minds extend beyond our brain interacting as we interact with the environment. Andy Clark, who is another philosopher who has an idea like that, Evan Thompson, Max Velmans, all these philosophers of mind have the idea that our minds are not simply inside our heads.

Starting point is 00:05:05 But when pressed and when asked, you know, in what way does this make a difference, then they become rather evasive. Is it just that we project out a kind of a controlled hallucination into the world around us which is totally non-physical, doesn't do anything and doesn't interact with the world or with anything else? Or is this extended mind something that actually makes a difference? Is our mind extending into the world in a way that can affect the world outside us? And I'm making a rather stronger claim than they are. I think that I've not seen any of them proposing any experimental tests for their philosophy. It's kind of academic thing about the way you think about perception or cognition. I'm

Starting point is 00:05:56 talking about something that's not just the way we think about it, but something that actually makes a difference in the world and which can be tested scientifically. So I think that my ideas like theirs are about the idea of the mind being extended beyond the brain. But I think of these extensions as being like fields, you know, like the gravitational field of the earth extends beyond the earth, the magnetic field of a bar magnet extends around the magnet, the electromagnetic field of a cell phone extends around the phone invisibly. All of these are field phenomena which extend around material objects. And I think our minds are field-like

Starting point is 00:06:39 and extend far beyond our brains and can have effects beyond our brains. Now of course, I'm not talking about trivial ways that if I say something and someone hears it and they respond that's having an effect beyond my brain. There's no disagreement about that. I mean, that's totally obvious and it's hardly even worth saying, you know, but what I'm talking about is something that's more, much more controversial. And so what I'm saying is that when we look at something, like when I look at your image on the screen right now, the images I'm seeing are projected out through my eyes to where you are, and the image of you is where it seems to be. It's in my mind but not inside my brain. It's outside me about two feet in front of me.

Starting point is 00:07:30 And if I look out of my window at a tree, then my image of the tree is where it seems to be outside there, about 50 feet away. So my image is being projected out. Now this is not a new theory, this is a very old theory. Euclid, the great Greek geometer in 300 BC, had this idea that we project out visual rays, our images are projected out from our eyes. This is often called extra mission, the sending out, extra out and mission sending. And what Euclid used his theory to explain was images in mirrors. So when you look at something in a mirror, what you see is a virtual image behind

Starting point is 00:08:19 the mirror. And how does it get there? It gets there because you've projected it there. It's not really behind the mirror in a physical sense, but it's there because you've projected it. Every time we look in the mirror, I think we're seeing our own visual projections. And so I think that this kind of two-way theory of vision, light comes in, changes happen in the retinas and in the optic nerve and in the cerebral cortex and the visual cortex in particular. And then outward projection of images in the opposite direction to the incoming light is what I'm suggesting. And what I'm, as I say, there's nothing original in this.

Starting point is 00:08:59 It's what practically everyone in the world believes except for scientifically educated people in Europe and America and anywhere else in the world in the last 100 or 200 years. Children spontaneously believe in visual extramission. That's why in Roald Dahl's book, Matilda, Matilda has eye beams that come out of her eyes that can move things. I mean, children love that because that's the way they think vision works. And Jean Piaget, the developmental psychologist, said that until the age of 10 or 11, most European children that he studied believed that vision involves an outward movement of images.

Starting point is 00:09:43 But after they're 10 or 11, they learn at school what he called the correct view, which is that thoughts and images are invisible things located inside the head. So what I'm saying is not only does vision work like that, but when we look at something, we can actually affect it by looking at it. That's where I differ from some of the inactive or other extended mind theorists. And the way to test it is to say, well, what if you look at another person from behind or an animal from behind, if they can feel your looks, then they might turn round. And they do indeed turn round.

Starting point is 00:10:26 It's a very, very well-known phenomenon. About 95% of people have had the experience of looking at a person or an animal who then turns around and looks straight back at them. And most people have had the converse experience of not necessarily consciously knowing why, they just turn around and there's somebody staring at them. So that's the phenomenon of Scopesthesia. And the reason I think it's interesting is because it can illuminate the nature of vision. And it's astonishing that in the 21st century, we still don't know how vision works.

Starting point is 00:11:03 So an analogy for people who know the X-Men, I don't know if you're familiar with the X-Men. I'm not actually, no. There's a mutant named Cyclops, and what he does is when he takes off his glasses, they're a powerful beam of light enough to destroy buildings and so on that shoot out of his eyes. Oh, I see.

Starting point is 00:11:20 So that's akin to what you're saying, except that it's much less powerful. That's akin to what I'm saying, except that it's much less powerful. That's akin to what I'm saying. And the reason that they'd have that and it would seem plausible to readers of X-Men comics or whatever they are, is because that's what a lot of people implicitly believe. And Superman comics used to have the same thing. Right, right. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:11:41 He has the same. I think X-Men just took it from Superman. I should have said Superman. So that's right. That's what I'm roughly what I'm saying that something like that is actually happening. And of course, from the point of view of conventional science, that's a tremendously heretical thought, and it's considered a childish illusion or misunderstanding. Here would be one reason, one physics related reason.

Starting point is 00:12:07 Let's say you're looking at something, then you should feel extra pressure backward and that object should feel extra pressure forward and that's something measurable. And then you can also measure that when someone's looking at something and when someone's not looking at something. Well, funnily enough, there was a study carried out in Princeton a few, three or four years ago and then at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm by a psychologist called Arvid Guttistam. And Guttistam and his colleagues did a very, very interesting experiment, extremely clever

Starting point is 00:12:42 and ingenious. They showed people a picture on a computer screen of a person looking at an upright cylinder, a cardboard cylinder. And all the person did was saw on the screen this cylinder, and then the cylinder tilted towards them, and they had to press a button when they thought the cylinder would fall over. And they did this experiment with people in the university who all denied the possibility of extramission, who were convinced it didn't really happen because they'd been educated to believe it didn't happen.

Starting point is 00:13:21 And they did the experiment where they showed them this person looking at it. Then they did the experiment where they had the person with a blindfold over their eyes, a cartoon-like drawing, a blindfold over their eyes. And then they had the cylinder tilting. And the angle at which it fell over was different, significantly different in these two cases. The people didn't realize they were being tested for this. But what it implied was that when the people were looking at it, it tilted at a greater angle as if it were being held up by a force.

Starting point is 00:13:56 And they even calculated the magnitude of this force that was implicitly coming out of the eyes, about 100 Newton. Now, they're not saying this force really is coming out of the eyes, but what they're saying is that the way in which people responded to this test was as if they implicitly believed a force came out of the eyes, and they even did then brain scans and found that people's brains changed in such a way that they attributed a movement to the eye gaze, the movement bits in the brain were activated. It was a very sophisticated piece of research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Starting point is 00:14:38 What they showed is that it's hardwired in us to believe that a force comes out of the eyes, even people who didn't believe it does, when tested in this way, not realizing what was going on, implicitly believed that there's a force coming out of the eyes. Their interpretation was that this has been built in and hardwired in by evolution because it's important for us to know which direction people's gaze is appointed because the gaze is very important in social situations and for animals as well. And that this had been hardwired by evolution into our brains and it then created this illusion of a force going out of the eyes.

Starting point is 00:15:24 But in evolutionary terms, I think it makes much more sense if it's not an illusion, if it's real. And so they didn't even consider this possibility because they started by saying this, of course, is totally impossible, but this is an illusion that's hardwired into us. And that's why so many people believe in it, because it's an illusion. So what I'm saying is that maybe it's not an illusion. It's not that they carefully considered the possibility that it might not be an illusion. The most recent paper on the sense of being stared at that they quoted was from 1910, and it was from a skeptic saying it's rubbish and they ignored all subsequent research on the subject because

Starting point is 00:16:08 Either they didn't know about it or they thought that it was so obviously impossible It's not even worth mentioning so we got here something that's very close to everyday experience for most people and Which is at the very frontier of science and scientific controversy, with huge implications for the nature of minds and the nature of vision. So to me the whole argument that it's wired in us evolutionarily doesn't imply anything extra in terms of credence we should place on something. And the reason is, well there's plenty hardwired in us racism is hardwired in us There's also bodies fall at different rates is hardwired in us bodies

Starting point is 00:16:50 Stopping is hardwired in us. I know when I was great to earth or however old When it was told that Newton's law said that something will just keep going forward unless the forces acted on it I'm like, why wouldn't it stop? Everything stops when you push it forward. And how could you ever imagine? I still don't know how Newton could have in his own mind through a thought experiment just imagine something going throughout outer space and not stopping because it's so contrary to our experience.

Starting point is 00:17:15 But anyhow, so what do you say to that? Well of course it's being hard, well it isn't proof it really is happening. That's why one needs to do research on this and it's why I've spent years doing research on this, empirical research, on the question of can people really tell when they're being looked at from behind? And there's two basic lines of research that have been done on that. One is by lots of people, including me, by direct looking. What happens is you have a person sitting with their back to another person and wearing

Starting point is 00:17:53 a blindfold. And then in a randomized series of trials, this person either looks at them or looks away and thinks of something else in a random sequence. And there's a signal, a sound signal, a bleep or a click to indicate when the trial begins. And within 10 seconds, the subject has to guess if they're being looked at or not, yes or no. So they're right or wrong. By pure chance, they'd be right 50% of the time. And in tens of thousands of these trials, the average hit rate is around 55%. It's not a very big effect, but it's massively significant when it's so widely and repeatedly replicated.

