Morphic Resonance 

I heard a man named Rupert Sheldrake (and what a lovely name!) speaking on CBC radio the other night, on Ideas. He was turned on for company while I cleaned the kitchen. I could have listened to him talk all night. Such eloquence! Says he’s basically been ex-communicated from the scientific community for being a heretic. Compared his situation to the Catholic Church at the time of Galileo. They just don’t want to know. In this case, about his theory of Morphic Resonance. 

Sheldrake says we’re living in a force field, like gravity, that operates telepathically. Thoughts are (like we’ve been told ad nauseam in so many new age books)… real. 

Scientists thought that when we discovered the minutiae of the DNA strand we’d be able to see how a tiny seed develops into a huge tree with a hard trunk, soft green leaves and branches, or how a tiny embryo develops into a sheep with fur, four legs, googly eyes with long lashes and a baaaa—baaaa. 

It hasn’t exactly worked out that way. They still have no clue why these astonishing changes take place from tiny seeds and cells. Sheldrake says nature operates on a ‘habit’ model. Things have always been thus, the plant ‘remembers’ what to do and does it, though there’s room for change. 

He says an idea is not only ‘in the air,’ it is actually In The Air, in this Morphic Resonance force field. This explains, to use an important example, why I suddenly want long hair, and so does every other woman in the western world. And we improve our skills exponentially and all together, although miles apart. Rats were thrown into water and told to find a way out. (They didn’t actually need telling.) They bumbled around and eventually figured out the process required. Their offspring were born doing better. And rats born miles away did better as well! The prowess of the few raised the level of the many. No mothers and fathers were passing on knowledge. It was just, seemingly magically, picked up, plucked from the air.

According to Sheldrake, we’re born knowing more than our medieval or dark age counterparts. We’ve absorbed knowledge from the air, from what psychic Arthur Findley referred to as the Etheric. His Etheric, which he expounded on in the 1920’s, seems to jive with Sheldrake’s Morphic Resonance.

You see where this is leading, don’t you. And this explains the scorn and dismissal of the established scientific community. It leads to a view of life that puts ‘nature’ in the centre, not man, and at the same time opens the door to what is called the paranormal or the supernatural, which  might just be downright natural, after all.

The show ended and I was left feeling sorry for this intelligent man who, like all truth tellers, is being ridiculed and made to suffer by the powers that be. How hard it seems for things to change, for fresh air to blow in the world. The world’s downward spiral seems intractable. It’s sad and disheartening. 

There was a documentary made some years ago called Killing Hope. It said the U.S. is on the wrong side of a world-wide revolutionary movement for brotherhood and fairness. When Obama started to be attacked for telling “fairy tales” that’s exactly what the powers that be were doing, their job of killing hope.

We’re aware of all this political stuff, but what if we tie it in with Sheldrake’s Morphic Resonance Theory. If thoughts and aspirations are real, then, in that case, we, the little people, are more powerful than we realize. From this point of view it is easier to understand the necessity of the powerful to cut down any leader who empowers people with good thoughts. It makes us brave and strong. Conversely, the importance of the powerful indoctrinating us with ideas of the futility of our efforts for change. God forbid things should get out of hand and positive upbeat, life-affirming vibes take us all over and we do something outrageous like ban plastic bags world-wide.

Populist Political leaders are easily bumped off, but I can think of an instance when positive vibes and enthusiasm were allowed to “inoculate” everyone. The Beatles. They weren’t just a band. They were a phenomena. I was a child of 9 at the time, (Autumn, 1963) but I vividly recall the energizing vitality of their popularity. They created, (much like Kennedy had) a feeling that a new age was dawning. It was modern times now and it would no longer be business as usual. There’d be some changes made. For the better. Finally! People felt empowered. It was good to be alive. 

I have long used The Beatles as an example of a miracle, (When I say “There’s magic in the world” and people look at me stunned.) and it’s interesting to me that one of my heroes, Kurt Vonnegut, cited them as well, as a time when something had magically changed the world, in a twinkling. He cited it to an interviewer as an example of miracles and magic in the world, to back up his feeling that positive world-wide change could happen suddenly. I think he was discussing the environment. But it all ties in, from Sheldrake’s theoretical point of view. Change can happen through ideas rapidly spread In The Air. 

I think we were allowed to experience The Beatles phenomena because the powers that be didn’t recognize them for the force they were. They were just a music band. The fact that they stood for an irreverent, anti-authoritarian outlook, a fearless happy stance, is what fed their popularity. Such a stance is the thing, of course, all great authorities fear. Much better to have a cringing, demoralized, scapegoat-seeking population. Nixon said it on tape, “Fear is easier to instil than love and hope.” 

We, the multitudes, have somehow got to turn this thing around. I apologize for turning this into a political tract. It wasn’t my intention at the outset. But if I can put the metaphysical and scientific at the point where they may converge, (and express them in a ‘60’s vernacular) there are a whole lotta bad vibes out there and some people are playing mind games with us.