'Sixth sense' may be biological

[Guest guest]

Science trying to explain things like this makes me shudder! They have

discredited many things I believe to be true in the past simply because they

are not intelligent enough to prove them.

 

Erin

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Comments?

Misty

http://www..com

 

Think someone's staring at you? 'Sixth sense' may be biological

 

By CECELIA GOODNOW

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

 

If Rupert Sheldrake is right, at least seven out of 10 of you

reading this article have felt the prickly sensation of being stared

at.

 

Maybe you've also had feelings of foreboding that later proved true.

 

Or perhaps you've been startled to answer the phone and hear the

loved one you were just thinking about.

 

 

Far from paranormal, these experiences are rooted in our biology,

says Sheldrake, a Cambridge-trained biochemist and maverick thinker

who's been called " a scientific heretic who refuses to be burnt at

the stake. "

 

He says scientific exploration of these common experiences could

lead to a new understanding of human and animal minds -- if science

could overcome its dogmatic hostility toward this line of inquiry.

 

" This field of research is inherently controversial, " said

Sheldrake, who has been touring with his new book, " The Sense of

Being Stared At, and Other Aspects of the Extended Mind " (Crown, 370

pages, $25).

 

" In my book, what I'm trying to do, " he said, " is put forth the

scientific evidence. "

 

Sheldrake argues for a new concept of the mind -- one not bounded by

the brain, but operating through fields of influence that he

believes are present throughout nature.

 

He suggests these " morphic fields " organize the development and

behavior of animals, plants, social groups and mental activity, from

human and animal telepathy to such everyday mysteries as the

synchronized swooping of

 

flocks of birds.

 

" I don't claim to explain all these things or to understand them, "

Sheldrake said. " I say, here's what seems to be going on. "

 

For example, he posits that telepathy is a kind of morphic field, a

social field that allows distant members of a pack or tribe to stay

in contact or warn of danger. As an example he cites wolf packs,

which scatter over hundreds of miles to hunt without losing their

group cohesion.

 

" Telepathy depends on social bonds, " Sheldrake said, adding that the

ability seems to be stronger in animals than in most people.

 

In the modern world, he said, the most common example is telephone

telepathy -- sensing who's on the phone before you pick up the

receiver, especially if the caller is a close friend or relative.

 

He said the phenomenon also occurs with e-mail, a topic he plans to

discuss at Microsoft. As of last September he had completed 160

experimental trials of e-mail telepathy, designed to yield a 25

percent success rate through random chance. He said his 43 percent

success rate was " very significantly above the chance level. "

 

 

A common event

 

As the title of his book suggests, the sense of being stared at is

the most common " paranormal " event, reported by 70 to 90 percent of

the adults Sheldrake surveyed. He speculates that focused visual

attention has an effect that extends beyond the eye and brain of the

observer.

 

Sheldrake may be a free thinker, but he doesn't to every

unorthodox idea. He suspects " a lot of what comes through channelers

is colored by their own mind " and he questions accounts of past-life

regression, saying, " You can get people to think all sorts of things

under hypnotic suggestion. "

 

What he finds most baffling are premonitions that precede tragedies,

such as the sinking of the Titanic and the terrorism of 9/11.

 

He quotes an eerily prescient dream that occurred five days before

the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as reported by Mike Cherni, a forensic

scientist who worked 300 yards from the World Trade Center. In the

dream, Cherni said, he was on an airplane and grew alarmed as the

plane took an unusual flight path, very low over Manhattan's

buildings.

 

" It was clear that we were flying directly south over the southern

tip of the island, " says Cherni's account. " Then there was a

tremendous impact and I woke up. This dream disturbed me for days

afterward, enough that I described the dream to my wife. "

 

Others reported dreaming on Sept. 10 of crowds fleeing down the

stairwells of a burning World Trade Center, or of buildings

collapsing or planes crashing or people running in panic.

 

Sheldrake finds it intriguing but said he has no conceptual

framework for these accounts. " I don't know how precognition works, "

he said. " It's much more mysterious, to my mind, than telepathy or

the sense of being stared at. "

 

 

Spirited debate

 

For his views, Sheldrake has been called everything from visionary

to crackpot and, in the spirit of free debate, he posts the remarks

of his most vocal critics on his Web site, www.sheldrake.org The

most memorable brickbat came from Sir John Maddox, emeritus editor

of the scientific journal " Nature, " whose 1981 quote about

Sheldrake's first book, " A New Science of Life, " has become

legend: " This infuriating tract . . . is the best candidate for

burning there has been for many years. "

 

Sheldrake said healthy skepticism is essential to science, but he

objects to " dogmatic skepticism, " or " scientific fundamentalism, "

which rejects on principle the exploration of anything outside

conventional theories.

 

As a result, Sheldrake said, many areas of human and animal behavior

have never been investigated. " The mind itself, and what the mind

can do, " he said, " is almost virgin territory. "

 

Sheldrake, who has explored the topic for more than a decade,

solicits anecdotes from the public and publishes experiments readers

can try at home. He claims to have a database of 4,000 case

histories, 2,000 questionnaires and 1,500 telephone interviews in

addition to controlled experiments.

 

Despite his critics, Sheldrake is considered a cutting-edge thinker

in non-traditional circles, and he said many mainstream scientists

have encouraged him as well.

 

Sheldrake has been a speaker several times at the Whidbey Institute,

an admittedly non-scientific group on Whidbey Island devoted to

ecology and spirituality.

 

Sheldrake, 60, studied philosophy at Harvard and natural sciences at

Cambridge University, where he earned a doctorate and became

director of studies in biochemistry and cell biology. He spent the

first two decades of his career in mainstream academia, studying

plant biology.

 

In the 1970s he worked in India as principal plant physiologist at

the International Crop Research Instititute for the Semi-Arid

Tropics. He also spent time at an ashram.

 

" I first became convinced that living organisms were organized by

fields, " Sheldrake said, " when I was doing research at Cambridge

University on the development of plants. "

 

While genes and molecules provide the building blocks of life, they

don't explain how the parts are assembled to create a living

organism, said Sheldrake, who suggests that morphic fields provide

the organizational blueprint.

 

He sees this organizing force as a kind of collective unconscious

that allows members of a species to draw from, and contribute to,

the collective memory of the species.

 

P-I reporter Cecelia Goodnow can be reached at 206-448-8353 or

ceceliagoodnow.