Starting point is 00:18:40 Some people do better. I mean, with practice you can get better. It's a highly artificial situation because in real life you're not in a forced choice situation and you're not being asked to detect when you're not being looked at. So these are very artificial experiments. Nevertheless, they've been widely replicated. They give repeatable results and they show that people really do seem to be able to tell when they're being looked at from behind. And I've recently released an app which can be accessed through my website which works

Starting point is 00:19:17 on cell phones so anyone can work with a partner and one cell phone tells you when to look for the looker and the other tells the partner when the trial begins and they can be blindfolded and they can say yes or no, it recognizes the voice. So the purpose of the app is to enable people to practice to see if they can get better at this. There's already evidence that people can get better by practice and in the martial arts, in most of the martial arts, they actually train people to become more sensitive to being looked at from behind because it's useful. You know, if someone's creeping up behind you to attack you and they're looking at you, if you can feel that,

Starting point is 00:20:00 you'll escape better than if you can't feel it. So that's why it's taught in the martial arts context because it's practically useful. Also, let me just add one more thing that as you know, on theories of everything, we delve into some of the most reality spiraling concepts from theoretical physics and consciousness to AI and emerging technologies, to stay informed in an ever evolving landscape I see The Economist as a wellspring of insightful analysis and in-depth reporting on the various topics we explore here and beyond. The Economist's commitment to rigorous journalism means you get a clear picture of the world's most significant developments, whether it's in scientific innovation

Starting point is 00:20:44 or the shifting tectonic plates of global politics. The Economist provides comprehensive It's a clear picture of the world's most significant developments, whether it's in scientific innovation or the shifting tectonic plates of global politics. The Economist provides comprehensive coverage that goes beyond the headlines. What sets the Economists apart is their ability to make complex issues accessible and engaging, much like we strive to do in this podcast. If you're passionate about expanding your knowledge and gaining a deeper understanding of the forces that shape our world, then I highly recommend subscribing to The Economist. It's an investment into intellectual growth.

Starting point is 00:21:12 One that you won't regret. As a listener of Toe, you get a special 20% off discount. Now you can enjoy The Economist and all it has to offer for less. Head over to their website, www.economist.com slash totoe to get started. Thanks for tuning in and now back to our explorations of the mysteries of the universe. Also, let me just add one more thing that I've also interviewed people who look at others for a living. Surveillance officers, the drug squad at Heathrow, the store detectives at Harrods store in London.

Starting point is 00:21:50 People who are in surveillance officers people in special services and so forth. taken for granted that this is for real. It's a very practical thing for them. In the British SAS, when people are being trained how to creep up behind someone to stab them in the back, they're told don't stare at their back because they'll feel you coming and turn around and shoot you first. So, you know, they're not sort of arguing, oh, well, maybe this is a perceptual illusion. Among practical people, it's just simply taken for granted. Now, you could say this is merely anecdotal, but it reinforces the experimental evidence. And I think that there's very good reasons for thinking something is really going on here.

Starting point is 00:22:39 What does that training look like for the people who are in martial arts to increase their scopesthesia? They're blindfolded and then there's a semicircle of people behind them and the instructor would then pick one of those people and ask them to focus their attention on them and they then have to say where the attention's coming from. Or in other situations, someone will creep up from behind extremely quietly, I mean, so they can't detect just by hearing. And then in the most extreme things actually hit them, and they have to turn around and deflect the blow because they have to anticipate it when it's coming.

Starting point is 00:23:27 So that involves not only sconfesthesia but a kind of anticipation of another person's action. But I think the more interesting test from this point of view is when you have a semi-circle of people and one of them, because the creeping up skeptics will obviously say, well, maybe they made a bit of noise they could hear, but this one, they're just looking. So how do we know that there isn't some sub perceptual cue being given off subtly? So for instance, I don't know if you know, but there's rock paper scissors tournaments. And you're wondering, how could there be a rock paper scissors tournament when it's one

Starting point is 00:24:04 out of three and it's a random game? It seems so trivial. But there are people in the world who score extremely high and they don't exactly know how they do it. But they're picking up on some subconscious cue or unconscious cue. And then when you get someone else to instead of choosing their rock or paper or scissors to let it be randomized by a pseudo random number generator, some computer, then the effect goes away. So how do we know that when someone's looking at someone else, that maybe they breathe,

Starting point is 00:24:33 they go just a tad more, or we're extremely keen in our peripheral vision for slight motion? Maybe we make a slight, I don't know, I'm just saying. No, there's a perfectly reasonable points, Kurt. Well, first of all, they're blindfolded with airline-style blindfolds which eliminate peripheral vision, so it's not peripheral vision. And then people have done these experiments through one-way mirrors and through windows that eliminate any sound clues from soundproofed rooms and which eliminate any possible smell clues as well. So those are already taken care of in these experiments.

Starting point is 00:25:14 And moreover, in real life, a lot of the actual real life situations would be like someone looking out of a third floor window at people walking past in the street below and they focus on a particular person and that person then turns and looks straight back at them. When people are above I think there's very little in terms of peripheral vision and it can be through a closed window and a darkened room where you can't actually be seen. That's another way of testing it actually. No one's done these real-life tests yet on any large scale. And it's one of the next areas of research I'm interested in. If anyone who's listening wants to try it, they can get in touch with me.

Starting point is 00:25:56 But basically the experiment is you look from a darkened window down onto a public street or square or public space and you have a camera running continuously a CCTV type surveillance camera and you look in say one minute periods randomized periods then you have one minute periods when you don't look and the camera records what's happening and then somebody afterwards looks at it evalu evaluates it blind. Did more people look up during the looking periods than the not looking periods? And you could have a control camera

Starting point is 00:26:34 the other side of the street where no one's looking at any time and see whether there's any change in frequency of people looking up. So you can do perfectly proper statistical experiments on this phenomenon quite cheaply and quite simply. And I think that the real life situation with the looking up towards a hidden observer with a camera is actually a better kind of test because it doesn't involve a forced choice in an artificial situation of making people self-conscious.

Starting point is 00:27:08 So this is a field that's actually readily available for research of a simple, inexpensive kind. And right now, I think the total number of people in the world doing research on this topic is about one and a half. I'm one of them. So it's not as if there's hundreds of people in the world doing research on this topic is about one and a half. I'm one of them. It's not as if there's hundreds of people doing this and it's PhDs and stuff. No one's working on it because it's so incredibly taboo within the academic world because it's simply believed to be impossible. And the materialist assumption is the mind's nothing but the brain. It's inside the activity of the brain is the activity of the mind. It's inside the head. Therefore, from that point of view, it's impossible that looking at somebody could affect them.

Starting point is 00:27:57 And that means you wouldn't be able to do this research in a regular university because you'd be told it's pseudoscience or it's rubbish or it's superstition or something. But it's frustrating because the experiments are so simple, not expensive, anyone can do them, which is why I'm asking people to try them and let me know what happens. So one way is with the app, the other is with the staring from an upper window. And in case anyone thinks, oh well, what's the ethics of looking at people from a window? The answer is there's no law against looking out your window at people down below. And if people say what's the ethics of filming people as they walk down a public street? The answer is the CCTV

Starting point is 00:28:43 cameras doing this in almost any street or public space you can think of and no one asks your ethical permission to do it. So I think it's perfectly feasible. As a creator, I understand the importance of having the right tools to support your business growth. Prior to using Shopify, it was far more complicated and convoluted. There were different platforms, different systems, none of them meshed well together.

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Starting point is 00:30:50 Okay, so Rupert, you're the only person I know that has given a legitimate utility to the vocation of stalkers. So they finally have something that they can contribute to science with their skill set. Yes, they can. If they're good at looking at people, some people have particularly penetrating gazes and are much better at looking than others. And some people are much more sensitive to being looked at than others. And some people seem to be pretty immune, at least in Britain. I often feel that waiters in restaurants have developed a kind of immunity. That's hilarious. Now, do you expect this effect to work through walls? You said through two-way mirrors.

Starting point is 00:31:35 So like, what is the mechanism? Do you expect it to be blocked by concrete walls? Yes, I think that this is a phenomenon that's basically to do with light. And there is a related phenomenon to this, which is that you can actually, if you look at people on closed circuit television, where you're looking at them on a screen, but you can't see them directly, people's physiology changes in that situation, you can get physiological arousal measured by electrodermal response. But their physiology, it's not conscious, it's an unconscious response.

Starting point is 00:32:17 And it's quite a weak effect. I've recently done an entire experiment. In fact, I've just today finished revising the paper for publication in a peer-reviewed journal where I did an experiment of people being looked at on screens in a randomized series of tests. So if you and I were doing it, for example, you'd be at home and I'd be at home many miles apart. And in a randomized series of tests, I would see you like I'm seeing you now. And in the other tests, I'd see a photograph of a random person sourced from the internet,

Starting point is 00:32:55 a distractive photograph. And at the end of each 10 second trial, you'd press a button, were you being looked at or not. It's very like the direct staring experiment I described, and it's on screen. Using technologies we're all very familiar with, like the one we're using right now, things like Zoom, FaceTime, etc. We're used to seeing people on screens. So I was interested, can they tell when they're being looked at on the screen?

Starting point is 00:33:25 No, the CCTV experiments suggest they can be looked at to some subtle physiological change, but I want to know if people can consciously tell. And the answer is they can't. In this experiment, the chance level is 50% and the actual result we got with 6,000 trials was 49.9%. I mean, there was no significant effect, whatever. and the actual result we got with 6,000 trials was 49.9%. There was no significant effect, whatever. And yet, in the same kind of experiment where you're looking at people directly from behind,

Starting point is 00:33:56 you get an effect that's quite repeatable. And so, just thinking about someone or just looking at their image on the screen doesn't work as well as looking through light. That's why I think the extramission hypothesis, the idea that there's something to do with light itself, is a key to this. Does that mean that people should be able to see in a dark room because you're emitting light? Well, you're not emitting light. You're emitting images. And we can create images with our eyes closed in psychedelic hallucinations or in dreams. We produce images all the time.

