Evidence That Your Mind is NOT Just In Your Brain - Rupert Sheldrake

[Uncle Joe]

In this episode Rupert Sheldrake, biologist and author, debunks the standard view that the mind is nothing but brain activity and argues that our mind is extended in every act of visual perception.

Rupert has designed an app to enable you to test your sensitivity to being looked at from behind, and to find out if you can improve with practice. The test takes just a few minutes to complete. https://www.sheldrake.org/participate . If you find you or your partner can indeed improve with practice, scoring repeatedly and fairly reliably above 75%, please let us know by email at [e-mail]

For more information about Rupert Sheldrake's research, visit https://www.sheldrake.org/

This talk was part of the 2023 Holberg Debate at the University of Bergen with the neuroscientist Anil Seth and the anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann. The full debate can be seen here: • Does Consciousness Extend Beyond Brai...

[Arne]

1. Real men stare at goats.

[Uncle Joe]

2. GOATS DECLASSIFIED: The True Story Behind The Men Who Stare At Goats

[Arne]

5. Teachings of Don Huan when I was young

and impressionable.

Castaneda concludes that Don Juan's teachings are not meant to be understood intellectually, but to be experienced and lived. They offer a different way of perceiving and interacting with the world, one that is more fluid, mysterious, and full of possibilities. In the end, The Teachings of Don Juan is not just a book about shamanism, but a profound exploration of the nature of reality and the human potential.

[somaticexperiencing]

3. really enjoy Rupert Sheldrake. Previously encountered his talks on Morphic Resonance. Thank you.

[dickthegrouch]

4. Fascinating

We all know when someone is looking into our eyes. There is an undefined invisible connection when that occurs. It even causes reactions of excitement and pleasure in some and loathing and discomfort in others.

[Martin68]

6. Sounds like pure pseudo science to me. The senses are useless without the processing of sensory information

from sensory nerves by the brain.

[Warpy]

7. I'd say the same thing if it hadn't been tested, verified, and replicated.

We could be picking up on something like an olfactory signal, we just don't know yet. It's one of those spooky things that cases us to keep asking questions and designing ways to test it out.

To suggest we know everything about consciousness and how it interacts with the environment is silly, we don't even know what consciousness really is.

[Martin68]

9. Olfactory signals are meaningless until processed by the brain. The same goes for sensory information from the eyes,

the ears, the nose, and the skin. The fact that the brain is involved doesn't make it less miraculous or interesting. What is being described here would certainly be worth investigating in regard to how the brain receives, processes and responds to this information. Now that we have imaging tools that indicate where in therein activity is taking place when receive sensory input, or even when we think about something, it is in the realm of possibility to study it.

[Warpy]

11. I was just looking for an answer to satsfy the materialist thinkers

I've felt some creeper giving me the hard stare from the nest subway car, so that explanation doesn't work for me. Boston subway cars are closed, no way for some olfactory signal to get through 2 layers of glass and steel.

It really has to do with the predator/prey paradigm, IMHO, some evolutionary quirk that served me well as a woman alone in a hard core urban environment. It needs exploration but other than verifying its existence, we have no way to measure it or determine exactly what it is.

[Uncle Joe]

15. Well, we're made of sub-atomic particles and observing sub-atomic particles changes their behavior.

So my question is when we observe the visual product; of sub-atomic particles, humans and animals with just our naked eye, does that rudimentary observation still change or alter the behavior of those sub-atomic particles, even though it's not visible to the viewer?

If that's the case then perhaps the person or animal being viewed may feel at some instinctual level the effect of their own sub-atomic particles being altered by a viewer.

[Warpy]

16. It's as good as any and will impress pople who can't name a sub atomic particle.

I sure don't have a clue and equipment to measure what's going on hasn't been invented yet.

[Martin68]

17. Instinct resides in the brain.

[Uncle Joe]

18. Yes. However from which sense; does the brain receive the "being watched" information

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to even become aware, vision, hearing, touch, smell, or taste?

[Martin68]

19. I assume instinct coordinates information from all the senses in addition to memories from relevant experiences

that interact with some hard-wired responses. All of this information is coordinated, analyzed, and acted on by the brain, but in the case of what we call instinct, the process is not accessible to the conscious mind. It takes place behind the scenes, so to speak, which is why it often seems mysterious our uncanny.

[Uncle Joe]

20. Except that it seems more primordial to me as the heaviest demographic experiencing

"being watched" in their experiments per the OP were children under the age of 9.

Having said that I do believe the sub-conscious plays the predominant role in those feelings.

[cynical_idealist]

8. modern science is still in it's infancy.

just because we can't explain something doesn't mean it's not possible.

(and i'm not superstitious)

[Martin68]

10. In many ways that's true, but it certainly is less of an infancy than it was 100 years ago, not to mention 2,000 years

ago. I think I might term it an adolescence at this point considering how far we've come.

[NJCher]

12. Anyone familiar with the work

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Of Robert Monroe knows what this is.

There are people who can do this at will. I can’t, but haven’t tried very hard. By “do this”, I mean learn how to get your consciousness to leave your body and go “places.” There is a forum at Reddit called astral projection where you can read about their experiences.

In reference to some of the first posts on this thread,, there is also a sub-Reddit called Gateway. The Gateway tapes are mental exercises that Monroe created and tested that shortcut the meditation or focus exercises that are part of being able to astral project. Our CIA used them.

Monroe has three books out. It helps to have read them before reading the experiences of people experimenting with consciousness leaving the body.

Some people cannot fathom how this works and are dependent on science to prove this to them. Science is too slow for me, so I’ve had to look elsewhere for my answers.

[Uncle Joe]

13. It sure felt as if I did in the 1980s to Jonathan Parker's meditation tapes

Whether it was that or self-hypnosis I was literally floating through the ceiling up to the clouds with a very powerful feeling of euphoria.

I felt extremely connected and motivated.

[NJCher]

14. Surprised I didn't know about this

Will comment more tomorrow. Four thirty am is when I go to sleep.