Searching The Truth Will Set Us Free: The Scientist Who Says Nature Has Memory and Minds Aren’t Trapped in Brains

Friday, May 23, 2025

The Scientist Who Says Nature Has Memory and Minds Aren’t Trapped in Brains

By Vicky Verma

Posted on May 23, 2025

The CIA trains people not to look directly at the people they are following, as otherwise they can ‘sense’ they are being stared at and turn around. This Man argues that this is due to consciousness being extended outside of the brain.

Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist who has written over 100 scientific papers and 9 books, and has helped write 6 more. His books have been translated into 28 languages. In 2013, a top think tank in Switzerland named him one of the world’s 100 most important thinkers. On ResearchGate, a popular site for scientists, he ranks in the top 4% for research interest.

On Google Scholar, his work has been cited many times, giving him high academic scores. For twelve years in a row, Watkins magazine has listed him as one of the most spiritually influential living people.

Rupert Sheldrake

His work has appeared in many well-known magazines and newspapers, and he has been featured on BBC radio and TV.

In the interview, philosopher Hilary Lawson asks Rupert Sheldrake why the scientific community has been so critical of his work, even though he has been very successful with the general public. Sheldrake explains that the scientific community is not just one group—it’s made up of many different people with different opinions.

When he first shared his ideas, some scientists were interested and friendly, while others were more skeptical. He had especially good experiences with scientists in India, who were open to his ideas, like morphic resonance.

But things changed after he published his first book, A New Science of Life, in 1981. A powerful editor at the science journal Nature, Sir John Maddox, harshly criticized the book and even said it was “a book for burning.” This public attack made Sheldrake seem like an outsider or a heretic in the eyes of many scientists, which made others afraid to openly support him.

Sheldrake believes that the scientists who attack him most often are militant atheists. He explains that these people treat materialist science almost like a religion, and because his work challenges their worldview, they react very strongly. This kind of criticism also appears on platforms like Wikipedia, where a group called “guerrilla skeptics” has taken control of his biography and prevents others from changing it.

However, Sheldrake also says that most scientists are not so extreme. When he gives talks at scientific institutions, people often come up to him privately afterward and say they’re very interested in his work and have had similar experiences, like feeling telepathic connections or sensing when their dog knows they’re coming home. But they admit they’re afraid to speak up about it because they don’t want to be judged or attacked by their peers. Sheldrake tells them that they’re not alone, and many of their colleagues feel the same way in secret.

Sheldrake agrees that he does have a philosophical view. His worldview is holistic: he believes that consciousness exists throughout the universe, that minds extend beyond just the brain, and that nature has a kind of memory—what he calls “morphic resonance.” These ideas go against the usual materialist and mechanistic view of science, which sees everything as just matter and machines. But Sheldrake says the key difference is that he thinks all of these views—including his own—should be openly discussed and tested scientifically. He does experiments to test his theories.

He says the people who oppose him don’t want open discussion. Instead, they label anything that doesn’t fit their materialist worldview as “pseudoscience” and try to cancel or suppress it. He calls this an unfair, one-sided situation.

Sheldrake points out that in most areas of life, like philosophy, politics, or religion, there are many different points of view, and people accept that. But in science, he says, there’s no real culture of open debate about controversial ideas. Instead, the dominant view controls everything: funding, journals, jobs, peer review, and government science advice. Those who don’t agree with the mainstream often get pushed out and silenced.

Sheldrake sees his ideas as models, not as the final truth. Morphic resonance is the idea that memory exists in nature and that past forms and behaviors influence present ones based on similarity.

He thinks some kind of memory in nature must exist because, in his view, evolutionary biology doesn’t make full sense without it. But he admits that while he’s fairly sure the phenomenon is real, he doesn’t know for certain that his specific explanation is correct.

He says it’s the only detailed model of its kind currently out there, though other, more general ideas touch on memory in the universe, like in Hindu and Buddhist beliefs about karma, which also involve effects traveling across time.

Sheldrake compares his situation to how science developed over time. For example, Michael Faraday proposed the existence of electric and magnetic fields without knowing exactly how they worked. Later, James Clerk Maxwell created a mathematical model involving the “ether,” which was widely accepted until Einste in’s theory of relativity showed that the ether didn’t exist.

Then, quantum physics introduced entirely new ideas. So, the models changed over time, but the actual phenomena—like electricity and magnetism—remained real and important. He sees his theory of morphic fields and resonance in the same way: the phenomenon may be real, but the model explaining it might evolve.

That’s why he keeps doing experiments. If he already knew the truth, he says, there’d be no need to keep testing his ideas. The point is to explore and discover, not to claim he already has all the answers.

Sheldrake says that his theory of morphic resonance, which he describes as a theory of memory, could have several real-world uses. He explains that this theory includes not only the memory we have in our minds but also a kind of collective memory that influences learning. According to him, if morphic resonance is real, then people could learn faster and better by tapping into the experiences of others who have already learned the same things in the past.

He says this might explain why people often learn practical skills, like sports or using tools, better through doing and repetition rather than through books. He thinks this approach could especially help in teaching languages.

For example, learners could benefit more from immersive, experience-based methods that connect with this collective memory instead of memorizing grammar rules and verb lists (like how he was taught French).

He also believes morphic resonance could be important in treating memory-related issues like Alzheimer’s or other psychological problems.

Looking ahead, he imagines that if we could build computers based on morphic resonance (which he says would need to be analog rather than digital), they might be able to access shared memory banks. These computers could lead to a type of artificial intelligence that is truly intelligent, not just simulating human thinking.

Sheldrake also talks about another area of his research: the idea of the extended mind. This includes things like the feeling of being stared at, telepathy, and intuitions about future events (what he calls “pre-sentiment”).

He believes that if we could train people to improve these intuitive skills, they might be better at sensing dangers or responding more naturally to situations in daily life. He says there’s a lot of potential for training in this area.

Sheldrake explains laws of nature were fixed at the moment of the Big Bang and never change. Instead, it suggests that just like nature evolves, the “laws” of nature might also change and grow over time. Instead of calling them laws (which is a very human concept), Sheldrake prefers to think of them as habits of nature—patterns that repeat and get stronger the more they happen, just like how animals or people develop habits. (Source)

He believes that everything in nature, including living things, thoughts, and even social behaviors, is guided by invisible fields called morphic fields. These fields carry memory from the past and influence present behavior. So if something has happened many times before, it’s more likely to happen again. That’s how species inherit instincts or how languages and cultures form and evolve.

He says these morphic fields affect our minds too. For example, the feeling that someone is staring at you, or the experience of thinking about someone just before they call you, might not be coincidences—they could be examples of telepathy through morphic fields. According to Sheldrake, this is not magic or paranormal, but a natural process. Experiments have shown that people often correctly guess who is calling them on the phone, and this might be a common form of human telepathy. Similar behavior is also seen in animals, like dogs, that know when their owners are coming home.

Morphic fields are not limited to the brain—they can reach far beyond the body, just like magnetic fields go beyond magnets or cell phone signals go beyond the phone. These fields help explain connections between people or animals, even over long distances.

Vicky Verma