Starting point is 00:34:37 I mean, everyone experiences this every night in their dreams. They may forget the dreams, but our minds can produce self-luminous images. They do it all the time. And the point that Anil Seth, the neuroscientist, calls it a controlled hallucination, ordinary perception is a controlled hallucination. In other words, it's closely coupled to what's out there, to the world we're actually interacting with.

Starting point is 00:35:08 But close your eyes, start daydreaming, or take LSD or something, or magic mushrooms, and you'll have uncontrolled hallucinations where you'll see things in full color and three dimensions, in your mind's eye, as it were. So I think in ordinary vision we're connecting with the perceptual world and the controlled hallucination is closely linked to the actual light that's coming in. That to me sounds like we can test this. So you give someone some psychedelic and they not only do they have visions when they close their eyes but they can also see the world in a distorted manner.

Starting point is 00:35:45 Now if part of that distortion is because of extra mission, because they're somehow distorting the world, then wouldn't you also detect something on the order of 1 over 100 Newtons of a difference in the object if someone is watching it who's on psychedelics versus not? Well, it would be very hard to know what to test because the point about the psychedelic hallucination is that it's decoupled if they've got their eyes closed from the external world and you wouldn't know where to try and measure it or test it. I mean, I prefer to stick to the much more simple, straightforward, everyday situation of regular people just being looked at from behind.

Starting point is 00:36:25 I mean, I think the psychedelic, well, where you could do an experiment of the kind you just suggested is you could have somebody behind a mirror in the place where a mirror image, say I look at you in a mirror, here's a mirror and I look at you're there, the beams bounce off the mirror, but the image I'm seeing is behind the mirror. You could, I suppose, put someone where the virtual image is behind the mirror and see whether they can feel it. That would be much easier than the psychedelic situation and much easier to do and cheaper

Starting point is 00:37:07 and simpler and so on. No one's ever done it. It's possible to think of dozens of experiments in this area. There would be enough for endless PhD theses looking into all sorts of variables and no one's doing them. Another angle on this, which I've just written a paper on, it's in the press right now, is that sleeping people and animals can be woken up by staring at them. I've got hundreds of stories of this where people say they can wake their partner, or

Starting point is 00:37:42 a lot of people say if they stare at their sleeping baby it wakes up so they avoid staring at the sleeping baby because they don't want it to wake up but a lot of people find they can wake up their sleeping dog or cat by staring at it. this happens is that the detection of the stare is non-visual. No one knows how it works, but it's not to do with seeing because you can detect it when you're blindfolded and people detect it from behind when the looker is outside the field of view. But I think it evolved in the first place in the context of predator-prey relations. A prey animal that could tell when a hidden predator was looking at it would escape better than one that couldn't tell. And animals are most vulnerable when they're asleep. So this sense still seems to operate in sleeping animals.

Starting point is 00:38:40 So here's another PhD-type project, looking at sleeping animals, do they wake up? Look at them at randomized times. I've asked some people to do this with the slogan for this research is, don't let sleeping dogs lie. You know, stare at them, see if they wake up. And several people have already done this with randomized looks. And indeed the dogs wake up and not only wake up but turn and look straight back at the owner who's looking at them.

Starting point is 00:39:11 So here's another project that I say do try this at home. It's again a simple easy to do experiment. And one thing it shows is that whatever the detection system of this is, it's not the eyes, it's not the normal senses because it works when people are asleep. And it's not skin because you can look at someone from behind who's fully closed, who's got long hair covering their neck. You can do it in winter when they've got gloves on and boots and scarves. There's not an inch of skin visible and they still respond. Animals are covered with fur and you can't see their skin, a dog or a cat, if you're looking at them from behind, and they respond. So there's something in this which I think must be some kind of bio-field, some field

Starting point is 00:40:11 around the body that can interact with the light and with the extra emission coming through the light, that not only detects when someone's being looked at, but also detects the direction, because another feature of this phenomenon is that it's directional. When people respond, they don't just feel vaguely uneasy and look around to see if someone's looking. They, without even thinking about it, they usually swivel around and look straight at the person looking at them.

Starting point is 00:40:41 So it's directional, which is another reason for thinking as closely coupled to the actual light. So a thought that occurs is that, do you think that this would be more pronounced in prey versus predator animals? I think it probably would, yes. Because predators just don't need to, well at. Some predators are also prey. Dogs, for example, are predators. They catch rats and things, but they could also be prey for mountain lions or something. But if you have a top predator like an eagle or lion or something, they don't usually have to bother very much about being looked at.

Starting point is 00:41:27 They might bother about whether the prey animals have seen them and are looking at them. You can use this as a way of detecting potential prey. For example, an Australian woman told me that she was, there's not exactly a prey, but she liked photographing koala bears. And she found they were hard to see. She'd go into the forest and she couldn't see them because they're sort of camouflaged. So what she did was went into the forest and just stood quietly for a while. And then she suddenly felt something and she turned and looked and she'd be looking straight at a koala staring at her.

Starting point is 00:42:10 So she could use this for detecting where they were. Now she's a potential predator, a human and their potential prey, but it could be that predators use this in their dynamics, in their relationship with prey. Again, this is a whole field of research, the natural history of predator-prey relations and the looks. It's virtually unexplored. I mean, I don't know anyone who's explored this except human hunters and wildlife photographers. I've interviewed a lot of hunters, people who do deer stalking, you

Starting point is 00:42:46 know, who stalk animals. And when they're stalking animals, they're obviously doing their best not to be seen, not to be smelled. They do it. They don't go upwind, so the animal will smell. I mean, this is all part of the tricks of the trade of being a hunter, a skilled hunter. And these skilled hunters, when you ask them about this, and this is not just people in Western countries with rifles or shotguns, it's people who hunt with bows and arrows

Starting point is 00:43:20 in forests and so on, tribal people. The general consensus is when you see the animal you want to shoot, you don't just stare at it because it will feel you're there, it will run away, it will feel your looks. So you have to look at it out of the corner of your eye or once you've got it in your sights, you shoot it as soon as possible because if you hesitate, it'll feel you. So that's quite well known. And it's a very similar thing.

Starting point is 00:43:50 I interviewed a whole lot of wildlife photographers who take photographs of birds and mammals from blinds. They're hidden, they're in darkness, they use telephoto lenses. And they too, almost all of them, said that when you've got a bird or a mammal or whatever animal they're photographing in your telephoto lens, they can't see you, but you have to take the photograph very fast, otherwise they'll detect your presence and go away.

Starting point is 00:44:20 So there's a lot of practical knowledge about this kind of thing from hunters and photographers. If it's evolutionarily advantageous, why wouldn't it be more acute? The scopesthesia. I think it is acute and I think that it becomes more acute when people feel under threat. Experiments in real life settings, looking at people in real life settings, the people who are most responsive are people who are looking a bit uncertain or insecure.

Starting point is 00:44:57 If people are sitting in a cafe, they feel totally secure, they're having an intense conversation. They're pretty immune to this. And I've asked surveillance officers and police detectives, you know, what they've noticed about this. And one of the things they say is that when criminals are about to carry out a crime, they become surveillance conscious, by which they mean they become much more sensitive to being looked at. And I think that when people are in a dangerous place, say you're walking down a dark street in a dangerous part of town at night, you're much more likely to be sensitive to this

Starting point is 00:45:39 than if you're in a sort of social setting in a perfectly safe, secure environment. So I think that our sensitivity varies from time to time depending on situations. And this is based on real life accounts from people who've spent a lot of time watching others. It seems to me like it would be selected for you to become more sensitive because it's advantageous to you to avoid predators. But it would also seem to me like it would be selected for the predator to extramit or extratransmit less if not zero.

Starting point is 00:46:12 What would be the advantage of you extramitting? Is that the correct term? Extramitting? I suppose so. Yes, extramitting. Well, I don't think there's an advantage for the predator to extramit. In fact, there'd be an advantage not to do it because, you know, like when people are detectives or following people, they try not to look at the person. But the thing is, you

Starting point is 00:46:36 obviously have to look at them a bit, otherwise you lose them. So if a predator is going to capture its prey, it's got to look at it. Now, I think, this is speculation because I haven't done the experiments, but if you watch cats when they're looking at a mouse hole, they're trying to catch a mouse and they're looking at somewhere the mouse might emerge from, what they do is look completely intently the whole time. They just stare. And I think that one reason for this might be that say a mouse emerges and looks around and then it goes back in again. They emerge again and it feels exactly the same. And they come out another time and it feels exactly the same. They're less likely to be alerted to it than if the cat keeps looking away and looking

Starting point is 00:47:25 back. All our senses, including the sense, I believe, work on the principle of detecting changes or differences. You detect changes in sound, changes in movement, changes in smell. If there's a background noise, you habituate to it. You don't notice it anymore. And if the noise stops, then you notice it stopped. So that's just the way sensory physiology works. And this is a kind

Starting point is 00:47:52 of sense. So I think that one way that cats deal with it, I don't know about other predators, those are the ones I've observed most, is by just a fixed stare the whole time, so there's no change. And then I think the prey animal would habituate to that. Now that's when they're sitting still waiting to pounce on something that emerges from a mouse emerging from a hole. Now in the case of lions or tigers following a herd of gazelles or something, it's not the same situation because in that situation when they're actually chasing a herd, the herd know they're there, and so it's a different situation. But if they're sitting quietly waiting to pounce on a prey, then I think that looking intently continuously would be their best strategy.

