The theory of “morphic resonance” posits that people have a sense of when they are being stared at. What does the research show?

Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to do a newspaper crossword puzzle later in the day? Me neither. But according to Rupert Sheldrake, it is because the collective successes of the morning resonate through the cultural morphic field.

In Sheldrake’s theory of morphic resonance, similar forms (morphs, or “fields of information”) reverberate and exchange information within a universal life force. “As time goes on, each type of organism forms a special kind of cumulative collective memory,” Sheldrake writes in his 1981 book A New Science of Life (JP Tarcher). “The regularities of nature are therefore habitual. Things are as they are because they were as they were.” In this book and subsequent ones, Sheldrake, a botanist trained at the University of Cambridge, details the theory, which is again hotly debated in the recent June Journal of Consciousness Studies.

Morphic resonance, Sheldrake says, is “the idea of mysterious telepathy-type interconnections between organisms and of collective memories within species” and accounts for phantom limbs, how dogs know when their owners are coming home, and how people know when someone is staring at them. “Vision may involve a two-way process, an inward movement of light and an outward projection of mental images,” Sheldrake explains. Thousands of trials conducted by anyone who downloaded the experimental protocol from Sheldrake’s Web page “have given positive, repeatable, and highly significant results, implying that there is indeed a widespread sensitivity to being stared at from behind.” (continue reading…)

If the brain mediates all experience, then paranormal phenomena are nothing more than neuronal events

Five centuries ago demons haunted our world, with incubi and succubi tormenting victims as they lay asleep. Two centuries ago spirits haunted our world, with ghosts and ghouls harassing sufferers during all hours of the night. This past century aliens haunted our world, with grays and greens abducting captives and whisking them away for probing and prodding. Nowadays people are reporting out-of-body experiences, floating above their beds. What is going on here? Are these elusive creatures and mysterious phenomena in our world or in our minds? New evidence adds weight to the notion that they are, in fact, products of the brain. Neuroscientist Michael Persinger, in his laboratory at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, for example, can induce all these perceptions in subjects by subjecting their temporal lobes to patterns of magnetic fields. (I tried it myself and had a mild out-of-body experience.) (continue reading…)

Why most scientists do not believe in ESP and psi phenomena

In the first half of the 19th century the theory of evolution was mired in conjecture until Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace compiled a body of evidence and posited a mechanism — natural selection — for powering the evolutionary machine.

The theory of continental drift, proposed in 1915 by Alfred Wegener, was not accepted by most scientists until the 1960s, with the discovery of midoceanic ridges, geomagnetic patterns corresponding to continental plate movement, and plate tectonics as the driving motor.

Data and theory. Evidence and mechanism. These are the twin pillars of sound science. Without data and evidence, there is nothing for a theory or mechanism to explain. Without a theory and mechanism, data and evidence drift aimlessly on a boundless sea. (continue reading…)

“Crossing over” to expose the tricks of popular spirit mediums

Like all other animals, we humans evolved to connect the dots between events so as to discern patterns meaningful for our survival. Like no other animals, we tell stories about the patterns we find. Sometimes the patterns are real; sometimes they are illusions. A well-known illusion of a meaningful pattern is the alleged ability of mediums to talk to the dead. The hottest medium today is former ballroom-dance instructor John Edward, star of the cable television series Crossing Over and author of the New York Times best-selling book One Last Time. His show is so popular that he is about to be syndicated nationally on many broadcast stations.

How does Edward appear to talk to the dead? What he does seems indistinguishable from tricks practiced by magicians. (continue reading…)

Ever since the 1970s, spoonbending (and the bending of other cutlery, metal bars, and the like) has been held up as physical evidence for telekinesis, a form of PSI in which thoughts alone can allegedly be employed to alter the physical environment. In this episode, Michael Shermer attends a seminar on spoonbending and discovers the power of group think to actually bend metal!