Reply #31: Stranger things exist than we can possibliy imagine.... [View All]

[whistle]

...I do grant that.
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The Extended Mind
By Rupert Sheldrake

My idea of the existence of the mind beyond the physical brain is what I call the extended mind. I would like to suggest that the mind is much more extensive than the brain and stretches out through fields that I call morphic fields. Morphic fields, like the known fields of physics, are non-material regions of influence extending in space and continuing in time. They are localized within and around the systems they organize. When any particular organized system ceases to exist, as when an atom splits, a snowflake melts, an animal dies, its organizing field disappears from that place. But in another sense, morphic fields do not disappear: they are potential organizing patterns of influence, and can appear again physically in other times and places, wherever and whenever the physical conditions are appropriate. When they do so they contain with themselves a memory of their previous physical existences (The Presence of the Past pxiii). Because the existence of these fields has intrigued me for a long time, I have developed experiments which do provide strong evidence for them as a scientific hypothesis.

We are all familiar with fields that extend from material objects; the most obvious example is a magnet. The magnet is a physical, material object you can hold in your hand, but it has a region of influence stretching all around it—the magnetic field—that is invisible and can have effects over distance.

Another, more modern example is the cellular phone. The material object you hold in your hand has a material composition which you can weigh and analyze, but its function depends on much more that its material constituents. It depends on invisible fields that stretch out far beyond the limits of the cell phone itself and its whole function depends upon those extended fields. Likewise, the fields of our mind are rooted in the brain, but they extend out far beyond it in accordance with our attentions and intentions.

The idea that the mind is more extensive than the brain is not a new idea, but is found in the ancient philosophies of Greece and India and in Buddhist traditions. It is something Theosophists have been talking about for a long time as well.

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<link> http://www.theosophical.org/theosophy/questmagazine/julyaugust03/sheldrake/