Starting point is 00:48:52 But again, no one's done any research on this. It would be a fascinating topic for research. Not very difficult to do. And using cameras and things, one could film predators. And actually, you could set up experiments in the barrage of the cats and mice, an archetypal predator-prey situation, a cat and mouse situation, and actually study the dynamics with cats and mice. I actually tried doing it myself with our cat,

Starting point is 00:49:20 and the only trouble is that when I started to capture wild mice in order to do this, I ran into problems with my wife who didn't want me doing experiments with wild mice in the house. So I mean, if I'd had a separate building, I could have actually done the experiment, but for simple domestic reasons, I couldn't. Now, speaking of your wife, it was lovely to meet her at the Institute for Arts and Ideas. It was great to host a panel with you.

Starting point is 00:49:48 And if this is released, I will put a link in the description. I'll try and get a clip just to show it on screen right now. That was wonderful. Yeah, we talked about the present moment. Yes. Do you think there's something inherent to extramission about vision? What I mean is that I don't see why it would not have been selected out otherwise for the predator.

Starting point is 00:50:13 Now I understand again for the prey they should become more sensitive to it. But for the predator, if it's not needed, if it's not required, why keep it? Why keep that property? Well, I think it's the way vision works you see I don't think you can have vision without extra mission because I think we project out our images I Think that's the way vision works. I think that this whole thing of scoff as these year and detecting stairs is a way of

Starting point is 00:50:42 experimentally investigating is a way of experimentally investigating extramission. But I think extramission works that way all the time. And I don't even have vision without it. Do you think you can have other senses without it? So do you think there's something that's being extramited with our ears when we listen? I don't actually. I mean, that's a very reasonable question.

Starting point is 00:51:00 And I asked it myself a few years ago and I thought, well, is there a comparable sense of being listened to, to a sense of being stared at? So I ran some experiments to test this. How the experiment worked is I used telephones because if you do it over the telephone, you can eliminate all other cues. And so I had an experiment, automated experiment that worked on telephones. And say you and I were doing it together, people worked in pairs. People were linked up together. And then you'd have a series of trials. And we'd

Starting point is 00:51:39 both be told the trial begins now. And you would be muted. I would then go on talking for 30 seconds. I'd go on and say, well, hi Kurt, how are you? I wonder what you're feeling. I don't know if you can hear me or not. I'd be talking. At the end of 30 seconds, I'm asked, was Kurt listening to you or not? And in 50% of the trials, randomly selected, you would hear me. In the other 50%, you hear some nice music composed by my son Cosmo instead. And so your mind was on something else, not on me. So could you tell when I was listening to you? Well, we did this experiment with hundreds of trials and thousands of trials and the answer was exactly a chance people simply couldn't tell when they were being listened to or not.

Starting point is 00:52:32 I also interviewed private investigators who make their living by tapping people's phones. Again, I believe in asking real life people who actually know about these subjects what their experience is. And there was a consensus among these private investigators. People simply don't know if you're tapping their phone and listening to them unless you have mechanical clicks and things. Whereas they all said, well, if you look at them, they do know. Whereas if you're staring at them, or even if you're hidden, they can feel your stare. But if you're listening to them, they can't tell.

Starting point is 00:53:12 So that's why I think this is not simply a matter of attention. If it was a matter that people could detect your attention, then it should work with listening as well as staring. I think it's specifically coupled to light, and I think it's telling us something about the nature of vision. So you've explained about how organ transplants, recipients, inherit traits through morphic resonance with the donor. Do you see this as differing from theories of cellular memory?

Starting point is 00:53:46 Well, we're now switching to a very different topic. Sorry, just to be clear, I would like to explore some other aspects of morphic fields and morphic resonance other than scopesthesia, because we can go on about that for another three hours. Yes. And maybe we should on another podcast. And if people are interested and they have stories or questions, please leave them in the comments. And also, please do some experiments

Starting point is 00:54:12 along the lines I've suggested and go to my website. I'll give the link, which you can put in, for the staring app. So this is an ongoing project. And looking out of windows and waking up dogs and cats. There's three very practical things that anyone who's sufficiently interested could do. And if they're interested and get any results, I'd love to hear from them. And there's an address to email me on my website.

Starting point is 00:54:39 So this is a public participation, citizen science, leading edge of research that anyone can be part of, which is not true if they were working on particle physics. You'd need to have multiple PhDs and a job at the Large Hadron Collider. They'd have to have 10 billion euros to build it in the first place. Whereas this research anyone can do at home for free. So to set this up, it's my understanding that there are transplant memories that sometimes occur, and then the critical responses, those are psychosomatic or triggered by medication. So I'd like you to set up what is it that you're referring to when people get transplants and then have other memories or other skills transplanted along with that? And what are the rebuttals and what are your rebuttals to those rebuttals?

Starting point is 00:55:28 Well, this is not an area where I've done experimental research. You know, I'm not a transplant surgeon, nor do I have a free pass to talk to patients who have undergone transplant surgery, you know, for data protection, confidentiality, etc. You can't just do this kind of research easily. And I haven't done it personally. So it's not one of my... There's no app for transplants.

Starting point is 00:55:53 There's no app for transplant. Well, there might be, but if so, I haven't come across it. It's not on the App Store. It hasn't passed the regulations yet. No. Well, you could have a social group of transplant patients who discuss their experiences and probably such things exist. But anyway, this is an area where I can't claim to have done any research myself, nor

Starting point is 00:56:14 do I have any prospect of doing it because it's a purely medical field. But, so all I know is what people say. And there have been various articles where people have collected together information from transplant patients and what they say is that Or at least what some of them say is that they have memories or Tendencies or habits they didn't have before the transplant that they feel have been transmitted with the transplant for example, there's a heart transplant patient who after the transplant found that he craved hamburgers

Starting point is 00:56:54 and meat products and all sorts of food that he never before had the slightest interest in. And when he found out who the transplant was from, it was from a young man who died in a motorcycle accident who was really keen on hamburgers and meat and all that kind of thing. So it's not very specific memories in that case, but it's a change that people notice. So most of them are a little bit vague. It's not as if they download episodic memories about things that have happened in other people's lives, describing people and places in detail.

Starting point is 00:57:31 It's more the sort of liking burgers when they didn't like them before, that kind of thing. So it's not incredibly strong evidence. I see. Anyway, there's numerous examples of people who've had transplants, heart transplants and other kinds of transplant. And it struck quite a number of people that does seem to have been a transfer of memory with the transplant.

Starting point is 00:57:59 I mean, I didn't initiate this research and I'm, you know, I'm merely peripheral in this particular area of inquiry. initiate this research and I'm you know I'm merely peripheral in this particular area of inquiry but the only reason I'm involved in it is because people quite often ask me how might it work and you see if someone does get a memory with a heart transplant they remember remember something that was appropriate for the person who the heart came from. Then the most obvious hypothesis is that there must be some cellular memory in the heart, some chemicals in the heart or changed synapses in the nerves in the heart or phosphorylated proteins or altered DNA or something. Anyway, some kind of material change, some material aspect of the transplant that transfers

Starting point is 00:58:49 the memory. And the reason they say that is because the standard theory of memory is the idea that memories are stored in the brain as material memory traces, either as modified synapses or as phosphorylated proteins or at some really rather way out theories, Gallistyle for example, proposes that it might actually be stored in DNA or RNA. The reason he says that is because attempts to find these traces have been so unsuccessful. So you think some must be inside the cell. After decades of shaky hands caused by debilitating tremors, Sunnybrook was the only hospital

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Starting point is 01:00:17 And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. What about Michael Levin's bioelectric fields? Well, that's a field theory of memory, but you see his bioelectric field, that's, Levin's theory of memory is rather ambiguous because Levin did those wonderful experiments with flatworms. You may remember them. He trained them to respond to particular light and respond in particular ways.

Starting point is 01:00:57 He trained them behaviorally in a distinctive way. And he then cut off their heads, which contain their rather minimal brain. And then, because they regenerate very easily, they grew new heads, and when they grow new heads, they're remembered what they'd learned before. So my hypothesis would be that this was because of morphic resonance. They were resonating with themselves in the past. The memory was transmitted across space and time. That's what morphic resonance does.

Starting point is 01:01:35 It's about transmitting memories across space and time based on similarity. But Levin in his published paper on this said, well, maybe there must be material memories stored all through the body and it somehow managed to retrieve them from cellular memories in different parts of the worm. It's possible, but he didn't think it was a biofield that was responsible for the memory when he did that research. And if it was a biofield, an electric field, then the electric field would have been tremendously disturbed by cutting the head off.

Starting point is 01:02:12 So it wasn't as if it would have been an intact biofield. Then you'd have the problem, how on earth could an electric field of the whole worm retain a memory when you disrupted the field so severely by chopping the head off the worm. And as far as I know, Levin's not suggesting that the memories are carried in these electric biofields. Do you see yourself as being congruent with Michael Levin's bioelectric field with his work? That is, that perhaps you have the same point of view, but you just give different mechanisms?

Starting point is 01:02:43 Or do you believe that you have different points of view on the same mechanism? There's a lot of overlap between me and Levin. I greatly admire and like his work. I think he's one of the most creative biologists working today and also one of those who keeps alive a holistic approach in biology as opposed to molecular biological reductionism, you know, trying to reduce everything to molecules and genes and things. So it's holistic and he and I are both very interested in the idea of morphogenetic fields, form-shaping

Starting point is 01:03:19 fields that shape developing organisms. He has, as I do, a kind of top-down approach to development. It's not just lots of molecules interacting that somehow allow cells to emerge and cells interacting that allow tissues to emerge bottom-up. There's an overall plan or shape of the whole organism that a field, which works top-down, fields work top-down. You know, a magnetic field works on the whole magnet and all around the magnet top-down and if you put iron filings there you can reveal the field. But it doesn't come into being through individual iron filings that have been lined up creating the magnetic field.

Starting point is 01:04:03 The magnetic field is there and acts in a top-down way. The gravitational field acts in a top-down way. So that's how fields work, electrical and magnetic fields and all fields. So he thinks that the organisms are shaped by fields and so do I. Then the question is, how are these fields inherited? How does the field of a past organism influence the present one? How is the field when a cat is developing, a cat embryo, where does that field come from?

Starting point is 01:04:43 And both he and I agree it can't come from the genes because the genes are the same in all cells and they just program the development of proteins. They're not shaping pores and noses and whiskers and things in the developing kitten. So he thinks the fields work through bioelectricity, that they work through bioelectric fields, and so do I. Where we differ is how they're inherited. I think they're inherited by morphic resonance non-materially by this influence across space and time from the past. And I don't think he knows how they're inherited, and if he thinks it happens by morphic resonance,

Starting point is 01:05:29 he doesn't say so. And it's absolutely mysterious as to how these fields could work in the Levin scheme of things. I rather suspect that if morphic resonance were proved and accepted scientifically rather than being treated as a kind of heresy. That Levin would probably rather like that and I think it would enable him to understand a lot of his own experiments in a new way. But there's no reason why Levin should adopt morphic resonance at the moment when it's still a speculative theory. I thought when I was speaking with Levin and I was hearing him talk about his philosophy

Starting point is 01:06:10 that he was an idealist, but I've come to the understanding and it could be misunderstanding that he's a physicalist. It's just he's more on the mysterious end of the physicalism, which says that it is all physics or physical or material or what have you. It's just that we don't have a handle on what that material is. Yes. Well, you see, I'm, I think morphogenetic fields are physical. I mean, they're not part of existing physics. And I'd agree with Levin about that. I think morphogenetic fields are physical in the sense that they shape physical

Starting point is 01:06:44 processes and interact with electromagnetic fields. And I think morphic resonance is physical. It's a process, I think it works in molecules and crystals. I think they have collective memories as well as biological species. And I think morphic resonance underlies a lot of actual physical processes. So I'm not saying it's supernatural or something, I'm saying it's part of an expanded physics. We have a very limited physics at the moment, but you could expand physics.

Starting point is 01:07:18 Morphic resonance doesn't have to be conscious, in fact it's a theory of habit. What it says is that the, in the most general sense, that the so-called laws of nature are not eternal laws fixed for all time at the moment of the Big Bang. They're actually evolving habits. And habits are unconscious, even in us. So it doesn't require consciousness, morphic resonance, but it does require habit and memory. So I agree with Levin, you see, that there's physics that we don't yet know and would actually transform physics itself. So now that leaves the question of consciousness, is it another level?

Starting point is 01:08:04 You have to move up a level to get to consciousness and what's going on there. But for biological development, habits and morphogenetic fields and morphic resonance would expand physical terms of explanation while remaining in a kind of expanded version of physicalism. It doesn't require abandoning physicalism per se, it just requires expanding physics. So I think he and I would probably agree that that's something that could happen. Yeah, on expanding physics, that's a project that's close to my heart in this channel, more so about expanding

Starting point is 01:08:46 what science is. So the way that I think about it is that science as it stands now isn't what it was a few hundred years ago, and definitely isn't what it was a few thousand years ago. Firstly it didn't exist, but there's a case to be made that Aristotle had a primitive form of science. And then the question is, where is science headed to? So I'm wondering is there a way to bridge between the first person and the third person? Science is about the third person so-called objective and the first person is so-called subjective. And Rupert, this whole project of making consonant the third person perspective with the first person perspective in such a way that it is whatever science will become. I call that abeach gnosis. Abeach meaning knowledge

Starting point is 01:09:31 of the East and gnosis being knowledge of the West. And then I wonder would it cease to be quote unquote science if it bridges that because is science not about the objective? Do we then broaden science to mean well it's whatever investigates reality what is reality what is that investigation until i don't know what do you think. I think that sounds already investigate subjective phenomena i was a whole branch of science consciousness studies. consciousness studies that actually studies dreams, lucid dreams, near-death experiences, psychedelic experiences, all of which are subjective. And even in regular medicine, there's a science of pain. You know, when drug companies are developing new analgesics, painkillers, they're dealing with pain. how do you, well I can't measure your pain which is subjectively experienced by you by putting a kind of meter on you or putting

Starting point is 01:10:35 a thermometer in your ear or something. The pain is already subjective and has been a part of scientific investigation for decades, particularly in relation to medicine and painkillers and anaesthesia. It's a really practical thing dealing with pain. That's why we've got an opioid crisis that, you know, very effective painkillers, but also addictive. So, consciousness studies bridges the realm of empirical science and subjective consciousness. That's why I think it's such an interesting branch of science. And you can study, I mean, there are people studying psychedelic experiences, for example,

Starting point is 01:11:23 by asking people what experiences they have, by you can do a dose response curve. I mean, in some of the early psychedelic studies, you give people different doses of the psychedelic and you find out what dose begins to affect them, at what dose they begin to see hallucinations or vision and so on. All of these things are psychedelic. You can tweak the molecules. Designers of designer drugs, people like Sascha Schurgin, made all sorts of amphetamine derivatives. MDMA was one he revived, and then he made a whole lot of others and a whole lot of tryptophan

Starting point is 01:11:59 and tryptamine derivatives. In his book, PCAL, Phenethylamines I've Known and Loved, he describes it's like a cookery book with 50 different kinds of psychedelic molecules, most of them that he'd made for the first time. No one had ever had them before. He made them and then tested them himself. And there's chemistry relating to consciousness in a book which the same book contains subjective reports of these new compounds from himself and from others and the sort of regular chemical

Starting point is 01:12:35 formulae and chemical structural formulae of how you actually make them. When we were speaking, I believe it was less than a week ago at this point at the Institute for Arts and Ideas, afterward just privately, we were talking about how idealism and physicalism seem to be two sides of the same monism coin. Can you please expand on that and then what your Weltanschauung, your worldview is? Well, this is a whole other topic. I can summarize it, but we might need a whole other podcast for this one. At least one. Or several. But anyway, I can summarize it. See, I think that at the moment, we've had

Starting point is 01:13:16 within the sciences since the 17th century, there's been a dualism, which everyone rightly traces back to Descartes. And Descartes, the great 17th century French philosopher and mathematician and physicist, divided the world into two compartments. On the one hand, you have what he calls raise extensor, which is extended things, which is matter. The whole universe is made up of matter extended in space and time, which is matter. The whole universe is made up of matter extended in space and time, which is unconscious. On the other hand, he had raised cogitans, which is consciousness, thinking stuff, which had three main forms, God, angels, and human minds and raise cojit and consciousness was not in space and time.

Starting point is 01:14:09 Where is all matter was unconscious and it wasn't space and time so that's car t zian do you listen and it meant the mind state different from the body and more over he said that any humans. And moreover, he said that only humans among the whole of the natural world have this thinking stuff, minds. Animals are mere machines, and so is the whole of the rest of nature, unconscious inanimate machines. So this in the 17th century was a reasonable compromise for a lot of people because it meant religion could go on as before they lost the whole of nature as part of the remit of religion but they kept god angels and human minds and morality and survival of bodily death. Which is non physical and non material so that remained the department of religion and department of science was the whole of nature, the stars, the heavens, the earth, animals, plants and human bodies conceived of as inanimate machines. So that's Cartesian dualism. Then in the 19th century, there were a lot of people who thought that having two things was too many and that ultimate reality should just have one. One school of thought, particularly in Germany in the early 19th century, became idealist and they said, well, actually the only reality is spirit or consciousness and matter is sort of

Starting point is 01:15:40 dumb-dumb mind. And the other school of thought, materialists, said all this stuff about God and angels simply doesn't exist. They're atheists. They say, you can't measure it, you can't quantify it, it doesn't exist. It's absolute fantasy, wishful thinking, nonsense, childish kind of belief systems, religion, thing of the past, forget about it, get rid of all that. And then we've just got a material world of unconscious matter extended in space and time. Then of course the problem for materialism became how come we're conscious?

Starting point is 01:16:18 We ought not to be if the whole of the universe is made of unconscious matter. So then they had to sort of try and explain it. That's why it's called the hard problem in the theories of mind. Because if you say consciousness is an epiphenomenon of brain activity, it doesn't actually do anything, then why did it evolve if it's totally useless and doesn't do anything? And if for some of them you say it's an illusion, then you haven't explained consciousness because illusion is itself a mode of consciousness. That's why you go round in circles and it's called the hard problem.

Starting point is 01:16:55 What we've seen recently is a revival of idealism, particularly in the work of Bernardo Kastrup, who tries to flip the physicalism on its side, or invert it, and say that the ultimate reality is consciousness. Matter is in fact sort of done-done mind. And what makes his proposition attractive to a lot of scientists is he says that basically for the rest of science it's business as usual. We just change the envelope within which we understand everything, flipped it around. But it's still reductionist, it's still naturalist, it's still there's nothing outside nature, it's still a kind of physicalism except now it's idealist physicalism. And he actually one of his great selling points is it leaves science undisturbed, reductionism

Starting point is 01:17:49 carries on as before. In basic, workings of science carry on just as they were before, except you change the framework within which you see it. I've not heard him make any experimental predictions based on his theory that would enable you to distinguish it from standard physicalism. I see it as a kind of armchair theory that enables you to go on with business as usual in science while dissolving the biggest problem of materialism in relation to consciousness by namely the hard problem because materialism simply can't explain consciousness. The trouble with his idealism is that it can't really explain matter. At

Starting point is 01:18:35 least he tries to explain it, but if you ask him, as I have done, then he says, well, it's like ripples on the ocean. You have a kind of ocean of being and the matter emerges from ripples on the ocean. But that's not really enough to explain the richness of the material and physical world, as revealed by science. I think that Barnardo Kastrup has so far got as far as verse two in chapter one of the book of Genesis. Chapter one of the book of Genesis, verse one says, in the beginning, God made the heaven and the earth.

Starting point is 01:19:13 Verse two says, the earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters. So, the Spirit of God is the word Spirit means wind or breath, as well as spirit. It's a wide-ranging word, ruach in Hebrew, numar in Greek, same width, breadth, meaning spirit, it's not just some abstract thing. Well, if the wind of God moves on the face of the waters, what does that create? It creates ripples on the ocean, which is what Bernardo Castrop's cosmogony has. But he stops at verse 2, and verse 3 he said, and God said, let there be light. Now you have the creative word of God, you have light and then you begin to get in

Starting point is 01:20:06 the subsequent verses of Genesis the separation of light and darkness, of the heavens and the earth, of the sea and the dry land, a series of what in modern physics are called spontaneous symmetry breakings, a series of divisions which is really based on old Sumerian cosmologies, where you have an undivided one that undergoes a series of divisions to produce the earth and the heavens and so on, through a series of divisions. But the creative power there is the Word of God, or as it's called in Greek, the logos. And so I think if you have God as the basic ground of consciousness, you have the Spirit as the dynamical principle that can cause wet ripples on the ocean, and you have the creative word, this is effectively what Christians call the Holy Trinity.

Starting point is 01:21:01 And the Holy Trinity as a model of ultimate consciousness has a threefold aspect. It's not three separate gods, it's three aspects of fundamental unity. And this trinity, this trinitarian model of ultimate reality is found not just in Christianity but in many, many other traditions. In Hinduism it takes many forms. For example, Brahma, Vishnu and Krishna, where Brahma is the creator god, the ultimate god, but Vishnu is the preserver of form and order, a bit like the Logos in the Christian Trinity, which in turn is rather like Platonic ideas in Plato's philosophy, forms order, pattern,

Starting point is 01:21:47 structure, meaning. And then Shiva in this Hindu trinity of gods is the creator and the destroyer, an energy principle who's portrayed dancing or with flames or through the Shiva lingam as the kind of sexual energy. Or in Advaitic Hinduism, Sat Chittananda, where Sat is the ground of conscious being, Chitt is names and forms. It's the Logos principle and Ananda is joy or bliss, but I think it equates more or less to the spirit principle. So I think that we have in Trinitarian models, which underlie many traditions in the world. Even yin yang in the Taoist one, the yin and the yang interact with each other. But it's not a duality because there's a circle, the Tao, which encloses them both, the ground

Starting point is 01:22:44 of both of them. So it's a kind of Trinitarian model. So you see, my point is that I'm against dualism, but Kastrup and the materialists want to reduce the two to one. And I think that the problem with Cartesian dualism is that it actually arose because Cartier Descartes reduced three to two. He started the Trinitarian model. And the Christian Trinitarian model in the Middle Ages wasn't just the Holy Trinity. It was a Trinity spirit, soul and body, which we experience ourselves. The soul is what shapes the body and underlies our instincts, our animal nature. The body is the physical body and the spirit is the conscious mind. And the soul is not necessarily conscious. It's all those unconscious habits, you know,

Starting point is 01:23:38 shaping the embryology as we grow. It's not, we're not conscious as embryos of, you know, make a limb here or develop an eye here. It happens unconsciously habitually. What Descartes did was remove the soul from this threefold model of nature. He said, there's no such thing as the soul in nature, in the earth, in the stars, in animals and plants, which is what all medieval Christian theologians had thought like St. Thomas Aquinas. There's no such thing as the soul, there's just spirit and matter. And so he collapsed a Trinitarian model into a dualism, which is extremely unsatisfactory. And the physicalists and the idealists are against that dualism because it's unsatisfactory,

Starting point is 01:24:22 and they collapse it to animonism, either all spirit or all matter. Whereas I think it makes so much better sense to explore and revisit these wonderfully sophisticated Trinitarian models that we have in the theologies of Hinduism. We have parallels in some aspects of Sufi theology and Islam. There are three levels in Buddhism. There are many ways of interpreting this trinity within the Christian tradition. But maybe I should just end because I think this would have to be another conversation. But I think that the primary metaphor, which I find makes it much easier to understand, is speech. Because even in the book of Genesis, you see the Spirit of God is like the breath, the wind, and then verse 3, we have the word, and God said, it's the spoken word. If you think of how speech works, this I think is the principal

Starting point is 01:25:27 metaphor of the Holy Trinity and indeed of other trinities. It's used over and over again. You know, in St. John's Gospel, in the beginning was the word, the first verse of St. John's Gospel. So when we're speaking, it means the spoken word, not the written word, of course. When we're speaking, like when I'm speaking now, you're hearing my words. Each word has its own form, its structure, its meaning, its connections with other words and so on. It has a form and you can see the form of the word on an oscilloscope. Each word has its own form.

Starting point is 01:26:04 That's why we recognize it. That's why automated voice recognition systems can recognize the form or pattern of the word. So each word has a form or pattern and the way they're strung together in sentences gives an overall formal meaning and paragraphs and so forth, forms patterned structure. Sure. But in order to speak those words, I have to breathe out. If I just have the words, then they're silent in my mind. They don't manifest. If I just have the breath, I have a flow of air, but it's white noise with no structural meaning.

Starting point is 01:26:45 And so we have to, the spoken word has to have both. The flow of energy, which we see all through nature, there's a flow of energy in all nature, the whole of physics is based on flows of energy, but the whole of nature is based on form, structure and pattern as well, which is mainly given through fields, the shape of the sun and the moon, and given through the gravitational fields and fields shape or nature. I think there are manifestations in nature of the Logos or word or form. So we have a model of ultimate consciousness that contains a ground of consciousness, like the speaker of the word.

Starting point is 01:27:27 I'm the speaker when I'm speaking of the word. I'm a unified source from which both the breath flows and the words come. I can't just have the breath without the words. I can have the breath without the words, or the words without the breath. They're separable. But in speaking, you have the speaker, the breath, and the words. And it doesn't mean they're three separate people, three different beings. They're all part of a unity of me speaking, but they're distinguishable aspects.

Starting point is 01:27:58 And I think the trouble with Kastrup-type analytical idealism is that it's too undifferentiated. It gets the first stage, the ground of being or ground of consciousness, but it doesn't have the energy in nature. It doesn't explain why there's ripples on the ocean. It doesn't sort of implicitly has the spirit of God moved on the face of the deep implicitly. It hasn't got to verse three of Genesis with the word. So I think if we have those three aspects in a model, then not only does it provide a very good model for consciousness itself, because our consciousness has a ground of consciousness, the mind has a ground of consciousness which in meditation, when it's possible to let go of thoughts going through the mind, a ground of consciousness which in meditation, when it's possible to let go of thoughts going through the mind, the internal dialogue, there are states of being

Starting point is 01:28:50 where you can just experience pure consciousness or awareness. I think that's contacting the ground of being, the sat aspect of sat, jit and anda, or the father aspect of father, son and Holy Spirit, the Holy Trinity. God the Father reveals himself to Moses in the burning bush. It's the first revelation of God in the Old Testament where he actually says who he is. Moses says, who are you? What's your name? And he says, I am who I am.

Starting point is 01:29:23 So he defines himself as conscious being in the present. And so the ground of consciousness in both in that model and in the Hindu model, Sat in Sat Chittananda, is conscious being in the present. But then there's contents of consciousness, the ideas, the thoughts, the images we see, the names and forms chit, the contents of consciousness, which are that, the loggos aspect of ultimate consciousness. And then it's not just all some kind of platonic mind floating in the transcendent realm, but it's embodied in nature.

Starting point is 01:30:04 And that's where the energy comes in, because that's flow, change, interaction, activity, which makes it embodied. So for me, a Trinitarian model is a much more satisfactory model than either materialism or analytic or any other form of idealism. Okay, so let me see if I can summarize. Descartes had dualism. Dualism is incorrect for whatever reason. The people who came after the dualists and some of the people who came before see dualism as needing to be reduced.

Starting point is 01:30:39 So they reduce it down to one because two goes to one. Some people reduce it down to zero, but we can forget about those people for now. And they say there's a monism. You can take a monism in at least two different ways. One is physicalism, one is idealism. Idealism says consciousness is fundamental, physicalism says something like material is fundamental plus physical laws. Okay, you would say that is akin to following verse one and verse two of the Bible, but numerical coincidence, perhaps. Verse three implies the Trinity. And then you made an analogy between the Logos, which is the word, and our actual speech.

Starting point is 01:31:20 So you can just breathe out and that's akin to spirit, but it's white noise. And you require the form or the stringency or the structure to give rise to the waveform of speech, which is what we analyze when we put speech on a computer, say. And that's the constricting of your neck. So you have the constriction, which is one element or form or structure. Then you have spirit, it's the second element which gives rise to speech, something like that. So you get a three-ness. And even non-dualists who think of themselves as monists, if you look at the nomenclature, technically what a non-dualist says is that

Starting point is 01:31:56 there's not two, could be three. It just says it's not two. It's not dualism. Or in other words, the three-ness is the speech, the breath, and the speaker themselves, I believe. And that speaker is synonymous with the circle of the yin and yang, which itself is synonymous with the ground of being. The only thing is that it's the three, the spirit, the breath, and the words are two aspects of it. But the third aspect is not the spoken word, it's the speaker, the ground of both, the ground of the breather and the speaker of the words. So the inter-speech, it's the speaker, the words and the breath on which they're carried.

Starting point is 01:32:45 I think that as the principle metaphor, all these things are metaphoric. All our thinking is metaphoric, including scientific thinking. So I think the principle metaphor is speech for this. And you're right that Advaita means not two in Hindu thought. So it doesn't necessarily mean one. In fact, Advaitic Vedanta, when you say that what is the nature of the ultimate reality, that's when they say Sat-Chetananda, that it has three aspects. So it's not a simple monism. They don't call it monism, they call it not duality. So yes, that's more or less your summary,

Starting point is 01:33:39 more or less, yes, what I was saying. Is God the ground of being to you? God is the Holy Trinity for me. I mean, this is the official, I'm a Christian, and the official Christian view of God, which I think is perfectly fine, in fact a very profound one, is that God is the Holy Trinity. And when Christians say the Creed during church services, what the Creed is, is basically a statement of the idea that there are three aspects to God. I believe in God the Father Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth. That's the first bit.

Starting point is 01:34:15 And in His only Son, Jesus Christ. So it goes on to Jesus as the Word or the log house of God, through whom all things were made. Well, obviously the whole universe wasn't made through Jesus of Nazareth. It was already there when he was born in Bethlehem. So that's referring to the Logos aspect, the cosmic Christ or the cosmic aspect of the Logos. And then the final part of the Creed and the Holy Spirit. So the Creed, all Christians, Orthodox Christians in Eastern Orthodox Churches, Catholic Churches,

Starting point is 01:34:57 Anglican Churches, Methodist Churches, and most churches, the view of God is not obviously an old man with a white beard sitting on a cloud. It's threefold, three aspects in the divine being, the source of all things. What I'm saying is actually at the root of the traditional view of God in the Christian tradition. And when someone meditates or takes psychedelics or does breath work or what have you and then they connect with this ground of being which you analogized or which you made synonymous

Starting point is 01:35:37 with the circle of the yin-yang, is that just one aspect of God or is it disconnected from God? What is it? Yes, well, this is another topic again. I wrote two books on spiritual practices. One's called Science and Spiritual Practices and the other's called Ways to Go Beyond and Why They Work. Each one deals with seven different spiritual practices, including prayer, meditation, pilgrimage,

Starting point is 01:36:08 fasting, singing and chanting, celebration of festivals, rituals, connecting with nature. There's a range of spiritual practices. One of them is sports, because for many people in the modern world, sports are a kind of spiritual practice, the way in which they go beyond their normal self and connect with something greater than themselves. I think that the different spiritual practices make contact with different aspects of ultimate reality or the Trinity. I think that meditation, when you sit quietly, meditate on a mantra or on mindfulness, then you're contacting the ground of being, sat, or God the Father in the Christian trinity,

Starting point is 01:36:56 I am that I am, that conscious being that underlies all things. I think when there are spiritual practices that involve activity and movement, like sports or singing or dancing, then these movement-based spiritual practices where you're in the flow and the spiritual experience comes from complete absorption in the flow when you feel you're a part of something much greater than yourself. I think those practices are connecting with the spirit aspect of the Holy Trinity. Or in Hindu terms, Shakti, the energy principle is a feminine principle. Shakti is the ground of things. It's Shiva and Shakti in Tantric Hinduism.

Starting point is 01:37:44 It's the and Shakti in Tantric Hinduism. It's the energy principle. Connecting with the, anyway, the moving or the energy principle, however it's conceived. And then spiritual practices that involve contemplation of beauty, for example, looking at a beautiful flower and getting completely absorbed in the beauty of it, or in the beauty of a painting, or the beauty of a building like a cathedral or a temple or a beautiful piece of architecture. That is more relating to the Logos, the word, the principle of form and order, that aspect of the divine. So I think that different spiritual practices relate us to different aspects of the Trinitarian

Starting point is 01:38:27 ultimate reality. And I think that's why very different practices like sitting quietly, meditating, and taking part in a sacred dance, or contemplating the beauty of a building or of a flower, can all lead to God in their own way because they're leading to different aspects of the divine which is not ultimately divided, it's an ultimate unity of which these are different aspects. Now to close, when we spoke we said, what is the proper way to pray for people who do pray?

Starting point is 01:39:04 One route is to pray, let's say you have an illness or you've lost your job, you pray for your problem to be fixed. Another is you pray for the strength to endure the problems. Another is you pray and you say, okay, I don't know what should be, but as long as it's within your will, God, let it be done. Another is you don't say words at all, you just recite rituals. You don't say your intent, you go to whatever the ritual is in your religion or your sect or what have you. And then I was going to ask you at that point,

Starting point is 01:39:38 how is it that you pray? So, how is it that you pray? So, how is it that you pray? All right. I pray every day in the evening before I go to bed. I also pray, I go to church on a regular basis, you know, for the main festivals, usually on Sundays, either morning or evening. And so in the church services, I take part in, I'm in Anglican, so I take part in formal collective prayers. And I think that's very important to pray with other people because I think our prayers are stronger when they're shared with others. And public prayers

Starting point is 01:40:20 also make a model for private prayers, you prayers, so that we remain connected with the tradition. So first of all, there's public prayers, and every tradition has its own public prayers. In Islam, there's standard prayers, not just praying, but moving with the prayers, as when people are praying in mosques. So this is common in all religions, having public prayers. But private prayers, again, I'm sure that most people in most religions, if not all religions, pray privately, and so a lot of people who aren't religious do as well. In my own case, my own private prayers, I start with the Lord's Prayer, because that's the central prayer of the Christian tradition. And I do it slowly, and if there's any particular

Starting point is 01:41:15 part of it that's important or relevant, you know, for example, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. If I'm really annoyed with somebody or angry with someone, I pray to be able to feel the grace to forgive them or at least to let go of the anger or resentment because I don't want to go to bed resentful or angry because anger and resentment are like corrosive acids that eat away at the soul. I'm not necessarily doing it for their sake, I'm doing it for my sake because I just don't want to be angry and resentful. It's really bad to be in that way. Not because it's morally bad. I think it is morally bad. But I think it's also just

Starting point is 01:41:58 self harm to harbor resentment. And you're able to see that even in your resentful state? Because when someone's rancorous, it's difficult for them to have another point of view where rancor isn't something that they should let go of, that acerbity desires to remain acerbic. Well, what I find is that I can't just out of an act of will sort of let go of it if somebody's done something I think is outrageous and awful. But I do find if I pray for the grace to be able to let go of it, then it's easier and doesn't necessarily happen straight away. But it does work. I mean, I know from my own experience, I don't go around harbouring resentments

Starting point is 01:42:45 and being angry. And it's not because I have a supreme character that's not affected by these things. It's because I pray to let go of them and it works. I mean, I can let go of them. I'm given the grace to let go of them. So saying the Lord's Prayer is the first bit. Then I say the Hail Mary because I like the idea of relating to the feminine principle, the Holy Mother, the quite different kind of energy from God the Father. It starts, you know, hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee. And then the second part, holy Mary, mother of God. So it's praying to the mother of God, which is like the cosmic principle. I mean, Mary, Jesus' mother in Nazareth,

Starting point is 01:43:48 became a kind of cosmic figure through the history of the church and has the title Mother of God. And Mother of God, she's sort of assimilated to the great goddesses, the sky goddesses. She's usually portrayed in a blue robe with stars on her. The mother of God is, among other things, the vastness of space which contains and gives birth to all the heavenly bodies within it.

Starting point is 01:44:13 So I think Mary has a kind of cosmic aspect as well as being an earthly mother. Just as Jesus is not just a man who was born and died in the Holy Land 2,000 years ago, but is the cosmic Christ and the ultimate second person of the Trinity. So there's a cosmic aspect. And then I give thanks for things that have happened during the day that I'm grateful for. I think it's important to remember the good things that have happened and to count our blessings as a spiritual practice. And then I pray about things that are preoccupying or worrying me, or people who I know who are sick, things I'm doing in the next few days, problems in the world or in my life, and so on.

Starting point is 01:45:13 So I start off with formal prayers, and I move on to informal prayers. That sounds like it's 10 minutes long. 10 minutes long? Yeah, it sounds like, how long does that prayer take? What, doing or the whole thing? Yeah. Oh, it varies from night to night. If I'm very tired and it's very late, it's shorter.

Starting point is 01:45:35 If sometimes it's longer, 10 minutes, 20 minutes. Wow. Rupert, it was wonderful to meet you at the Institute for Arts and Ideas and in person. And I'm grateful for this conversation. So am I. Thank you, Kat. I think you're doing a great job because you're having really deep questions, really deep conversations, and not many people are doing that. So I really appreciate what you're doing. Don't go anywhere, I have a treat for you. Google released something called Notebook LM,

Starting point is 01:46:10 which is an AI that can create short radio-like banter in podcast form about a particular subject. I placed today's podcast as a source in it because after the technical talk, it can serve as a friendly summary. Here you go. Hey everyone, ready to dive into something kind of spooky today? We're tackling that feeling you get, you know, like someone's watching you and bam, you turn around and there they are, eyes locked on you. We've all been there, right? But what if it's not just a coincidence? You guys sent in some

Starting point is 01:46:40 wild research by this biologist Rupert Sheldrake. And it's got me thinking. He's talking about actually sensing when someone's staring, even from far away. Gotta be honest, I'm a bit skeptical. But hey, that's the fun of these deep dives, right? So we'll break down Sheldrake's theories, see if the evidence holds up, maybe even try some experiments ourselves.

Starting point is 01:47:00 Let's do this. It's funny, when we think supernatural, it's all telepathy, mind reading, that jazz, but this feeling of being watched scopes these, tons of people swear it's real. Yeah, it's almost like a universal experience. But Sheldrake doesn't just say, oh, it's evolution, does he?

Starting point is 01:47:17 Nope, not at all. He thinks it backs up this big idea he calls the extended mind. Basically, our minds aren't stuck in our heads, they're reaching out, interacting with the world in ways we barely get. Extended mind, hold up, so our minds are like outside our bodies. Now that's a trip. Right, totally goes against that classic view that our everything's just happening inside our skulls. So not a closed system, but our minds are always

Starting point is 01:47:39 mingling with the world, picking up info, maybe even affecting things beyond our bodies. You got it. You're probably thinking, okay, now this is getting out there. Kinda. Giving me X-Men vibes over here. But seriously, what evidence is there for this extended mind stuff?

Starting point is 01:47:56 Well, Sheldrake uses Scope's Thesia, this feeling of being stared at, as one clue. And he links it to this vision theory called extra-mission. You might be surprised you probably believed in this as a kid. Wait, really? Think about it. Remember drawing those lines coming out of people's eyes in your drawings when you were little?

Starting point is 01:48:15 That's extra-mission. Now that you mention it, those laser-eyed stick figures make a lot more sense. I thought we were past that whole eyes are lasers thing, though. We did. As we learned about how eyes actually work, that inward focused view took over like our eyes are just cameras. But Sheldrake's like, hold on, maybe those kid drawings were onto something. So instead of our eyes just taking in light, he thinks they're also sending something out. Okay, now this is getting juicy, but where's the proof?

Starting point is 01:48:43 The million dollar question, right. Sheldrake says there's actually been loads of studies on this, lots of them using that classic setup where you gotta guess if someone's staring at you. Like one person's behind a wall, focusing really hard on staring at the other person. Exactly. He's looked at studies with blindfolds, one-way mirrors, even brain scams, and he says the results, even if they're small, hint at something real going on. Whoa, so there's actual science being done on this. I can see why this is so controversial,

Starting point is 01:49:11 but also fascinating. For sure, it ruffles some feathers. Critics say those experiments are tough to control for subtle cues, like maybe the person staring shifts their weight or breathes differently without realizing it. So the person being stared at might pick up on that and not some stare energy?

Starting point is 01:49:25 Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to be 100% sure. What about all those stories people tell though? Seems like everyone's got a feeling watched story. You're right, those stories are hard to ignore. Childricks talk to tons of people who say scopesthesia is a real deal. Part of their lives, surveillance people,

Starting point is 01:49:41 detectives, martial arts instructors. People whose jobs often rely on being hyper aware of what's around them. Exactly. But even with all that, gotta be careful. We humans are great at confirmation bias. True. If we already believe something, we're more likely to notice those times it seems real. Okay, so let's say there is something to scope asthesia. Wouldn't that give, like, prey animals a huge advantage? You'd think, right. Knowing a predator's lurking before it pounces would be pretty handy for survival.

Starting point is 01:50:12 Talk about a sixth sense, right. But wouldn't it be a bad thing for the predator? Like, if a gazelle can feel a lion staring, wouldn't that make hunting tougher? Sheldrakes brought that up. He thinks maybe predators evolved ways around it. Evolved? So they've, like, leveled up their staring game. Do they wear eye camouflage now? Not exactly. Think about how a cat watches a mouse hole. Just stares intensely, right? Sheldrakes says that fixed days might actually be their way of not setting off a prey animal's sopastesia. If the stare is always there, not changing, the prey might just tune it out. So it's like they're saying, yep, still staring, nothing to see here. You could say that. Of course it's just a theory. Evolution's complicated, no easy answer for why some

Starting point is 01:50:56 traits stick around and others don't. Fair enough. But knowing my cat wouldn't surprise me if they were messing with me on purpose half the time. Speaking of cats, Sheldrick mentions this thing a lot of pet owners know about waking up your sleeping pet just by staring at them. He seems to think it's scopesthesia, but how is that even possible? Yeah, that's one of the weirder parts, isn't it? If it's about sight, how can it work on someone with their eyes closed? Like saying you can see someone else's dream. Makes you wonder if there's more to it than we're seeing, literally. This whole influencing someone from afar thing,

Starting point is 01:51:27 even during sleep. Maybe scopesthesia isn't just about what we consciously see. Okay, now you've got me hooked. This is why Sheldrake's work is so cool, even if it's controversial. Big questions about how our senses and minds really work, but how do you even test that? Besides the whole staring at your pet thing

Starting point is 01:51:45 while they're napping. Well that's where it gets fun. Sheldrake's a big believer in citizen science. Anyone, no matter who they are, can help discover stuff. Love that. Science for everyone. So what kind of experiments is he talking about? He's got a bunch of simple ones anyone can try. Like that sleeping pet one. Test it out. Or try looking down at people from a window. See if they look up more when you're staring. He's even got a staring app to test it with a friend using your phones. A staring app.

Starting point is 01:52:11 That's putting your money where your mouth is. I'm checking that out for sure. It's a perfect example of how easy experiments can help us understand stuff that seems really complex. Totally. So we've talked about sight, but does Sheldrake think this extra-mission thing works with other senses too? Like, could we tell if someone's listening to us even miles away? That's a good one, and he did try an

Starting point is 01:52:33 experiment with telephones. The idea was if we project something while listening, maybe people could feel it through the phone. So like a psychic hotline, did it pan out? Well, as cool as psychic eavesdropping would be, no dice. Looks like our phone calls are safe from mind readers for now anyway. Yes, my psychic spy career is on hold. Yeah. But that's really interesting. It's like this extra mission thing might just be a vision thing, right? That's what Sheldrake's thinking.

Starting point is 01:52:57 No sign of it working with hearing seems to back up the idea that scopesthesia, if it's real, could be all about light. Yeah, makes sense. Light, vision, staring, all fits. We've gone deep on Rupert Sheldrake today, and wow, what a ride. Definitely still up for debate, but man, his ideas get you thinking. There's something about those fringe science ideas stepping outside the box. Reminds us there's so much we don't know about the world, about ourselves. Totally. And hey, maybe someday we'll have all the answers. But for now, we get to decide what we believe. Exactly.

Starting point is 01:53:31 Don't just take our word for it, or Sheldrake's. Try those experiments, see what happens, come to your own conclusion. Now that's a challenge I can get behind. So while you're staring at your phone, maybe feeling that little tingle on your neck, here's something to think about. If our minds can reach out like that, what other hidden powers might we have? Until next time, keep those minds open and watch out for those stairs. There you go.

Starting point is 01:53:55 If you enjoyed that cordial recapitulation by Notebook LM, then let me know and I'll start including them at the end of the podcast to provide an abridged introductory level summary after the in-depth graduate level theories of everything podcast New update started a sub stack writings on there are currently about language and ill-defined Concepts as well as some other mathematical details much more being written there. This is content that isn't anywhere else It's not on theories of everything It's not on patreon also full transcripts will be placed there at some point in the future. Several people ask me, hey Kurt, you've spoken to so many people in the fields of

Starting point is 01:54:33 theoretical physics, philosophy, and consciousness. What are your thoughts? While I remain impartial in interviews, this substack is a way to peer into my present deliberations on these topics. Also, thank you to our partner, The Economist. Firstly, thank you for watching, thank you for listening. There's now a website, curtjymongle.org, and that has a mailing list. The reason being that large platforms like YouTube, like Patreon, they can disable you for whatever reason, whenever they like. That's just part of the terms of service. Now a direct mailing list ensures that I have an untrammeled communication with you. Plus, soon I'll be releasing a one-page PDF of my top 10 toes. It's not as Quentin Tarantino as it sounds like. Secondly, if

Starting point is 01:55:21 you haven't subscribed or clicked that like button, now is the time to do so. Why? Because each subscribe, each like helps YouTube push this content to more people like yourself, plus it helps out Kurt directly, aka me. I also found out last year that external links count plenty toward the algorithm, which means that whenever you share on Twitter, say on Facebook or even on Reddit, etc., it shows YouTube, hey, people are talking about this content outside of YouTube, which in turn greatly aids the distribution on YouTube.

Starting point is 01:55:54 Thirdly, there's a remarkably active Discord and subreddit for theories of everything, where people explicate toes, they disagree respectfully about theories, and build as a community our own toe. Links to both are in the description. Fourthly, you should know this podcast is on iTunes, it's on Spotify, it's on all of the audio platforms. All you have to do is type in theories of everything and you'll find it. Personally, I gain from rewatching lectures and podcasts.

Starting point is 01:56:19 I also read in the comments that hey, toe listeners also gain from replaying. So how about instead you re-listen on those platforms like iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, whichever podcast catcher you use. And finally, if you'd like to support more conversations like this, more content like this, then do consider visiting patreon.com slash Kurt Jaimungal and donating with whatever you like. There's also PayPal, there's also crypto, there's also just joining on YouTube. Again, keep in mind, it's support from the sponsors

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Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal - The Scientist Researching Morphic Field | Rupert Sheldrake

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